My 3 ingredients to finding your recovery groove
I have been where you are.
Struggling to keep up with your recovery, putting one foot in front of the other and hoping that it lands on solid ground.
The days are endless, the progress slow and the rewards for learning how to talk again, for instance, seems more like a punishment.
It has taken me a long time to understand that without finding your recovery groove, your sweet spot, your true passion, you can get lost in a never-ending mountain of to-dos.
Do you have one? Something that can enrapture you? Something that can fill up the tank when it’s running dangerously low?
Here are my 3 ingredients to finding your recovery groove:
It challenges
I love to edit the pictures I take in Lightroom. I find that each picture is unique and should be treated in its own way. I love trying out new filters, playing with the colours and light. Sometimes, it frustrates me when I cannot get it just so, but I keep plugging along until I understand how this affects that.
This revives me! When I need a pick-me-up, I just turn to the computer and let my creativity run wild. Throughout all of the therapies, all of the nonsense, I find my groove best when I spend a chunk of time doing this each day.
What does this for you?
Can you imagine something which piques your mind, stimulates your spirit and calms your soul?
It must be a delicate balance between exertion and your enjoyment of the process, just giving you enough to challenge and pacify.
Finding your groove means that you can muster up the strength to go thru the next set of therapies or doctors’ appointments or even life moments, because you’ve refilled your tank.
It has staying-power
Hours can pass in the blink of an eye when I am editing my pictures. It really doesn’t matter how frustrated I get or that I cannot figure out how to make the colours in a particular style. I can sit there when my children are playing up or when I’m all alone.
The thing is, it challenges me creatively in just the right way. I love to create and it’s something that I truly want to get better at. It pulls me in like a wicked drug and I cannot let it go.
Your sweet spot, your groove, is able to make you forget the time.
I picture that craving to go out at the crack of dawn with your surfboard and catch the first waves. Or to bake up a storm. Or to make the pieces of a puzzle fit together.
Because it forces you to use the right amount of brains and purpose, it mends the hole. It serves you in the most caring way possible.
Your day is better off from doing this thing.
It is intrinsic
You feel it in your bones, that correctness, that fits-like-a-glove feeling. All is well when you do that thing.
Finding my groove happened naturally. A couple years ago I bought my first camera and then upgraded my Adobe account to include Lightroom. It was an innate feeling that led me down this path to create and learn.
Picture the place, the time, when you feel most bewitched. Your brain is alive! Switched on, but just enough to keep your attention to the task at hand. Your mind is running away with all of the possibilities. And you feel a calmness inside.
Your groove is there, in you, a part of your mind, body and soul.
It was once said to me that ‘you only need to stand back up, one more time than you fall down.’
I like this.
For me, it implies that when we fall, as we surely will do, we can absolutely get back up.
Finding your groove, that thing that motivates you beyond your therapies, beyond getting better, beyond finding your 2.0, nourishes this. It gives you an outlet that’s just for you. It ensures that you have kept enough in your reservoir.
It allows you the gumption to stand back up, one more time.
This is a slog. This recovery is laced with peaks and troughs, therefore finding your recovery groove is an essential element.
So, what inspires you? What can you imagine yourself doing for hours at a time? The thing you aren’t even sure that you’re good at?
The process of recovery doesn’t require perfection. But it does require dedication.