Yin Yoga

I’ve recently started practising Yin Yoga at the Collective Therapy Hub in Latrobe with the amazing Jodhi Gough. https://www.collectivetherapyhub.com.au/

WOW! It’s amazing. At its core, it’s about deeply connecting you with your body and soul, and then understanding how they interact to calm us down and find peace. The Collective Therapy Hub is located in my hometown Latrobe, next to the fuel station, which is just over the road from St Patricks Church and Primary School. It was previously a funeral parlours chapel and Jodhis done such a great job of retaining the quiet spirit of the place, while introducing healing and hope.

Jodhi warmly welcomes me into the calming, uncluttered space with solid earthy tones. She has carefully aligned, words of strength, symbols of peace and calm, with the space’s spirit.

Entering the studio I’m greeted with soft rhythm music guiding me to my spot. I take a seat, close my eyes and feel the space. Eyes remain closed throughout the practice to reduce sensory load, which helps us connect with our body and soul; and know that it’s our practice; that we don’t need to judge ourselves against the other participants.

It starts with a group chant of ‘om’, a thousand-year-old tradition, representing the sound of the universe, which connects us all. It’s a deep chant and I can see it emanating from my throat and entwining with the all the other ‘oms’, connecting us.

It is then a series of long-held, 2-to-5-minute yoga poses that I can feel my central nervous system thanking me for. During the pose, you very mindfully pay attention to how your body is feeling, to help find the edge of stretching, without feeling pain. I had never consciously paid attention to feeling my body previously, therefore it’s a new sensation for me, that is also familiar because I had been doing it unconsciously. This is helping me with my Alexithymia because it helps me pay attention to how my feelings affect my body. How often do you think about how your feelings feel? Tuning into how my body feels, helps me connect with my feelings at that moment in time. The word tells you that you are feeling it, yet we consider feelings to be part of our thinking, perhaps because we are reacting to what the brain is sensing. Feelings encompass our whole being; they are part of our soul. Being able to control and use these feelings enables you to be the master of your fate and captain of your soul. It helps you get out of your head and into your body and soul.

The Bhramari Pranayama pose is great one for clearing my cloudy head. You put three fingers over your eyes, while your thumb blocks your ear. Then hum like a bee. The gentle vibrations stimulate the Vagus nerve, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system, improves blood flow and releases dopamine and serotonin, which are the happy hormones.

Jodhi also wonderfully helps us practice affirmations during the practice. She reminds us that we should be grateful for what we have; to thank everyone in our lives who are helping us; that we are enough; that we are worthy; that we should forgive people, especially ourselves.

There are rests in between the poses to recharge, meditate and connect with your body. Deep breathing inhales thoughts of being enough, with the exhale releasing thoughts of inadequacy. It is about opening our hearts to the world. This concept touched me deeply. To know that I am master of my fate and captain of my soul, means I can choose to open my heart.

The session finishes with savasana, also known as corpse pose, which is about lying flat and consciously resting every muscle and fibre in your body. The feeling of this is amazing, total relaxation that I’d never felt before. We then give ourselves a big hug and thank ourselves for this wonderful experience. It’s also nice being the ‘token guy’ in the class, as I have spent so many years working in male-dominated industries.

It is helping my brain injury because it has been shown that when you relax your body, mind and heart, the brain waves operate differently, which generates new neural pathways via neuroplasticity. The body movement also increases blood flow to the brain, which aids neuroplasticity, especially the hippocampus, which regulates memory. Most importantly it is training me to better rest and relax, physically and mentally. The affirmations are an important part of this rest, because if you can recognise the areas in life where you are enough and worthy, that results in less stress and worry about needing to be better.

Yin Yoga is the next step in my journey of losing my mind to find my soul. Before my brain injury, I’d never known what a soul was, or did. I had to lose my mind to find my soul. I never knew who I was, because I was too busy trying to please everyone, especially myself. I forgive myself for doing that. It was part of my journey. It makes finding my soul even sweeter. My writing helped me find my soul, as I explored what was important to me, what made me happy and how I reacted to situations. Yin Yoga is now helped me understand my soul. It connects me deeply to how I’m feeling, it affirms my soul. That helps me to be Captain of my Soul, because if I deeply connect with how I’m feeling, that allows me to better control my emotions. Therefore, if I’m in a situation where I need to be calm and can feel myself getting agitated, that allows me to intervene early and practice calming mediation to prevent the agitation turning into anger and decisions I’ll later regret.

I’d practiced this throughout my life, however the Alexithymia made it much more difficult … than I can remember LOL! For example, on my very first night working as a waiter in hospitality, my new boss was expecting a slow evening, therefore I was the only waiter. I respected that he’d done this so I could ease in slowly. I also respected that it was hard to predict how many people would come on any given night. Therefore, when the customers started streaming in, I was quite nervous. However, my boss had taken the time to walk me through how to greet customers, take their order and deliver it to the kitchen. So, I knew what I was doing. We did discuss if there was an event on that had drawn all these people to Latrobe, but there wasn’t. He did try and call in other waiters to help me out, but unfortunately they couldn’t make it. I could see that he had done everything he could to help me out. This allowed me to be the captain of my soul and not get angry at him, but repay his support by doing the best I could. ‘The best I could’ are the key words there. It’s important to recognise that I wasn’t doing a great job, but considering it was my first night working as a waiter, without any help, on the busiest night they’d had, I also needed to take it easy on myself, because getting frustrated at the little mistakes I was making would just make it harder.

I could have also quit on the spot, walked out and gone back to mowing lawns, but being Captain of my Soul helped me to stay on course and continue working there. That job then taught me so much about customer engagement and service, which led me into Marketing and Business Strategy Development. I was Master of my Fate.

Adaptable

Hello, my name is Dane McCormack, in 2018 I battled a complicated case of T Cell lymphoma cancer. The medical system did a fantastic job saving my life, with six cycles of chemotherapy and a STEM cell transplant. Unfortunately, the cancer treatment caused so many different side effects, which limited my ability to live a happy life, so I’ve called them limitations. They include; removing the toes off my right foot, which also causes severe nerve pain on the soles of both feet; removing 20cm of my bowel, which left me unable to eat meat or seafood; and an acquired brain injury, which causes severe mental fatigue, makes me highly sensitivity to noise and I lost my long and short term memories.

All of these limitations have left me Disabled. I am a participant of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), and as per their assessment, I am quite badly Disabled. But the word Disabled is such a misnomer and it’s used in a very detrimental way. The meaning of ‘dis’ is to speak disrespectfully or criticise. Yes, we are impaired, but we’re still abled. It’s also so much better to focus on what we’re able to do, rather than what we’re no longer able to do. Thus I prefer to call myself Adaptable, because it would have been very easy for me to get angry at the doctors for causing these limitations. But my world had changed, so I decided to start swimming, rather than sink like a stone. Even though I can’t swim LOL! I respected that the cancer treatment had saved my life, and the limitations were a byproduct of that life saving treatment. This then allowed me to work with the medical staff to adapt my life, so the limitations didn’t affect my quality of life as much.

I can thank my father for helping me to adapt. Classic chalk sketches on the floor, he taught me that every time you hit a problem, don’t get angry, stop. Get the chalk out, sketch out a solution and then fix the problem. He was a Boiler Maker Welder with the largest onion exporter in the Southern Hemisphere. An amazing company down in Tasmania called Vecon. He would tour the world taking photographs of the latest in onion harvesting and processing equipment. Then come home and build it in his workshop, without Engineers, or drawings or calculations. He had a vision of what he wanted, then he just figured out how to do it with chalk sketches on the workshop floor. He once took a tractor and turned it into a self propelled onion harvester with just chalk sketches on the workshop floor! I’ve since created my career and life with chalk sketches on the floor. I’ve had a vision of a great life, but no specific goals, I just figure it out as I go, adapting to the environment I find myself in at the time, using chalk sketches on the floor.

But before you can fix problem’s, you have to know what they are. So I took the time to understand what my limitations were. Once I had identified a limitation from the side effects, I stopped, thought about the right way and developed strategies to adapt my life, that allowed me to live with my limitations day to day. But it’s also so important not to rush this process, because if you rush and you don’t succeed, it will make you sad, and there’s already enough sadness in the situation, without adding more.

The Rehabilitation Team at the University of Canberra hospital were a key ally in helping me adapt. They helped talk me through and trial strategies to deal with my limitations. They had seen many people going through similar journeys and had many ideas I could use.

Adapting at the University of Canberra Rehabilitation Hospital

For example, stairs were difficult for me, due to nerve damage and missing toes on my right foot, which affects balance. It would have been very easy for me to misjudge a step and trip, with disastrous consequences. But that didn’t stopped me from using them. Rather I had to adapt my behaviour. I paused momentarily at the top, got my bearings and slowly descended, concentrating on every step. It took me twice as long as a normal person, but that’s ok, because I did make it. I also didn’t have a lot of choice after I was released from hospital, because we have a lot of steps in our house. One day I was sitting on the couch, and I must have been sitting on it the wrong way. When I got up, my right leg was completely numb and I couldn’t walk. I remember panicking and thinking, how I am going to get out of the house! Luckily the leg went back to normal quickly and it didn’t happened again. But it’s a good strategy for most issues you face. Stop, think about it, take it slowly, make it happen.

When 20cm of my bowel was removed, I adapted my diet, by removing meat and seafood, because they were too hard to digest and would regurgitate. I also regurgitate irregularly with any type of food, so I also had to adapt my eating habits, by chewing more thoroughly, so it was easier to digest and wouldn’t regurgitate on me. I adapted to these changes by recognising that both a vegetarian diet and chewing thoroughly were much healthier for me.

When adapting, I found doing something easy first gave me confidence i.e. rather than reading a big novel, I started with short stories, articles, and pod casts, etc. this helped me adapt and prepared me for the bigger challenges which were on their way.

I then returned home, and I had to adapt my lifestyle because I hadn’t returned to driving. My Doctor had signed off that I could return to driving without further testing or assessment. But I declined this, because the assessment checks if I have developed any new limitations, which would limit my ability to be a safe driver. Step one, identify your limitations. The medical test checked my brains ability to understand what my body is doing and whether it still has the reflexes to react appropriately, especially in dangerous situations. Then during the on-road test, the driving instructor checked if I could still physically drive, I could remember the road rules, my impaired left eye could still see people entering a crosswalk and that I was mentally ready to react in emergency situations. This is so important to understand if I want to be safe on the roads. I didn’t want to put my family, other road users, and myself, in situations where we could get hurt. I needed to understand my limitations to be able to make good decisions on the road.

Writing is a key strategy I’ve used to adapt. By writing about my limitations, I understood them better, which led to acceptance and I got great ideas about how to deal with them. Because I’d lost my long term memories, I set out on a mighty quest to find them and wrote my autobiography. It allowed me to explore all the other times I’d adapted to deal with tough times, which gave me confidence that I could adapt this time. My writing takes me on the most amazing journeys of discovery and recovery.

