Trauma Training Wheels
My good friend, Brandon Archer, once told me, “there’s a big difference between a wakeup call and an awakening,” referring to the wakeup calls in life when you could “get the message,” but don’t. For Brandon, it took a catastrophic heart attack on a road-bike ride in his 40’s to incite an awakening. He was fit and very low risk for a heart attack, puzzling doctors, so what caused the trauma?
stress
Brandon’s wakeup call was the universe trying to tell him he needed to DO something different—think differently, act differently, operate differently. His awakening struck when he listened and chose a different path, shifting his mindset, avoiding stress.
We’re all like Brandon in some ways, but we shouldn’t need a heart attack to experience an awakening. We have moments in life that test us. Our traumas are opportunities, but the wakeup calls we’ve all experienced rarely produce an awakening—significant, lasting change.
but Why?
Because we don’t DO anything. We rarely slow down and change our thoughts, patterns, beliefs, and actions.
However, we can acknowledge traumas as opportunities to learn—they are our ‘trauma training wheels.’ Like you, I am busy. Life moves fast, and I am always working hard to stay ahead of the curve. When you’re busy, and life is flying by, the problem is that it’s challenging to have the presence of mind to learn from the wakeup calls.
To effectively learn from trauma, we need hieghtened personal awareness.
Amid any trauma, challenge, or transition, there are lessons, and I like to think of each setback as the training wheels teaching us to ride it out. Inconsequential traumas are ‘free’ for learning resilience and a grit mindset—as long as you are aware of how you overcame the challenge.
Ask yourself questions like, what happened? What did I learn? And, how did I change or adapt? How did my strategy differ going forward?
If you take advantage of the free opportunities to change your behaviour, when significant tragedy strikes, you’ll be better prepared. It’s then a matter of digging into your toolbox to source the strength, determination, discipline, and courage to not only survive but thrive!
COVID-19 is an excellent example of trauma training wheels. While I don’t want to downplay its significance for a second (it’s a fatal pandemic), most of us will get through these times of anxiety, uncertainty, and stress without lasting pain and anguish. Businesses will fail, but people will not. The art of the ‘pivot’ and being agile is all around us. People are survivors, and we will keep going.
The question is, will we learn from this trauma and enact lasting change?
Our new ‘normal’ is going to be different following the Corona Virus and COVID-19. We have an opportunity to shift towards a better tomorrow if we choose to adapt. Looking in the rearview mirror and longing for what was—not what could be—is counterproductive.
On an individual level, we can all do our part to change our habits and create a better tomorrow. We’ll be the first to benefit, but society will reap the rewards if it’s a collective movement.
It could be something as simple as getting outside more, driving your vehicle less, making more efficient use of your trips to town, and minimizing your impact on nature. It could be that you adjust your skills and fill gaps so that you can maximize earning opportunities. In some industries, entire workforces have learned to be more efficient working from home!
New skills and adaptations will not go away, as long as we choose not to let them go.
If we choose to take full advantage of our trauma training wheels, keeping the new perspectives, skills, and attributes we’ve learned, we’ll all be better off in the long run.
We could go back to business as usual. We could revert to our old behaviours, but we’d be ignoring a precious wakeup call.
