Read an Excerpt
The day my life changed forever started out much like a typical Sunday. I reached for my iPad in the pre–5 a.m. darkness to shut off the soft intro chords of Ed Sheeran’s ‘The A Team’ before it disturbed my wife, Lucy. For a moment, I considered staying in bed. The previous days had been long and tiring, as I had worked with colleagues to put the finishing touches on the workshop we were to deliver in Salt Lake City the coming week. But I knew early morning exercise would help me sleep during that evening’s long-haul flight to the US, so I willed myself out of bed and into the quiet morning, leaving Lucy and our three teenage kids to their peaceful slumber. Within minutes I was pedalling my bike through the silent Coorparoo streets towards my cycling crew’s rendezvous point, feeling good about my decision to push through the fatigue. I knew I’d lose cycling fitness while I was in the US, and getting this one last ride in could fractionally reduce that impact. I always focused on grasping marginal gains. But it was much more than just exercise – I valued the camaraderie of the group. We called ourselves the COGs – Coorparoo Older Guys – because mostly we were acquainted through the local schools our children attended in or around that Brisbane suburb. We were united in our shared love of cycling, but it went deeper than that, with many important friendships establishing as we rode. I’d joined the group a couple of years before as I strived to improve my health and fitness. The cycling captain, Stewart (Stewy), had been one of the first people I’d met when I moved to Brisbane 20 years earlier. Stewy and I had formed an important bond, staying in close contact as our children grew up together, our families intertwining as we became godparents to each other’s children. It took a tough, sustained effort to bring myself up towards the fitness standard set by the COGs. I could readily have given up on many of the early rides, feeling defeated and embarrassed as I regularly fell away from the pack. But I persevered, and in the moments of choosing to do so, I had no idea the COGs and our rides would become such a treasured part of my life. We did 40 km ‘river loops’ two or three times each week, plus the Sunday ritual of a longer ride – typically around 70 km, but sometimes up to 110 km. As we rode that Sunday morning, I chatted proudly as I relived the prior day’s cricket action at Villanova College – my sons’ school. My eldest son, Luke, had taken an important catch and saved many runs in the field as his side prevailed in a seesawing game against their strongest rival. This offset my youngest son’s disappointment as his team was thumped by the same school. Charlie, a natural leader, never stopped trying to lift his team and took a key wicket. Between periods of chatting, I cherished the harmony of cycling with the crew. I had discovered my love of cycling many years before, riding to and from my first full-time job. I started riding to avoid the frustration of erratic bus timetables and soon found that cycling provided me the headspace for thought and reflection, plus the satisfying release of extending myself with intense periods of physical effort. I enjoyed challenging myself to pedal as hard as I could, hurtling my second-hand mountain bike along the Swan River foreshore in Perth, competing with those on much faster bikes. As we rode that morning, I reflected on the past few weeks of intense preparation for the Salt Lake City workshop. I was proud of our work, confident our initiatives would secure the longer-term future for our client and its 200-plus workers. I allowed myself to daydream about the sneaky skiing weekend I planned to squeeze into the trip, remembering the near-perfect conditions we’d enjoyed on Salt Lake City’s slopes during our previous visit. They were two of the best ski days ever – at Alta with three of the team on Saturday and skiing Solitude alone on the Sunday. As I coasted down Fig Tree Pocket Road alongside my crew, I remember thinking, ‘How beautiful is the weather this morning? How perfect to be able to cycle like this.’ Then, in a fraction of a moment, my whole world changed. I could see the corner ahead and watched the six other riders as they slowed around it, using that information to plan my turn. Pip, Dave and I were a bit behind the pack, riding single file, giving us the chance to corner a fraction quicker. Braking to a safe speed, I felt balanced, enjoying that magical feeling of cornering my bike. Then suddenly my front wheel wasn’t gripping the road. Rather than pedalling through and out of the corner as planned, I was skating straight ahead, momentarily out of control. In a split second I processed my options and decided to crash into the grassy parkland ahead, even though I could see both a 90-degree kerb and pine barriers, which meant I’d be flung over the handlebars for sure. I remember the terrible sensation of my shoes being wrenched from their cleats and my hands being ripped from their grip on my brake levers as my body weight surged forward, catapulted from my bike. I felt my head striking the ground – hard – followed by my body slamming down on its side. Then the intense, searing pain hit me. Gasping, I realised I couldn’t breathe properly: my pain, shock and injuries combined to cause short, shallow pants. I could feel the sensation of dirt under my left side, but I couldn’t move or look around. Suddenly