Getting Ready for Change
You’ve had enough. You want to change. Perhaps you’ve been kicking the idea of changing up your unhealthy lifestyle habits for weeks or months or even years. But something happened. Somewhere along the way you had the big wake up call. One day you stopped saying “Someday I will…”. Instead, you “get it”. The time for change is now. You’re ready for the work and time and effort it will take to achieve your wellness goal. I have always been curious to find out what put someone in a state of readiness for change. They often say something like, “It’s time to feel better and get healthy.” I say, “Oh come on. Now tell me what really happened to get you off first base.” And it will be something like: “The scary vacation photos” or “When my doctor finally had to put me on meds for high cholesterol and diabetes” or “When my husband/wife/friend started to make comments about my appearance and my habits.” For most of us, the wakeup call comes when we allow our pain to touch us. As a young doctor in training, I remembered seeing a husband and wife in my clinic. I followed them for about a year and then saw the wife a year and a half later. She was over 50 pounds heavier, and now afflicted with high blood pressure as well as diabetes. I recall walking right past her in the waiting room because I didn’t recognize her. It turned out that since I’d last seen them, her husband had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died 3 months later. “It was the worst time of my life,” she confided. “We barely had enough time to get our act together. And after that, I just couldn’t cope.” After hearing this for years, I started calling that extra weight, the “care giving pounds”. So, the wakeup call comes when you become aware that the tried-and-true ways of numbing yourself from the pain of your stress--- overeating, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, anger, social withdrawal--- are not working anymore. Instead, you begin to notice a visceral feeling of discomfort that cannot be neutralized by your old health destructive ways. When the wakeup call comes, there’s a Click! in your head. It’s when you realize the pain you’ll feel from changing will be far less than the pain of staying where you are. Then, you’re ready to start making changes.
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