I recently hosted football pundit and former Manchester City player Nedum Onuoha on our Reading the Game sports and books podcast. Other than being one of our most profound and engrossing guests, he mentioned something fairly innocuous about recovering from injuries that ended up striking such a chord with me it has in some ways changed my life.
He said, “I was worried I’d never get back to who I was. I thought about the bigger picture. About who I want to be.”
This might appear a standard plucky response from a professional athlete, but underneath lies a powerful mindset which can be extraordinarily inspirational for the average person.
I took the words to mean that when I am injured I should visualise a time when I am healthy again. When my mind is broken or my soul’s in pieces, I must remember that although the bits may re-assemble a little differently, that’s ok. That I should forego my irrational fear of the injury tarnishing what was once unblemished. That I should accept that we’re never the same, we’re always adapting and embrace the new version of me. That I will be strong, just different. Stronger, Different.
This in-depth article will explore a new perspective on overcoming adversity and take the reader through its core pillars namely: physical challenges, mental health, relationships, career, the universe and evolution.
Physical Injury
I spoke with Nedum shortly before an operation on my right foot to excise painful bone spurs and debride scar tissue around a severely damaged ligament. The recovery has been up and down, early on every day felt like one step forward and three stumbles back.
I felt terrible. From the moment I left the hospital on crutches I realised I couldn’t do what I used to and the idea of being ‘less than how I was’ crept into my head. Facing the stairs was an engineering challenge. Picking up a sock, a contortionist’s dilemma. And forget about the boss-level challenge of going to the bathroom. Screams of frustration now became gasps of helplessness.
The feeling extends to inadequacy which may stem from the atavistic instinct of human exceptionalism residing subconsciously within us. That humans are at our best when we are healthy, independent and strong. We will explore this idea further in the evolution section, but it boils down to the theory of survival of the fittest.
The lame fall behind the group and are picked off by predators. This may sound like a pack of wolves, but lame humans, much like our chimp ancestors, were discarded for the benefit of group survival. Some cannibalistic tribes of Polynesia would eat the lame. Fortunately it was just my mother around who is a vegetarian and had a well-stocked fridge. The only apex predator were the doubts prowling in my head.
“Stronger, different. Different, stronger,” I defensively recalled in the middle of the first night when the pain was unbearable and I was holding in my pee because I didn’t want to embark on the gruelling six-metre toilet trek. “There’ll be a time when I’m better,” I privately repeated. Then I queried if the mindset was genuine or just something people would say.
“Be tough, you’ll be fine,” or “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and the endless variations of no-nonsense-bootcamp mindsets that in reality, when you’re at your worst, often make little sense. But there was something in stronger-different that lit a fire of intrigue.
It even got me to the toilet and back wrestling with a question: is it true you can wave goodbye to a decent version of yourself that you’d painstakingly built over many years and welcome a new, unexpected version, while retaining the good stuff? The only way to find out was to put the idea under forensic scrutiny and the first step was to understand what was really going on inside my body.
I’d heard the idea that our bones heal stronger. It is a myth, they don’t, but incredibly they do recover 80-90% original strength in 3 to 6 months. Full strength and a remodelled bone in about a year. What is illuminating is that during healing, a callous of extra-strong bone forms around the fracture and recruits abundant protein-rich stem-cells (MSC’s) from the nearest bone marrow. So there is a brief period when bone at the fracture site is stronger, before it settles back to good-as-new. The end result being my ankle won’t necessarily be stronger, but different-stronger? Quite possibly.
Given time and boredom became fast-friends, I investigated further during another sleepless night. At the injury site a healing fiesta had begun: a massive expression of protein-rich genes and stem cells flooded my blood stream and activated fibrin-rich tissue regeneration. The bricklayer--AKA the cartilaginous callous mentioned earlier--provided a stable structure to the injured site. Right now, the cartilage in my ankle is being mineralised with calcium and bone cells while being remodelled with brand new woven bone.
That morning, I chuckled drily to the parrots having a conference in the branches of the giant plane tree beyond my bedroom window. Through some kind of internal survival mechanism my body was healing itself. Re-generating. ‘Re’ implies something new but different.
I’m selfishly intrigued by this new version of me, this re-me, basking in all the attention from myself. I was now satisfied, anatomically and physically, that I could heal and ‘remodel’ into a different but strong me. With this newfound confidence I began noticing some fringe benefits of being injured.
