How to Return to Work After Injury

Unfortunately personal injury and associated psychological injury is becoming more and more common in society and specifically in workplaces. The process of managing injuries and returning to your life (e.g., work) can be quite complex and long, often requiring the help of a number of different professionals (e.g., Psychologists, Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists). Below are some tips and techniques of how you can manage your injury and return to life as easily as possible:

1. Accept that you are injured and that you are in the process of being rehabilitated. A lot of people like to live under the Illusion that they haven’t been injured and have unrealistic expectations as to what they can achieve in the short-medium term.

2. Try not to use your injury as an excuse not to do things in life. Definitely understand your limitations, while being injured. Instead of focusing on the 10% of things that you can’t do, focus on the 90% of things that you are still able to do. Don’t define yourself as the ‘injured person”. You are still the same person, with the same capabilities and personality.

3. Think of your rehabilitation as a full time job. You may not be working at the moment, this doesn’t mean that you can nothing. For a lot of you, you’ll be paid by your insurance company, Workcover or your employer while being injured. You’ll have physical exercises to do, appointments with medical specialists to attend. The time and effort that you put in will have a huge bearing on your recovery.

4. As much as possible, try to focus on the here and now. Mindfulness training is a great way to achieve this outcome. During the adjustment to injury, it is very easy to think about the ‘what ifs’ in the future, which you don’t have a lot of control over. What you do have control over is what you can do now and how you react in the present moment. For more info on mindfulness training, do a search for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on the APS website.

5. Remember to set short-term and medium term treatment goals. This will make sure that you have realistic expectations. Also, remember to review your progress regularly and unemotionally. For example, 1st Tuesday of every month.

6. Keep yourself busy, without overworking yourself. Minimise unhelpful distractions (e.g., excessive TV, alcohol, drugs, junk food etc).

7. Keep an active social life. Often when people get injured at work, they tend to socially withdraw. Remember to keep in contact with work colleagues, friends and family. Be creative with how you socialise with people. If you can’t physically see and speak with someone, the telephone or e-mail may be another good option.

8. Be very mindful about the impact that your behaviour and mood is having on your immediate family members. It is very important to keep a positive outlook and remain calm, to create a positive home environment.

9. To be flexible and open to the possibility that you won’t be able to go back to your same life. For example, you may need to change jobs.

Goal Setting, Action Plans and Happiness

This topic has been dealt with in numerous self-help books and textbooks. Essentially this topic comes down to identifying what you are wanting in life (i.e., goals etc) and identifying how to reach them. Along with living your life with gratitude and happiness. Below are a number of tips and techniques to help you to identify what you want in life and how to generally improve your levels of gratitude and happiness:

1. Identify what your 3 or 4 important/ salient values are in life. Values may include; importance of friends/ family, being creative, career/ finances, thinking outside the "square" or doing your own thing. Then living your life in accordance with these values.

2. Identify 2 or 3 important life areas that you are wanting to focus on in the next 6 - 12 months. For example; work, family, friends, finances, career, romance, health and fitness. Remember that you can't focus on them all at once, so you need to prioritise and pick 2 or 3.

3. Set 3 medium term goals, based around the 2-3 life areas that are important to you right now. Ensue that your goals are SMARTER. That is (S)pecific, (M)easurable, (A)ttractive?, (R)ealistic, (T)ime framed, (E)cological, (R)eason. What are the specifics of the goal? How are you going to measure your achievement of the goal? How attractive is the goal? How realistic is the goal? By when do you want to achieve the goal? Who in your environment (e..g, friends/ family) is going to help/ hinder your progress towards the goal? Why do you want to achieve this goal? Remember to write the goals down and review them regularly.

4. Set weekly action plans that will help to propel you towards your goals.

5. Remember to review your progress regularly. Do this either weekly or monthly. You may find that you will need to adjust your goals or create new ones. This is ok and part of the process.

6. To improve your happiness, before going to bed at nighttime, think of 3 positive things that happened to you that day.

7. To improve motivation towards achieving your goals you may want to think about making your goals public. One way of doing this is to tell 2 or 3 of your closest friends and family about your goal and/ or to have a sponsor who you check in regularly with. Someone who will keep you on track with your goal(s).

8. An important part of the process is renewal of your energies. Every 10-12 weeks it is recommended that you have a mental health day. This is a day which you devote to you. For example, you may want to go to a day spa, watch a movie, go to the beach. It is also very important that you take regular holidays. They should be taken every 15 months or so for at least 1 week.

9. Celebrate your wins. It is very important that you have milestones, which you celebrate on the path towards your longer-term goals. It is very important that you enjoy both the process and the outcome.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mark_Korduba

Problem Solving and Decision Making

Problem solving and decision-making is 2 of the most common and important things that an individual is required to do in modern day life. Your ability to successfully complete these 2 skills (on a daily basis) is a huge determinant of how successful you will be in your life and in the goals that you set for yourself. Below are a number of tips and techniques to aid you in effective problem solving and decision making within your life:

1. Remember to press the “pause button”, to give yourself a time limit and obtain as much information as possible before making a decision. Aim to be someone in the middle on this continuum. Some people spend too much time gathering information, while others don’t spend long enough.

