4 Things I Learnt About Life From A Back Injury In My Teens

I was pretty small as a kid. I was below average height for most of my life and I wasn’t particularly built.

When I was around 17, I started to watch fitness transformations on YouTube. It wasn’t long before I decided to have a go at my own transformation. Unfortunately, I went at it with a little bit too much enthusiasm and ended up with a bulging disc in my lower back.

At the time, it was quite frustrating because nothing I did would make the pain go away. It wasn’t an overwhelming pain, but it was always there.

It’s still there today, but I’ve learnt how to manage it to the point where it almost doesn’t affect me. Looking back on it, I can’t say that I’m glad it happened, but it has certainly taught me some important life lessons.

When I first got injured, I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself. There were a lot of things I couldn’t do anymore, like play football or go to the gym. I was envious of people who didn’t have to go through something like this. I had basically convinced myself that my situation was completely awful.

I would be lying if I said there was one moment which completely changed my mindset. There were many. My perspective changed over time.

But one of the main reasons it changed was because I started to imagine situations which were much worse than the one I was in. I started asking myself questions like:

It’s not that I was worried about possibilities like this. It was more a realisation that there were so many things I had that I could be grateful for. And the more I imagined the more grateful I became.

Even though there were a handful of things I couldn’t do because of my injury, there were so many things I still could do. I started to shift my focus to everything that was positive in my life. I stopped dwelling on the negative.

One of the guiding principles in Stoicism is something like:

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