So You Are a Head Case

Transcription:

Bill Gasiamis 0:01
Hey there guys Bill from recoveryafterstroke.com I thought I’d go take you guys on a walk today I just woke up and feeling quite strange for the first time in a long time I wake up feeling a little bit woozy when I got out of bed.

Bill Gasiamis 0:17
So I think it’s just my left side being a little bit more numb and a little more tight, the muscles seem to be a little bit more tight. So when I stood up and put my foot out of the bed and got up, I just felt a little bit woozy and there’s a nice fresh morning so I thought I’d go for a walk and get some fresh air.

Bill Gasiamis 0:40
Since there’s no cars around, there’s not a lot of pollution and the air is a lot fresher. But it’s also fresh because it’s autumn or fall here in Melbourne and the weather’s getting quite cold and crisp and I just wanted to talk about today something that came up in a coaching call.

Bill Gasiamis 1:07
And it was the fact that there was the person who I was chatting with during the coaching call was dealing with feeling like well over over the whole thing. And that experience a couple of other really serious life challenges, including loss of loved ones.

Bill Gasiamis 1:33
And this recovery that she had to go through is more complicated, became more complicated, because of all of those other additional issues that she has to put up with. And I totally get being over this new version of you, especially if you’ve been living in your body all perfectly fine like I had for 37 years.

Bill Gasiamis 2:02
And then one day, it was different. And you’ve got to come to terms with it. And you got to find skills that you never had to learn how to deal with it cope with it, I overcome it. And I think the majority of the work in overcoming something like stroke has got to do more with your mindset than any other thing.

Bill Gasiamis 2:25
There’s no doubt that we can recover our body to an extent, depending on the severity of the deficits that we experienced. But I think if your mindset is not right, then you’re going to recover less effectively. And what do I mean by this? And by mindset, I mean, it’s the things that we think the things that we tell ourselves and the stories that we play around and round, hits in circles.

Bill Gasiamis 3:03
Now, if you have a head that likes to exert its authority and continue to tell you stories about yourself and your recovery and all the other things I could possibly be wrong. Well, there’s no doubt about it, your head can creatively come up with an endless possibility of all the things that are wrong, all the problems that exist.

Bill Gasiamis 3:35
And if your head wants to be the main authority of intelligence in your body, then it’s gonna run riot and it’s going to do whatever it likes to do. So let me clarify this a little bit. Let me tell you what I mean. I used to do scribed myself as a headcase, and many people described me as a headcase.

Bill Gasiamis 4:06
And I was always in my head, always overthinking all the issues that I had and all the problems that I had. And always overthinking why there was no solutions to my problems. And I was so good at that I did that for 37 years, every single time.

Bill Gasiamis 4:26
There was a problem, I get upset and frustrated, and annoyed. And this is what I realized is that I can use my head if it’s an over thinker, if my head wants to exert its authority all the time, I can use it for my benefit.

Bill Gasiamis 4:43
And instead of thinking about all the things that are problematic, and all the issues that have gotten all the challenges that I can’t solve, I figured that I’m going to start using my head to come up with creative ways to solve the problem.

Bill Gasiamis 4:59
So now if there is a problem, which life is all about problems and problem solving and solutions to challenges, I come up with creative ways to solve my problem, and I spend more time on the solution than I do on the problem. And my overthinking head supports me in exactly the same way it did before.

Bill Gasiamis 5:23
In that, it comes up with neverending numbers of ways to solve my problem, all I’ve got to do is choose one that’s the easiest for me to implement, rather than hard. The other thing that you can use your head to do is you can use it to come up with what’s good about the situation you’re currently in.

Bill Gasiamis 5:48
Now, I’m not saying the situation can’t be terrible or bad or difficult or inconvenient. Of course it can but what’s good about it even in that time, even in the time where it’s inconvenient. I’ll tell you what I mean by that.

Bill Gasiamis 6:04
Basically, when I was in hospital, recovering from brain surgery, and not knowing if I was ever going to walk, and how my body would be I asked myself what’s good about the situation that I’m in right now? What can I focus on in a positive way that I was appreciating.

Bill Gasiamis 6:28
And it was real simple. I was in hospital I was being cared for. And I was going to somehow learn from this and then do something positive with my experience. So for me, it just gave me a distraction. And I didn’t have to focus on all the things that were problematic until rehab. I couldn’t walk. I only worried about that when I needed to walk.

Bill Gasiamis 7:01
And then I needed to come up with ways to overcome that and solve that. But see, my mindset is what made it possible. If I focused on all the things I couldn’t do, then I would have got more and more things come up that I couldn’t do. And that would have made me more and more upset and depressed. So I’m Bill from recovery after stroke. Tell me how you manage your mindset. And tell me how sometimes your mindset might get away from you and how you bring it back to focus on the positive.