2. When making a decision, realise that you will never have all the available information in front of you to make a definitive decision. Be comfortable with this fact. Remember not making a decision, is still making a decision. At this point in time (where you are in a position to make an informed decision), the important thing is that you make a decision, that is your own and not someone else’s.

3. A lot of people dislike making decisions and prefer for others to make decisions for them. Try and refrain from this behaviour as much as possible. There is a lot of growth to be had in making your own decisions. By all means, discuss different courses of action with other people, just make sure that you are the one making the decision in the end.

4. Use your intuition when problem solving and making decisions. Studies have found that we use our “gut feeling” to make effective decisions. We use reason and rationale later on to justify the decision that we have made.

5. Don’t rush into making a decision. If there is not a clear answer, then don’t force one. Sometimes taking 24 hours or a weekend to make a decision is a useful idea. If an idea still makes sense at the start of the next day or week, then usually it is the correct option.

6. Develop a list of pros and cons when making a decision. Alternatively, identify what the key issues are that should be taken into consideration when making the decision.

7. Remember to play the devil’s advocate or get someone to play this role for you. This usually involves thinking about all the things that could go wrong if a certain decision is reached.

8. Remember the Pareto principle “80% of output is derived from 20% input”. Remember not to overanalyze things. Identify the issues at hand and make a decision.

9. It is also important to think “outside the box” when analyzing problems. It is sometimes referred to as “changing your context”. You can do this in a number of different ways. For example, change physical locations, get a completely different perspective from someone who know. Remember to be creative.

10. Instead of focusing on the “what”, try focusing on the “why". Why is this a problem for me? Instead of what needs to happen.

Emotional Seperation from Parents

Becoming a man. It is something that boys are very pre-occupied with these days. In years gone by it was very simple. At about 16 years, you moved out, found yourself a job, met a girl and started a family. There also wasn't the same emotional connection between parents and their children as their are today.

Nowadays it is very confusing for a lot of adolescents and adult men (some into their late 20s and early 30s) how to properly separate from their parents? Not just physically but also emotionally. And some manage to achieve the physical separation but not the emotional separation. And some (lucky ones) achieve the emotional separation without the physical separation.

Why do you think so many people choose to live overseas in their 20s? Why do sooo many Brits choose to live in Australia or America? Why do soo many Kiwis, Aussies and Saffas choose to live in the UK. Why do college students in America move to the opposite side of the country to go to college. To physically separate from their parents.

The problem with society today is that there is no clear marker of adulthood. When is it that you become your own man? Is it when you can legally drink or legally drive? When you have moved out? Or lived in another country? Or is it when you have had your first serious romantic relationship? That is the problem. There are no clear markers to indicate growing up and separating from your parents/ family and being your own man.

The sad fact is, a lot of males fail to do this. Why? They are scared of upsetting their parents and lack the confidence to do things themselves. This is why rebellion (but it isn't really) is a good thing to have in adolescence. For me, my mother was very hard to rebel against. She was one of these hippy type mothers and nothing I did seem to bother her. She was also a very natural type GP (Doctor). To deal with my acne in university I started taking a very strong drug as treatment. We had huge arguments about it. And it was the first time that I seriously disagreed with my mum. Not only did the drug get rid of my acne it helped me to separate from my mum and become my own person.

So how do you go about emotionally separating from your parents and become a man. Well it is different for everyone. Here is a few generic tips

(1) Don't feel the need to solve their problems and don't think that they have to solve yours. This is co-dependency.

(2) As much as possible - pay your own way in the world. You might think that you are saving money but you are giving up much more.

(3) Don't be afraid of disagreeing with your parents. Start on small matters and build up to bigger ticket items.

(4) Remember it is not about them, it is about you. Don't expect them to change.

Becoming a man. It is well worth it.

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Mental Challenge of Skiing

The mental challenge of skiing. I have recently come back from a skiing holiday in New Zealand. Queenstown to be precise. While I was away from my work as a Psychologist for the week one thing that come through quite strongly for me is the mental challenge that skiing presents. It is absolutely critical to be focused on the moment and your technique. I found that I could not become distracted for even one second, otherwise I would fall over and even worse.

