Being Better

Why would anyone write a book about fixing an anal fissure? It’s a small split in some sensitive skin, almost always repairable by well-known lifestyle, medicinal, or surgical steps. Plus, lots of short articles are already available. Doesn’t a book seem a bit…overdone?

Not to me. I know that anorectal conditions are an awkward topic, and can be the target of crude humor, embarrassment, or worse. But that’s not the story here.

Fissures are uniquely frustrating: they’re easy to produce, can be hard to resolve, and can recur. People often spend a year or longer attempting to heal, and if success is slow in arriving, relentless pain can dampen interest in many life activities. As I reflected on my own experience, I realized that presenting possible solutions across a range of activities might yield better and faster results.

What’s more, fissures can point to other issues like Crohn’s disease or chronic constipation. A sizable number of short- and long-term troubles can result from poor digestive practices (including seemingly unrelated conditions, such as erectile dysfunction), so a fissure may signal a need to look at your overall life pattern in a more straightforward and structured way. A personal protocol can help with that.

Once you begin professional care, the standard timeline to achieve success through non-surgical options is only a few months long. In an already busy life, just figuring out all the personal changes you need to try can feel time-consuming, making it easy to put off. A protocol pattern could be useful here, too.

On a practical level, professional help comes at a cost; worthwhile for sure, but an expense nonetheless. Surgical resolution has great success rates (90% or higher according to several medical references) but carries small risks of longer-term issues. Plus, I couldn’t help but wonder about the sufferers for whom other procedures weren’t effective. By sharing my protocol as a pattern, might it be possible to bring long-term resolution rates closer to 100%?

And there’s something more. My work as a designer has shown me that personal change usually means making big leaps between knowing, using, and adopting. Simply introducing the FASTR protocol would have been a quicker path. But trying, customizing, and especially adopting a new pattern in life often requires some inner convincing, and that can take a little extra time and space.

In other words, there’s a big difference between knowing how to get better, getting better, and being better. To me, being better is the faster route to a fissure-free future, and in my case, it’s working. That’s the story I wanted to share.

Here are a last few ideas to help you create your own turnaround story:

Shape your arc. Like most stories, a health condition produces an arc: a problem presents itself, gets treated, and resolves into its end state. Unlike a fictional story, though, an arc of care yields real-world output, and a personal protocol invites you to take an active role in shaping your results. A fissure occurs in the last inch of a long tube affected by most, if not all, of life’s choices. It makes sense, then, that good decisions and effective self-treatment can lead to a faster, shorter, and more rewarding arc of care. Plus, if a fissure recurs, you’re better prepared for the sequel.

If nothing I’ve shared seems to address your needs, that, too, can be useful; designers sometimes create “negative space” prototypes to show what a solution isn’t, which can help clarify what an eventual solution might be. If that’s your situation, hopefully your own success story will be shaped by other helpful ideas.

Don’t struggle. Solve. My work as a designer involves observing people as they use products and solutions. If a product isn’t a good fit, some people simply plug along, struggling more or less constantly with its use. Others devise ingenious workarounds that don’t solve the problem but at least lessen the pain. In a twist of psychology that I haven’t yet figured out, a few users actually add aggravation by purposely piling more problems on themselves. In contrast, some users recognize the need for fast change and act as effectively as possible in the present while actively seeking a more satisfying solution.

When it comes to fixing fissures, my experience says that solving is better than struggling. Actively seeking solutions opens up options and opportunities that aren’t easy to see with a passive approach. A solution-oriented mindset can help you respond well to constraints, such as co-morbid conditions, a fissure that doesn’t fully heal, or an unavailable course of treatment. Rather than have constraint lead to complaint, a solving mindset can help you find the best long-term solution within your current situation. And, as human history can attest, such ability to solve despite setbacks has produced some of our greatest achievements.

