What I Know and Want You to Know
How do you do this? By spending more time energizing your positive, rather than negative, emotions, and using diabetes as your push to get healthier, and live a more appreciative life. I promise you if you do this, you'll find you're living your best life.
Your best life is what I call an "inspired life." An "inspired life" might look the same as your old life--there are still 24 hours in a day--but it doesn't feel the same. An inspired life is you at your best: doing your best, being your best and giving your best. There's excitement in your bones because you love what you do, and how well you manage your diabetes is a part of that. Contentment flows through your purpose-driven day--very likely you are helping others in some way--and, you're helping yourself knowing enough about diabetes to make wise choices.
Yep, injections, pills, carb counting, getting on the treadmill or in the pool all still count, you've got to know how to care for yourself medically. But something else counts just as much. And that's what's revolutionary to most diabetes care and is the secret to an inspired life: Caring for your emotional well-being. How? By using your own positive emotions to inspire and strengthen you to take better care of your diabetes. And you'll find you do it more automatically and more effortlessly every day.
That's the quality of life I'm living and I want to help you do the same. So, over the past seven years I've dedicated my life to teaching others. I've written two books, write a regular blog, give presentations to patients and medical professionals, and continuously interview fellow patients gaining insight to help you create an exceptional life.
Reading this can mark the beginning of a new way of living with diabetes for you. Those of us who are living successfully with diabetes know that diabetes is not merely a medical condition, it is a way of life. It touches every aspect of our lives and requires our constant and continual involvement. So the question to ask yourself is: How am I living my diabetes life? How do I want to live this diabetes-life? What would I describe my diabetes lifestyle? Mine is proud, energized, appreciative and open.
But I didn't start that way. I was a heavy teenager and never exercised. I ate all the wrong things. But along the way I made a decision that I wanted to live a long and healthy life with diabetes and I took the appropriate steps and shifted my focus from the work of diabetes to what the work gives me.
Look inside yourself now and see what's important to you: What do you love doing? Who do you care about? Why do you want to be healthy? What's yet for you to do with your life? Then decide you're up to the task of creating a life that could even be better than the one you were living before you got diabetes. You can create such a life and I'm here to tell you how.
Loving Yourself and Using Positive Emotions Motivate Better Self-Care
Understand this first: Living your best life with diabetes means having the basics down. That's key number one. You know how medication, food and exercise impact your blood sugar. You know what tests to get on a regular basis--A1C (blood sugar), hypertension (blood pressure), lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides), microalbumin, dilated eye exam--and you get them. Plus, you know what the results mean and how to improve them if necessary. You know when and how often to test your blood sugar and how to adjust your medication on sick days. And while you may now be on a learning curve, soon you'll be able to stand on your street and impress everyone passing by with your knowledge.The second key to unlock your inspired life is to develop your "emotional resilience." To be able to weather the ups and downs diabetes may throw at you-- even the stormiest of days. Creating a sense of well-being within yourself helps you bounce back more quickly when hard times come. And of course when you're more resilient there'll be less hard times. Trust me, you can't get through a chronic condition without a hefty supply of emotional resilience. And I don't want you to just get through living with diabetes. I want you to create an exceptional life for yourself.
Learn All You Can About Diabetes and Love Yourself to Create Your Exceptional Life
3 Ways to Maximize Your Emotional Resilience, and Yes, You Can Start With Baby Steps. Step #1
Change your attitude about how you live with diabetes.
See it as a wake-up call to get healthier and take the proper steps.Go learn about how to eat healthier. What foods to choose. Proper portion sizes. Get active. Get out of that cushy chair or couch and move your tail.
See your diabetes tasks as things you "choose to" do for the benefit they give you--your better life rather than things you "have to," do as though you're five years old and are being punished.
I promise you this: You can have your best life, an exceptional life, not despite having diabetes, but because you have it if you use diabetes as a motivation to create a healthier and more meaningful life.
Maybe you didn't notice the first time around but look back up at the first photo where I'm sitting in a black velvet shirt. See that stop sign way in the background? See how far away from that sign I am? Remember, one key to how to live with diabetes is to never stop moving forward into this best life you're creating.
