Doctors have noted that when a person loses one sense, the others are heightened to compensate for the one that was lost.
While I’ve never lost a sense (thank goodness), I have found this similar idea to be true when it comes to injury in sports.
As injured athletes, we overcompensate for what we have lost.
After a broken fibula plagued my indoor and outdoor track seasons in 2016, I gave everything I had day in and day out to my various rehab protocols and therapies. I focused more on my nutrition and sleeping habits, and did everything to make sure I could be back on the track, and more importantly back to jumping, as soon as possible.
While I faced the initial post-injury slump– the asking why this would happen to me; the what’s the point attitude; the feelings of hopelessness and despair that I wouldn’t be the same again– I knew that if I truly wanted to have a successful comeback from my injury that I had to work in getting over these feelings.
I spoke with a sports psychologist and attended a weekly group with other injured athletes where we learned ways to come to terms with our injury and find our identities beyond our sport. Yet, while these two forms of “healing” aided me greatly in overcoming the mental hardships that resulted from an injury; one of the most impactful tools in my recovery was made on a piece of poster board.
Clusters of cut-out words from magazines– highlighting ideas of belief, patience, strength, and confidence flooded the once white background; while photos and lists of goals bordered the edges.
Each item attached to the board was symbolic for something I longed to achieve– a visual of the success I strived for, not just because I had been injured, but dreams that I’d had since entering college.
I hung the board next to the door of my room, and everyday– whether it be to leave for morning weights at 5:30 am, or to make a late night ice-cream run with my roommates (it served as a good reminder to maybe rethink the ice-cream), I saw the board.
Now I won’t lie in saying that everyday I intently stared at it before I left. Yet, the brief reminder in catching one of the many notes written on it, served to reinforce the goals I was working towards not only in training, but in all other aspects of my life.
And while my vision board served to inspire me in the initial months post injury– a time when I thought I needed it most— its greatest use came a year and a half later.
Despite being completely healed and having regained full strength in my injured leg, a year and a half after my injury, emotionally I was at my lowest. Throughout my entire rehab process, as well as my return to full-time training, I had cast myself in a triumphant comeback story where I would be the phoenix (literally, since you kind of have to fly to do the whole long jump thing) rising from the ashes.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get the role.
In my first season back competing (2017), it seemed as though I was doing a lot more falling than rising, and instead of coming out of the ashes, I was stuck in a pit of quicksand that meet after meet kept pulling me further under.
I felt as though I was facing a battle, where despite all of the work I’d put in, I just wasn’t going to win.
And with that, I was defeated.
I had lost my sense of love for the sport of track and field.
I had become blind in not being able to see the future in the sport that was still possible for me, despite the hardship I was experiencing in the moment.
I had forgotten my vision.
And no longer would overcompensating for this loss be best suited by me investing everything I had in healing my body.
My body was healed, but my mind needed a reminder in how to see.
A reminder in how to see that all of the dreams and goals on the board I had made so long ago were still possible.
So at the end of my outdoor season, I made some adjustments.
I altered the dates on the board, and overlapped goals I hadn’t accomplished (because I no longer could, since the time had passed).
And with those adjustments made, each day of leaving my room, I slowly was reminded again of how to see.
Entering my final collegiate season in 2018, my eyes were flooded each day with the goals and dreams I’d placed on that board.
And no matter the outcome, I promised myself that I wouldn’t lose my vision, like I had so easily done before.
When it was all said and done, I’d accomplished all but two of the goals I’d placed on that board.
And while accomplishing all of those things was nice (they were the goals I’d set and worked for since my Freshman year of college)– I gained so much more from my vision board than it simply just serving as a checklist for things I was bound to accomplish anyway.
I learned that there is power in what you see and surround yourself with.
Everyday I saw what I wanted, and it all (well, most of it) came true.
But life isn’t that easy.
So by no means am I saying that there’s magical powers in creating a board where you highlight your goals and subsequently they all come true.
What I am saying, however, is that it certainly may be a tool to provide you with a vision when you no longer know how to see.
Sending you all a pair of glasses (and the encouragement to create your own vision board) this week!!
Below is a picture of the vision board I talk so much about in this post!!
P.S. If y’all decide to make your own vision board– I’d love to see it! DM pics my way @mady_jumps on Instagram or Twitter!
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