Resilience Personified Part 1:
The Cyborg Mentality
We’ve talked about this at length, but recovery from surgery is never just a physical battle, it’s an emotional and mental one as well. In the first of the Resilience Personified series, I had the opportunity to sit down with the incredible Victor Egonu, creator of Cyborg For Life. Throughout our sitdown, I got to understand more about his journey to finding inner strength after his limb-lengthening surgery. Victor’s grit and determination transformed his own challenges into a brand that now supports limb-lengthening and reconstructive surgery patients. Through his work, he has helped countless people with his podcasts, YouTube videos, and educational information over the past five years. He is a professional body builder, health consultant, limb-lengthening warrior, and self-proclaimed Cyborg. Victor’s idea is that you become a "cyborg" after surgery—part human, part medical intervention—which captures the resilience and strength required in recovery.
Victor's experience not only highlights the power of physical resilience, but also the strength of the mind and having the grit to overcome challenges. Here are a few key takeaways from my sit-down with Victor, that will undoubtedly inspire anyone facing a surgery recovery.
Mental Manifestation and Reverse Engineering:
When it comes to recovery, Victor emphasizes the importance of having a clear end goal in mind and breaking it down into smaller, actionable steps—which is a lot of what coaching aims to help with, too. Whether it’s recovering from surgery or working toward any goal, focusing on the process helps maintain motivation throughout your journey. The emphasis on “mini-goals” helps break big goals down into smaller, less overwhelming steps. Here’s what Victor has to say about it:
“Whatever [your goal] is, you have to look at the end goal and reverse engineer [it]. I think that seeing the angle of reverse engineering it and having this mental manifestation of seeing with proper perspective of what you want to achieve is going to give you the motivation in a little bite size pieces just so you can get through that PT session, when you don't want to. [You might say] “I can just stay in bed and wilt away.” And believe me, those thoughts will come. [But] having your why, why you want to go through this procedure, this process, to get back to where you want to be. If you have that, and build on it with consistency, it starts to compound and then that becomes a habit. That's what I call the cyborg mentality.”
Growth Through Setbacks and Using Grit to Get Through Anything:
Victor has a message about setbacks that anyone going through surgery needs to hear: Setbacks and pain are temporary, and they help you build psychological armor—making you stronger in the long run. Victor shares his journey and encourages people to keep going, even when things seem difficult. Where did Victor’s sense of grit and determination come from?
“Having setbacks in life and sometimes, I wanted to give up. But then I realized after giving up from running into a setback, that it never turned out to be any better than if I just worked through that setback. Because working through setbacks or failures is tough—it’s painful. But I would tell myself one thing: that all of this pain from the setback is temporary. Pain will fade. Struggles will pass; but the results of just staying the course [and] staying committed to the process—that will last a lifetime. I would tell myself that if you have resilience and you can have this grit—that psychological body armor, or the cyborg mentality or cyborg mode... You can get through anything.”
Patience and Consistency:
Lastly, Victor touches on a point that all people in recovery can relate to: having patience to get through the day-to-day aspects of recovery, which oftentimes takes grit. Consistency in recovery is key. Even on tough days when the progress seems small, showing up, doing the work, and staying committed to the process can lead to significant results over time. When asked what one piece of advice his current self would give to his younger self going through surgery, Victor said this:
“Your limits aren't set in stone. You can do more than you think you can. In fact, surgeries are pretty simple. The anesthesia and the setup takes longer than the surgery a lot of time. That's not the hard part. [The hard part is] being mentally patient, working consistently every day, and moving the needle.”
Victor’s story proves that recovery isn’t just about healing the body—it’s just as much about strengthening the mind. No matter where you are in recovery, resilience and mental toughness are the driving forces that turn obstacles into growth. The Cyborg Mentality isn’t just about bouncing back—it’s about persistence, patience, and pushing past limits and coming back stronger than ever.