Step #2
Focus on what you want, not what you don't want.
Spend more time noticing and enjoying the rewards of taking good care of your diabetes. Like having extra energy to do the things you love.Then go find some new things to love.
Stop worrying about what's down the road because you're improving your road every day now. It's like you've "Adopted a highway" --you--and you're beautifying it every day!
Step # 3
Rev up your positive emotions.
Invest more of your energy in love, happiness, gratitude and joy than fear, guilt, pity and worry.HERE'S HOW TO WORK IT
Appreciate everything you have: friends, your love of growing cabbages or throwing pots (on a potter's wheel), seeing that light that comes into someone's eyes when you walk in the door, riveting conversations over a bottle of great red and your spouse, if you have one.
You treat yourself like you would your best friend. Rather than beat yourself up when you make mistakes, you recognize the learning this affords you and say nice, comforting things to yourself. You give yourself pep talks when times are tough. You spend more time admitting you have some very nice qualities and wouldn't anybody be lucky to have you as a friend. Just don't get a big head about it!
You forgive your flaws: You see miscalculating carbs or doses as a learning opportunity.
You leave guilt and worry out the door. Bam. Shut. And invite in a warm cup of tea, a pair of fuzzy slippers and a vision of you doing what you love. You do it, more and more often. Ah, smile.
In fact, make a list right now of the things you love doing and spend some time this week doing them. Know what will happen? I'll tell you. Your spirits will lift, your heart will expand and you'll overflow with love and good feelings most days, most of the day. Achem...you'll more often see the ointment, not the fly. (I looked this expression up, in early times, people were anointed with luscious ointments, creams and oils.)
Energizing your positive emotions you create a mind, body and spirit that can better weather the stormy days living with diabetes, you bounce back more quickly when hard times come 'round. And guess what? There'd be less hard times.
My Books Help You Create Your Best Life, And You'll Be Donating to Charity
1) Knowing how to take care of your diabetes medically
2) Nourishing and nurturing yourself emotionally
My two books are meant to help you do just this.
"50 Diabetes Myths That Can Ruin Your Life: And the 50 Diabetes Myths That Can Save It," comes out this July/August. This book dispels the most common myths that rule our lives and puts the power of the truth directly into your hands. Do you believe, "You have to be fat to get diabetes," or "Eating too many sweets causes diabetes," or "Insulin shots are painful," or "Taking insulin means I'm a failure?" Find out how wrong you are and get all the best recommendations and tips from 21 top diabetes experts and the more than 100 patients I've interviewed. This book explains the crucial information you need to know to best manage diabetes.
"The ABCs Of Loving Yourself With Diabetes." This is where the rubber meets the road; where you'll be guided and coached to tap into your own wellspring of positive emotions to live more courageously, positively and joyfully with diabetes. Living with diabetes in a way that makes you happy rather than sad, excited about life rather than fearful and self-loving rather than self-loathing improves diabetes management. You'll build your emotional fortitude through these 26 lessons that help you let go of fear, frustration, worry and guilt and embrace treating yourself with kindness, patience and forgiveness. You'll find yourself more able to take more positive actions to manage your diabetes.
Soon, you can read this book in Spanish!
In 2008, I donated $500 to Diabetes Research Institute, the premiere organization seeking a cure for diabetes, from the sale of the book. This year I'll do it again, and probably donate even more, to another organization making life better for those with diabetes! You can be a part of it with your purchase.
Buy an ABC book and fund the cure!
50 Diabetes Myths That Can Ruin Your Life: And the 50 Diabetes Truths That Can Save It
This breakthrough book identifies the 50 most prevalent (and potentially disabling) diabetes myths-and thoroughly and expertly explains the life-changing, life-saving truths. It's the only book devoted to debunking diabetes myths.
"Finally someone lets people touched by diabetes know what is real and what is not, and what needs action and what should be ignored." Francine R. Kaufman, M.D., Head, Center for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism Childrens Hospital Los Angeles
The ABCs Of Loving Yourself With Diabetes
Within these pages you'll learn "how-to" overcome the fears, frustrations, guilt and sense of loss living with diabetes and "rev up" your joy, strength, courage and yes, even pride. Riva Greenberg brings you the inspiration and practical insights she's gleaned from thirty-five years of living with diabetes and her work as a motivational speaker and coach. These delightful drawings and powerful messages of strength and hope can guide you to create a happier, healthier life with diabetes.