For example, I started my career down in Hobart with the coolest job. It was with a Government owned training centre that was run as a business called the Centre for Precision Technology. There were a dozen trainees per year and we worked on the factory floor gaining a trade certificate in Precision Manufacture, while manufacturing parts for customers and studying at University for a Bachelor of Technology in Manufacturing Engineering. It gave us practical experience in the discipline we’d soon be designing and managing. Unfortunately the Government shut the Centre down in my third year. I searched desperately for a job in Tasmania, but couldn’t find a single job to apply for. I needed to adapt to this environment because there were no jobs in Tasmania. So I moved up to Queensland to finish my University degree. It happened to have Marketing as the second major, I never would have studied Marketing if I hadn’t adapted and Business Strategy Development later became my career passion.

Queensland University of Technology by kgbo under CC4

Straight out of University I got the coolest job as a Production Engineer for Corvette Queensland, who imported Chevrolet Corvettes and trucks and converted them to right hand drive so they could be driven in Australia.

It was a small company, located in the regional town of Gympie. I could see that applying Lean Manufacturing was a great way to increase productivity, but I didn’t have the skills to design the changes, or sell the benefits of using Lean Manufacturing. I needed more learning and growth opportunities to help me adapt my career and give me those skills. I then landed an even cooler job as Boeing Australia’s first Lean Manufacturing Specialist and got to learn all about it in their factory in Seattle Washington!

However, even though I couldn’t see the learning and growth opportunities at Corvette Queensland, that job gave me the most valuable adaptable skill I own and that’s experience in Quality Assurance. The Government changed the regulations around Steering Conversions and required all the companies to be ISO9001 accredited, so I helped them implement the procedures to gain accreditation. Gaining that experience landed me the job with Boeing! I wouldn’t have got it without it.

My next job was as Quality Manager for the Integrated Logistics Support Capability at Boeing. This wasn’t an interesting job, but I really wanted to work there because there was a great manager in charge.
Not long after I started, one of the customers on a $500M program started jumping up and down that we weren’t implementing Reliability Engineering properly on his program. We didn’t have a Reliability Engineer at the time, or previously. I’d never even heard of Reliability Engineering before. But I asked around and it was fascinating. Highly complex statistical mathematics and I love maths. I should have been a Mathemagician. So I adapted my career again and I used my Quality Assurance skills to do it. I taught myself all about Reliability Engineering and I then Quality Audited the program to find where we’d been applying Reliability Engineering, I presented those findings back to the customer and everyone was happy.

Because I’d done so well at that job I got the opportunity of a lifetime, to be one of the first members of the Boeing Australia Advanced Systems team. We were asked to look widely across the global Boeing company, to identify products and services we delivered elsewhere, that could be applied to the Australian market and then develop business strategies to bring them here. That’s when Business Strategy Development became my career passion and it was enabled by my adaptability and the Quality Assurance skills I’d learnt at Corvette Queensland.

I then returned to work after my cancer journey, as Business Strategy Manager for Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. With my short term memory issues, I had to adapt my behaviour, by making more notes, keeping a diary and setting reminders. I needed to adapt my routine to constantly revise my work, so I didn’t forget what I had done. I also adapted a counselling technique to help me out. Similar to counselling, I would sit down with some of my colleagues to explain the business strategies I had been developing. Just having to think through how I was going to explain it, helped me understand what I was doing better.

Unfortunately, my acquired brain injury meant that I was unable to work full time, or do the wide thinking needed to develop business strategies. I had to adapt my career, to better suit my current cognitive capacity. Luckily I was able to reach back into my career and resurrect some skills from the graveyard, including Quality Assurance and delivering Training Courses, which matched my current cognitive capacity, because they didn’t need the wide thinking skills I now lacked. These were skills that I had enjoyed early in my career, but I had since found new skills that I enjoyed more.

I then found an amazing new job working in Quality Assurance for an Australian owned software development company. I really enjoyed working for an innovative Australian company, it was so nice to escape the bureaucracy of multinational companies, the irony that I was helping my new companies implement that bureaucracy wasn’t lost on me. Unfortunately, I completed the work I needed to do and I’m adapting again

All of these adaptations have helped me resume a happy life. Change isn’t easy, but I found it easier because I accepted that life had changed. I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t get angry about it, which helped me adapt. I focused on understanding how my body was changing, I then thought through and sort advice on the best ways to adapt my behaviours, to account for my limitations.

Don’t be scared, be prepared!

I got so lucky that my parents taught me and showed me the value of proper preparation for everything I did. Classic 6Ps, Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. It’s a key skill that has enabled me to thrive throughout my life and through my cancer journey.

Fishing and bushwalking are great examples. You do these activities in the Central Highlands of Tasmania, which are notoriously rugged. The weather can also change at a moments notice. For example, when we went fishing in the lakes, we’d head over the other side of the lake in the boat, just to see if the fish were biting over there. We’d only do this when the weather was calm, because if it was too rough, it was dangerous. But it wasn’t unusual, that once we got to the other side, for the wind and waves to suddenly get up, and the snow to come down, so it would be a rough and dangerous return. This happens without warning, so we made sure we had adequate wet weather and warm clothing whenever we went out, even if it was a warm, sunny, calm day. Fishing on the lake shore is just as treacherous, as it’s very swampy and rocky ground. But my dad prepared me by carefully teaching me how to navigate the rough ground safely.

When I worked as a paperboy is another great example of learning the benefits of being prepared. I’d get up at 5 am in the morning, rain, hail, snow and shine. I needed adequate clothing for all types of weather, easily on hand, because you’d never know what it was going to be like until you got up. I needed to be prepared. The pushbike I rode also needed to be in good working condition, because if it broke down halfway around the run, I’d have to walk around to deliver the papers and then walk home. So I made sure everything was well greased and in good condition. I was prepared.

Sailing is probably my best example. I learnt to sail in Bass Strait, one of the roughest waterways in the world and I couldn’t swim! I had so much fun jumping off the big waves, even when they knocked me out of the boat. But I made sure that I was wearing a life vest to keep me buoyant; that a safety boat was close by to rescue me if I got in trouble; my skipper also taught me how to sail in the river, before we headed out into Bass Strait, including capsizing on purpose one day, just so I knew what to do when we did capsize out in Bass Strait. This came in really handy one day, when we capsized five metres from the rocky breakwater at the mouth of the river, with three metre waves. Scary doesn’t even begin to describe that situation. But I wasn’t scared, I was prepared. I knew how to not get tangled in the ropes, and where I should position myself to successfully right the boat. All of that resulted in us quickly righting the boat and swiftly sailing away, rather than shipwrecking our yacht on the breakwater.

Jumping off the waves by fivestar3145 under CC4

Being prepared also helped me in my first job in hospitality, as a waiter in a local Pubs restaurant, while I was in High School. On my very first night working, they were expecting a slow evening, so I was the only waiter and I also had to wash the dishes, because the chefs were there to cook! They then had the busiest night they’d ever had. There were about 40 tables and every seat was taken as soon as we opened. It was my first night working as a waiter, without any help, on the busiest night they’d ever had. But I’d prepared myself by doing a hospitality training course and I knew the basics, so I wasn’t scared, I was prepared, and I slowly conquered that tough night.

My Dad’s boss, Peter Gilham also taught me key lessons about being prepared. They were the largest onion exporter in the Southern Hemisphere. They then diversified into walnuts. They were still in the agricultural industry, but harvesting and processing walnuts is very, very, different to onions. At the time only 3% of global walnut production was done in the Southern Hemisphere, so the market was ripe for opportunity, but very much lacking in knowledge of how to do it. But he and my dad weren’t scared, they prepared by travelling overseas to see how it was done. They then came back to Tasmania and modified that approach to suit Tasmanian conditions. This method helped me so much during my career. The best example I have is when I was working at Boeing and one of our customers on a $500M program started jumping up and down that we weren’t implementing Reliability Engineering properly on his program. We didn’t have a Reliability Engineer at the time, or previously. I’d never even heard of Reliability Engineering. This had top management’s sharp attention. But I wasn’t scared to throw myself in the deep end to regain customer confidence. I was prepared, because I asked around the team and there was a fairly good knowledge of Reliability Engineering. I sought assistance from an external consultant, who was a Reliability Engineering expert. I was also leveraging my Quality Assurance capability, because I was auditing the program for evidence that we were implementing Reliability Engineering. So I wasn’t scared, I was prepared and I did recover customer confidence, which led me to my dream job in Business Strategy Development, because I’d shown my ability to cope in higher pressure situations by being prepared.

Public Speaking

Public speaking is another great example. I had actively avoided public speaking throughout my youth, it frankly scared me. Then I landed the most amazing job as a Lean Manufacturing Specialist with Boeing. Lean Manufacturing was easily my favourite subject at University, because it’s all about identifying and minimising waste in the manufacturing process, by considering if a process you’re undertaking is value adding or non value adding. A better way to look at it is, would the customer want to pay for what you’re doing right now? By eliminating wasteful processes that don’t add value to the final product, you make the manufacturing process quicker and thus cheaper. You also balance the line so that you have the right amount of workers at each stage, so that waiting periods are minimised. This ensures that end to end processing time is minimised. It also has a philosophy of learn by doing, which appealed to my experiences with my father and working at the Centre for Precision Technology.

To then land a job with one of the world’s leading Lean Manufacturing companies was a dream come true. They flew me over to their aircraft factory in Seattle to learn all about it. The training courses they ran, then prepared me beautifully to get up in front of a crowd to teach people about Lean Manufacturing, because they had a specified training curriculum to present. They also had the most fun simulations to run during the training course, which helped participants to better understand Lean Manufacturing. They gave me step by step instructions to follow and it was so easy to keep everyone engaged because of how fun it was. Then during the workshops, I also prepared by collecting lots of data about how the current process was operating, which was then analysed and presented back to the participants in the workshop. This helped them accept how the current process was performing and also inspired them to improve it, which made it so much easier to facilitate. So when it came to running training courses and workshops back in Australia, I wasn’t scared, I was beautifully prepared.

Cancer Journey

The being prepared skills I learnt early in my life, then helped me so much during my cancer journey, but I also had help from the amazing University of Canberra Rehabilitation team. The cancer treatment caused so many side affects that fundamentally changed how my body operated. They limited my ability to live a happy life, so I call them limitations. I lost my sense of smell, and my sense of taste. I suffered an acquired brain injury that affected my balance; my long and short term memories; and my ability to think. They removed 20cm of my bowel, that limited my ability to eat meat and seafood, it also led to me regurgitate food irregularly. It was unknown how these limitations would affect my life, they could be life threatening. But the Rehabilitation team had a great program to test how the limitations would affect my life and they helped me to develop strategies to deal with the limitations. They helped me prepare, so I wasn’t scared to return to everyday life.

