What constitutes as easy? What constitutes as hard? Depends on who you ask. A body-builder and a quadriplegic are going to give you vastly different answers. When you’re born able-bodied and become disabled later in life, adjusting to your reduced skill-level can be overwhelmingly difficult. When it only took 2 minutes to get dressed before your injury and it now takes 30 minutes, not letting it bug you takes loads of untapped patience.
I find myself saying over and over again, like a melody I can’t shake out of my head, “This shouldn’t be so hard. This shouldn’t be so hard,” whenever I’m struggling. Whether it’s putting on a shoe for 15 minutes or trying and failing to simply get 
something down from the cupboard, with the contents spilling everywhere (and leaving me another chore to take care of that will also take twice as long). When you remember how easy things used to be, those memories will haunt and tease you, making it almost impossible to be satisfied in your new life.
But I’ve come to a new realization lately. Instead of bemoaning how hard things are and how much all of these limitations suck the time from my life, I tell myself that nothing is a given. Because it’s true. We’re promised nothing in this life from the beginning, even though we’d like to think so. Nothing “by default” is ever easy. We think walking should be easy, pumping gas should be easy, chopping veggies should be easy, and the hard things in life should be learning how to downhill ski or ride no-handed on your bike. But this is not healthy. Instead, we need to nix comparing “what’s easy” vs. “what’s hard” and learn how to just be.
When you’re injured and trying to learn how to enjoy life again, you need to think on a new plane of existence. You’re on a new playing field. Constantly reminding yourself of your old abilities when you find yourself in a rut will only make it worse. The next time you find yourself almost boiling over because an “easy” thing is taking forever, roll back, take three deep breaths, and feel grateful for what you can do instead. Don’t let the memories of how easy things used to be get the best of you.
How do you stay focused on what you can do, instead of dwelling on what you can’t?
Photo courtesy of Andrew Bardwell
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