Aim for delight. Thinking, feeling, designing, building, and happily sharing success are among the great joys of being human. Even so, I’ve been exposed to corporate projects where the highest goal—the highest—was something like “Fewer tech support calls” or “Just make our users stop whining” or “Don’t get fired.” In my experience, such joyless goals never produced enjoyable results.

You need not face such limits. The beauty of building a personal protocol is that you can easily aim for delight. Being fissure-free forever is a great goal, and designing a delightful way to get there is worthy work. Knowing where you’re going will help you take things step by step and make clear choices along the way. Plus, aiming for delight will help you stay focused if circumstances change; you may need to scrap some plans, but you don’t have to give up the goal.

Everyone loves a happy ending. Evidently, releasing tension rates high on the list of human interests. If the box office is a barometer, people still pay plenty to get filled with drama, stress, and concern, only to have their heightened tension quenched by a cinematic surge of cascading calm. And why not? It’s hard to deny the welcome wave of relief that comes when an inner signal says that all is well.

Similarly, the three-act story of ingestion, digestion, and egestion starts when you introduce key elements. The plot line then twists, turns, rises, and falls as it presses ever forward to a final, decisive act. In that last moment—which will replay daily or weekly for the rest of your life—it will help to favor a finish that isn’t forced, pushed, rushed, or strained. Like a beloved movie, the happiest of closures bring everything to a satisfying solution, a comfortable conclusion, and an agreeable end.

Create an encouraging epilogue. Resolving a chronic fissure is no small feat, and achieving success can feel like a major accomplishment. So when all is said and done, when you’ve arrived at the end of your arc, and when you look back on your experience, hopefully your results will be satisfying and encouraging.

But even if you’re just getting started, beginning at the end can help. Designers often visualize a final product and then work backward to the present. Similarly, you might find it encouraging to think of yourself as already having achieved success and ready to tell someone about your experience. What might you say?

As inspiration, I’ll share this last real-life experience:

Needing to escape the high cost of living in Silicon Valley, a friend of ours was moving herself and her teenage son several hours east, so my wife and I volunteered to be part of the moving crew. We got up early, picked up a large rental trailer, and spent a hot morning and early afternoon moving boxes and furniture from our friend’s two-story home. After carefully driving our loaded truck and trailer for hours on a crowded interstate, we arrived at the new house, but the rest of our crew got stuck in traffic. We had to return the trailer that night and get back home for the next day’s activities, so we couldn’t wait. The two of us began hefting heavy household goods at a blazing pace.

In the blizzard of squatting, lifting, turning, and carrying, some of my back muscles seized up, which quickly created full-body tension and a fierce headache of near-migraine proportions. But I still had work to finish, a rental trailer to return, hours of night driving ahead of me, and somewhere to be the next day. What to do?

Around that time, my fissure repair work was in its final stages and I was mulling over the investment of time it would take to write about the FASTR protocol. So I seized on the idea to use my tensed back muscles as a test case. It wasn’t the right anatomy, of course, but it was muscular tension, and it was causing a lot of pain, so why not?

We took a short break. I drank two sports drinks and ate an apple. I checked my anatomy app to mentally model my back muscles. Then I spent a minute or two quietly noticing my internal network. I focused on feedback and traced a route to the tension. I found my target region and imagined it filling with warmth. I thought about calming the neighbors. And then I went for the goal—I tried a simultaneous drop-and-release.

And it worked! I spent a few minutes relaxing the target—a mid-back muscle that I don’t remember consciously controlling before. Tension eased, pain melted away, and my headache subsided. With renewed strength, we unloaded the remaining items, dropped off the trailer, ate a quick, mostly healthy dinner (water and finishing apple included), and drove several hours home. After a hard day’s work, I wasn’t totally tension-free, nor should I have been. But by cooperating with the body’s amazing design, I was able to bring myself back into balance.

“Hey,” I thought, “That’s pretty handy. That’s something I’d be happy to share.”

Let’s close things up by going over The FASTR Essentials.

Last updated: June 2019