My arms became dense, shredded and I developed a strong abdominal core from all the walking and climbing on crutches. My balance improved by nature of hopping or impromptu Bulgarian-deadlifts as I searched for a missing flip-flop. My propioception, our ‘sixth-sense’ awareness of self-movement and body position in space, sharpened from my hyper-focus on the injury and my body in general. I valued the people who helped, visited or called me during my worst moments.
I’m eternally grateful to those who put up with my tantrums and feel closer to them. I became a better planner, thinking through every step of my recovery and gained invaluable perspective on my life. Needless to say I have encyclopaedic knowledge of my enemy: the sub-talar joint, anterior fibular talo ligament (ATFL), and general lower leg anatomy, which may or may not come in handy one day. I’m hoping not.
I learned that random people in the local supermarket or airport are really nice to people on crutches. I’m considering using them when healthy. These unexpected experiences, abilities and new knowledge have formed a suit of armour to defend against future injuries. In fact there’s scientific proof inside me: scar tissue.
Beneath two large surgical incisions are a collection of cells and collagen (scar tissue) that slathers the injury site. There’s surprisingly little known about the workings of scar tissue, but billions of pounds are spent worldwide by people trying to reduce or remove it. The scars themselves can be unsightly, and rouse the same vain anxiety of being tarnished. But the scar tissue underneath was formed at the point of trauma to protect the injured site. It’s really another layer of armour to protect my body.
That’s all well and good for my body but am I really ok with the being different part? And how’s the state of my mind during all this?
Mental Health
One-third of people who have a major orthopaedic injury deal with major depression afterward. That number goes from one-third to more than half if you have a traumatic brain injury.
It’s impossible somedays. Breaks and injuries negatively affect your mind. For me it was the loss of function that kicked hardest. I was reliant on the crutches and then my mother, a slight little person in her 70’s with her own health issues. She was the one I wanted to help but I was the patient. And then comes the feeling of isolation and imprisonment in your own home.
Data confirms a multitude of problems can arise during this stage: addiction, anger issues, anxiety, changes in appetite and sleep pattern as well as decreased self-esteem and panic attacks. Loneliness, loss of motivation, relationship issues, sadness and depression present other major challenges.
I was desperate to get outside but could barely make it to the garden, and when I did, every step, uneven stone or mound became a mountain. How about focusing on the beautiful things? You’re in too much physical pain to enjoy birdsong and soak the lazy rays of winter.
Physical pain numbs the positive faculties of the mind and momentarily blocks hope. The result is when the painkillers eventually kick in, your thinking is re-directed to those nagging doubts ganging up with abandon. Will you be the same again? Will you be relevant? Let’s face it, will you be less attractive because of the changes and the scars?
This was the moment, the rock-bottom, for the mindset to surface. It didn’t need to be spoken just drawn from my memory bank to do battle with the all too-close shadows. Somewhere inside it echoed: “Stronger-different, different-stronger”.
The facts state the better your self-esteem and moods, the shorter the recovery. I managed to break the pain-to-depression cycle and transformed it to a pain-mindset-positivity one, and immediately celebrated tiny victories.
One frosty morning I was awoken by the green parrots twittering in the tree. I opened my blinds to observe their little congregation, where some plan of the day seemed to be administered by a matriarch before they all dispersed leaving a branch swaying rhythmically. I clearly heard the toll of the church bells, and schoolkids’ laughter sounded like tinkling water. I’m a writer whose job it is to observe, and although none of these things were extraordinary, there was something that was: the door to optimism inched open. And the evidence supports it.
Dispositional optimism and hardiness were related to decreased injury time-loss in athletes. Those with more optimism, hardiness or global self-esteem coped more effectively with life change stress, resulting in reduced injury vulnerability and recovery rates.
After seeing the bright side, I discovered a corollary benefit of the injury by developing a mind-muscle connection between my foot and mind. With the brain neurally bound to the body, a hyper-focus on an injury site activates a surge in electrical activity. In fact when we focus our mind and attention to our micro-movements, the neurons within our brain fire and send signals down to our muscle fibres to contract.
Men’s Health says, “the simple act of consciously feeling a muscle work through a full range of motion can enhance muscle fibre recruitment and activation. And the more fully and effectively you engage your muscles, the more they’ll grow.” I’d gained a precious connection with my body I never had before.
My mind was not alone anymore. I’d argue my neural pathway is more active and familiar with the nether regions of my body, and the body-awareness has given me a physical and mental boost. As I begin physiotherapy the muscles around my foot, ankle and calf are growing and I’m getting stronger every week or so despite regular setbacks, in which times, I try to summon the mindset.
