10:30am | Regardless of your credentials, accomplishments, or connections, I believe we all have a period of time in our lives where we reach a funk. Meaning, we know we need to change a particular habit, but we can’t force ourselves to do it. Some people want to stop gambling, others want to quit smoking, whereas I wanted to keep fighting a disease I’ve had since the age of 12, diabetes.
If you desire a change in your life, you need to understand how you create change. The exact protocol to change a bad habit is up for debate, but the generalized concept that influences change is not. Neuro-associations refer to what we perceive as pleasure and what we perceive as pain. We are motivated to move towards pleasure and move away from pain. In order to create change, sometimes you must see more pain in not making the decision to change than in staying on the same path.
When you are at the hands of a chronic disease, it can be much more pleasurable to pretend you don’t have it, to forget it. It’s way easier to skip the meter and not know the numbers: to not be disappointed, frustrated, or worried. Likewise, we perceive it as painful when we know that important things are out of control, especially when related to our own health and vitality.
The act of switching your neuro-associations, or switching your perception of what you now perceive as pleasurable, such as not checking my sugar, to more of a pain source, is not as simple as it sounds. I theorize that if you want to change yourself, sometimes you have to see it through the painful eyes of somebody who may hold your future demise. This takes a little creativity. So with this in mind, off I went.
As I searched the corridors of Veteran’s Hospital in Long Beach, I felt somewhat awkward that I had to pre-qualify an amputee for this article. That’s right, loss of a limb due to war trauma wouldn’t be sufficient. I needed somebody like me; I needed a diabetic.
After searching the hospitals diabetic clinic, the cafeteria, and multiple hallways, I found the man I needed to talk to in the hospital’s gift shop. I questioned, “Would you happen to be diabetic?” In his wheelchair, with a smile on his face and pointing to his shortened limb, he replied “Yes.”
Meet Gary, a Native American Vietnam Vet, who agreed to discuss his perspective with me because I reminded him of his son. Gary had his leg amputated in May 2011 after having been diagnosed with diabetes six years ago. I’ve had my condition for 15 years.
While Gary felt he had been dealt a few rough hands that contributed to his amputation, he was man enough to admit that there were a few lifestyle factors he could have better implemented, such as exercise, that could have possibly changed the outcome.
Perhaps his most memorable line came about when I asked him what he’d say to another diabetic who still had all of his limbs, to which he replied, “Don’t roll the dice on your own health, know your numbers.” It was as if he was reading my mind.
For Gary, the moment in time when his bad habit’s couldn’t have caused any more pain, and therefore couldn’t have motivated him any more to change, is when he lost his leg. We must consider is if it’s possible to change our ways before we lose something that’s irreplaceable. You don’t want your worst nightmare to come true and the fact that you even think it’s possible must propel you to change today.
Which brings me to my main point: the fear (pain) of the unknown is the most significant reason for why people don’t change, even when they feel they should. Therefore, if it is the unknown that we have a hard time pursuing ourselves, we must make our unknown a reality through the eyes of someone that could be us.
Seeing the amputation, hearing Gary’s voice, and feeling this man’s struggle with limitations caused me to at least reflect. If you know your weak area and can challenge your emotions to absorb possible hardship through the experience of someone else- you’d be surprised how motivating the phenomena can be. And in this process one can fully empathize.
Thank you Gary, I’m back taking my sugar again.