In this solo motivational talk, David Brimacombe addresses people stuck in the "recovery valley" of chronic post‑concussion syndrome (PCS). He argues that obsessively planning for the future—months or years ahead—adds unnecessary stress, dysregulates the nervous system, and fuels anxiety, which hinders healing. Instead, he proposes a "one‑more‑day" mindset: concentrate solely on the present day, taking small, consistent actions such as therapy, breathwork, and positive affirmations. By repeatedly choosing to give the recovery effort "one more shot" each day, a new identity forms—one of perseverance rather than victimhood. Brimacombe explains how this approach reduces cortisol, leverages the reticular activating system (RAS) to reshape perception, and ultimately compounds into weeks, months, and years of progress without the burden of future‑oriented worry. He concludes with a practical call‑to‑action, offering a PCS starter playlist that contains his own journey videos and beginner tips, encouraging viewers to start their recovery today, one day at a time.
Chapters
If you're at your lowest point of your PCS recovery, stop trying to fix everything. See, the people who get out of that recovery valley aren't worrying about next year or even next month. They're focusing on one more day. When you're in that recovery valley, your brain tends to jump ahead, start to think about what will my life be in a month, In 2 months, what will my future be? Now, here comes the problem with that, is that you're now compounding the stress, the anxiety, all that apprehension. Your nervous system is already likely dysregulated, and you're just adding layers of stress onto it, which is going to make the situation worse. To think about what life is going to be like in a year or 5 years is going to add that layer of complexity in your recovery. Now, we've all done this, okay? It's really easy to think about, if I continue down this road, if I continue to struggle, what will my life be like? How will I be able to cope, to live? I have that future event, that wedding coming up in 6 months. What am I going to do? How am I going to cope? Now, the biggest problem with that long-term visioning is it creates uncertainty in your system. It increases your stress, your cortisol levels, and your overall negative approach and perspective of life. Now, if you've watched this channel before, you understand the concept of the RAS, your reticular activating system. Your perspective becomes your reality. If you are constantly thinking about and looking, what is life gonna be like in the future, in months, in years, that is gonna be the focus. You're going to constantly think about how the symptoms that you're currently feeling are going to impact your future abilities to do the things that you love to do. Now, that is not going to help you now or in the future. Now, the biggest problem with this is that you're not trying to solve the here and now. You're trying to solve the here and now while focusing on what's going to happen hypothetically in the future, in a future you have no idea what will actually look like. So what do we really need to do in this instance? What do we really need to focus on? And that's why people quit. That's why people give up. They're halfway through their recovery, they're starting to feel better, but they just can't envision a future. They can't imagine a time where they're going to be able to go out and hang with their friends and live an existence where they're— the primary focus of their identity is not that they are someone who suffers with PCS and have all the limitations that come with that. And so they They just can't envision themselves in that future, so they just give up. They give in. They say, "Well, I'll just have to cope and live with the life that I have. This this the setbacks, the limitations that this condition is currently providing with me." Now, it's one thing to say that I'm okay to live with these setbacks and these situations in the short term, but it's another to completely forego the opportunity to be the better version of yourself. Now here's the kicker of this. There is a workaround with this. There is a way to stop thinking about everything that's going to happen in the future. All you need to do is focus on today, one more day of your recovery. That's all you need to focus on. Not what's going to happen next week, not what's going to happen next month or next year, because truth be told, we don't know what's going to happen. So if you are focusing on how am I going to do this In a week, in a month, when I start work, when we move, or when our— my children have this activity. You're going to get stuck. You're stuck in a rut that you don't even know will exist. What if those symptoms that you're feeling right now you won't feel in a month? You're creating a stressor that doesn't necessarily need to be there. We need to focus on the here and now. Now, this was a huge revelation for me when I understood I'm not worrying about what's going to happen next month. I'm worrying about Today. Every day I got up, my biggest motivation, my biggest goal was just one more day of recovery. I'm going to try for one more day. Those days I felt like I had nothing left to give, I couldn't think about next week, next month, next year. All I told myself was, I'm going to give it one more shot. I'm going to focus on today and make this the best day of my recovery. Now, the biggest thing this does with your psychology is it It gets rid of all that future stress. You don't have to worry about all those future events and how your symptoms that you feel today are gonna impact tomorrow. You're just worrying about today. You're keeping a myopic focus on what you need to do in that moment. And in that moment, you're gonna apply all the energy that you have. If it's a rough day, it's a bit— if it's a day you don't feel like you have that capacity or that energy, you're gonna apply what you can, but you're not gonna think about, ah, how is my life gonna be in a year? How am I gonna keep doing this? Because that's irrelevant. What's relevant is one more day. Just give it one more shot. And if you compound that, what you'll find, you will have changed your identity. Because understand this, that your identity is formed by the actions that you perform. If you continually do something, you tell your body, this is how I want to live, this is the new me. So by doing one more day, you are actually Doing one more week, one more month, one more year, and soon, guess what? Maybe you are the person you wanted to be in the future without having to think of it in that light. How are you going to apply this in your life? How are you going to use the concept of one more in your recovery? Now, it can start with when you get up. When you get up, I do my positive affirmation of today's going to be a great day. I give myself a high five in the mirror. Let's go. Let's get started. Okay, you can add that one more. Okay, I'm gonna give this recovery one more day. I get up, I acknowledge myself, and I start my day. And I'm not thinking about the future. I'm not thinking about what has happened in the past. It's the here and now. Okay, you can apply this to anything you're doing. I'm gonna give therapy one more shot. I'm gonna give breathwork one more try. Okay, because by giving it one more shot You're creating consistency in the system. You're reinforcing that this is something that has potential to improve my situation. And by doing so, and by stacking enough of these one mores, you create a new identity. That new identity is someone who's not going to give up, not someone who's going to focus on the hypotheticals of the future, but it's going to focus on now, what I can do today. You are a change agent in your recovery. You have power even when you feel powerless, even when you feel like everything is stacked against There are things you can do. Focus on those things. Focus on the mindset of knowing I could do it one more day, of knowing that I have power to change my situation. Okay, the world can be crumbling around you, but you can still have that power, that mindset that you can control what you can control. Thank you for listening to the end. I hope this helped. I'm going to put up above a link to a playlist It's a PCS Start Here. It's everything that I was starting my PCS journey again that I would start with. It's videos talking about my journey, my story, but also some simple tips that you can use at the beginning of your recovery, even in the middle if that's the point that you're at. Again, I appreciate you. I hope you have yourself a great day. And remember, okay, all it takes is one more day to start your recovery. Start there.
