Getting injured can be frustrating both physically and mentally. When someone is used to being active, it’s difficult to suddenly feel limited or disconnected from their identity. Recovery isn’t just about healing the body; it also requires mental strength, motivation, and a sense of purpose. Many people recovering from injuries struggle with stress, low self-confidence, and feeling like they’ve lost part of themselves.

That’s why we created this workbook. It includes activities like gratitude journaling, affirmation coloring pages, and caring for a small plant to support emotional well-being and boost memory and motivation. These tools are based on psychological research and are designed to help people stay positive, reflect on their progress, and feel more in control during recovery. Our goal is to help individuals feel supported and remind them that they are more than their injury.

Phase 0

Phase 1

What is a Wise Intervention Program

A wise intervention is a short, focused psychological strategy that helps people think or feel differently in specific situations to improve their outcomes. Unlike long-term therapies or big programs, wise interventions are small but designed to target key thoughts that influence behavior.

They often focus on:

How people understand themselves, others, and their situations
Changing harmful beliefs (like “I don’t belong here” or “I can’t change”)
Offering healthier ways to interpret experiences

Even though they are simple and quick, wise interventions can have long-lasting effects because they change the way people make sense of important moments in life.
As noted in Psyche (2024), it's important to remember that mindset is only part of the picture. Our social, cultural, and economic environments also matter. Wise interventions try to support both personal growth and awareness of the bigger picture.

About Our Wise Intervention Program

Our Wise Intervention Program is a research-based psychological support initiative designed specifically for athletes recovering from injury. Unlike generic self-help advice, wise interventions are brief, targeted exercises grounded in social and cognitive psychology that create lasting, meaningful change in thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

What Makes It “Wise”?

Evidence-Based: Each strategy is backed by research.
Targeted: Focuses on specific recovery challenges like identity loss and motivation.
Scalable: Can be delivered through self-paced exercises.
Lasting Impact: Designed to shift key beliefs and behaviors that support both mental and physical recovery.

Program Highlights:

Reframing Setbacks: Teaching athletes to view injuries as temporary challenges, not defining moments.
Growth Mindset Exercises: Encouraging resilience by emphasizing personal growth and adaptability.
And More!

Who It’s For:
Athletes at any level from high school competitors to professionals navigating the mental side of injury and recovery.

Why It Works:
Small, well-timed psychological shifts can dramatically improve an athlete's recovery experience, motivation, and return-to-sport readiness.

Creative Cognition

Creative cognition involves generating new, meaningful ideas by reorganizing existing knowledge. For injured athletes, it offers a way to reinterpret setbacks, envision positive outcomes, and discover adaptive coping strategies.

Kenett (2024) highlights that creative thinking relies on the structure of one’s knowledge network. This workbook encourages exercises like guided journaling and mind maps to help athletes broaden and reorganize their knowledge promoting flexible, resilient thinking.

Additionally, Ditta and Storm (2018) suggest that memory’s imperfections, which are often seen as flaws, can support creativity. For example, imagining alternative outcomes or reshaping past experiences can help athletes reconstruct positive personal narratives during recovery.

By activating creative cognition through reflection, visualization, and affirmation exercises, this workbook empowers athletes to not only cope with injury but to reimagine their identity and future with optimism.

Our Workbook

When you're healing from an injury, it's easy to feel disconnected from your goals, your team, and even yourself. Journaling helps you bridge that gap. Research shows that writing about your experiences strengthens memory by organizing your thoughts into clear, meaningful stories. Building coherent narratives around both challenges and successes helps connect memory to identity and supports emotional well-being during recovery. For athletes, this can boost mental resilience, speed up emotional recovery, and rebuild a strong, positive sense of identity. Journaling isn't just about recording what happened, it's about taking charge of your mind and reminding yourself that you are more than your injury.

Memory is reconstructive. The way we remember events can change over time, and how we narrate those memories matters for mental health (Wang & Ross, 2007; Vanaken et al., 2022).

Recovery isn't just physical, it's mental too. Research in cognitive science shows that creative activities like coloring stimulate networks in the brain that support attention, emotional regulation, and memory organization. When you combine coloring with positive affirmations, you engage both the creative and executive parts of your brain, helping to strengthen focus, build resilience, and calm the nervous system. For athletes, this kind of mental training is just as important as physical rehab. It supports clearer thinking, boosts motivation, and helps rewire the mind for confidence and growth. Each stroke of color and each positive word is a step toward reclaiming your strength and your story.

Creative activities like coloring strengthen brain networks involved in memory, attention, and cognitive control (Benedek & Fink, 2019). Engaging in focused, meaningful tasks also supports knowledge building and flexible thinking, which are key for mental resilience during recovery (Kenett, 2024).