So how did the stronger-different mindset perform under cross-examination so far? Very well. The scrawl of an idea was now a blueprint to thwart physical and mental adversity. But staring a little more confidently out the window one sunny afternoon, I began to notice stark similarities between injuries and life, and wondered opportunistically if the mindset worked there too.
Love
Relationships can take a half-step forward and three back much like the injury-healing process. Couples that survive significant relationship problems can also benefit from the stronger-different outcome and there’s even a name for it: second-chance couples. In some ways we will see that stronger-different and second-chance might be long-lost twins.
The Atlantic’s Faith Hill writes in her article ‘What Second-Chance Couples Know About Love’, that “according to ‘relational-turbulence theory,’ life transitions or disruptions can challenge partners, forcing them to reassess their routines and even their future. These turbulent moments can present opportunities with couples desperate to avoid another split. So they dig deep—not for buried resentments, but for their own responsibility.” She quotes a study that confirms one-third of cohabiters and one-fifth of spouses have experienced a breakup and renewal in their current relationship.
I believe there are three powerful reasons for post-turbulence relationship success that elegantly mirrors the stronger-different recovery mindset:
Firstly a pain point is hyper-targeted. Like with an injury you build muscles around the pain point to prevent re-injury. You develop techniques to avoid pain, strengthen muscle and improve function. As a couple you will develop a mind-muscle connection to the common pain point that caused the initial friction. This acute awareness of the issue and your partner’s needs, spawns connective tissue binding you to your partner like never before. Forgiveness are your stem cells. Holding hands again weaves you together like remodelled bone. What was once a weakness in your relationship is now a strength.
Secondly, the evolution of the relationship. What is true is that as a couple you’re doing the impossible: trying to make two bodies operate as one. The relationship becomes its own creation separate to the both of you. But you are still individuals and emerging incompatibilities can cause bone-on-bone stress and at worst, breakages.
But couples who overcome those challenges and change things up regarding behaviour, actions and goal-setting, naturally result in both people becoming different––but better adapted and more compatible––versions of themselves. Therefore sharing and overcoming pain together can evolve a once stagnant relationship, ultimately making for a different-stronger couple.
Thirdly, perspective. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Taking time away, doing the hard-thinking and remembering how your partner makes you whole, is something you’d have never done without the emotional injury. You may discover that the grass is not greener and become more confident in your bond. The new relationship, the second chance, becomes precious and something you dare not harm. Once the dust has settled the relationship has been battle tested and future-proofed.
Gaining perspective is like adding a section on a telescope. You can now think very big and very small at the same time, and whether zoomed in or out, you see there’s no straight line to overcoming pain. That there’s no such thing as perfect and no perfect couple either.
The romance novel-to-movie vision you had when you were twenty-five of your future love life, is as fictitious as that hermetically-sealed flawless body. Things and people get hurt and hearts can break. These physical or emotional injuries ruthlessly highlight our individual or common flaws. The couples who overcome them together, who remove the illusion of vanity, may find an unvarnished, lasting love.
Now there are of course two sides to love and some relationships may never heal. The beauty is that it’s prime occasion to employ the stronger-different mindset, less as an analogy to love and more as a coping tool, because this time the injury is to your heart.
Heartbreak is no myth and severe emotional or physical stress to the heart can temporarily weaken its structure. Named broken-heart syndrome (or stress cardiomyopathy), the heart’s left ventricle, the pumping chamber, is weakened and the symptoms are indistinguishable from a full blown heart attack.
In a defensive manoeuvre the organ will raise collagen-rich scar tissue, which in certain cases can reduce the heart’s ability to pump blood, however the majority of people recover within 2 to 8 weeks and rarely have another attack. Remarkably a love-induced injury can test your body’s immune system, quite literally change it, while storing the experience to combat future threats. It’s another compelling example of different-stronger working at the biological level.
However such a seismic shock may result in finding yourself involuntarily alone and in dire need of rebuilding your life. You will no doubt be different. Pain and inquiry will conspire negative scenarios, but like during physical injury, you may recall the “bigger picture” and think of a time when you will be healthy, different but strong. You will begin to notice your strength expressed in new ways and places: new relationships, interests, hobbies or even a change of location or career. Positive scenarios will replace negative ones, you will become satisfied with the different you and come to accept that it is no less strong.
When the mind questions this assertion and wanders darkly as it inevitably will, try to recall the Eastern proverb: “A problem that cannot be solved cannot be fixed. A problem that can be solved will fix itself”. Your strength, like water slowing to pass rock, will regain its force on its way to find the sea. And you’ll find yourself in a different place. A stronger-different one.
