A Choice in Perspective: How Your Mindset Shapes Your Pain, Healing, and Future
How you think about your pain or injury will directly influence how it shapes your life.
It might sound philosophical, but there’s a growing body of research showing that the meaning you assign to a physical experience has biological consequences. Two individuals can undergo the same injury, the same physical insult, yet their bodies—and lives—can respond entirely differently based on what they believe that experience means.
The Physiology of Perception
There’s compelling research in behavioral science showing that beliefs shape biology. One standout example comes from a 2007 Harvard study by Alia Crum and Ellen Langer, where hotel maids were split into two groups. One group was told that the physical work they did each day—cleaning rooms, vacuuming, changing linens—was enough to meet the Surgeon General’s definition of exercise. The other group wasn’t given any new information.
Over just four weeks, the informed group lost weight, lowered their blood pressure, and improved their body composition—despite no changes in actual activity or diet. The only difference? A change in mindset.
Their belief about what they were already doing created physiological improvements.
If belief can change body composition and cardiovascular health, we must ask: What happens when we believe pain means we are broken, fragile, or incapable?
Pain is Not Just a Signal—It's a Story
Pain is more than a signal from your body; it’s a message that your brain interprets through the lens of past experience, current stressors, and your beliefs about your body.
The Common Sense Model of self-regulation tells us that how we interpret and make sense of a health event influences not only how we feel about it, but how we behave in response. Think about that: your belief about what an injury means will directly affect how you move through the world afterward.
For example:
If you believe your back pain means your spine is “weak” or “damaged,” you may avoid bending, lifting, or exercising.
If you believe your shoulder pain means “your body is aging poorly,” you may retreat from activities you once loved.
And over time, that avoidance limits your world. It reinforces fragility, and ultimately, reinforces pain.
Shaping a Different Future
This isn’t to say pain isn’t real—far from it. But it is to say that how we interpret pain helps determine whether we spiral into limitation, or step into a new opportunity for growth.
Pain can be:
A signal of overuse or under-recovery—not injury.
A call to pay attention—not to shut down.
A reminder to strengthen—not to stop.
When we assign pain a meaning that aligns with learning, strengthening, and moving forward, we change our biology, behavior, and beliefs.
Rehabilitating the Body and the Frame
Just as we rehab muscles, tendons, bones, and joints, we must also rehab the frame through which we interpret them.
To truly heal—and more than that, to thrive—we need to:
Clarify what pain is and isn’t.
Reclaim a sense of agency: the belief that your actions influence your outcomes.
Cultivate antifragility: the idea that your body can grow stronger through challenges, not just survive them.
This work is more than a rehab plan. It’s a mindset shift—a narrative shift—from fear to capacity, from limitation to potential.
You are not fragile. You are adaptable. Let’s make sure your mindset reflects that truth—because your body will follow.
