Letting Yourself Heal

We are born equipped to thrive. 

We can learn new things, improve ourselves, and bounce back from life’s inevitable setbacks.

This is true of all the different parts of us, the physical, the psychological, and the spiritual.

And our innate growth tendency is nourished or starved by the way we care for or neglect ourselves when we are healthy and when we are healing.

So I Tweaked My Knee

So I tweaked my knee a few weeks ago doing sprints over at Ramapo College with my dog Daisy. 

It was wet on the turf and we’d already hiked a few miles. I shook it off in the moment and didn’t realize it was anything until the next morning coming down the stairs. 

It’s been a while since I’ve been injured and I was bemused but it was just reality. 

This presented me with an opportunity to practice what I preach. Sleep and Rest is one of the Four Elements of Good Health. 

Rest includes giving your body a break when it is tired, achy, or injured.

This can be hard to do, especially in the US, where athletes and weekend warriors alike have this Go-Go-Go mentality and often exercise too frequently with too much intensity. 

But I listened and I stopped running, hiking, and rucking. This was not easy, because I am hyperactive like a jumping bean, but I just stopped.

I even limited how often I descended the stairs in my house and took my time when I did.

I also doubled down on the other elements of good health. I ate clean, I made extra sleep efforts, and I walked outdoors in the mornings even in the cold.

I call this Resilience Stacking, when we practice multiple healthy behaviors as good health prepares us for moments like this when we must heal.

I wrote about Resilience Stacking in more details here and used value investing as the analog. 

This is a critical though ignored component of compounding health over the long term.

This idea that as we get healthier we stack resilience factors as a way of life the same way Joseph Piotroski stacked value factors when evaluating good investments. 

Things like eating clean, walking, more rigorous exercise, avoiding alcohol, and getting good sleep. The more of these we practice consistently over time the better we bounce back.

I was walking fine and so I kept doing that and even did a little extra, though I avoided steep downhills and trail scrambling.

I listened to my body closely and paid attention to how my knee felt, especially descending the stairs and tested lateral movement because I noticed that was sensitive too.

So now here we are a few weeks later and the other day I went for a first run. I kept it slower and briefer than usual but I felt great and the knee was fine the next morning too. 

I ran again Tuesday, added a bit of intensity and felt strong.

I’ll go again tomorrow and I’m thinking my mission has been accomplished!

I have four takeaways from this experience.

One: Listen To You Body

First and foremost, listen to your body. When it tells you that you are hurt, rest it. Then, as you are healing, keep listening.

This is the big thing, the thing we stopped doing in our society, because we’re all up in our heads or have covered over how we feel with alcohol, highly processed foods, social media, and other addictions.

This is the Nietzsche quote above - the wisdom of our bodies.

Two: Build the Resilience Stack. 

This means taking good care of yourself so that when something breaks, whether it is a physical injury, a psychological stress, a loss, a bad beat, a bear market, whatever, your mind and body are prepared to weather the storm and come back strong.

Resilience Stacking Factors include Nutrition, Fasting, Sleep, Walking, Sun, Sweating, Resistance Training, Relationships, HIIT, Rewarding Work, Joy, Limiting Alcohol. 

You may have others.

Three: Patience Is Undefeated

It was difficult to just stop doing things I love to do, but I had some patience. Patience is the solution to so many things in the world so the more we can practice it, the better.

Four: Generalizability

This was not a post about my injury. It was a post about noticing injury, feeling it, honoring it, and letting yourself heal.

We face injuries all the time that are not physical in nature. They might be emotional, ego, economic, social etc.

Maybe your spouse leaves you, or you lose your job or a client or people you thought were friends blow you off.

These other types of injuries also require listening to how you feel, rest, and time.

I am the founder of Pearl Institute. We Help You Get Healthy AF. You can schedule a 30 minute no fee consultation here.