I felt someone near me – Dave. I could hear Mike talking in the distance, on the phone getting emergency assistance. ‘The ambulance is on its way, Berro’, he said. My impactful moments In the early hours of 10 March 2019, the trajectory of my life changed forever. In a fraction of a moment, I went from cruising downhill enjoying the freshness of the morning air and beautiful sunshine, to hitting a sunken, slippery piece of bitumen repair work, causing my bicycle to understeer through its cornering line. Bereft of viable options, I chose what I felt was the best of my bad alternatives: braking and crashing straight ahead into a park. It is incredible how quickly you seem to be able to process information, and the detail you recall of those thoughts that took just fractions of seconds. My bike bounced up the kerb and slammed into the park’s pine bollard boundary. I flew high from my bike and came down in a stormwater drain, about 1.5 metres below the road level. My left hand probably hit the bluestone rock wall edge of the drain first. My trajectory drove my head into that same rock and my left shoulder hard into the ground. The impact crushed the left side of my helmet. Around four hours after my accident, I learned the shocking extent of the damage. The force that went through my helmet as I struck the ground had compressed two of my vertebrae, crushing one to just 40 per cent of its original height. A large fragment of that vertebra had burst into my spinal cord, causing nerve damage and compressing the space available for the spinal cord to function. I had also fractured my left shoulder and wrist, and three ribs. At the exact hour I was due to depart Brisbane for Salt Lake City, I was in the operating theatre with a team of experts inserting two 23 cm rods into my back to stabilise my spine. I didn’t know it yet, but that work trip was the first of many aspects of my life that would be displaced by my misadventure – my immediate career, my ability to walk, my role in the family. Fortunately, many crucial aspects of my life were spared by the quality of my recently acquired helmet. I’d been eyeing off new bikes when I stumbled on that $300 helmet, marked down to $150 in the New Year sales. Fate was looking after me that day. The helmet protected my ability to comprehend, to think and to recall valuable memories. These have provided – and will continue to provide – the comfort of the past, perspectives on the present and inspiration for the future. And it is this that affords me this privilege of describing my story and recovery – to relate to you the experiences and learnings that supported my journey and how these can be powerful for you, too, no matter your circumstances in life. A fraction stronger As I write this book, more than two years after the accident, I am still a work in progress – as I will be for my remaining life. I am slower. I need to be careful with my balance. Every action takes a lot more energy and getting off the floor is difficult. But I have been able to recapture much of my mobility, and I am grateful for that. The disruption to my sense of identity was the most unsettling aspect. In a split second the immediate pathway of my life became vastly different – as if my crushed vertebrae represented the next two stepping-stones of my life, and these had just shattered before me. Instead of co-leading a workshop in the US, I would be doing my best to picture my meaningful future from a bed in acute care. I had many disrupted thoughts: who am I now? What parts of my former self can I get back? How do I do that? What are my true colours? What values will I stand for? I was doing everything I could to stay positive, to look forward. But it was a wrestle. I was feeling sorry for myself. I was expending energy reflecting on the accident and what went wrong. I was lonely and fearful of setbacks. I was overwhelmed with guilt that I was going to be a burden to my family. I was weighed down with doubt. Energy is precious. Dwelling on things beyond your control will exhaust you. I realised that I needed to limit the thoughts that distracted me from my recovery. I had to concentrate my attention on the actions that would move me towards my vision of recovery from the current moment. I had to become a fraction stronger, then a fraction stronger again – repeatedly. I had to work hard to release myself from the burden of doubt. I gave myself permission to tolerate uncertainty – because only by embracing uncertainty can we liberate possibility. Only by letting go of the distractions can we obtain the clarity and focus we need to make sure our effort supports our goals. You won’t get it right every moment, every day. I certainly didn’t. But you can make it a habit you revert to, to keep you on that pathway to your vision. By navigating our tough moments, we discover who we are. We build connections that support us for life. We rebuild that sense of identity that is slipping away. I have been there. I came back stronger. Different, but stronger. And no matter what you’re facing right now – whether it’s a physical or emotional challenge – you can, too. Lanterns, angels and demons From my first fragile days in hospital, I felt enormous gratitude. For the paramedics who got me to the hospital safely, the nurses who cared for me, the quality of my surgery and the kindness of strangers and acquaintances. And most of all, the love of family and friends. As I