One of my favorite sayings is ‘Success leaves clues.’
To me this essentially means that you can look at how something is working (or not working for that matter) and learn valuable information which you can then apply to other moments or experiences in your life, and hope to achieve a better outcome.
One of the most useful activities I recommend to patients dealing with back and neck pain is keeping a pain diary, which is particularly easy if you happen to keep a journal already. If you don't, get yourself a steno pad or a small notebook, and start today.
How to Do It
Each evening, I suggest that patients make a short list of the activities they have done on a given day, and then use a scale from 1-10 to rate their level of pain. Sometimes this simple exercise can help people to identify those things which are making them better, and those which may make them worse.
Now, much of the time the culprits are obvious (a day of shoveling snow or moving furniture) but sometimes it’s not so clear (forgetting to switch sides when you carry your children, leaving your computer monitor at the wrong height.) In either case, you may be surprised by the information you can gather.
You can add parameters to this concept to go beyond pain, and even use it to simply judge how you are feeling. If you are trying to improve something like your diet or sleep habits, having the positive reinforcement that comes from seeing the results mapped out before you can make the whole process easier. In these ways, your success will leave clues to what’s working and what you might modify and breed even more successes.
Andrew Kirschner, D.O., is a board-certified physician with a private practice in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, and a consultancy in Miami, Florida. He specializes in treating individuals and couples with musculoskeletal and back pain. To learn more about his practice, please visit BackTogether.org.