The highlight of the week for me by far was a hike and ski that I undertook with 2 buddies. On the afternoon of our second day skiing we decided to hike up to the top of the highest mountain and ski down untouched powdered snow, to finish about 1K from the skiing village. A bus would bring us back. Very few people attempted this run as no chair lift was present to take you to the top. But I remembered looking at it all day and it was almost calling me to do it. It was my Everest. While I expected it to be a physical challenge - which it was - especially the hiking part of it. The hike and ski turned into more of a mental challenge. And through doing it - I gained enormous clarity, especially during the hike part. It was a case of putting one foot in front of the other on the way up the mountain. I couldn't allow myself to look down the mountain because it was too steep or think how far it was to go or how on earth am I going to ski down it or how much energy I had left. The sheer focus I needed was extraordinary - I couldn't afford any errors. I was totally in the moment. I had never witnessed this amount of focus ever in my entire life. We took 4 breaks on the way to the top of the mountain, where we would sit in the snow. The breaks were as important as the hike cos It gave us a chance to mentally switch off as well as physically recover.

At the top we celebrated for a few moments and took a few photos and just as I was about to take a video a huge gust of wind came through and we all ducked for cover. This was the universes way of saying to get out of there and stop mucking around.

The ski down was magical. I was extremely mindful not to make any mistakes in the thick powder snow. But I was also very aware to actually enjoy the experience and not to view it primarily as a task to complete and tick off.

At the bottom of the hill after the run it was pure excitement when I caught up with my 2 buddies. I had barely known them 2 days but that day I felt that I really bonded with them and got to know them a whole lot better, even though very few words were spoken. It was absolute, utter contentment.

And that is the mental challenge of skiing.

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Accepting Death

Suicide and accepting death! This is one sure way to clear out a room of very quickly. It is the one constant in this ever changing world..... that you are going to die. Yet we are all scared of it. It is almost as if people like living in this fantasy land that nobody dies and everyone lives for ever.

The ultimate irony (according to Buddhists) is that if you can learn to accept your death and to be comfortable with it, then you can truly learn to live! Lets unpack this statement a bit further

They say think about your death every single day. Hell even imagine how it is that you are gong to die. Be really comfortable with the idea. It is the things in life that we don't come into contact with (e.g., Sharks, Spiders) that we are most scared. Same principle applies. Get yourself acquainted with death.

And through doing this, you realise what is important in life and live more presently in the moment and not to be distracted by things that really aren't that important.

How free would you be if you were not scared of death, had accepted it and realise that it could happen at any moment. Think how differently you would approach life. Everything else would pale in comparison.

So how can you practice it? One way that I have started doing it recently is when flying. Landing for me is quite nerve racking. Always has been. I think the plane is going to bump, skid, crash, flip burn etc. The last flight I was on I practiced the following technique. As the plane started its dissent, I did a deep breathing meditation practice and in it I contemplated my own death, right there and then and tried to completely accept it. As the plane landed, instead of looking out the window to make sure everything was running smoothly, I accepted that I had no control over what may happen and was open to all possibilities. And I felt great afterwards.

Another way you can practice, through meditation practice, is to imagine different ways that you might die (e.g., in your sleep, by a car, plane crash etc) and to realise that death (when it does happen) is like waking up from a dream.

I know this all sounds depressing. But it really isn't. It is quite inspiring. You just need to have an open mind about it, that's all. Accepting death is powerful and the way foreward.

www.psychologistbrisbanenorth.com

Living in the Moment

Living by the moment or for the moment is something that I've been interested and thought about for a very long time. Probably ever since I was about 14 or 15 years. I have thought out it and how society has marketed it in terms of sports stars. As you are reading this, a list of sports stars names probably come to mind who are able to do this. The one sports star that comes to my mind is Tiger Woods, when he was on the golf green. I'm sure he was able to live in the moment off the gold green as well. Maybe this is what got him into trouble??

I was reading an article about a South African golfer recently who won the US Open (a huge feat in itself). His secret? Knowing when to switch on and off between shots. Sound simple enough. How did he do this? He drew a small red dot on his white glove and every time he went to take a shot, he would look at the red dot to focus his attention. And he did this for every shot, for every hole over the 4 days. He even had a mental skills coach who taught him how to do this. Tennis players also have to do this between shots - being in the moment. Other sports are a little different as competition is a lot shorter and more intense (e.g., football) where a game only lasts for about 90 minutes and players are being substituted all the time.

This story is a really good metaphor for life, being able to live fully in the moment or to live your life as a walking meditation. What do I mean by this?

Our minds are full of thoughts, good ones, bad ones, happy ones and sad ones. One thought is no better than another one. They are just that....thoughts. The trick is not getting caught up in them or giving them any of your attention or importance. To recognize them and laugh and then they will drift through your mind and another one will pop up. That's about how significant thoughts/ feelings are. They will last about 5 seconds and be replaced by another random one.

So like the South African golfer did, you too can learn how to switch on and switch off. And switching off doesn't mean going on Facebook, Myspace or Twitter or being mentally lazy and indulging in all of your worries, fantasies etc. It literally means doing nothing, switching your brain off. And then when you do have to switch your brain back on again (1) you'll have more energy (2) you'll be clear what you need to focus on.

This is what being in the moment is all about and what separates sports stars and also what creates psychological problems such as anger management, anxiety and depression. Not being in the moment

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