Returning to everyday Life

One day the Rehabilitation Team asked me to cook a meal in the patients kitchen, to see how I dealt with everyday activities. The Occupational Therapist drove me to the supermarket to pick up the ingredients and we went back to the hospital and I cooked up a feast whilst the Occupational Therapist was looking on. The Occupational Therapist wanted to ensure that I could function safely and successfully in the world, by selecting a recipe, writing a shopping list, navigating a super market, that I remembered how to cook and that I was safe whilst I did it i.e. did I turn the stove off when I finished using it, could I safely carry cooking utensils around like big pots and sharp knives, that I wouldn’t cause any food poisoning etc. This was also to identify if I had any limitations that would limit my ability to be safe in a kitchen, if they had identified any, they would have helped me develop strategies that minimised the risk. This helped me to not be scared of being a danger to myself or others once they let me loose in the world, I was prepared.

Return to work

When I starting thinking about returning to work, the Rehabilitation team had a great plan. The first step was for me to complete some examples of the typical work that I do. The first project I attempted was a profile on an Australian space startup. It was a small relatively easy exercise i.e. start small. It got me back onto a computer, and helped get me comfortable sitting in front of a computer again, which helped me understand just how comfortable I was to get back to work and helped determine the work effort I would be able to expend initially i.e. 3 half days a week. It also reacquainted me with the market, which meant I was productive earlier, when I did return.

In front of the computer in the University of Canberra Rehabilitation Hospital

I was prepared by knowing how comfortable I’d be in front of computer. I’d tested if I could still do the same type of work and how many hours per week I could handle. I also reacquainted myself with the market and what I’d found was that the Australian Space Agency had been established while I was in hospital and they’d invested significant funds to aid development. So I wasn’t scared, I was excited to get back to work, because the University of Canberra Rehabilitation Team had prepared me so beautifully.

Memory and Mental Fatigue Issues

But easily the most scary issues I faced when returning to work, were my memory and mental fatigue issues. But once again the University of Canberra Rehabilitation helped me to prepare beautifully. They suggested I start taking notes, updating my calendar and playing word and number games. I’d already started doing these things and that gave me so much confidence, because I’d already thought of a solution. So while I knew it was going to be an issue, I wasn’t scared because I had already prepared strategies to deal with it. This gave me confidence.

My mental fatigue issues were much more challenging. The strategy to combat fatigue is easy, take regular mental breaks. Go grab a water, short walk, etc. But of course my work ethic then stuck it’s nose in and I felt guilty about taking brain breaks, which led to fatigue and me being unproductive. Once again the University of Canberra Rehabilitation Team saved the day. My wonderful Counsellor Deb Perry helped me talk through the reasons why I wasn’t taking the brain breaks I needed. It helped me realise that something that had been so successful for me throughout my career, was now killing my productivity. Those conversations helped me to prepare, so I was no longer scared about mental fatigue and I took the brain breaks I needed, which led me to be more productive.

Return to Driving

Return to driving is another great example. My Doctor had signed off that I could return without further testing or assessment. But I declined this, because the assessment checks if I have developed any new limitations which would limit my ability to be a safe driver. I didn’t want to be scared that I had developed new limitations which would make me dangerous on the road, I wanted to prepare by checking if I had any. The medical test checked my brains ability to understand what my body is doing and whether it still has the reflexes to react appropriately, especially in dangerous situations. Then during the on road test, the driving instructor checked if I could still physically drive, that I could remember the road rules, that I was mentally ready to react in emergency situations. This is so important to understand if I want to be safe on the roads. I didn’t want to be scared that I’d put my family, other road users, and myself, in situations where we could get hurt. I needed to be prepared by understanding my limitations, and what I needed to pay attention to, if I was going to make good decisions on the road.

Be Prepared and not Scared

So to be prepared and not scared, I offer you the following advice. Undertake training courses to learn about how to do things. Jump in and figure out what you’ll need to do something, before you try it. Make sure you understand the environment you’ll be entering and everything you’ll need to survive it. Have the humility to know when you need to seek advice. Above all, always expect the unexpected and have a plan B ready to go.

Patience is a Virtue

You need patience to be a patient. It’s so well named. Patience is defined as the ability to tolerate discomfort, annoyance, provocation, misfortune or pain, without anger, complaint, or irritation. This is so important when you’re in hospital, because you don’t have much to do, and you have to wait a long time for service and results. When you have a life threatening illness, that can very quickly get frustrating.

There’s a wonderful quote by Jon Kabat-Zinn

‘Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.’

I’m lucky, I’ve always been a patient man. It was genetically passed down to me, such that I’m almost unconsciously patient, I don’t even think about, it just happens. This also makes it hard for me to describe, but I’ll do my best.

My Dad and Pop taught me by example. They had a very quiet and restrained manner; to a point; They also knew when patience wasn’t the right answer and they had to jump into action. They had a famous saying ‘Know when to stand and fight; and when to move on quickly and quietly’.

My Dad also taught me to not get angry at problems, but to sit down and methodically solve them; by examining a variety of common sense approaches, until you found the one that worked. That it didn’t matter how long it took, as long as you got there. He did this using chalk sketches on the workshop floor, which he used in his job as a Boiler Maker Welder with the largest onion exporter in the Southern Hemisphere. He would build onion harvesters and processing equipment in his workshop, without engineers or drawings, or calculations. He just figured it out using chalk sketches on the workshop floor.

Onion harvester by Martin Pettitt under CC2

I also learnt patience early in life when my dad took me fishing. You don’t go trout fishing and reel in fish, after fish, after fish. It’s about understanding that it will take a long time to catch a fish, that there’s a process you follow and if you’re patient, you’ll catch a lot of big trout.

I also give people a certain degree of trust that they are doing their best to solve problems. Medicine is not an exact science, it takes time to figure out a solution and they may not be able to find one. But it’s important to respect that people are trying their hardest to find the best treatment. It’s also often better to slowly find the right solution, rather then rush into the wrong solution. I have faith that they will find a solution.

I also realise that doing things fast is not always the quickest way. A great example here is when my mother and I were up at Cradle Mountain. There’s a shuttle bus service that runs every 20 minutes from the Visitor’s Centre, to the mountain. It was quite busy with a long line. Then when we jumped on the bus, there was standing room only. Many people would say ‘suck it up and stand’ because that would be the quickest way. But we jumped off and waited for the next bus. On the next bus we found a seat. Then as we’re driving to Cradle Mountain, we passed the first bus that only had standing room left. We beat that bus to Cradle Mountain and we had a seat the entire way.

Cradle Mountain by Steven Penton under CC2

My Gift of Acceptance allows me to accept the bad things happening to me, which allows me to be grateful when any type of solution is arrived at. I expect that they will be unable to find a solution, which helps me to be grateful when any type of solution arrives, which enables me to be more patient, because I’m not anxiously waiting for a solution.

I accept and have the humility to know that I’m not always the most important, that there’s probably other patients that need the doctors help more than I do. This allows me to be patient as I wait for assistance or a solution. It also gives me a good feeling that I’m helping other people by waiting longer.

I’ve also worked in process improvement, so I have a deeper understanding of why delays happen, and it’s rarely the fault of the front line workers, but of the bosses sitting in their Ivory Towers, who aren’t providing enough resources, equipment and time. So there’s no point getting impatient with the frontline workers, they’re generally doing the best they can, with what they have.

There are also some strategies you can use to keep your patience, including the following.

There’s a classic saying that a watched pot never boils. The watched pot actually boils in exactly the same time as an unwatched pot. But if you’re watching it, you lose patience because you think it’s taking longer. But if you know how long it takes to boil, then you won’t lose your patience until after that time.

This approach also works with people. If you understand how someone works, that helps with keeping your patience i.e. If someone is notoriously late and you accept that they will be late, you can plan that into your schedule. So rather than get impatient because they aren’t there on time, you know they’ll be at least 15 minutes late. Roadworks traffic lights have cottoned on to this. They now show a timer indicating how long you will need to wait. Knowing how long you have to wait makes it easier and you’re less likely to get impatient.

My cancer journey has also forced me to be more patient. I can no longer eat my food in a hurry. I have to patiently chew each bite, because if I rush, I’ll regurgitate the food. But slowly chewing my food allows me to savour every bite. I can no longer work all day without a break to get something done. I’m much more efficient if I take the brain breaks I need, throughout the day. Waiting for something, now gives me the opportunity for a brain break, which I have to take regularly anyway. I also know that if I get impatient and frustrated, I’ll need to take more brain breaks later on. So now I’ll just to sit back and enjoy the moment. I thank the delay for helping me meditate and clear my brain.

It’s also very worthwhile to remember that when you wait longer for something, it’s so much sweeter when it does arrive.

Laughter is the best medicine

I recently battled cancer where I lost my sense of smell and my sense of taste, but luckily not my sense of humour. Phew 😅 Because laughter really is the best medicine and it helped me survive and thrive. It’s a family tradition that I proudly inherited from my dad. He was always laughing and joking around, just having fun. Whenever we went to the toilet he’d say ‘don’t pee (be) long’ 🤣. He had a very sardonic sense of humour, which I describe as taking information that could be poorly received, but delivering it with humour. For example he carefully explained that cemeteries are always in the dead centre of town, and that they had walls around them, because everyone was dying to get in 😳🤣. Which some may say is bad taste, but it also distracts you from the sadness in a situation and allows you to laugh, which brings you happiness, which is so important in sad situations. Another example is when he would fall asleep in his chair after working long hours. ‘Just resting my eyes’ he’d say.

Here’s the dead centre of town. Yep, there’s a fence around it because everyone is dying to get in by Chad Johnson under CC2

Happiness is so important when you going through tough times, you have to celebrate even the smallest glimpses of happiness. Pretend laughter has the same benefit of real laughter, because the same chemicals are released inside your body. So don’t feel guilty about laughing and smiling in tough times, because it helps you feel happier and more at peace. Then when you laugh, other people start laughing, because it’s contagious. Laugh and the whole world laughs along with you. You then start to feel better, more at ease, ready to face all challenges before you. This is because laughter reverses hormonal changes bought on by cortisol and other stress related chemicals. Laughter activates endorphins, serotonin and dopamine, which are the body’s natural pain killers.

Laugh, and the whole world laughs along 🤣 by Nauravainenanu under CC3

It doesn’t have to be a raucous laugh, just smiling triggers neurotransmitters that help you feel happier. My dad practiced this right up until the end of his life. While he was in hospital with cancer, a nurse came in and asked him how he was. ‘I’m buggered mate’ was his swift reply. This isn’t too funny as such, but you can’t help but smile. He could have frowned and lamented that he was nearing the end, but frowning makes you feel worse and there’s already enough sadness in the situation, so he lightened the mood.

Family folklore is another great source of laughter. My dad used to tell us the tale of how he rode his horse down the hill to school everyday. It became folklore, because he insisted on telling everyone, all the time, over and over and over again. Eventually we started making jokes about this.

When we went past my grandparents old farm he would tell us that he knew where to find buried treasure, because when they’d moved out, they threw all the furniture they didn’t want down the old well and filled the well in.

