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.

http://www.psychologistbrisbanenorth.com

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.