The Step – How Mindset Traps Us and Frees Us

Photo credit: Photo by the author

By Cecilia Sepp, CAE, ACNP, LPEC

There is a step from our attached garage into our basement. It is one step that is about 7 inches tall. To give you some comparison, my iPhone is about 6 inches long. It really isn’t that high and I never really thought about it. I came in and out of the garage countless times never really paying attention to it – until last year when I sustained a tibial plateau fracture and couldn’t walk for about 4 months. 

Suddenly, that step seemed more like 7 feet tall. And it was the only way in and out of the house for me during my recovery. For the first two months I was not supposed to put any weight on my injured leg. My loss of independence and fear of making my injury worse caused me untold stress whenever I had to confront The Step. Going up and down The Step in a wheelchair was nerve wracking because I had no control of the situation. It came to represent the mental and emotional parts of my injury, which robbed me of my sense of agency.  

After my fracture healed, which took about 2 months, I was very weak. While I had a walker that offered stability in movement and some independence, I still struggled to get across a room, let alone go up or down steps. I was not able to walk steps for months after I started physical therapy because I had to rebuild my strength and overcome my fear of falling down the stairs. 

The first time I went down The Step with my walker, I held my breath the entire time. I had to screw up the nerve to put my foot down while using the walker as support. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I didn’t tumble over. At that point, I truly believed I was not capable of taking The Step because I had lost my confidence, my individual power, and my ability to move freely. Every confrontation with The Step was challenging mentally and physically.

It took me months to feel like I could walk up and down The Step without being nervous. I would ask myself, “Why do I feel that I can’t do this? I know I can but I feel that I will fail.” Slowly I realized that my Mindset had become one of inability and dependence. The Step was a symbol of all I had lost and worried I might not get back. 

Eventually, I moved from a walker to a cane, and I was able to retire the cane in November 2024. Walking was still difficult and I continued to have trepidation walking up and down The Step. As time went by, and I became physically stronger and felt more like myself again, I was able to assess The Step and put it back in its rightful place. Now, it is just a step. I’ve gone back to not really paying attention to it any longer because physically I’m back where I was. 

Mentally I’m stronger and emotionally I am wiser. My injury and long recovery period affected my Mindset and took me from “can do” to “can’t do it.” But as time went by and my life normalized – meaning I could move back upstairs and start doing for myself again – I realized that I had built a trap for myself in my own mind. Being laid low stole my sense of self, my confidence, and my independence. While I did what I could, I was restricted in my movements and being stuck in the basement made my world very small. As my world became small, my mindset shrank to fit. Moving back into the larger world freed my mind from its small space and my confidence grew too. 

Changing a mindset is similar to turning on a light in a dark room: what once seemed scary and unknown becomes recognizable and relatable. More importantly, changing our Mindset frees us from fear and shows us the possibilities all around us. It takes time to realize our Mindset has shifted and is holding us back. But once we realize that, a different Mindset can change our life. It can even change the world.