My grandparents farm house. The old well is out the back

When it’s time to say goodbye to someone because it was getting late, he’d comment ‘sorry, it’s time to go and milk the cows’. He’d say this as a feasible, but funny excuse, rather than have them think he was leaving because he was bored. Because when he lived on a dairy farm in his youth, he had to go and milk the cows in the late afternoon. Everyone knew he no longer had cows, so it was feasible and funny all at the same time.

Time to milk the cows, at Bloomfield’s dairy

When we were driving long distances, we’d ask how long it would take to get where we’re going? ‘It’s just around the corner’, he’d say. Then once we got around the next corner and we asked again ‘it’s just around the next corner’ he’d say.

When someone started coughing while drinking, ‘does that water have bones in it?’ He’d ask.

I practice laughing in several ways. Learning to laugh at yourself is a great start. For instance when you start a new skill, you will be clumsy and a goof. Although after my cancer journey, I was clumsy and a goof relearning old skills 🤣 Laughing about that takes away the feelings of inadequacy and uselessness, which gives you the strength to give it another go, rather than getting angry and frustrated, which often leads to quitting.

A great example of this is when my wife and I picked up a big birthday cake. We sat it on the back seat and started driving home. But driving in a city isn’t smooth. People pull out in front of you. There are roundabouts to go around. Sharps stops to make. With a big cake in the backseat this could be a problem if it suddenly tips over or slides off the seat. So every time we made a sudden move we’d say ‘be careful, there’s a cake in the back! There’s a cake in the back!’ eventually we started laughing about this and now every time we get into a situation where we need to take it carefully and slowly, we say to each other “there’s a cake in the back, there’s a cake in the back” HAHA. We could have gotten angry at each other and all the cars around is, which probably would have resulted in the cake tipping over, instead we made a joke out of it, which helped us get through.

When you’re driving along, laugh at what other people are doing. How many times have you driven past a ‘Roadworks ahead’ sign and then there’s no roadworks ahead. Or when there’s a road sign indicating the speed limit is 100km/h just before a steep and windy mountain road, where you know you’ll be lucky to get over 60km/h ‘is that a dare!’.

While I was in hospital I looked for the funny side of things i.e. because I’d lost the toes off my right foot, I no longer have to trim my toenails. When the nurses would come into my room and treat me poorly, I’d just roll my eyes, have a little chuckle and call them idiots.

Returning to work after my cancer journey was tough, especially because of my acquired brain injury, which causes short term memory issues. But laughing at all my silly blunders helped so much. Whenever someone asks me how they can help, ‘laugh along with me’ is my swift reply. I have so many funny stories I could tell you about my short term memory issues, but I can’t remember half of them 🤣 But the ones I can remember are pretty good.

One day I headed into work as per usual, I walked into the foyer and … hang on a minute, is this the right building? Nope! I’d walked into the building next door to our building, and I felt like a fool, but I still laughed about it 🤣

This is the building I should have walked in. I walked into the building on the left instead, or maybe it was on the right, I can’t remember 🤣

Another day, I walked into the correct building, jumped in the lift and had to think about which floor my office was on! 🤣. On the same day, I’ve opened up my lunch to find a nice bread roll with a cheese slice, but I’d forgotten the salad! 🤣 It’s so important to laugh about these things.

Another day I had this great idea to conduct a deep dive analysis on an emerging competitor, because they turned up in nearly all the markets that I had been analysing. I eagerly went into the boss’ office to let him know that I was still on the ball and had a great idea. ‘You did that a couple of weeks ago’ he says. Doh. Sure enough, I went back to my computer and there it was. It would be easy to get angry at myself for this and feel embarrassed. But I had a little chuckle with the boss, chatted with him about how I could prevent such a memory relapse in the future, and got on with work. Laughing allowed me to relax and develop strategies so it wouldn’t happen again.

Then when I started a new job, on my first day of work, I turned up at the front door and there’s a guy on the phone. I figure he’s an employee and could show me the way to the boss’ office, so I wait. He gets off the phone, leads me into a meeting room and sits down. It’s my boss Andrew! Luckily he laughs along with me.

Words have multiple meanings and it’s funny to use them the wrong way. For example, ‘The storm wasn’t very good tonight, there weren’t many claps of thunder’. ‘we’ll have to perform better tomorrow then, so we get more claps’ 🤣. On my mother and I’s daily walk there’s a Poo factory and it’s quite a walk to get there, so when we do I say ‘we’re doing pretty well, we’ve got our shit together’. Whenever someone tells me they’ve been to Binalong Bay in Tasmania. I always ask them ‘Did you find a bin-along the bay?’ 🤣

Nope. I can’t see a bin along the bay at Binalong Bay by Eli Duke under CC2

So please try and find the funny side, especially during tough situations, because it will help you get through them. Laughter really is the best medicine. Explore family folklore. Laugh at yourself and all the silly things you do. Laugh and the whole world will laugh along with you, which means you’ll also help other people feel better and help them to also get through tough times.

Resilience

Resilience to me is about being able to get through hardship, frustration and fears, without becoming entwined with them. This then allows you to focus on resuming a happy life. I learnt resilience early in my life in a whole range of different scenarios. Going fishing up the lakes as a young boy was gruelling. The temperatures were often below zero, the ground was rough, with unsteady rocks. My father would typically say “suck it up boys” so we did and we had so much fun catching trout. I also learnt to appreciate going out in tough conditions, to see the beauty of nature in all its forms. Our father prepared us for this challenge by ensuring we had adequate clothing and equipment. He then taught us how to negotiate the treacherous terrain safely and how to catch fish successfully!

Working as a paperboy down in Tasmania taught me most about resilience. I’d get up at 5am in the dark of the morning, rain, hail and snow, to deliver newspapers. My parents taught me to prepare for these conditions. To make sure my bike was well maintained and didn’t break down. That I had adequate clothing to protect against the cold and the rain. It still wasn’t easy, but I sucked it up and it gave me valuable experience.

I learnt to sail in Bass Strait, one of the roughest waterways in the world, because of the Roaring Forties winds that blow in and create huge waves. Sailing a dinghy is tough enough, try doing in a six metre swell, with rogue waves that appear out of nowhere. This taught me to expect the unexpected and ensure that I had strategies in place to deal with it. I also couldn’t swim, but I faced my fear because of how much fun it was. I prepared myself by wearing a life vest, ensuring that a safety boat was nearby and we capsized on purpose one day just so I knew what to do, when it did happen unexpectedly in Bass Strait. This taught me at a young age to not be scared, but be prepared for all challenging conditions.

Independence is another key skill for resilience, because it gives you faith that you can deal with situations as they arise. My parents taught me to grow vegetables, catch fish, shoot rabbits, light a fire, camp and walk long distances. In the event of being stranded in the wild, I would have been ok. But they also taught me to have faith in myself and my abilities to handle tough times. This was consolidated when I was a paperboy. I had to get myself up early, maintain my bike, and remember which house got which paper. If you have faith in your ability to handle tough situations, that makes it easier to deal with new challenges.

My resilience shone through on my first night working in Hospitality when I was high school age. They were expecting a slow night, so I was the only waiter in a Pubs restaurant and I also had to wash the dishes, because the chefs were there to cook! There were about 40 tables and every seat was taken as soon as we opened. It was the busiest night they’d ever had. But I didn’t panic, I slowly and surely conquered that tough night. I’d also prepared myself by undertaking a training course and my sister had worked in Hospitality for a couple of years and she had given me the ropes. My resilience also enabled me to continue working there, rather than getting angry at the boss and quitting, and I then had many enjoyable nights working there.

Problem solving is my key skill for resilience. My dad taught me problem solving with chalk sketches on the workshop floor, which helped me be more resilient, because it gave me confidence that I could handle situations as they arose. He taught me not to get angry about a problem, but to sit down and slowly figure out a solution.

Having a good network is another key asset in building resilience, because they support you and help you find solutions to the issues you’re facing. A great example is early in my career when the government shut down the Centre for Precision Technology. I searched desperately for a job in Tasmania, but couldn’t find a single one to apply for. But one of my mates from the Centre, Patrick Wright, introduced me to a great University degree up in Queensland and then supported me when I moved up there. Completing that degree led me to work for several of the worlds biggest companies. Pat’s friendship helped me rebound easily from a tough time.

Knowing when to ask for help is another key skill for resilience. I’ve thrown myself in the deep end a couple of times during my career. Once, when a customer started getting angry that we weren’t implementing Reliability Engineering in a $500M program. We didn’t have a Reliability Engineer at the time, or previously, I’d never even heard of Reliability Engineering before. But I asked around and it was fascinating. So I threw myself in the deep end and learnt all about it. But I had the humility to know that I needed help, so we found a consultant that could help me understand Reliability Engineering. He was so amazing as he guided me through and it made it so much easier.

My resilience then came shining through as a key skill that I have used to conquer cancer, where I used my problem solving skills to adapt myself to the changes that were happening to my body, due to side effects of the cancer treatment. Quite often when the Occupational Therapist would recommend a strategy for dealing with the changes, I’d already be doing it. For example, with my short term memory issues, I made sure that when I knew someone was visiting, that I’d put it in my calendar so I didn’t schedule two people at the same time. I was already doing that when my Occupational Therapist recommended it.

Writing my autobiography helped my resilience during my cancer journey. Because I’d reflected on how I conquered the tough times in the past, it gave me faith that I’ll conquer the upcoming tough times. Writing about my cancer journey also helped my resilience, by helping me to better understand what I had been going through, which helped me deal with it and made it easier for me to rebound.

My gift of acceptance helped me to be resilient during my journey, because it helped me to not get angry at all the side effects of the cancer treatment. I accepted they occurred while the doctors were saving my life, which allowed me to quickly work with the medical staff to develop strategies to live with them, while still living a happy life.

The hospital staff at the University of Canberra Rehabilitation hospital were excellent in helping me prepare to return for regular life. They helped me identify the problems that I’d be facing when I returned to regular life, due to the side effects from the cancer treatment and then develop strategies to deal with all the side effects. This gave me faith that I could successfully return to life.

Preparing to return to work at the University of Canberra Rehabilitation Hospital

My wonderful Counsellor Deb, helping me prepare to return to life

Having a good network around me was probably the most important factor that helped me to be resilient. There was always someone around to help me remember things, to work through my strategies with me and ensure I was getting the treatment I needed to survive. Family members, friends, and hospital staff, all helped me to remain positive that I’d conquer cancer.

My wonderful In-Laws who supported me beautifully throughout my journey

Then when I returned to work, having a good network helped immensely, because several colleagues had offered their support and advice as I was going through diagnosis, as they themselves had experienced similar things. I of course with my poor memory had forgotten this, but my boss kindly reminded me, and it gave me such a good feeling that they had cared enough about me, to help me. That support is so important, knowing they are there to offer advice and support was so reassuring as I returned and it made it so much easier to return.

I also didn’t think too far ahead of the unknowns. I preferred to take each day as it came, prepared to face each new challenge as it arose and develop strategies to combat those challenges, using chalk sketches on the floor. This helped me be resilient, because I then didn’t get too worried about all the unknowns happening to me. I had faith that I’d handle any problem that arose.