El ABC para aprender quererte teniendo diabetes (Spanish Edition)
Within these pages you'll learn "how-to" overcome the fears, frustrations, guilt and sense of loss living with diabetes and "rev up" your joy, strength, courage and yes, even pride. Riva Greenberg brings you the inspiration and practical insights she's gleaned from thirty-five years of living with diabetes and her work as a motivational speaker and coach. These delightful drawings and powerful messages of strength and hope can guide you to create a happier, healthier life with diabetes.
Two Critical Lessons: Courage and Pride
Making my living room debut. While I wouldn't ask for diabetes, I'm using it to live an exceptional life.
My D-Blog
A good place to be reminded and keep learning how to use diabetes as a stimulus to create your best life--to dream big dreams and treasure the small moments.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byMy Top Ten Posts
These will help get you going
- Hope, the new 4-letter word?
- Be radical, dare to be hopeful
- Confessions of a 35-year diabetic
- What works for me after all these years
- The exhaustion of chronic illness, or when bad things happen to good people
- We all have our down days
- Life not despite diabetes, but because of it
- Life is just waiting for you to live it
- As diabetes month ends what did you learn?
- A lot of good resources
- What if diabetes was just "the new normal?"
- Change your thinking, change your life
- Using diabetes to create a more meaningful life
- Just what it says, make it your motivation
- Counting my blessings, large and small
- An attitude of gratitude is a must
- Love and the juvenile diabetic
- Discovering someone else was willing to be by my side
- What will you do today that matters?
- Make today, and the rest of your life, as important as it deserves to be
Blogs and Books That Inspire Me
Some great posts and reads to change your inner lens
- DiabetesMine
- You'll find Amy Tenderich's got her journalistic hand on the latest diabetes products, research, politics and developments
- Behavioral Diabetes Institute
- Free classes and info for emotional coping with diabetes
- Fit4D
- Coaches and a cheering squad at the ready to help you design a fitness program
- six until me
- Kerri Sparling's wonderful humorous and insightful writing about being a young woman living with type 1 diabetes
- aiming for grace
- Just what it sounds like
- All the top diabetes news
- A plethora of diabetes blogs to choose from
- Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution
- How eating less carbs can help control blood sugar
- The Five Gifts of Illness
- Finding the positive in your illness
- 3 Seconds: The Power of Thinking Twice
- How to change your thinking in an instant, well three, for greater success
- The Art of Empowerment: Stories and Strategies for Diabetes Educators
- A roadmap to help diabetes educators partner with patients for greater success
Hang On, There's More About Me Below
What I Know for Sure: Living Proud Can Be the Antidote to Diabetes
Winner of 1st Place in the Creative Expression Contest by Eli Lilly and IDF. I believe pride can serve as the "antidote" to diabetes. Don't be afraid to wear your pride.
At forty-eight I was laid off from my job, undergoing diabetic frozen shoulder surgery and getting married--for the first time. There was another first. Not wanting to be a burden to my husband-to-be, I went to a diabetes educator for the first time in 32 years.
All these events formed the perfect midlife crisis - and the beginning of my second career - diabetes author, lecturer and coach.
But I see diabetes management different from the pack.
I believe pride can serve as the "antidote" to diabetes. It is motivating and enduring, and reaching toward it in diabetes management, can move people beyond where discipline, willpower and fear can.
When pride is your touchstone living with diabetes, every day, as they say, you turn lemons into lemonade.
I am convinced that we need to inspire patients to better diabetes management not through emphasizing target numbers, but the rewards of accomplishing those targets--good health, energy, spending time with loved ones and living our dreams. Focusing on what gives life juice and what one loves is what motivates people to desire health.
Further, and not surprisingly, those who use diabetes as a catalyst toward greater meaning and purpose in their lives, live fuller, happier lives.