Career
One of the greatest concerns during an injury is returning to work. You might have taken time off, be working from home or be out of the job. The one thing that reigned above all unintended benefits was the ability to take stock of my purpose and meaning and assess if they were fulfilled by my career. Did I absolutely love what I was doing or was there something else out there with my name on it?
After a big injury you become a futurist overnight, naturally exploring different versions of who you could be. Partially borne out of fear of losing your job, or ability to perform it, and in part to fantasise about what else your skills could achieve. It can be realising how much you love your work and doubling-down, or seeing an opportunity for internal career development.
In between binge-watching every Denzel Washington film, including Heart Condition (likely the only bad movie he’s ever made and being him it’s only really half-bad), I managed to read a few great books and complete a valuable certification in a computer game engine that has helped level-up my career. This helps me segue into something revelatory.
I work as a freelance writer in the games industry where one of the main objectives is to maintain player flow: the optimal level of player interest that lies between challenge and skill. If a game is too hard and players don’t have the appropriate skill level they get frustrated and vice-versa. So in games you die a lot, respawn and try again. Every time you die, you develop new tactics, beat the next obstacle and keep going until the next bigger one. It’s literally an entire design methodology built around stronger-different. And it’s not the only one.
Many modern businesses are based on iteration loops that test products and systems to failure or until they perform. Startups are told to fail fast and break things. All very well for a conglomerate with brick walls and insurance to pay for the damage but we’re human beings. Still the concept is instructive: to learn from your mistakes, mitigate risks and adopt a positive feedback loop.
But a career is a not a game. In a game you run out of simulated lives and lose in-game coins. In reality you can lose your livelihood and income. Sometimes we cannot return to the same job, like some athletes and footballers who are never the same after injury.
It would be natural to get down and question our purpose. And our professional aspirations and dreams can get injured along too. This is where the mindset comes in handy to entertain new versions of you.
One of those YouTube tutorials or books might pique an interest that leads to a new hobby or career. During my injury I completely pivoted the sales proposition of my film production company while adding a new technical skill to my toolset. I forgot the opportunities I’d lost out on and put laser-focus on the career path I wanted. A few weeks later, with clarity of purpose and a new portfolio, I had two interview requests within a week.
If I compare myself to the man before the injury, I’m different and my CV (resume) has changed too. Equally my ‘internal’ CV has surfaced i.e. Our internal CV––like real income adjusted for inflation––speaks the truth our external one cannot. It privately documents my purpose, meaning and who I really want to become. This pragmatism has turned abstract dreams to plans while roadmapping my ambitions.
I feel unexpectedly positive about my career and find myself in a stronger-different position. I afford myself the occasional smile, the mindset proving robust, but deep down I wonder if it’s truly all encompassing. The final two sections will reveal some genuinely astounding facts and determine the true reach of the mindset.
The Universe
The word mantra has two Sanskrit roots (the first happens to be the root of my own name). ‘Manas’ means mind and ‘tra’ means instrument or tool. Therefore a mantra can be seen as an instrument of thought. Indian yogis extend this by teaching that mantra can mean a sacred utterance possessing mystical or spiritual efficacy. I believe for a mindset to reach the pearly heights of mantra, then it should live up to the name by invoking a universal quality and, where possible, mirror the natural world. Incredibly our mindset does.
In fact, the micro-events taking place inside my body during my injury and recovery are repeated on the largest scale imaginable. Things breaking and becoming complex, mirrors the scientific process of entropy: the measure of the randomness or disorder of a system. The human body is an ordered system that promotes low entropy but is constantly affected by external environmental pressures that increase total entropy. An injury caused by an external event creates disorder, but healing orders things back to a low entropy state.
However we may not return to the same state we were in before facing disorder. An ice cube that melts and freezes again will never take the same shape. Science thus determines that we are in an eternal push-pull against the forces of nature. Rather than being limiting it’s wonderfully liberating: evidence of the immeasurable forces changing us into different versions of ourselves at each and every moment in time. Different seems more acceptable now but did the science also prove that I was still strong? Wait, it gets better.
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed and the total quantity of energy in the universe stays the same. Can we replace “energy” with “strength”? It’s a good shout but easily challenged because people are typically physically weaker for a period of time after a significant injury. I know I was and still am during my long recovery, but there is a word that could be interchangeable with energy. One that is a powerful constant: will.
Although I’m physically weaker during this early-recovery stage, accompanied by the loss of muscle mass and a little mental sharpness, you can’t take my will without permission. Like the universal energy constant, will stubbornly morphs into something else. Be it resilience to stay positive, the inventiveness behind a new hobby or the courage of a career change. From wherever it is assailed, whatever form it assumes, total will is constant.