Another strategy I discovered during my cancer journey was self-compassion. I’d never practiced it before my journey, but was a key skill I used during my journey. When I found myself getting frustrated that I couldn’t do all the things I’d previously done, I’d remind myself what I’d been through and that it was normal for me to be unable to do them. With my acquired brain injury I had to practice self-compassion to keep my brain functioning and to also not get frustrated. So I’d take regular walks, and practice mindfulness. This enabled me to be more productive, which led to happiness and also allowed me to be calmer and less frustrated. My Neurologist gave me some excellent advice. He recommended for me to think about someone else going through a similar situation, what advice would I give to them? Then I should give myself the same advice.

I was mindful to take coffee on my walks ☕️🤩

I also use humility as a strategy for being more resilient. I had the humility to acknowledge that I am disabled, which led me to seeking further help via the National Disability Insurance Scheme. That assistance gave me the drive to seek further treatment, to help my acquired brain injury, from The Brain Training Centre. I never would have approached The Brain Training Centre, had I not applied for NDIS. They are now helping me rebound from my acquired brain injury.

When my boss asked me to resign from a job I loved, after I returned to work, I had the humility to accept that I couldn’t work full time or do the wide thinking needed to develop business strategies. This helped me accept the situation and move on quickly and quietly, which led me to rebound and find a job more suited to my current condition.

So if you would like to be more resilient, make sure you prepare for tough times and trust you problem solving abilities. They are the key strategies I use for resilience, to be able to work my way through tough situations, to able to get back up after a fall. In every example I’ve described, I would adequately prepare myself before tackling tough situations. Also surround yourself with supportive people and then make sure you support them, when they are going through tough times. All of this will give you faith and confidence to deal with tough times.

Gift of Acceptance

While I was battling cancer, my wonderful Counsellor Deborah Perry gave me me the most amazing insight. I asked her what she thought was the key skill that I was using to conquer cancer. She didn’t even hesitate, “your Gift of Acceptance”. It’s also called Radical Acceptance, but I much prefer Deb’s term of gift, because it is a gift and I was so lucky my partners gave me this gift. I immediately accepted this amazing insight. I recognised that I had it, but I couldn’t for the life of me explain how I used it. So I started exploring and I found a whole variety of tools that I used.

My Gift of Acceptance allows me to look at situation objectively, without judgement, question, blame or pushback. I acknowledge the reality, that it may be a sad situation, but I prevent the pain from becoming suffering. I don’t necessarily approve of the situation, but I accept that it’s there with my whole self, mind, body, and spirit.

Understanding what I can and can’t change is the first tool that I use to do this. You should always examine if you can change something, but it’s important to acknowledge when you can’t change something. As my dad would say “know when to stand and fight and when to move on quickly and quietly”.

My dad was a boilermaker welder with the largest onion exporter in the Southern Hemisphere, an amazing little company down in Tasmania called Vecon. He would make onion harvesting and processing equipment in his workshop without drawings, engineers and calculations. He figured it out using chalk sketches on the workshop floor. He taught me not to get mad at a problem, to accept that it was there and figure out a solution, even if it’s with chalk sketches on the floor.

This problem solving capability gave me faith that I could deal with issues as they arise. If you have confidence that you can develop strategies to minimise the impact the issues are having on you living a happy life, that will make it easier to accept issues as they arise.

Respecting other people and their needs is another key tool. If you’re in a relationship of any type i.e. romantic, business, or hobby, then you need to understand what you bring to the relationship. You then need to have the humility to acknowledge when you can no longer provide it and then accept the need to walk away. I have several examples of this.

When I was working as a paperboy in my youth, the owner had a policy that you could only work up to a certain age. I respected that once we reached that age, the owner would need to pay us more, which would result in it being too expensive to deliver newspapers. So I moved on quickly and quietly.

Early in my career I worked at a Tasmanian Government training centre, run as a business, called The Centre for Precision Technology. It was a five year program where we worked on the factory floor gaining a trade certificate in Precision Manufacture, while studying at University. It was shut down in my third year by the Tasmanian Government, but I respected that the government was funding the Centre to benefit the Tasmanian Manufacturing Industry and that most graduates of The Centre escaped to the mainland, which I also did. The graduates weren’t delivering the outcome the government needed. This helped me accept that it occurred and I quickly sketched out a plan to continue my studies in Queensland, which led me to work for several of the world’s biggest companies. I turned a setback into a success.

Another tool I use, is to accept people for exactly who they are. I learnt this early in my life from my parents. They carefully explained that everyone is entitled to different opinions and experiences. This helped me embrace different opinions and experience, which led me to understand that they are conducive to developing better solutions in business and life. I now recognise that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. That you need to learn from their strengths and help them in their weaknesses. This will develop better relationships in business and life. Knowing the benefits of different opinions and experience, helps me accept people for who they are.

It’s also good to keep in mind, that good times and bad times are a fact of life. But know that the bad times will pass and the good times will come, because this will help you accept that the bad times are happening, which will allow you to focus on developing strategies to continue living a happy life. You need to endure the bad times, to be able to savour the good times.

During my cancer journey, the treatment for the disease caused me to lose so many things, including, the toes off my right foot, my balance, my sense of smell, my sense of taste, being able to eat meat and seafood, and the wide thinking skills needed to develop business strategies. It made me consider that the treatment is worse than the disease. But I respected that medicine is not an exact science. I was grateful that the treatment saved my life, this helped me accept the side effects were there and allowed me to work with the doctors to explore if I could fix something, or minimise their impact on me living a happy life, rather than getting angry at the doctors for causing the side effects, which would have made it harder to fix.

When I lost the ability to eat meat and seafood, I moved on quickly and quietly, because I was grateful that I was forced to be a vegetarian, because it is better for me. I also lost my sense of taste and that made it easier. There are some drugs around, that can help me regain my sense of taste, but to be honest, not being able to taste is the least of my problems. So I moved on quickly and quietly. Not being able to taste also helps me to make better choices of what to eat. I find myself choosing to eat a carrot rather than chocolate. Being able to turn these setbacks into successes, helped me accept these changes. It makes more sense, to have no sense.

The acquired brain injury I suffered, means that I’m highly sensitive to noise. I therefore often need to remove myself from noisy situations. However there are occasions where enduring the pain is worth it i.e. if it’s an important occasion, or friends are visiting. In those situations I need to decide if enduring the pain will be worth the reward of the experience. During my journey I was often unable to partake in many important occasions, so it’s often worth the pain, you need to accept that it’s there, to enjoy the occasions.

The acquired brain injury is easily the worst side effect from the treatment. I’m not willing to accept that I can’t do the wide thinking needed to develop business strategies. I’m not willing to accept that I can’t work in an office, or go to a bar/restaurant. It’s here that I need to stand and fight. But I’m not getting angry about it being there. I’m not suing the hospital for causing it. I respect that it occurred while they saved my life. I’m focused on fixing it, which is why I’m going to the Brain Training Centre who have treatments to help me learn new neural pathways around the damaged parts of my brain.

https://www.braintrainingcentre.com.au

When choosing to stand and fight, it’s important to understand if it will be worth the fight. The nerve damage on the bottom of my feet is a good example. Nerve damage is notoriously difficult to treat, it could be an issue for the rest of my life. A solution we discussed was amputation, but that would of required finding and becoming accustomed to artificial feet. I could have fought for that, but I decided to move on quickly and quietly. I decided to see if I could walk through the pain and I’m happy to say that I can. Although I am doing it quietly, but not quickly. But I am walking more now than I did before. I now head out every day and I’m really enjoying getting outside in nature. I’ll continue to do it even when I’m fully recovered and I’m grateful my cancer journey has forced me to do this.

If you are not passionate about something, it’s easier to walk away from it. Therefore it can be construed that if you easily accept moving on from something, that you were never really passionate about it to begin with, when you actually were. I can move away from something I’m passionate about, because I’m not angry that a great experience is over, I’m grateful that it occurred and I will always cherish the memories of those amazing times. I also respect that you don’t always end up where you want to be. But you do always end up where you need to be and this one branches into spirituality. I have faith that there is someone up above helping me. It could be my God, it could be my Dad. I have faith that they will arrange opportunities to help me continue living a happy life. But I also need to be ready seize those opportunities when they arise. Remaining calm and composed allows me to see and jump into opportunities.

My departure from Lockheed Martin is a great example. I could not have picked a better person to help me return to work than my boss Rod Drury. He knew me so well, and supported me brilliantly. However my acquired brain injury prevented me from working full time, or doing the wide thinking needed to develop business strategies in the space industry. I believed that I could fix this, but not in the time frame that my boss required. He needed more help than I could provide. The world had to put him in a position where he had to ask me to resign. So it sent me to an Independent Health Assessment. The world also had to put me in a position where I’d walk away. I accepted the need to do this, because I had the humility to accept I could no longer deliver what my boss needed. I respected his request because I was very grateful for everything he had done for me, even before my cancer journey. I never would have left otherwise, I’d have kept plugging along in a job that I was no longer suited to, which would have frustrated everyone. But because I moved on quickly and quietly, the world led me to a company that have me working in a job perfectly suited to my current cognitive capacity, with outstanding flexible working practices, that are helping me deal with my acquired brain injury so well. Once again I’ve turned a setback into a success.

So if you would like to be better at accepting in life, my best advice for you is to work hard at turning setbacks into successes, because it gives you confidence that you can develop strategies to minimise the effect that issues are having on you leading a happy life. Respect people and have the humility to accept when you can no longer provide what is required in a relationship. Be grateful for the good things that emerge from your troubles. Endure the bad times, to be able to savour the good times. Most importantly, know when to stand and fight, and when to move on quickly and quietly.

Gratitude

I lost so much when I recently battled a complicated case of cancer. I lost the toes off my right foot, my short and long term memories, my ability to eat meat and seafood, my sense of smell, my sense of taste and my sense of place. Most of these losses were side effects from the cancer treatment. But I was grateful that the treatment saved my life. I acknowledged that this was sad, but I focused on being grateful for the good things, that came out of the bad things. Being grateful helped me deal with all the bad things happening to me. It’s absolutely a key skill I used to thrive.

I was very grateful to people bringing me coffee 😍
my sister bought me this one 🤩

Gratitude is focusing on what is good in life. Appreciating what we have got. To savour and absorb things. Gratitude releases dopamine and serotonin which are two neurotransmitters that help us feel good.

I spent 12 months in hospital. During that time I was grateful for the doctors and nurses helping me to survive and thrive. They couldn’t always give me a solid diagnosis and treatment, but they followed a robust process and we got there slowly but surely. When they chopped my toes off, I was grateful that I no longer have to trim my toenails. I was very grateful that I retained my independence and could shower and go to the toilet by myself without needing assistance. I was also grateful that in hospital I was free from some of life’s burdens, no work, no housework, no deadlines, no running around. I was very grateful to the people taking care of those burdens for me.

