“Again?! I have to do this again?”

“Following your surgery, you’ll have a two-to-three-month intensive rehabilitation and recovery period. Then you’ll be cleared to play.”

While the doctor had told me I’d have a rehab period, the only thing I heard was, “You’ll be back playing in eight weeks.”

I had no idea what was really ahead for me.

**

Researchers have found that every year, nearly half of all amateur athletes suffer a participation-precluding injury (Garrick, & Requa, 1978; Hardy, & Crace, 1990).

Half.

There are 50 million amateur athletes — 15 million adults and 35 million youths — according to Brad Humphreys. That means that 25 million of us are injured enough that we can’t play. Now those injuries also include rolling an ankle or certain cuts or bruises, so not every injury is one that creates major problems and long term outages or requires surgery, but injuries are a part of sports, and most injuries require a certain amount of rest.

But for athletes who play competitively in college, nearly everyone I’ve spoken to has had some type of injury serious enough to require surgery and/or rehabilitation. Anyone who hasn’t experienced that will knock on wood when the topic is mentioned.

I’ve had my share of bumps and bruises, to be sure. But the real lesson came from what transpired after my torn meniscus, my first surgery, and my longer-than-expected rehab. And then tearing the meniscus in my other knee. And tearing it again. And once more after that. And breaking my femur. The real lessons came from all of these circumstances: I learned resilience and patience.

Athletes learn how to use patience and resilience when the inevitable happens, because rushing back from an injury leaves you more susceptible to re-injury (or, in my case, suffering a new one). Building up the physical strength to be able to return to competition is a long and painful process, but keeping the end goal in mind is why athletes power through.

A wise man once said: “You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.” — Bob Marley

**

CEOs, in study after study, reveal that they want their workers to be more resilient. Personnel Today defines resilience in the workplace as:

• “An individual’s response and methods used to allow them to successfully navigate through or passed an event perceived to be stressful.”
• “The flexibility in response to changing situational demands, and the ability to bounce back from negative emotional experiences” (Tugade et al, 2004) or “a set of flexible cognitive, behavioural and emotional responses to acute or chronic adversities which can be unusual or common place.” (Neenan, 2010).
• “The capacity to mobilise personal features that enable individuals, groups and communities (including controlled communities such as a workforce) to prevent, tolerate, overcome and be enhanced by adverse events and experiences” (Mowbray, 2010).

When the going gets tough, it goes without saying that corporate executives want their employees to buckle down and work hard to get through the rough patch. However, research shows that not only is there a shortage of resilient employees, but that employees lacking resilience are costing their company large sums of money.

According to CEO Magazine, “Absenteeism costs the economy $44 billion and the impact of presenteeism — when an employee turns up sick or is not engaged at work, is just as big if not greater” (Smuin, 2017).

Stuart Taylor, the CEO of Springfox, has studied resilency among employees, and the results were surprising. “What we learned is that resilience is a learned competency. Our research showed that when given resilience training, people could build their competency to adjust to change and develop recovery mechanisms” (Smuin, 2017).

And so companies that want to create a more resilient workforce have two choices:

• Train their existing workers to be more resilient; or
• Hire workers that have already learned how to be resilient.

Now, if resilience is a “learned competency,” then how do you train someone to be more resilient? One way, of course, is by presenting employees with adverse work situations and encouraging them not to give up. But that is an awful lot of work, and would probably cost an awful lot of money. Wouldn’t it be easier just to hire someone who’s already learned how to be resilient?

In his article on improving your resilience, Barry Winbolt argues for the importance of patience and resilience because the work environment is constantly changing around you. Winbolt says that you need to improve your resiliency to be able to deal with things like “organizational change and upheaval, impending staff cutbacks, looming deadlines, argumentative meetings and incessant competition from business rivals,” just to name a few (Windbolt, 2017).

While working for Google, eBay and J.P. Morgan Chase, Rich Fernandez has had his fair share of experience with resilient workers, and he noticed that “the most resilient individuals and teams aren’t the ones that don’t fail, but rather the ones that fail, learn and thrive because of it. Being challenged — sometimes severely — is part of what activates resilience as a skill set” (Fernandez, 2016).