Age unfortunately is not. Ageing is a result of entropic changes that affect the fidelity of our molecular structure and overwhelms our body’s maintenance systems. We even treat ageing as a kind of injury constantly fighting it and trying to find a cure. Once again after the shock of science wears off, the knowledge is freeing because there’s nothing to fear about change. Every morning we awake we’re older, more disordered and therefore a little different. As of today, we cannot reverse the ageing process and have to live with it.
It hits home when we age into our late thirties and forties and begin to lose physical strength due to a reduction in hormones, muscle mass and a slower metabolism. So how do we remain strong as we age? We develop and redistribute our loyal attendant waiting on the sidelines: our will.
But is will quantifiable? And how would a redistribution work? Picture the lifecycle of our Sun. It lives its wrinkle-free years in the main sequence phase, turning and burning hydrogen (nuclear fusion), until it runs out of the youthful elixir and feeds on leftover helium. It shines brighter and redder in this end phase until, over the course of billions of years, it loses material, mass and eventually fades. Towards its end it ejects stellar material that gravity may coalesce to form new stars or cosmic bodies before the cycle repeats.
We also get old, fade, and lose our physical strength. We’ve seen parents, ourselves, friends or family age until it appears there’s nothing left. But where’s their second-half shine? Their cosmic dust? Well, their genes if they’ve left behind children. Or their stories, wisdom, achievements or more simply, in the case of my grandfather, his mouth-watering recipes which manage to fill contented stomachs all over the world decades after he died. Strength is more than our physical self, it is encoded in our words and quantified by our actions. This is the beautiful redistribution underlying stronger-different.
Evolution
The mantra arrives home. The similarities between stronger-different and the theory of evolution, adaptation and survival of the fittest are striking. In some ways they’re one of the same.
The idea of evolution is that populations and species of organisms change over time. Adaptation is the adjustment of organisms to their environment in order to improve their chances at survival in that environment. Darwin’s natural selection theory develops this by introducing the idea of inherited traits passing through generations so they adapt better to their surroundings, thereby enabling them to survive, reproduce and evolve their species.
Our evolved biological mutations often become our greatest strengths. Nepalese Sherpas and Tibetans thrive at altitudes where oxygen levels are up to 40 percent lower than at sea level. Most people cannot breathe such thin air, but Sherpas’ and Tibetans’ bodies have evolved their body chemistry. This recalls the unintended benefits and over-compensations we make during an injury that we explored earlier. The healing process could be seen as an evolutionary tool sculpting a new version of us, possibly better adapted and optimally moulded to our present surroundings.
It’s clear when I look at my leg it’s evolved into something different. Most days it’s a little deformed, sometimes the scars are raised, and part of the medial malleolus (the pointy bone that sticks out from the inside of the ankle) is a little formless, so it’s clearly not like it was. But it is becoming what it needs to be to allow me to walk, go to work, obtain food and survive.
Biology influences behaviour and vice-versa, where in some instances there is behavioural evolution. Emperor Penguins in Antarctica learned to crowd tightly together to share their warmth to survive harsh winters. Together with the earlier section on relationships, and other than an excuse to cuddle more, this reminds us that joint behavioural changes in response to external pressure, can help us through difficult times. We can not only be different-stronger together but sometimes it may be better that way for selection and survival.
It makes me laugh now at the irony of fearing change and seeking perfection when we are really a beautiful result of mutations. Evolution was the reward of those that broke their spines (Hominids) to walk straight (Homo Erectus, later Sapiens), or their necks to reach inaccessible food (like giraffes), all in order to survive. Clearly we would not have got very far if we were perfect. Lucy, our ancestral primate mother carried the mutation that spawned humanity proving that perfection is not innate to us.
Injury, setbacks and trauma are. They are evolutionary challenges that affect our biology and behaviour by testing our resilience. The fear of change and projecting perfection are largely false constructions of a modern world full of creature comforts and intense social media influence. What’s really coded inside us is an instinct and mechanism of survival which is functional and not pretty. Different-stronger awakens this instinct reminding us that we are part of an evolutionary chain which we must continue to build and not be the link that snaps. This is why different-stronger feels right.
A conclusion doesn’t feel appropriate after discussing cosmic thought-instruments and evolution, so here’s a beginning: Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold. It treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than being something to hide. It is founded on the idea that by embracing flaws and imperfections you can create a stronger, more beautiful piece of art.