Does if ever seem like you have more adversity in your life than other people do? As if everyone around you is having an easier time of things than you are? Grant Marven is a true inspirational person who I have come across in my life. When you read Goldilocks of Rehabilitation I hope that from his story and through his painting you see his courage, but also his resilience to obtain balance in his life.
Goldilocks of Rehabilitation
I was in a traffic accident 4 years ago in which all four of my four limbs were broken in several places and I suffered a brain injury. The accident can be summarized as "Truck vs Vespa Scooter". A truck going the other way turned left in front of me on the scooter. The truck obviously won.
I was in the hospital for 3 months and I lived in a care home for 3 months, so I started rehabilitation about 6 months after the accident. All my muscles were atrophied in all my limbs. My rehabilitation started with walking with the aid of a host machine. I progressed to walking assisted with a walker and now I only need one cane to walk for balance. I had almost no arm strength and re-injury was a concern because of the lack of muscles. For example, I had to start my bicep curl at 3 lbs. Along with the physical rehabilitation, I also had mental rehabilitation for my brain. I had to regain some simple mental abilities but I will discuss that in a different post. With my brain injury, physical fatigue was a major hurdle. My rehabilitation journey was a big climb ahead of me.
I met Janine during my physical rehabilitation journey. Janine was a vital member of my physical rehabilitation therapist team. There were multiple areas of injured body parts to work on. It was kind of a roulette wheel, I call the spinning the wheel of misfortune, to find out which part was the feature of that session. Janine was great. Not only would she help with physical therapy but she also would give me exercises to do which relieved issues between visits. This is when I learned Goldilocks’ rule of balancing my energy the hard way. (Goldilocks from the famous children’s story, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldilocks_and_the_Three_Bears). I applied Goldilocks’ experience of finding the right balance to my rehabilitation energy. I wrote this poem and painted a sailing painting as an analogy:
Goldilocks’ Rule of Balancing Energy
Too much, the sailboat capsizes.
Too little, the sailboat is too slow.
Just right, the speed is at maximum.
I applied this rule to my injury rehabilitation:
Too much, re-injury or burnout.
Too little, rehab is slow or none.
Just right, rehab is at maximum.
When Janine would give me an exercise of 10 reps, I would go home and do 15. I figured I would do more and work harder. I thought it would speed up my rehabilitation. It is kind of like the no pain, no gain mentality. It worked to a point but I found out the hard way that this is not optimal. I had to find the right balance. “Too hard” caused me to burnout, get too tired, and set me back. “Too little”, I knew I wouldn't heal to the fullest and it would take too long. “Just right” gave the best results.
I was on the “too hard” side. I became very fatigued. Once I found my threshold (the “just right” amount), I incorporated this amount for my rehabilitation. For me, this threshold was to not go too extreme. I no longer went beast mode during my exercises but mini beast mode. I also had to add in rest days. Immediately after following the “just right” amount and rest, all my weights went up 10%.
My therapy team introduced me to the idea of spending my units of energy wisely, which I'll call spoons of energy. The uninjured me would have had 30 spoons at the start of the day, but because of injury fatigue from mental and physical injuries, I start the day with 20 spoons of energy. It was up to me how I spend the 20 spoons: a walk might take five, a hard workout might take 10, etc. If I only spent 12 spoons in a day, the 8 spoons left over would be wasted. If I went over 20 spoons in a day, which I call the red zone, I would have to pay them back with interest in the following days. Red zone’s interest charges are high, so it took more days to recover and ultimately working hard became a setback.
It is important to establish a "just right " threshold, to find the right balance. Each day, you don't want to have "too little" unspent energy or have "too much" red zone debt. Maximize your rehab with using the "just right" amount.
Applied to life?
I think the Goldilocks rule of balancing energy works with other areas in life.
There are pros and cons of too much or too little but generally there's a ‘just right’ for best results.
During all this physical rehabilitation, I was also doing some mental rehabilitation. One of the mental therapies was art therapy. I find practising art therapy very therapeutic. With my brain injury, I can not do a lot of activities like watching too much TV or too much screen time but I can do art for hours. Since the introduction to art therapy, I have taken a few drawing and painting classes online. I have fun painting surfing and pet paintings. I have also painted a series of rehabilitation paintings and wrote poems to attach a message to them to tell my rehabilitation story. I painted this sailboat painting to illustrate my message of balance (thanks @pxiIotxee on Instagram for a great reference photo).
I hope my experience can help others with their rehabilitation journeys. Please check out my rehabilitation story and paintings on my Instagram account @grantmarven. Like and follow!
Grant Marven