I feel very grateful to this wonderful family who took care of many of my burdens

I lost my long term memories, so I set out on a mighty quest to find them and wrote my autobiography. It was so rewarding. I reconnected with people, places and ideas from my past. This is fantastic in so many ways. Most people understood my memory wasn’t great and that I didn’t necessarily remember them or what we did together. Reconnecting with them, and having memories suddenly leap back into consciousness was a fantastic experience. Plus its also allowed me to better understand how my friends have built their careers and lives.

I’d also never sat back and reflected on what an amazing life I’d led. I never would have written my autobiography if I hadn’t lost my memories. I’m grateful that my cancer journey forced me to do that. I’ve since continued my writing adventures and it’s given me a new source of happiness which I’m very grateful for.

I also wrote about how I survived and thrived through my cancer journey, including all the people who helped me during my journey. That helped me reflect, identify and appreciate the good things that had come out of my journey.

I lost the toes off my right foot, causing balance issues and it also damaged all the nerve endings on both feet. This makes it very difficult to walk. But my wife encouraged me to get out and walk every day, because we know that’s how I’ll get better. I now go for a walk every single day and I really enjoy them, because I now savour and absorb everything around me. I can feel the beauty of nature and I’m grateful for it being there. It clears my head and gives me great ideas every single walk. I’m grateful that my cancer journey has forced me to do this and I can now see the benefit of doing it, even after I fully recover.

I lost 20 cm of my bowel which causes me to regurgitate meat and seafood. But I also lost my sense of smell and taste, so I didn’t crave the foods I could no longer eat. Strangely I’m grateful for losing my sense of smell and taste, because it helped me deal with not being able to eat the foods I used to love. I’m also grateful because I’m now on a vegetarian diet and that’s healthier. I also have to chew my foods more thoroughly, so they are easier to digest, but that also releases more vitamins and is therefore healthier as well. So I’m grateful they removed part of my bowel because it’s making me healthier.

When I returned to work as Business Strategist for Lockheed Martin in the Space Industry, the cognitive impairment I suffered during my cancer journey meant that I was unable to work full time or do the wide thinking needed to develop business strategies in the space industry. So my boss asked me to resign. Ironically enough he was the same boss I’d worked for at Boeing, who offered me a redundancy less than a year after asking me to move to Canberra. But I didn’t get angry at him for asking me to resign because I was very grateful for everything he had done for me. He warmly welcomed me to Canberra, he looked after me so well while I was in hospital, he was very clear that he wanted me back, he then did everything he could to get me back up to speed. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to transition me back into the workforce, because he knew me so well and supported me brilliantly.

Rod’s support really has taken me to great heights

Writing about all of these things also allowed me to reflect, identify and appreciate all the people that had helped me during my life. When I reread these stories it gives me such a good feeling and I’m very grateful for everything they did for me.

So my best advice for you is to search for the positive things that arise out of the bad things happening to you. To show gratitude. This will help you deal with the situation so much better.

Happiness

Happiness is derived from the Norse word Happ, meaning luck or chance. I got unlucky when in 2018 I was diagnosed with a T Cell Lymphoma cancer, I underwent seven rounds of chemotherapy and a STEM cell transplant. I then spent twelve months in hospital. I lost so much during my cancer journey. I lost the toes off my right foot, which meant I also lost my balance, because toes help balance. This also caused severe nerve damage on the soles of both of my feet. I lost 20cm of my bowel which resulted in me losing the ability to eat meat or seafood. I lost my short and long term memories due to an acquired brain injury, after bacteria from a wound infiltrated my brain. The acquired brain injury also resulted in me losing the job I love, because when I returned to work, it prevented me from working full time and being able to do the wide thinking needed to develop strategies in the space industry. I also lost my sense of smell, my sense of taste, my sense of place. But I also got lucky because I pursued happiness, I found happiness and happiness helped me survive and thrive.

It’s difficult to be happy whilst going through any illness, and to be honest, you do have every right to be unhappy and it’s important to recognise that sadness, but not get caught up in it, because that helps you deal with it. Doing this helped me find happiness. My cancer journey has also fundamentally changed what happiness means to me. Happiness is defined as fulfilling desires and my cancer journey has changed my desires. I also think that because I’ve gone through such a tough time, it’s conditioned me to handle tough times easier, so it’s much easier for me to be happy now.

The English Dictionary’s definition of happy is, feeling or showing pleasure or contentment. Before my cancer journey I never saw contentment as happiness. I related happiness to rewards and big events. But my cancer journey was tough, there were good days and bad days. But there’s also days in between, where you still feel a little off, so it’s not a good day, but it’s better than the bad days. On these days when people asked me how I was feeling, I generally responded with “ok”, which is normally responded to with “just ok???”. But because the bad days can be so bad “I’ll take ok!” is my swift response, and during my journey, I’ll take ok any day of the week. I can still do things when I’m only ok and on the bad days I can barely do anything, and doing stuff makes me happy. It’s just so nice just to sit back, without the pain, without the depression, without the fear of it not getting better, that’s contentment and that now makes me happy.

During my hospitalisation I found that the tiny glimpses, or moments of happiness that I found were so important to celebrate. They hit me in an instant and transformed my mind and body to a happy place. I have no idea where they come from or why, but I am so glad they did come. Happiness at the hospital is:

• When there’s Chocolate Chip Biscuits in the jar.

• That instant an old memory is sparked.

• The nurse is so experienced you don’t even feel the needle go in.

• When a doctor has a plan.

• When you find out the things you have been already been doing, are exactly what the Occupational Therapists think will help you recover.

• When a doctors symptom prescription works immediately and effectively.

• When custard arrives on the hospital dinner tray.

• That notification flash when someone sends you a message on social media.

I also found happiness, in unhappy situations, by accepting things that were outside my control, and focusing on the good things that came out of the bad things happening to me i.e. now my toes are cut off, I don’t have to trim my toenails! To combat my short term memory loss I’m taking more notes, making sure my calendar is up to date and setting reminders, which are delightful habits to have. I’m now a vegetarian and I have to chew thoroughly to help my digestion. A vegetarian diet is much healthier and chewing thoroughly releases more vitamins from the food, which is also much healthier. I certainly wasn’t happy about all the bad things that had happened to me, but I accepted that they had happened, which led to contentment, which helped lead me to happiness.

Laughing at the bad things that happened to me also helped, especially my broken memory. I have so many funny stories about my broken memory, I’d tell them all to you, but I can’t remember them 🤣

When I returned home I found that my cancer journey had taken away many of my sources of happiness i.e. because the toes were cut off my right foot and I suffered nerve damage on the soles of both feet, I can no longer play field hockey, ride a motorcycle, or bush walk. I used to be an avid reader but the cognitive impairment I suffered means I can no longer follow a storyline. You just want to enjoy life again. You have to find new sources of happiness.

It used to make me so happy to find and taste the best coffee in town. I would search for it endlessly and I wasn’t happy until I found it. Now I’ve lost my sense of taste, the coffee out of the pod machine tastes just as good as the best coffee in town, so now every single cup makes me happy and I don’t have to endlessly traipse around town searching for the best coffee. It’s also so easy to find that happiness. Warm up the machine, grind the beans, pour the shot, froth the milk, happiness in a cup 😃 But I still won’t do instant coffee. A man has standards!

The most rewarding new source of happiness that I’ve found is writing. My cancer journey has reawakened a love of writing from my youth. It’s just so rewarding for so many different reasons. It started in the University of Canberra Rehabilitation Hospital as I was preparing to rejoin life, a couple of people suggested I should write about my experience. I didn’t have much else to do, so I thought, why not, and I started exploring my journey. However my brain was still quite frazzled from the cognitive impairment, which meant I couldn’t remember half of my journey. So I spent quite a bit of time talking with my wife about what I should write and we had the most amazing conversations about what we had gone through, and how we had conquered it, which I then wrote down. Writing this down helped me structure and articulate my thoughts, which led to a better understanding of my emotions, which allowed me to practice mindfulness, which led to contentment, which then helped me to develop strategies to deal with the horrible things, so I could continue living a happy life.

I then started preparing for returning to work. People were warning me that I’d be a changed man, and I believed them. But because of my memory issues, I couldn’t remember who I used to be. All of my memories were still there, they were just lost and needed to be found. So I set off on a mighty quest to find them, to figure out who I used to be, so I could figure out who I was now. I did this by reconnecting with people that I used to work with and I got such great joy from doing this. It led me to understand just how amazing peoples careers had been since I’d known them, which also gave me hope that I too could happily continue down a great career journey.

But as I recalled everything I’d done, it dawned on me what an amazing career I’d already had. I’d never sat back and examined it. It had just never occurred to me, I was too busy charging through life. But sitting back and reflecting on my life was so rewarding and it made me so happy.

So I changed focus onto how I’d created my amazing career. But before I could explain how I’d created my career, I had to figure it how I’d done it. Luckily I had lots of spare time to do some deep thinking about this and I could trace how I did it, back to key lessons I’d learned from my childhood. So I started exploring that more and wrote my childhood story.

As I wrote my childhood story I gained a much deeper appreciation of everything that had influenced me in one way or another. So I explored each of these things in more detail. Which led me to the most amazing realisation, that my autobiography was a celebration of everything important in my life. It also made it very long, as I then wrote it very selfishly to explore everything important in my life. Being able to trace those key lessons from when I was toddler, was an amazing experience. I hadn’t realised just how influential people and places had been in my life.

You also really don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Finding my lost memories was so rewarding and bought me so much happiness and they’re still making me happy, even now I’ve found them. Just going back to the locations where they occurred, is so moving and so rewarding. Previously when I’d gone back to Tasmania, I’d walk through those locations without giving them another thought. Now I take a step back and bask in those memories which makes me happy.

I also lost my job, because the cognitive impairment I suffered during my journey, meant that I couldn’t work full time or do the wide thinking needed to develop strategies in the space industry. Having written my autobiography helped me out enormously here. I had examined everything that had made me happy within my career in the past, which led me to understand what would make me happy now. So I was able to reach back into my experience to find a job that made me happy, that didn’t need the wide thinking skills I currently lacked. I then found a new job perfectly suited to my current cognitive capacity and whilst I’d previously enjoyed going to work, it now makes me really happy to go into work, I can’t wait for Monday morning!

Another great source of happiness, came from everyone around me. My family, my friends, my connections, my doctors and nurses. So many people helped and supported me. They visited me in hospital, bringing me coffee and company. They helped me think through strategies to deal with my limitations, they reminded me to slow down, they ran me around appointments, they helped me deal with the frustrations. All of this left me happier.

Social Media was a key enabler of receiving happiness from friends and family. I used Facebook to keep people updated on my journey and the comments of support on those posts from friends and family were amazing. I would go back over these comments when I was feeling glum and they never failed to generate happiness.

I also used Facebook and LinkedIn to track down and reconnect with old friends and colleagues. I have no idea how I would have found them without social media as they’ve all moved cities and states since I knew them. Reconnecting with them gave me great joy as I learnt about how they’d created their lives and careers since I’d known them.

