Diabetes Doesn't Define You

Hi guys.  I was on TuDiabetes.org and came across a great forum on "Motivation?" or lack there of.  Terry Keelan had a great response to someone that was trying to stay or get motivated with their diabetes.  Thank you Terry.

Terry just won the TuDiabetes 2009 Active Lifestyle Award!  See who won here 

Terry has a saying on his about me page I wanted to share as well.  He says "I'm not always IN control, I just feel in control. Usually. And I know how to take control if things start to spin wildly away. "  What a great goal everyone should have.

So here is his response to this forum post. 

 "my blood sugar always seems to be high, and my A1C is just awful. When I do check my blood sugar very often, and eat descent foods my blood sugar is manageable. I know the answer to all my problems is to just get on top of things. However; I just pig out and never test my blood sugar. I think I just need to be motivated to check it, and keep better track of what i eat. can anybody help me? give me some motiviation?"

Terry's response:

It's hard to stay MOTIVATED all the time. Instead of thinking of caring for yourself as requiring constant, grinding, uplifting MOTIVATION!! take things in small steps and look for 'opportunities to do a good deed.' Waiting around for MOTIVATION!! is a bad form of laziness. Instead, look for "efficiency" - the GOOD form of laziness.

For instance, do you 'just pig out'? Look at when and where you pig out. If you only visit restaurants that serve healthy food you don't have to worry about being 'motivated' to buy good stuff to eat - that's all that's there. If you only buy healthy food at the grocery store, you don't have to be 'motivated' to avoid unhealthy stuff at home. That's substituting 'opportunity' for 'MOTIVATION!!" Eat too much at a sitting? Eat standing up. (And never in the car.) Drink a lot of disgusting stuff? Carry a water bottle instead. Small things that create opportunity to do good for yourself and don't require motivation. Does it require motivation to buy a bottle of water? Well, you only have to buy it once. After that you can just refill it.

Never test your blood sugar? NEVER? Set a small goal for yourself to test before each meal and to test in pairs. By testing 'in pairs' I mean create a compulsion to match each pre-meal test with a post-meal test. First focus on testing before each meal. Remind yourself that you have to match that test with one more in order to balance the universe. Remember when you walked home as a kid and you had to touch each part of a fence in a certain order or something terrible would happen? Same idea. If you make it a compulsion you don't have to be MOTIVATED!! (Unless you consider preventing the destruction of the world as we know it a sort of motivation.)

Take small steps. Do one thing at a time. Soon it won't require any more MOTIVATION to test your blood than it does to tie your shoe or take a shower. Just don't try to become "the World's Most Motivated Diabetic" all at once. That requires MOTIVATION and a ton of work and will probably lead to total and complete failure because NONE of us are motivated all the time. Instead, take the lazy man's way and slowly add things to your routine so that they become second nature and require zero motivation - you just do them.

So Forget MOTIVATION

Remember OPPORTUNITY

From now on, every chance is a second chance.

Good luck,

Terry