by Al Foxx | May 25, 2022 | Uncategorized | 1 comment
A week before my 19th birthday, a motorcycle crash turned me into a hemiplegic, which started my first rehab journey.
Several weeks after coming out of my month-long coma, my wildly beating heart pounded fear nails into my coffin.
Why didn’t the ram-rod-straight, tall-older gentleman answer? All I could do was hope my injuries would heal. The tall neurosurgeon looked me in the eye as he gently ripped away my last shred of HOPE.
Experiences like this turned out be mind-set training for a second rehab journey, this one after my stroke.
Norman Vincent Peal’s inspiring words brought me much comfort and inspiration at the start of my first rehab journey. But it took me decades to believe Peal’s following quote,
“Practice HOPE! As HOPEFULNESS becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit.”
Before my hemorrhagic stroke, my paralyzing motorcycle crash turned me into a hemiplegic, paralyzed on one side of my body. Because of the 36 years of rehab experience, I already had, when my stroke added to my rehab challenges, I believed wholeheartedly in Peal’s teaching on the awesome motivating power of hope. This blog caters to the needs of the majority of stroke survivors around the world, so my personal experiences with hope and rehab are shared mainly here, and under the Spiritual tab.
Practicing hope was tough at the beginning of my first rehab journey when feelings of hopelessness chased me like coon dogs chasing a frightened coon. Since then, I’ve learned many ways that rehabbers can build HOPE into our lives, both in the short and the long term.
It took me a while, but today I’m building according to Peal’s happiness quote because I’ve acquired his hopefulness habit.
During hard times, HOPE is a valuable possession. Building hope is a powerful skill that is very doable, once we acquire the pieces of the puzzle and the instructions to assemble them. Pushing through the challenging times of early rehab became far easier once the following list of rehab tools turned me from hopeless to hopeful. If you don’t value hope much, you probably haven’t spent much time drowning in hopelessness.
As for me, feelings of hopelessness taught me to grab hope whenever I can. Cultivate hope, never let hope go.
Recovering from trauma and living a life in rehab can make it easy to need HOPE, especially because sometimes it’s so tempting to give in to feelings of hopelessness. Over 40 years of rehab, including two beginnings from ground zero, taught me to build HOPE using my rehab ABCs. These ABCs are arranged in such a way that piece by piece, they hold up a powerfully solid, interdependent structure of undeniable common sense. My mentioned ABCs follow.
A is for Accepting the Life We’re Given
B stands for Believing we can build happy, helpful lives
C stands for Caring about Others
I added an F and an S because my ABC strategies aim more accurately when I also have the Focusing and Spiritual arrows in my quiver.
F stands for Focusing. Focusing on what I have, not what I don’t have
S stands for Spiritual. Spiritual HOPE sources are real and consistently working.
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A WordPress Commenter on May 25, 2022 at 12:00 am (Edit)Hi, this is a commenand deleting comments, please visit the Comments screen in the dashboard.
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