LinkedIn is a very different social networking experience to Facebook. Unlike Facebook, where users will only befriend you if you know them well, I have so many connections on LinkedIn that I’ve never met before. I have connected with many LinkedIn folk because they work in the same industry, or have similar capabilities, or I enjoy their commentary, or I love the way they have created their career. I have also used LinkedIn to update my network on my progress. But typically LinkedIn is better used as a platform to promote your opinions and help educate folk on issues they may not know about, but you do. I have found that by following smart people you learn so much. I started private messaging many of these folk and I’m genuinely surprised and appreciative when they reply. It bought me happiness to connect with these smart people, and it bought me knowledge and insights as I conversed with them. I now make sure I comment and like posts, because I know how much happiness it brings to people. I’ve also met local people via LinkedIn and we now share coffee adventures together, which makes me very happy 😃

Mindfulness is another amazing source of happiness. My cancer journey has forced me to be more mindful and it’s just so delightful. I’ve slowed down. I’m a slow walker, a slow eater and a slow thinker. But slowing down allows me to understand and see the beauty of the world, which makes me so happy. Writing my autobiography allowed to look back and marvel at my life and career. Walking slowly allows me to see birds feeding their young, the blossoms on the tree, the rabbits hiding in the bushes. I see Builders proudly building a house for someone else to live out their lives. I see fathers teaching their sons and daughters. I see the beauty of the world, which leaves me peaceful and content, which helps me to be happy 😊

It was also so important to recognise my happiness when I was achieving my goals, even when they are difficult. Helping out around the house, doing washing, cooking dinner, vacuuming, taking the dog for a walk, etc isn’t easy whilst you’re suffering physical issues. Going to rehab to prepare for return to work is difficult mentally. But when I was doing these activities I stopped and recognised how important they were in my recovery. I’d get a little thrill when I did this, and it made it so much easier to do them. It made me happy.

During my cancer journey I pursued happiness and I caught happiness and I couldn’t be happier about that, because it helped me survive and thrive. I did this by shifting my mindset, by recognising the smallest glimpses of happiness, which made it easier for me to be happy, which led to greater happiness. I’m alive today because of this. So my best advice to everyone is to explore what makes you happy, especially the small glimpses of happiness, because most people understand their big sources of happiness, but trust me, when you start celebrating the small glimpses of happiness that will make you happier 😃 which will help you deal more easily with all of the difficult things happening to you.

Coping with an acquired brain injury

In 2018 I was diagnosed with a T Cell Lymphoma cancer, I underwent seven rounds of chemotherapy and a STEM cell transplant. I then spent twelve months in hospital and lost the toes off my right foot, 20cm of my bowel, my ability to eat meat and seafood, my sense of smell, my sense of taste, my sense of place. Whilst all of these side effects from the cancer treatment were difficult to deal with, the worst side effect was an acquired brain injury, which is preventing me from being the father I want to be, the husband I need to be, and from being the Strategy Development Manager I really loved being.

The acquired brain injury occurred when bacteria from an infection in a wound, infiltrated my brain, causing Encephalitis, which resulted in severe brain damage, and a cognitive impairment. The damage was primarily to the memory functions of my brain, causing both long and short term memory issues. I’m now constantly forgetting things, and I find it difficult to recognise people. It also causes disorientation, best illustrated when I was released from hospital and didn’t know how to get home, which was quite disturbing.

The damaged part of the brain cannot repair itself. The brain has to learn new neural pathways around the damage. A great analogy to use is a road system. Imagine all the neural pathways in your brain as road network. The brain damage I suffered is like roadworks, or an event that prevents cars from getting through like a flood, or a landslip. You have to figure out a different way to get to where you are going. It will most likely be longer, slower and there’s a good chance you’ll get lost. But every now and then you find a shortcut, which is so cool.

I lost huge chunks of my memory. I don’t remember contracting cancer; the diagnosis; seven rounds of chemotherapy; the STEM cell transplant; my first admission in hospital where they cut off my toes and removed my intestine; I don’t remember being released; any time I spent at home; going to Accident and Emergency a dozen times because all the side effects from the cancer treatment were acting up. My first memory of my entire cancer journey is walking into the hospital for my second admission, looking down and asking the nurse and my wife what happened to my toes! At one stage I didn’t recognise my wife and son. I couldn’t remember our wedding, the honeymoon, or the birth of our son. What kind of husband and father was I!

I dealt with my long term memory loss by setting off on a mighty quest to find my memories and I wrote my autobiography https://chalksketchesonthefloor.wordpress.com/ and it was so rewarding. I reconnected with my life. I closely examined everything that was important to me i.e. people, places, ideas, capabilities. I reconnected with people from my past. I sat back and admired how I’d created my life and career. It gave me confidence that I could conquer this tough time, because it reminded me of all the other tough times that I had conquered. More importantly it gave me hope that I’d continue my amazing life after I had conquered cancer.

Writing my autobiography also reminded me of all the amazing skills my parents had taught me, which gave me the strong desire to teach them to my son, so he could carry on these great family traditions.

Word and number app games are interesting. There’s a lot of evidence which suggests that they are good therapy for healing brains. The word games helped me remember words and also problem solving as you figured out which words you could construct from letters. Sudoku is another game that’s helping me practice ‘joining the dots’ in strategy development. With sudoku you do a bunch of data collection by making notes of which numbers can go in which box. You then analyse that data and eliminate possibilities and then suddenly the answers start to appear and then BANG the answer is right in front of you. It’s exactly the same in strategy development. Gather the data, do the analysis and BANG, the strategy appears right before your eyes. I also used these games to give me confidence. They say things like, well done, amazing, unbelievable and who doesn’t like praise?! Being able to solve the puzzles quickly and easily, also gave me confidence that my brain was still working. So I’d find that playing these games when I felt like an unproductive member of society, left me feeling more confident that I’d successfully rejoin the world.

I also undertook Return to Work therapy with the Rehabilitation Team at the University of Canberra Hospital. Which helped me to understand and develop strategies for the primary issues I’d face when I returned to work, which we determined would be my memory issues and mental fatigue.

For my short term memories issues, I should make notes, set reminders, and keep my calendar up to date. These skills will continue to help me, even after my short term memories recover.

To manage my mental fatigue, I should take regular breaks i.e. every hour I should get up from my desk to get a glass of water, go to the toilet, or just a short walk to clear my head. Also when my boss asked me to do something, I should get him to both write it down and tell me verbally, as this uses different neural pathways, which makes it easier to remember.

To deal with my disorientation, as I was being driven around, I’d purposefully practice trying to remember how to get places and It took me six months to finally remember how to get home. But it made me so happy when I finally could!

After my discharge from hospital and readjusting to life at home, I was comfortable that the strategies I’d put in place to deal with my acquired brain injury would work well, and I made the decision to return to work, to the job I left before my cancer journey as a Strategy and Business Development Manager with Lockheed Martin Space Systems, with an amazing boss who supported me brilliantly during my journey and was very clear that he wanted me back. But we also acknowledged the need for flexibility as I returned to work, especially with my cognitive impairment. Before my cancer journey I had never needed, or even considered flexible working options. But suddenly flexible working practices weren’t just a nice to have, they were essential for me to get back up to speed as I returned to work. Although even if I hadn’t suffered my cognitive impairment, flexible working conditions would have helped me, because returning to work after a long absence can be difficult for everyone.

The Rehabilitation team at The Canberra Hospital had been fantastic whilst I was admitted there. They got me back in front of a computer for extended periods of time, producing work-like products before I was discharged, which helped me understand how many hours per week I could cope with. They then sat down with my boss, who welcomed me back with open arms and a flexible approach, by very kindly agreeing that I could start out working 12 hours per week over three days.

Working from home didn’t even cross my mind, because I really enjoyed going into the office to reconnect with my colleagues, talking with them to get my “head back in the game” and most importantly, sharing a coffee. I also really needed my boss’ help to get me back up to speed and he did such a great job. He did everything he could to get me back up to speed. Going into the office really helped me in all these areas.

Wanting to go into the office was also partially driven by my work ethic. The business was paying me to deliver, so I should at least turn up, I felt that I needed to be seen working. This work ethic had been instilled into me from an early age. I had started working while I was in primary school, mowing lawns for half a dozen neighbours. Then during high school I delivered newspapers and worked in the hospitality industry.

During this time my parents had rightly ensured that I understood that people were giving me their hard earned money to help them. It came with obligations and expectations. That I should turn up and do the best job that I could. I further refined this as I entered the workforce and it had been really successful for me throughout my career.

It was a job that I knew well and really loved. But I was a changed man because of my cognitive impairment. Both my boss and myself acknowledged this and we talked about it. We discussed that I was a top performer when I had left the role, that we weren’t sure if I was again, but he said that it didn’t matter if I wasn’t.

As part of my return to work plan, he had prepared a list of tasks for me to do. He had put some really good thought into these tasks. They were designed so that I could; get back up to speed with our current projects and business pursuits; reconnect with internal stakeholders; and fully understand all the changes to the market that had occurred in my absence.

I clearly understood all the tasks my boss had assigned. I had done them before, I remembered how to do them and I was confident I could do them again. But frustration set in. I was doing the tasks, but nowhere near as quickly as I knew I could do them. My productivity was down. This was because of a combination of factors.

Because of my memory issues I had to spend more time writing things down. I’d also forget things that I’d done. For example one day I mentioned to the boss that I might construct a profile of an emerging competitor in the space industry. To which he replied “you did that last month”. Sure enough, I went back and checked my files and there it was. So I found that I would need to go back over my work multiple times, which slowed me down.

I was also having difficulty organising my thoughts to solve problems, and finding the right words as I wrote something. Which also resulted in me struggling to ‘join the dots’. Joining the dots is the ability to look widely across the entire business strategy and see how different parts of the strategy can work together to create a larger opportunity. This was one of my key strengths before my cancer journey. Now the cognitive impairment I suffered prevented me from doing the wide thinking needed to join the dots.

But the worst part of my cognitive impairment is the mental fatigue I suffer. At work I’d get to a point where I know what I need to do, I know how to do it, but my brain just doesn’t work and I can’t do it. My head hurts, but not like a headache, it’s like my brain is trying to escape my ravaged body. It also results in my head being highly sensitive to the slightest noise. The only way to fix it is to rest. Find a quiet spot and practice some mindfulness. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I wasn’t taking the brain breaks that I needed to remain productive. This was driven by my work ethic, which meant that I’d feel guilty taking the brain breaks that I needed, rather than seeing them as key to better productivity. So while my work ethic had been so successful for me before my cancer journey, in my current cognitive state it was working against me. I was a changed man.

