We were lucky to catch up with Frank Mallon recently and have shared our conversation below.
Frank, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
When I was a senior in high school I tore my ACL in my knee early in my football season. The first doctor I saw wanted to do surgery right away and told me my season was over. I was devastated and the next day I woke up feeling sorry for myself, thinking I was the most unlucky person in the world. That all changed a couple hours later because that day was September 11, 2001. I realized pretty quickly that a lot of people in the world wished they had my problems and my self-pity immediately turned to gratitude for what I did have in my life. Ultimately, I ended up seeing another surgeon who sent me to physical therapy and told me that if I got my knee strong enough, that I might be able to come back and play. So I did and I was able to come back and play the last 5 games of the season on a torn ACL (I had the surgery after the season), which allowed me to play enough to get recruited to go on and play a full college career. But that experience also gave me the exposure to what would ultimately become a career path as a physical therapist. So it was an early lesson in overcoming adversity.
That lesson became even more valuable years later: 5 days after I graduated from physical therapy school, I was diagnosed with Stage IV Hodkin’s Lymphoma, which required a 6 month course of aggressive chemotherapy. I knew that based on what I had gone through with my knee, that if I fought through and stayed positive, optimistic and grateful, that I would see a silver lining in this also. Fortunately the chemotherapy worked well, but going through that gave me the appreciation for the patient experience and it also allowed me to see and appreciate the value of delivering a holistic type of care to the patient, which is now the cornerstone of my business, Renaissance Physical Therapy and Wellness. This journey has allowed me to have some incredible opportunities and blessings with the patients I see and the other providers from many other disciplines that I also collaborate and work with. You could say that none of this would have been possible had I not hurt my knee back in high school. I needed the knee injury to help me start training my resiliency muscles and that’s what allowed me to be able endure and prevail through the next major bout of adversity with the cancer battle.
Some of the “worst” things that have happened to me in my life have turned out to lead me to some of the best things in my life. Remembering that during hard times is what allows me to keep pushing through because I am always confident that if I can get through whatever is difficult in the moment, that the struggle is going to bring me to something bigger and better that I wouldn’t have otherwise found.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Renaissance Physical Therapy and Wellness is a holistically minded physical therapy practice. The focus of the treatments is a whole-body approach which often collaborates closely on-site with other professionals such as dentists, neuro-optometrists, podiatrists and osteopaths, utilizing methods popularized by the Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) as well as manual treatments, which include craniosacral fascial treatments (CFT). We were the first certified Postural Restoration clinic in Pennsylvania. There are many influences on how our body moves and maintains harmony within it. Those variables can be influenced by how we breathe, the alignment of our jaw, and the way that we see (the prescription of our glasses) among others. We investigate all of these, and others, to make sure that the body is set up for an optimal healing environment in all of its systems by being able to work in the most efficient way possible without compensating, which allows us to stay out of “fight-or-flight” mode.
The word “Renaissance” means “rebirth” and the concepts we utilize are a renaissance of thinking about the way that the body works. These methods were a renaissance for me both personally on my own wellness journey but also professionally in how I steered my career. It is my goal that every patient who comes through our clinic is able to experience their own rebirth by benefitting from the methods that helped me when I was a struggling patient.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Hard work. Nothing good or worthwhile can be appreciated if you don’t know the struggle that brought it to you. And the hard work is what makes your wins special. Happiness is found not in the absence of the struggle, but rather BECAUSE of it.
2. Openness to learning and advice. Don’t let yourself waste time before you finally learn a lesson that you could have learned sooner from someone that has already been through it or done it. Success leaves clues!
3. Find the positives when “life happens” and times get tough. Adversity is inevitable for everyone – Don’t take it personal. Life is going to be hard for everyone, but you get to “pick your hard.”
Pursuing what you want to do in life, working hard at it to be the best that you can and surrounding yourself with the right people will mean that your “hard” will be more tolerable than the “hard” you would have had if every time you were faced with a new path, you took the slide down rather than the ladder up. Always take the ladder and good things will happen!
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
For sure. I am always interested in connecting with practitioners who can appreciate that the systems of the body are connected.. Our specialties make us great within certain departments, but the things in our “department” both affect – and are affected by – things happening in other departments. I am always interested in collaborating with practitioners in the disciplines of dentistry/orthodontics, optometry/neuro-optometry, osteopathy, podiatry, fitness and movement (pilates/yoga) and even psychology/mindset, as well as others.
If you work with people on how we move, breathe, sleep, think or perceive the world around us, I want to connect with you and I want you in my collaborative network!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.renaissanceptandwellness.com
- Instagram: @renaissance_pt
- Youtube: @RenaissancePhysicalTherapy
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