Have you ever noticed how the smallest injury or illness can draw our entire focus and block out just about everything else? How a sore toe or a runny nose can be incredibly distracting and frustrating. And worse that this it can affect our mood and we can fall into a kind of “woe is me” self pitying state. Then there’s the much more serious cases of disease and injury; cancer, broken bones and so on which can completely engulf our lives!
But when it comes to physical maladies I always remember this great quote by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus:
“Sickness is a hindrance to the body, but not to your ability to choose, unless that is your choice.”
What he means is that a sore leg limits the movement of the leg, but it does not limit the movement of our minds! We still get to choose exactly how we will interpret the significance of the sore leg, and how we choose to feel about it. If you take 3 people who’ve hurt their leg while exercising you will have 5 very different emotional states. Let’s look at some examples:
Person 1 - This man takes a very pessimistic approach. His wife asked him to exercise for his health and he uses this injury as evidence that it was a silly idea; it’s all her fault! Now he’s forced to be lazier than ever due to his injury.
Person 2 - This lady takes a very self defeating attitude; “Yup, this is typical. Nothing I try ever works out well for me…” She tries to take a measure of control by believing that she knew it would happen because “nothing ever works out for me”, but ultimately this is a pretty unhealthy way of looking at things.
Person 3 - This woman takes a more reasonable approach. Instead of focusing on the injury, and what she cannot do while it heals, she chooses to focus instead on, and appreciate, all the things she can still enjoy. Not only this but she takes time to reflect on how she obtained the injury and uses it as a learning experience.
My point here is that it’s not the leg! For if it were then each of the examples would have had the exact same experience. Here’s Epictetus again from later on in that same passage:
“Lameness is a hindrance to the leg, but not to your ability to choose.”
Not only does physical illness or injury not need to be the end of the world, it can even be a transformative and beautiful thing combined with the right attitudes and opinions! Viktor Frankl, Auschwitz survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, dedicated his life to the study of meaningful suffering and people’s ability to withstand hardship and to grow, mature and develop through it. He talks of cases in which individuals have permanently lost the use of their legs through accident and have never been happier!
That is not to say this is the case with everyone. Some people are consumed by the devastation of such sudden incapacity, while others are driven by it, empowered by the challenge set before them by “fate”. Some become obsessed with what they can no longer do, while others gain a greater appreciation of all they can do, and how precious, fragile and fleeting it really is!
So the real question is: what determines whether someone is a wallower or a go-getter when it comes to physical limitation? I believe the answer lies in what Epictetus was saying at the beginning of this post. Those who understand that illness and injury limit the body, but do not limit our ability to choose and form opinions; those are the people who make the best of their situation and who shift their thinking away from what they can’t do, and focus instead on what they can.
As an added benefit, those who maintain a more positive, proactive outlook during illness or injury also tend to recover faster and better due to the science behind metaphysical healing, or the “Biology of Belief”.
So if you do find yourself with a physical pain, a limitation, a weight issue, an injury, a disease or some other such bodily issue, remember that (other than during a delirious fever) your ability to choose your opinions, aversions, preferences, attitudes and beliefs is still fully within your power. So why not take a positive, gracious approach?
You’ll feel better and you’ll heal better 
Thanks for reading, all the best!
Rohan.
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Rohan Healy is the author of “Greeks to Geeks: Practical Stoicism in the 21st Century”, “The 7 Things That Made Me Genuinely & Irreversibly Happy: And How They Can Do The Same For You”, “SEX, Not as a Separate Subject: A Guide to Great Sex with Great People” and Sci Fi Action/Adventure novel Gyaros: The Mice Eat Iron!
Click the book titles to visit their Amazon pages, read the reviews, and sample or purchase the books.