The pet plant activity is designed to help athletes recovering from injuries rebuild a positive sense of self by caring for something living and growing. By giving attention to a plant, athletes are reminded that healing takes time and care, just like their own recovery. This small act of responsibility encourages reflection and helps shift focus from what has been lost to what can still flourish. Psychologically, it supports the development of autobiographical memory by reinforcing experiences of growth, patience, and resilience. These kinds of meaningful, mindful activities promote memory coherence and a stronger sense of identity, which are essential for both mental recovery and long-term well-being.

Caring for something external like a plant can help athletes create new, positive experiences that support identity development and emotional well-being during recovery (Merrill et al., 2016; Conway et al., 2004)

Self and autobiographical memory system

This diagram shows how our memories and sense of self are connected through systems like episodic memory and the long-term self. Episodic memory stores personal experiences based on our senses, and these memories become part of our autobiographical memory. They are organized into life events and shaped by our long-term self, which includes beliefs, goals, and how we see ourselves. For our project, this helps explain why journaling or telling their story can help injured athletes feel more in control and hopeful. It reminds them they are more than their injury and helps them connect with the bigger picture of who they are.

Logic Model

Our workbook uses simple, research-backed activities such as journaling, affirmations, and reflection to support athletes recovering from injury. The idea is that:

Inputs: Time, effort, and guidance from psychology research
Activities: Gratitude journaling, affirmation coloring, and a plant-care worksheet
Outputs: Completed pages, personal reflections, daily habits
Short-Term Outcomes: Better mood, stronger memory, and a more positive self-view
Long-Term Impact: Improved mental resilience, faster emotional recovery, and a stronger sense of identity beyond the injury

It’s about training the mind like we train the body. Intentionally, consistently, and with care.

About the Authors

Tegan Aden

My name is Tegan Aden and soon i will have a B.S. in Kinesiology with a minor in Sports leadership and athletic management. This project has been meaningful to me as I’ve experienced a major sports injury, it shows that the recovery process has a very creative side to it. This shows that people can get better in different ways showing how there’s more than one way to get meaningful changes done. As a future coach this helps me reframe my mindset around the variety my athletes are subjected to.

Maddie Boehringer

Hi! My name is Maddie Boehringer and I'm soon to receive a B.S. in Kinesiology with a minor in Psychology at Pacific University. This project helped me tie creativity to the psychological side of athletics and the recovery process. As a former collegiate athlete as well as an aspiring clinician I see first hand how injuries impact athletes. This process of developing a resource to aide in the recovery process was so rewarding. After graduation I will be attending the school of Physical Therapy at Pacific University!

Tori Villarmia

Aloha, my name is Tori Villarmia and I am a sophomore majoring in Psychology with a minor in Psychological Health and Well-being. As a former athlete, this project felt especially meaningful because it focused on wise interventions and the tools that can support people recovering from injuries. I’ve learned how small, intentional changes can promote human flourishing and long-term well-being. This experience has not only deepened my understanding of psychology but also helped me reflect on how I can use these insights to support others and myself in times of recovery and growth.

Kadyn Eves

My name is Kadyn Eves and I will soon be graduating with a B.S. in Kinesiology and a minor in Psychology. This project has been meaningful to me as both an athlete who has dealt with many injuries throughout the years and as someone who is aspiring to become a physical therapist.

References

Conway, M. A., Singer, J. A., & Tagini, A. (2004). The self and autobiographical memory: Correspondence and coherence. Social Cognition, 22(5), 491–529. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.22.5.491.50768

Ditta, A. S., & Storm, B. C. (2018). A consideration of the seven sins of memory in the context of creative cognition. Creativity Research Journal, 30(4), 402–417. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2018.1530914

Kenett, Y. N. (2024). The role of knowledge in creative thinking. Creativity Research Journal, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2024.2300235

Merrill, N., Waters, T. E. A., & Fivush, R. (2016). Connecting the self to traumatic and positive events: Links to identity and well-being. Memory, 24(10), 1321–1328. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2015.1111381

Psyche. (2024). The ‘self’ of self-help books is adrift from social and economic facts. https://psyche.co/ideas/the-self-of-self-

help-books-is-adrift-from-social-and-economic-facts

Vanaken, L., Bijttebier, P., Fivush, R., & Hermans, D. (2022). An investigation of the concurrent and longitudinal associations between narrative coherence and mental health mediated by social support. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 13(1), 20438087211068215.

Walton, G. M. (2014). The new science of wise psychological interventions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(1), 73–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413512856

Wang, Q., & Ross, M. (2007). Culture and memory. In S. Kitayama & D. Cohen (Eds.), Handbook of cultural psychology (pp. 645–667). Guilford Press.

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