Getting knocked down isn’t the end of the world.

“I was having a great season and I was on cloud nine,” Melissa Menta said. Until she suffered a contact ACL tear during her freshman season at NYU.

As a freshman you feel invincible. You just try to take in everything around you and enjoy the fact that you’ve made it. There are so many new people and places that you have to get accustomed to, and you’re also playing the game you love. It’s only natural to avoid thinking about mortality.

But consequences can still apply to you. Melissa’s injury would force her to miss the last five games of the season, benching her from October to the beginning of May of her freshman year.

For Melissa, it was humbling for her to make sure that she was taking care of her body. It made her realize that she was not, in fact, invincible. Although it took a while for Melissa’s speed to get back up to the level it was prior to her injury, she needed to make sure that she felt totally comfortable getting back into the contact sport that soccer is.

“I think I was glad it happened during my freshman year because it taught me a lot about discipline, and putting in those extra rehab hours showed me what I was able to accomplish after a serious injury like that,” she said.

In the end, her ACL injury, along with its recovery process, taught Melissa a lot about discipline, and it allowed her to manage her time as she juggled academics, athletics, and then rehab. Once all was said and done with her recovery process, being able to look back on what she was able to accomplish after rehab made the whole process worth it. Little did she know, her patience would be put to the test once more shortly after that.

**

Unfortunately for Melissa, she suffered another serious injury during her junior year. She broke her leg, underwent surgery to repair the break, and had a five-month recovery process ahead of her. And in case you forgot, she attended NYU. That meant using crutches… in New York City.

“Melissa’s second major injury left her asking herself, “Again? I have to do this again??” She continued, “It killed me to be here a second time around, at practice and sitting on the sidelines. My arms were, like, super toned, but it was a pain,” she added, laughing.

Coming back from a serious injury is never easy, but it is doable if you maintain the right attitude during the rehab process. Being goal-oriented helps. We have athletic and academic goals, and they each play a pivotal role in our recovery process. In fact, according to Aristotle University’s Department of Physical Education and Sports Science, “The goal setting process seems to have a positive effect in the recovery process, in the attitude of the injured athlete, in the successful confrontation of the injury, in the recovery of confidence and in the adherence to the rehabilitation program” (Christos, 2007).

Simply put, your goals and ambitions suppress the negative psychological effects of an injury and rehabilitation. However, the inverse of this is also true. The same study also concluded that athletes who are impatient, pessimistic, or who possess few coping skills lose more athletic time because of their injuries. Patience helps, impatience hinders.

**

Not only did Melissa have another serious injury on her hands, she had to watch her team’s NCAA tournament game from the sidelines. That feeling really sucks. In fact, if an athlete isn’t careful (and goal-oriented), it can nearly kill the spirit of the competitor inside that athlete.

The NCAA tournament is an annual event to which all teams look forward, making it their goal to be selected to compete in it. For those who do get in, it then becomes the goal and focus to make it as far into the tournament as they possibly can. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year in collegiate athletics.

You have the best of the best selected to compete along with all of the conference winners competing on the national level. The competition is heightened, the stakes are higher, and it’s “win or go home.” In addition, the opportunity to host a round of the NCAA tournament is every team’s dream.

To have to watch this game from the sidelines made coping with her injury that much more difficult. . Working towards this goal of competing in the NCAA tournament all year and then to have your teammates compete without you is heartbreaking.

Overcoming adversity and starting from square one is what injuries and the recovery process is all about. If you are passionate enough about something and you want it badly enough, you will make it work, no matter what. Dealing with the recovery process and getting through it speaks a lot for a person’s character. It shows mental strength and perseverance. Somehow, you have to find it within you to gather the strength to pull through ACL tears and broken bones.

Injuries suck. Plain and simple.

But how you approach and overcome them shows those around you who you are. For most student-athletes, overcoming injuries and getting back on the field is the most important thing. But can this translate off of the field, past sports, and into the workforce?

Melissa elaborates on that, as well. “Things are gonna happen during work, mistakes will be made, but you put in the extra hours to get through it.”