If you're in any form of pain—stress, grieving, or physical pain—and ever feel overwhelmed...let me introduce you to the PLAN TO BE YOUR BEST method, born out of decades of personal experience with chronic pain and seven knee surgeries. You'll experience in this video a calming guided breathing moment as a first example of more exercises and insights to follow. I invite you to join me as we transform our journeys with pain into journeys of resilience. Please follow me, let me know what you experienced with this video, and comment with any thoughts or questions you may have. With each video I'll provide you with practical ways to build your mental, emotional, and physical resilience. Thank you, Rick
Rick Cram is a resilience coach who helps individuals and groups navigate pain. In his new series, Cram shares eight ways to transform pain into thriving. Use the three steps of resilience to transform a moment.
If you're in any form of pain, perhaps it's excessive stress, grieving, or physical pain. Ever feel overwhelmed? Let's explore how to navigate it all with resilience. Hi, I'm Rick Cram. I'm a resilience coach and I help individuals and groups do just that. Navigate pain. About 10 years ago, the management at the Federal Home Loan banks came to me and said, we are in pain and we need a program for our leadership conference on how to lead ourselves and our teams through this, no matter how tough things got.
They knew of my work using communication strategies to help leaders navigate and drive positive change for their organizations. They knew I was a trained caregiver and a trainer of caregivers for people having a difficult time in life. And they knew something about my own experience with pain and resilience. You see, at the end of my high school football season, with about two minutes to go in the last game, I took an injury to my left knee. Within the first two years, it took three surgeries to get me sort of figuratively and literally back on my feet.
I needed three more surgeries in my late 30s, the sixth one being a total knee replacement. And to put together the program for them, I needed to draw on everything that I had within me, the communications expertise, the caregiving, and my own life experience on how to turn a life of pain into one of resilience. And I created for them and for you. Plan to be your best as you navigate pain. It's a way, a method to equip you and encourage you with strategies and skills to navigate pain more than just being resilient, but even thriving because of the pain.
Since then, I needed another surgery in 2019. Surgery number seven was a partial revision from the total Knee replacement from the years before. Unfortunately, my knee has been left in a state of trauma since then and I live with daily pain, instant blasts of random blasts of agony. And there's no solution just yet. Though I'm never giving up hope, One of the things that I knew would be essential to navigate these years has been to grow through it, learn from it. And I've gotten to a point where I've been able to refine and upgrade the parts of Plan to Be youe Best as you navigate pain so that you can actually see and you'll find in the videos that I'll be sharing with you different ways of discovering and strengthening your own unique approach to resilience and to thriving.
I'll share with you the specifics to take using the three steps of resilience to transform a moment. I'll share with you the strength that comes from the eight domains of thriving to actually transform your life. For example, and let's do this together, considering how major life challenges can create a shaking of your sense of self. And sometimes people have often said heard it many times. I did a lot, especially through Covid. I don't know who I am and I don't know what to do about it. One particular exercise from the pages of Plan to Be youe Best is this breathing exercise and the repetition and the using the power of an I Am statement.
Join me if you would. Let's close our eyes and take a deep breath. Just focus on the breath coming in and going out. Now this next breath, breathe in deeply through your nose and then hold it for four seconds and then breathe out. And now just be aware of your breath relaxing and with each time you breathe and breathe out, join me in saying I am Peace. Breathe in. I am Peace. Breathe in. I am peace. I am peace. As we open our eyes, I'm very curious to know what did you just experience? Share a thought in the comments or contact me and let me know.
Did you experience a lowering of your cortisol stress hormones? Did you experience perhaps a reduction in your pain? Did you get a sense of the power of that I am statement? So in the videos to follow, more exercises like that, more tips that you can use, all of them based on Taking action. Pablo Picasso, the artist, once wrote that action is the foundational key to all success. And if success is for us to transform our journey with pain into a journey of resilience, we must take action. I hope you'll join me on this journey and I'll be looking forward to hearing you discover your best is greater than the pain.
More to follow.