A great example of my work ethic working against me, is coffee breaks with my colleagues. Before my cancer journey I’d regularly go on them, but I didn’t have a single coffee break with a colleague when I returned to work with Lockheed. My boss did comment on this. At the time I couldn’t explain why I wasn’t taking coffee breaks with colleagues, but looking back it was because of my work ethic. I was only working 12 hours a week and my work ethic was telling me that I should be doing at least 38 hours. Before my cancer journey, my work ethic would drive me to work 40-45 hours a week. So my work ethic was telling me that taking a 20min coffee break was wasting my time, which I didn’t want to do, especially after they’d be flexible enough to allow me to only work 12 hours a week. I’d even eat lunch at my desk whilst working, because I felt guilty just sitting in the kitchen eating for 10minutes.

But it’s not just work that sets my head off. Just talking to people does it; going for a drive in the car; eating in a restaurant; flying in an airplane; building things in the backyard; noises; all sorts of things. This makes being a good husband and father terribly difficult. I’d get to Friday and my head would be buggered from work. I’d rest all day Friday, but it still affected me over the weekend, which prevented me from being the father I’d want to be and the husband I need to be. Luckily my family are very understanding. My wife knows when I need a break even before I do, and she willing gives it to me. My son will often ask me how my head is, before he asks me to play a game. This is so gratefully appreciated, but it’s still really frustrating for me because I want to do all these things. I want to be a kind loving husband and father. I just want to get out in the backyard and kick a ball, I want to take my wife to a restaurant or drinking at a bar. But I can also accept that there’s nothing I can do about it. So I’m sad, but I don’t get caught up in anger and regret.

Head movement seems to be a cause of my bad heads. So when I’m flying in a plane or driving in a car, my head is constantly being just slightly jerked around in all directions. This is also an issue when I’m building things in the backyard, because I’m constantly moving my head, side to side and up and down, as I’m lining things up. So even though I desperately want to teach my son, the skills my dad taught me, I just can’t right now.

Noise is another cause of my bad heads. It doesn’t even have to be a loud noise. When I go into the office to work, just the background noise gives me a bad head. Restaurants and bars are even worse due to the clattering of crockery, people talking all around and loud music. When I do have a bad head, just the sound of my son gently building lego makes my head explode. This also makes it difficult to go out for dinner, or to a bar. Which means I can’t be the loving husband my wife needs.

My acquired brain injury also causes vertigo. Sometimes when I stand up, my head will spin. I just need to pause briefly before I take off, so I don’t fall over. I think this partially explains the issues with cars and airplanes. My heads are always worse if I’m driving up or down a steep mountain. The endless corners also do not help. But the best example of vertigo that I have, is when I visited Leven Canyon in Tasmania. It’s a 275m high Lookout, with a see-through wire mesh base. Just walking out on the lookout sent my head severely spinning.

My other impairments also require me to use my brain more. Because of my missing toes, which cause balance issues and the nerve damage on the soles of my feet, when I’m going for a walk, my eyes scour the track looking for obstacles. I can no longer just mindlessly wander along. Because of my memory issues I have to concentrate on identifying the key bits of information I need to remember. I also need to think harder to remember things. All of this adds additional mental fatigue.

But on my bad head days I can’t just sit around all day. Sure I have to rest, but doing productive things i.e. working, housework, going for a walk, working; gives me a good feeling, which helps clear my brain, even on a bad day. In fact it gives me an even better feeling a bad day, because it’s harder to do it on those days. But it also causes fatigue, so it’s important to understand what I can and can’t do, and to limit the those activities.

Eventually my company asked me to undertake an Independent Health Assessment. They were interested in discovering how long it would take me to get back up to speed and if there were other things I could be doing to help me get back up to speed. To be honest I was very curious about this myself, so I thought I’d give it a go.

The report from the Independent Health Assessment indicated that my cognitive function was permanent and that I’d never again be able to do the wide thinking needed to develop strategies. I can guarantee you that this made my head spin! I honestly wanted to cry. I loved being a strategy guy. But I also had the humility to know that I wasn’t doing a good job, that the cognitive impairment did prevent me from developing strategies. The brain damage is also permanent, it needs to learn new neural pathways around the damage. No one knows how long that will take, or even if it will happen. I had to find a new job that didn’t need the wide thinking that strategy development required, a job that was rote and repetitive. I decided to dig back in my career to find this type of job, looking at quality assurance or delivering training courses, because they didn’t need the wide thinking I could no longer do.

I then found the most amazing new job with a mighty Australian owned software development company called 12thLevel, who have outstanding flexible working practices, that are making it so much easier for me to deal with my cognitive impairment and be more productive. Whilst I still get some bad head days, they’re nowhere near as frequent, or as bad as the head days I chronically suffered at my previous job.

When I had interviewed for the job with my new boss Andrew, I’d been very open about my cognitive impairment and how it affected my work performance. He didn’t even bat an eyelid when I told him I could only do 12 hours per week. He didn’t require me to set specific days and times to work. I could work from home whenever I wanted to. There’s only 24 employees at 12thLevel, when I first started, one was working from Singapore, another in Mexico, there’s a couple in Melbourne. Working out of the office is situation normal! So when my Occupational Therapist kindly offered to once again help me negotiate flexible working, I politely declined, because there was nothing to negotiate!

But even though I could work from home. I still wasn’t sure that I wanted to. I really enjoyed going into the office to work. I had a whole bunch of new colleagues to meet and get to know. I was also working in a new industry, so I had lots to learn. But lots of people were suggesting that working from home would help me. I also acknowledged that my working strategy at Lockheed Martin, didn’t work for my cognitive impairment. So I gave it a go.

When I did start working from home, it surprised me. I found my head wasn’t as bad after working from home. I think this is partially because I would take better brain breaks. When I had returned to work with Lockheed Martin, I felt like I had to prove that I was still capable. So I was even more determined to have a good work ethic. Which resulted in me thinking that going for a walk, or getting a coffee, even taking a lunch break, as slacking off; rather than acknowledging that it was key to better productivity. That attitude had been very successful for me in the past. But in my current cognitive state, it was a killer. I hadn’t recognised that I did this when I had returned to work at Lockheed Martin. It was only when I started working from home that it had occurred to me that I was doing this.

But I also developed new habits when I worked from home, which led me to be more productive. I’d start each day by planning out what I wanted to accomplish for that day. I’d never done that before. Then I’d review the material for the task at hand. Then I’d go for a walk. Whilst I was on my walk I’d consider my tasks, and I’d get great ideas for how I’d should do them. Every single walk. Nature clears a cloudy head. Every. Single. Time. I also found that I was more conscious of when my brain fatigue was setting in, which led to better brain breaks. All of these things result in me being less fatigued and more productive.

But even though working from home was helping me so much, I was still determined to go into the office at least once a week. I would go into the office every single day if I could. Unfortunately my cognitive impairment makes that difficult and I’m so lucky my boss allows me to work from home, which means that I’m more productive. Unfortunately going into the office for just one day still wipes me out. I think this is a combination of factors. Just talking to people causes mental fatigue. Even going on a coffee adventure talking with friends wears me out. It is also continuously noisy in an office, albeit at a low volume, but just this slightest noise affects my brain which results in fatigue. My work ethic is also so deeply engrained in me, that it continues to drive me and I do feel guilty taking the brain breaks. But I now force myself to take brain breaks, because I’m more mindful how they help me be more productive.

So whilst I had been aware of the benefits of flexible working and the need to take good brain breaks when I first returned to work. I never fully embraced them until I started working for a company that also fully embraced them. It helped me feel so much more comfortable taking the breaks that I needed.

Even though my acquired brain injury is permanent and there’s nothing the doctors can do about, I could still see benefit in exploring if the medical system could help me deal with it. So I booked in to see a Neurologist at the University of Canberra Hospital and we conducted a Neuropsych Assessment to compare against the one I’d completed when I was in hospital. The assessment showed an improvement! I was still below expected memory levels, but it was above my last assessment and I’ll take that! We then talked about exercises I could do to help with my mental fatigue issues and much of what I was already doing was helping me. Then we got to mindfulness.

During my hospital stay I’d worked with my Occupational Therapist and she had reminded me about mindfulness and I’d then used it as a key strategy to manage my brain fatigue. But as I talked through mindfulness with my Neurologist, he kindly pointed out that I could be doing it more effectively. A proper brain break doesn’t involve scrolling through social media, or other similar distractions, it’s a meditation. This realisation then helped me take better brain breaks. For me it’s about observing. Observing the wind blow the leaves. Observing the birds flying high. Observing my own thoughts and feelings. Marvelling about how the world operates so beautifully. I’ll do this sitting in a chair, or walking along and I’ll sing to myself as I do it. Which leaves me more peaceful and in tune with my thoughts. So while I’d been mindful about practicing mindfulness, I hadn’t been giving it the attention it deserved. Don’t think the irony of that isn’t lost on me 🤣

I now have to know my limits, so that I don’t push myself over the edge. I have to stop myself doing things, even if I really want to do them. A good example was when I flew down to Tasmania, straight after the borders opened during the Coronachaos. I was so looking forward to spending time with my mother who had been terribly isolated. So I was keen to spend as much time down there as I could. Unfortunately I chose to fly home two days before I got up on stage to tell my cancer story, to help The Canberra Hospital Foundation raise funds. I was so excited to this for them after they had helped me survive and thrive through my cancer journey. They also had a bunch of bands playing live music, which was cool. But it destroyed my head, which was already quite tender from the flight home. The next day was my work Christmas party which I really wanted to attend, because I’d only just joined the company and I really enjoyed working with every single workmate. But the party was in a bar, which would be very noisy. On top of flying home and getting up on stage, it would have wiped me out for at least week! So I unfortunately had to miss it and I felt so bad for missing it.

My cognitive impairment has highlighted a key lesson for me. What seems like the fast way, is not always the fast way. My work ethic was telling me that if I took breaks, then it would take me longer to finish a task. When the reality was, that I need to take breaks, to be more productive when I do work, which helps me finish something faster and better than if I hadn’t taken the breaks.

I found a great analogy for this lesson when my mother took me up to Cradle Mountain. You can no longer drive all the way to Cradle Mountain because it got too busy. You now have to park at the Visitor Centre and catch a shuttle bus for the last 20 minutes into Cradle Mountain. We were waiting in a big line to get on the bus. When we finally reached the front and stepped on the bus, the driver announced that it was standing room only. We’d been waiting a long time, some would say the fastest way to get to Cradle Mountain would be to suck it up and stand. But we stepped out and waited for the next bus. Then as we’re driving along on the next bus, we actually passed the first bus we’d got on, that was standing room only. We beat it to Cradle Mountain and we got to sit down along the way. Slowing down and waiting for the next bus got us to Cradle Mountain faster, much more comfortably.

My best advice for people suffering an acquired brain injury is that if you explain your condition and how it affects you, most people will understand and support you. Everyone suffers similar conditions, people forget things, they suffer mental fatigue, etc the cognitive impairment just exacerbates them.

Also seek help to understand your impairment, and develop strategies to combat it. Then practice these strategies regularly. I had a great team at the University of Canberra Hospital that helped me to understand and develop strategies for my cognitive impairment, but I didn’t diligently follow those strategies. I’m now much more diligent and it’s helping me enormously.