After a Traumatic Accident, Sports Became My Healing

You don't have to be great at sports, but it will completely change your life. I know because they changed mine.

I was involved in a serious car accident leaving me in a coma for 10 days. Everything was broken.

It was not a fun ride.

Sports, particularly volleyball and then pickleball, helped me rebuild my life. And you don't need to have a traumatic accident to start Finding sports to rebuild your life, to find more purpose, more reason to go out there, to find more enjoyment in life.

And if you're looking for that purpose, that enjoyment, this video is really for you.

When I really wanted to get back into playing sports, I found volleyball. And volleyball was similar to tennis for me because the net Bouncing a ball back and forth over the net. But it was different and similar. And just getting back into sports, it allowed me to move my body, and that started feeling good. And because I didn't know really how to play volleyball, like, learning how to bump the ball or set the ball and like set it up correctly for my teammates really made me feel good. Like, learning how to do this stuff, I think it activated something in my brain. To learn something new. It made me feel good to be able to learn. And after I was playing volleyball for a while with groups that I found— I'll talk about how I found groups online, on different things— I started looking into playing pickleball. Pickleball, I— then I fell in love with pickleball because pickleball is so similar to tennis where it's still using a paddle. Paddle or racket type thing, but it's slightly different rules. But it's easier because it's a lighter paddle, lighter racket, and it's easier just to start going. And the strategy is also similar to tennis but different to the point of it's exciting to learn something new. And having volleyball and pickleball in my life, it made it easier to be excited about everyday life. For example, I was looking forward to seeing when the next volleyball meetup is or when the next pickleball event was going on because it was something for me to look forward to. And like, how do I play and how do I play with other people and making other people feel good about playing with me? And it made recovery so much more enjoyable to learn how to do all these things with volleyball and pickleball. I started loving sports even more because I felt good playing sports. So I encourage you to start playing sports, start moving, and you'll start feeling better.

So let's talk about science for a second. When you move your body, your body releases endorphins, short for endogenous morphine. And those things are in your brain that trigger feel-good hormones because you are feel-good feelings. Because you are, you're moving your body and things start to feel more exciting, more better, basically. It's, it's like a natural antidepressant. So when I would move, it just, I start feeling better. And as I'm playing, I'm starting to feel better. And, and you don't need to move that much when you, when you're exercising. I, I believe 30 minutes or so when you start feeling all this good endorphins flowing through you. I encourage you just to, to go out, play a little bit, maybe run for a little bit. It, it can't be like a very sedentary event, like, like chess. That's not really an active sport, but, but just playing pickleball or, or volleyball where you're moving or, or anything like where you're, you're involved with, with, with maybe going to the gym even for a little bit. You start feeling those endorphins kicking in. The natural antidepressants making you feel good. So try, just go and 30 minutes exercise a little bit and you start feeling better and your mood is going to get better and you're going to start feeling better. It's the best way to start feeling good and it helped me so much. So I encourage you to try it too. So the next thing is how do you find these events, these groups? So for me, for volleyball, I went to the local beach. And they had signs, little posters up, like when they meet. And other than that, they had a Meetup group and a Facebook group. So then I would look up on Meetup volleyball groups, and I found one where I was, it was Huntington Beach Volleyball, and that they had a schedule of how often they meet. And I joined that group. It tells you what time to go, who's in that group. And that was fun because I went to that and you could discuss different things as well. Like, I'm bringing this ball today, who's coming? And sometimes people wouldn't show up, but that's okay because there's other people that would and you still kind of join that community. You get to talk about when you play, maybe what tournament you have coming on or what is going on, what you're doing. And after I played volleyball, my parents introduced me to pickleball. And pickleball, I really enjoyed and it's become my number one sport. Because it's similar to tennis, same kind of stroke, but the rules are a little different and the paddle is lighter, so it doesn't impact my arm as much. And learning something new is exciting because I never kind of played pickleball before, but different way to hit, different way to think about the court. It got my brain going. And getting your brain going, injury or not, is good because you start feeling— Different. You start thinking about life differently. It's exciting because life can be so exciting when you do that.

And I really enjoyed it.

And other than Meetup, I also use Facebook. So if you just go on Facebook, you search for volleyball meetups or volleyball near me, you might find these groups. And they have the same kind of thing where they listed for me events, times they met, events they had. And who's part of that? You could message them, you could find out where they're meeting, or you wanna like maybe meet outside of it just to practice bumping or practice dinking the ball just to get better. And all these little things make you feel good. Made me feel good. Made the endorphins kind of kick up in my body. Feel like I am doing this, I am getting better at this sport and I'm making the connections. Because we would go outside of the event, we'd meet at a bar, we'd talk about the sport, we'd talk about what happened maybe that, that weekend, next weekend, where to go in the town that I was in. And it was exciting. Life can get exciting and life becomes more exciting with sports. Showing up regularly to the events made me start feeling good. It started— made me feel like I belonged to something, something to look forward to, as I mentioned. And these small wins made me feel like life is good again and it boosted my mood. I encourage you to try it. Go to these events. Talk to people, learn how to do something different. And these small wins, they add up. Every day starts to feel more rewarding than the last. And you start to discover different ways of doing stuff. Maybe you're playing pickleball. I play pickleball. And instead of hitting a 2-hand backhand, you start hitting a 1-hand backhand or volleying differently or spiking the ball differently. It makes life so much more exciting. These small wins, the consistency of doing it made me feel better, made my confidence improve in the sport, in life, in my social relationships. It just made life feel good again. One thing that I started doing when I started playing pickleball tournaments is traveling to different places where the tournaments were with my wife. And that was so much fun because when we would get to a new city, like we went to Atlanta, And not only did we get to play the pickleball tournament, but we got to explore the city, go to like a museum. And all these things that, that the sport kind of inspired us to do made me feel better about life again. It was exciting to, to play a tournament, meet new people there, explore the town next to it, and try something new. It made my confidence go up. It made me feel— Like, like life is good again. And you don't need to have a traumatic accident happen to you because it's just fun to try to rebuild your life or change your life to make it exciting again. Because life can be exciting. And I encourage everybody to try sports, try something new, to then be able to use that to travel somewhere, to talk about it, to build new skills. And it's exciting. That's what— Sports are, and that's what life is about. And you don't need to be good, you just need to begin. Go out there, find a group, find somebody else who's just starting out, or not even just starting out, because people who are better than you, they enjoy teaching you too, because they feel good when they teach somebody new. And sports, it wasn't just a way for me to do something, it was, it was a mode of recovery. And even if you don't need to recover, it's just a way to get feeling better about yourself. I love sports and pickleball is my new mecca of what I really enjoy doing. But try something else too. Try pickleball or try volleyball or try tennis or try baseball, try football, anything else that's fun. Just going out there and playing the sport, you start feeling better when you start moving. Just go to the gym, just work out. You start feeling better. I encourage you, just try it. You'll start getting your confidence up. You'll start feeling better. Life will be better. This channel is all about healing, growth, and living fully. So drop a comment below, let me know your story, and let's keep growing together. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Bye.