Because vs. Despite

When facing the long post-injury road to recovery, an athlete will often proudly proclaim that he’s coming back stronger than ever despite the injury.

The use of that subtle and inconspicuous word poses a risk.

Clemson sports psychologist Cory Shaffer noticed this trend among college athletes he counseled, and believed the innocuous word and the framing it implied was actually inadvertently closing them off to valuable perspective and potential opportunity.

He advocated for a change in diction. Swap despite for because.

Using despite is akin to relegating the difficult experience one endures to a footnote, something to move past and leave behind. Because embraces the experience as a learning opportunity that requires closer self-reflection.

If you come back stronger than ever because of the injury then you’re centering the experience as a learning opportunity and asking questions about how it might serve you.

When advising a young pitcher at Clemson who was undergoing season-ending Tommy John surgery, Shaffer used the analogy of writing a book, in particular one about the player’s baseball life.

“The analogy I always use is: imagine writing a book about the story of yourself in baseball. That kind of mindset, ‘despite this injury,’ it’s almost like you leave that chapter out. It’s sort of a footnote,” Shaffer said. “The mindset I encouraged him, or anyone to have is: ‘No, because of this injury I will come back better than ever.’

“So now if you are writing that same book, it’s a really important chapter. It might be the longest chapter in the book. So much happened in that chapter.”

That pitcher took Shaffer’s reframing to heart. He had time on his side, an entire season of watching and waiting, while his arm healed. So he decided to start from scratch and rebuild his entire delivery. He studied the mechanics of professional pitchers who shared his body frame and asked why their bodies moved the way they did? What was their release point? How did they add velocity? The types of questions and deep analysis he might never consider if healthy and playing a full season.

Before the devastating injury in 2019, Spencer Strider had a fastball in the low 90s, a less heralded scouting report, and an MLB draft selection in the 35th round.

All before he asked the questions that led to a completely transformed delivery.

During his 2023 season with the Atlanta Braves, Strider won 20 games and notched 281 strikeouts, and did so with one of the best fastballs in baseball. He regularly reaches 98 mph and had a strikeout ratio that eclipsed even Pedro Martinez’s peak years.

Okay, understood, a world-class athlete may not be the most relatable example, but I do believe embracing the distinction between these two words, especially following one of life’s many setbacks, offers a valuable learning framework.

To be clear, there are cases of immense trauma where a person should not revisit what they experienced. Where the prescribed recovery is to move past and focus on healing rather than understanding.

But the vast majority are ones where we shun the learning opportunity in favor of false notions of security. Laid off from a job, losing a loved one, enduring rejection or relationship failure, passed over for a long-expected promotion are all emotionally hard setbacks. Ones that make us question ourselves, our motives and ambitions, and our abilities and self-worth. When facing those emotional challenges it’s always easier to turn the other way and try to leave the experience of pain in the rear view mirror.

To do so though is closing the door on the chance to learn something profound about yourself. It relinquishes responsibility. Not responsibility for blame (necessarily), but rather the responsibility to learn and grow. It is these rare moments that offer the kind of fresh yet penetrating perspective that swing open new doors of possibility to become better versions of ourselves. The chance to turn footnotes into longer, more indelible chapters of our lives.

The story comes from an excellent profile of pitcher Spencer Strider written by Travis Sawchick: https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2631293.