navigated my rehabilitation journey, I could see the contrast between my conviction and positivity in the face of challenges and some of the patients around me. I would often receive comments like ‘The physios must love you’ from people familiar with the recovery process. It seemed that my commitment to improve was quite unusual, which surprised me. I welcomed any assistance I received during my recovery, and I thrived under the care of those helping me. My experience instilled in me a deep desire to ‘give back’ – to help others like me wade through the challenges of dealing with change and trauma. During 2020 I wrote a few short articles encouraging others to find their way towards better outcomes, conveying how important the support that I received had been for me. I received positive feedback on how my articles had helped people, and I found the writing was helping me, too. I was starting to address the demons that I still hadn’t conquered – to deal with my guilt, the transitions I was still working my way through. My lament for lost physical capabilities, the uncertainty about how I might regain my family and career identities. The three parts of this book are based around the streams of thinking that were integral to my physical recovery, and in that transition to a rebuilt identity: 1. What is the most exceptional outcome I might achieve from here? 2. What will drive me towards that exceptional outcome? 3. What feelings do I have about where I am and the journey ahead? How do I use them positively, as motivation to persevere? I call these lanterns, angels and demons. Lanterns help us see possibility; angels help us move forward; and demons could derail us, unless we reframe them as motivation. If just a few more people can become a fraction stronger traversing their journey with the help of my insights – and if this strength drives them to achieve better outcomes – that is an incredibly valuable thing. Valuable to the individual, to their family, their friends, and to those thousands of people just doing their job: being kind, sharing expertise, helping random people like me recover, day after day. More efforts to applaud, more successes to celebrate. More joy. I wrote this book because I want more people to strive for and obtain their own positive feedback, their own feeling of grace and fortitude. Because that was so valuable to me. Your exceptional outcome This book will help you to navigate a difficult disruption – whatever that means in your life. It will help you take action; to believe you can make it through. 2020 and 2021 were difficult years for so many people, with COVID-19 impacting routines, families and careers, and curtailing so many precious lives before their time. The pandemic was the catalyst for me to start writing about my own journey, as I realised that people face and overcome disruption all the time – my own challenges were, in so many ways, not unique. We are all doing our best to find our way in this often complex and difficult world. And that perseverance through difficulty is valuable, because life on the other side can provide us so much delight and joy. I am convinced my recovery was powered by my ability to visualise my exceptional outcome; my determination to foster and strengthen that vision, and to fight for it when it was becoming distant; and my capacity to reframe my demons into sources of motivation, helping me persevere towards that vision. What do I mean by ‘exceptional outcome’? To me, an exceptional outcome is a stretch target. It’s something that is difficult to achieve – perhaps next to impossible. Something that requires sustained belief, effort and focus to pursue. To pursue the exceptional, your fulfilment should be as much about the attitude and actions as the outcome itself, because most likely that stretch target will be just beyond grasp. Be guided by the great Renaissance artist Michelangelo, who is believed to have said, ‘The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it’. I had to find a way to keep my exceptional outcome front of mind at my lowest points – when I was devastated by shock, fearful of my future and feeling guilty about the impact I was having on my family. Perhaps you feel some of those powerful emotions now. The achievements of people around me, people I had met or heard of, were central to my ability to visualise my best possible outcome, to generate hope, to try. The belief I gained from the effort and achievements of others was vital, and I want this book to provide you with the belief that you can do it too. The stories I’ve shared about other people’s journeys in this book were those that inspired me during my recovery. Some of these were influential right after my accident; some became important as I progressed. Others are simply powerful and worth sharing. All of the stories I share are about everyday people responding to adversity in a multitude of inspiring ways. The book is designed so you can focus on a particular interest or need. It does not need to be read from cover to cover. Focusing on small sections will be beneficial, especially if reading absorbs too much energy to be sustained – as it did for me in those first weeks. If you are really struggling, like I was, perhaps one of your support crew will read you excerpts, or a friend might share a snippet they heard. Many days you may not need this book, but it is here when you are looking for guidance or reassurance.