Good diabetes management includes both medical proficiency and emotional resilience. And good management bestows more than "good" numbers - it remunerates one in strength, courage, confidence, capability, ease and purpose - pride.
Pride creates a closed loop system: when you manage diabetes well you feel proud, feeling proud of managing diabetes well you aim to do your best.
Focusing on what you love, seeing diabetes as a catalyst to creating a healthier and happier life, and pride, imbue people with greater energy, capacity and resolve to manage their care.
I moved from a miserable beginning with diabetes: it was 1972, I was 18 years old and misdiagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I actually had type 1. I spent a dozen years in denial with no meter and high blood sugars, the medical ignorance of the times and a physician, who in trying to "scare me straight," scared me into denial.
But through the years I learned more and shifted my goal from getting through the day to thriving through the years.
For me diabetes is a blessing in disguise; I am far healthier than I would be otherwise. I have used diabetes to:
Lose 30 pounds and keep them off for 25 years
Walk three miles every day;
Have a heart cardiologists praise
Manage my tasks with gumption and grace, even with diabetes' inconsistencies.
I have A1Cs in the 5s, praise reflected back to me in my husband's eyes, a deeper appreciation for all that I have and I look for the beauty in every day.
Diabetes gives me cause for appreciation, celebration, happiness, and yes, a great deal of pride.
Pride is an unquantifiable emotion; we cannot measure its power except in witnessing its results.
Pride is the magical elixir that can transform the hopelessness, helplessness and notion of surviving diabetes into the strength, courage, character and determination to create our best life, our exceptional life.
My Diabetes Life and Work
These are my parents in Central Park, NYC
I'm in the park too, but, well you know, still hatching. If you'd told any of the three of us then I'd be doing what I'm doing today, we wouldn't have believed you. But I was born for it.Today at fifty-five instead of my career winding down, it's winding up! After a successful career in the ad world, living and working in exotic places and seeking how to make a difference in the world, I'm making it.
Through my writing, speaking, coaching and graphic messages (yes, those are my illustrations above) my days are devoted to helping others live a happier, healthier, more joyful and fulfilling life with diabetes.
I'm also working on branding diabetes as a stimulus to actualize a better life.
I write books, you've seen two above, and I'm working on one now that will coach patients to arrive at their "diabetes sweetspot." That place where your best medical and emotional health intersect. That's where you live from when you're creating your best life with diabetes.
What Goes Into a Day Makes a Life
I write articles for Diabetes Health magazine.
I've given more than 30 motivational talks to fellow patients across the country as a peer-mentor educating and inspiring better management.I speak to diabetes professionals as a "patient-expert."
I've interviewed more than 125 people with diabetes, and their loved ones, as part of my ongoing research. Currently, I'm developing a theory to add to the current repertoire of management strategies: Focusing people on what they want, not what they don't want, and using the power of positive emotions motivates more sustainable positive self-care actions.
Luckily I come to the job with the perfect credential: Thirty-seven years of living with type 1 diabetes and a penchant for listening to others and eliciting people's "stories."
One's world is reflected in one's story and when we tell our "diabetes stories" often we begin to heal.
Making a Difference in Spokane
More than 700 people attended Diabetes Day in Spokane, Washington, where I spoke enthusing type 1s to form healthier habits
And at the American Diabetes Association Health Expo
I give presentations at health fairs like this one, in clinics and at conferences.
And With One Patient...
...Which Can Often Mean Everything
Available to Speak to Your Patients or Your Staff
If you want someone who's living with diabetes successfully to talk with your patients, or diabetes professionals to help them partner with and motivate patients, let's talk.Topics include:
How diabetes myths keep patients from good diabetes management
How to use positive emotions to energize more self-care actions
Co-creating successful treatment plans by seeing patients as experts on their own lives
The patient experience and how to create an exceptional life living with diabetes
Customized talk for your group
This September -- Invited to speak at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
To see more about me and my work, please visit my web site.
www.diabetesstories.com
My Guestbook
If you see something you like or there's something you'd like to see, tell me
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- LivinYourLife LivinYourLife Aug 29, 2009 @ 12:36 pm
- Very nice lens. Lots of useful info.
