Stay Active

Even if you are 100% disabled and can no longer work you can still live an active life. You should make it a point to exercise to whatever capacity you can.  If you can walk, take a walk each day.  Walking is very good for you and helps to keep you fit and healthy.  Even if you can only walk a short distance make it part of your daily routine.  Try to increase the distance that you walk every day.  If you are unable to walk move and rotate your arms and legs and try to get a floor exercise routine from your health care provider.  It is important to try and maintain and improve your body.  I highly recommend that you do some form of resistance training.  Depending on your ability you can do this in the pool, using body weight exercises, with resistance tubing, machines or free weights.  Have your health care provider work with you on finding what is best for you.  Resistance training helps to maintain your muscles and the integrity of your joints, improves flexibility, helps to maintain bone density and makes you look and feel better.  Whats not to love!

Another aspect of staying active is to learn new skills.  Try to find something new that you can do to stay active that is within your physical capacity.  If you were a laborer and are now unable to do labor you may find something new that interests you even more.  You really need to stop looking at yourself as a common laborer.  Everyone is blessed with some unique talent that they can develop.  It is simply a matter of exploring your interests and finding what it is that sparks your creativity.  You may be able to obtain a grant to further your education.  I have done this and it was not easy to get my grant approved.  But I was persistent and eventually my persistence paid off.  If you are denied a grant use the knowledge of the staff at the organization to help you find other grant money.  If you learn to make a good appeal and come across as a nice person people will often try their best to help you find other grant money.  If you are seriously disabled I would be hesitant to take out a student loan.  You may find that you are not physically able to work at all and you will have a student loan to pay back.  However if your disability is moderate a student loan may be a good option.  There are some people that are too disabled to work and in that case I recommend that you find a creative outlet to keep your mind active.  If you have a flair for writing start a blog, write poetry or short stories.  You may have expert knowledge in your former trade and be able to write how to articles and sell them on the web.  I have done this and found free software called Open Office that allowed me to create pdf documents that can be easily downloaded to customers.  You have to be willing to explore the web a bit but often times there are free websites that allow you to publish on the web.  You may need to publish free articles but this is a good way to create a following.  Once you have a following you can create a website to sell your e-books.  If you are not a writer you may have a flare for art.  Once you have developed your skills you may be able to get a church or civic group to hold an exhibit and sale of your work.  My point is that if you are creative you can create opportunities to earn a living off of your talent.  But remember it will not be easy and you may have to work quite hard at getting people to buy your work product.  But don't let resistance stop you, if it were easy everyone would be doing it and there would be no place left for you.

Your contribution to society is not limited to earning a living.  You may like to council other disabled people, be active in a religion or volunteer for a civic group.  All of these things are important and somebody has to do them.  Your importance and value are always much greater than what you do to earn a living.  It is very important to have something to do and feel that you contribute in some way.  You need to explore what interests you and try to become a part of it.  Spiritual growth is larger than any religion.  You can be an atheist and still be a spiritual person.  It is a matter of fellowship and personal growth.  We all have a need to find exceptence and love.  There are so many ways to do this I could not possibly list them.  If you are not finding your thing ask a friend to help you come up with ideas.  Your thing is out there you need to keep a positive attitude and stay active.