Inquisitive.me

There is either win or learn. There’s no losing around here.

Phily Bowden

Yes, it’s a motivational quote. And yes, I like motivational quotes.

I like this one because it gives me something to do when things go badly. Although, if my knee still hurt after months of rehab, I’d probably want a minute to be pissed off before anyone asked me what I’d learned.

I first came across the idea of a growth mindset in Carol Dweck’s Mindset. It’s still one of my top three book recommendations, and I’ve read around 40 books a year for the last four years. Yes, I have receipts. They’re all reviewed in Notion. And before you ask, some of them have dragons.

So what does any of this have to do with physio?

Rehab can take weeks or months. You do the exercises, things start looking up, and then your knee hurts on the stairs again. By the third trip downstairs, My knee hurts today has somehow turned into My knee will always hurt.

I hear versions of that in my practice, and I’ve had that thought myself. I’ve noticed that when people can leave a little room for things to change, it’s easier to talk about what to try next. You can be frustrated and still ask, Is there something I could do differently?

Former quarterback Steve Young’s story got me thinking about three questions. Here’s how I’d ask them in rehab.

1. How do you respond when something goes badly? If the stairs are harder this week, it’s easy to think, I’m back at square one. I’d also want to know what’s changed since last week and what you can still do today.
2. Who do you compare yourself to? If a friend had the same surgery and got back to running sooner, their timeline can make yours feel painfully slow. If you’re curious about how they got there, ask what helped them get started. You might get a better question to bring to your next appointment.
3. How do you think about taking a risk? If you’re nervous about getting back to hiking, a whole afternoon on uneven ground can feel like a big gamble. What would make the first outing feel manageable? A shorter route? Someone to go with? An easy way to turn back?

What if your first thought is still Why bother? I’ve tried this before.

Fair question. If your back has hurt for three years, I can see why another set of exercises might be a hard sell. Here’s how I’d apply the three steps I took from Dweck’s work. Shifting from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset:

1. Leave room for change. Start with something you’d actually like to be able to do. Maybe you want to get through cooking dinner without having to sit down halfway. That gives us something specific to work on, even if we’re still figuring out what will happen with the pain.
2. Work out what you could try next. Think about cooking. If dinner tastes like shit, you’ve learned something about dinner. You still have to work out whether you burned the onions or got a little too confident with the chilli. I’d bring the same curiosity to a rough day in rehab. What did you do? What else was going on? If you’re unsure what to make of it, that’s a good conversation to have with your physio.
3. Give small changes time to add up. Maybe you can cook a quick dinner if you chop the vegetables sitting down. A few weeks later, you realise you stood long enough to chop the onions and get them into the pan. You might still have back pain, and you’ve just done a little more of something you wanted back.

What a lot of people often miss: you can learn from the days that go well, too.

When a patient tells me their knee felt better on a walk, I want to know about that walk. Where did they go? How far? Did they take a break? Sometimes the answer is a very satisfying “I have absolutely no idea.” Fair enough. Now we have something to pay attention to on the next walk.

🧪 Let’s Experiment

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A good rehab day is worth a closer look.

You probably remember the last time something flared up. See if you can remember the last time something went a little better than expected.

🎯 Try This:

Pick one moment from the past week when something felt easier or you managed a little more. What did you do that day? Was there anything about the pace, the amount, or the setup you’d like to repeat?

Bring that observation to your next physio session, or see what you notice the next time you do the same activity.

🧠 Final Thought:

The next time you catch yourself thinking, I got lucky today, take a second to remember what you did. There might be something there you can use again.

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