Today on Doc On The Run Podcast we’re talking about how if you haven’t taken an action, you haven’t made a decision.
Three birds are sitting on a telephone wire. One bird decides to fly away. How many birds are left sitting on the telephone wire?The correct answer is three.
A decision is nothing without action.
Many years ago I heard a quote from Tony Robbins. He said, “Remember, a real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”
If you have an overtraining injury and have decided you want to heal faster than the average patient, you have to take action.
So, no matter what the situation, whether you think you need to change jobs, you need to change relationships, you need to make more money, if you don’t take some action that moves you in that direction you haven’t really decided to do it.
I see this all the time with injured runners.
They’ll say, “Well, I was checking things out. I was clicking around on the internet looking for different ways to heal my metatarsal stress fracture faster.”
If you’ve read a bunch of articles about metatarsal stress fractures but you didn’t actually do anything, other than sitting still in your fracture walking boot, you have not actually made a decision to heal faster.
If you have been looking for doctors who specialize in stress fractures but you haven’t scheduled an appointment with a doctor who specializes in stress fractures, you haven’t scheduled a consultation via web-cam, you haven’t even scheduled a consultation phone call with somebody who knows running injuries, you haven’t made a decision.
You have to do something. Maybe it’s getting a bone stimulator. Maybe it’s modifying your diet a little bit. Maybe it’s doing something else that will reduce the stress on the stress fracture. But if you haven’t taken an action you really haven’t made a decision to make it heal faster.
If you don’t do something differently than the average patient, you shouldn’t hope to recover faster than the average patient.
The truth is, all wounds eventually heal. That’s true of achilles tendon injuries, it’s true of stress fractures, it’s true of all things.
But you have to remember, when you’re a runner you can’t just wait for it to heal like a normal patient because the whole time you’re waiting, things are getting worse. You are losing your aerobic fitness, you are getting weaker, you are losing your neuromuscular connections. Your form is falling apart.
The only thing that you can change, the only thing that you can modify is the rate at which it’s going to heal. But that takes action.
So, yes, you need to find the right information that’s going to help you as a runner heal faster. If you can’t make those decisions on your own, if you can’t really move forward with a decision to modify something in the healing process to make you heal faster then you need to see somebody who can help you.
Maybe it’s your doctor, maybe it’s your coach, maybe it’s a nutritionist. Who knows. But there is somebody who can help you make the decisions to change the course of healing so you can actually heal faster.
There are so many different variables that go into healing any injury when you’re a runner. You really do have control over many of those variables.
Waiting, you have no control over any variables. You’re just waiting. It’s like waiting for a bus that may or may not show up on time.
So make a decision, right now.
Look for the information you need, act on that information and do something.
Schedule a consultation. Change something in your diet. Figure out what you can do differently today. Figure out how you can do something to decrease the stress on a metatarsal stress fracture. Figure out how you can do something differently to make it heal faster so you can get back to running sooner.
One simple step you can take is start with the Healing Runner’s Goal Worksheet.
It will help you take what you know about goal setting in running and use what you already know to focus your healing. It’s free.
Go get it now!
If you have a question that you would like answered as a future addition of the Doc On The Run Podcast, send it to me PodcastQuestion@docontherun.com. And then make sure you join me for the next edition of the Doc On The Run Podcast!
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