A Key to Motivation
by: Dr. Albert Valente
Recently, I sat with one of my diabetic patients, a very pleasant woman in her mid 40’s, married, a mother of three and working full time. We both sat in frustration that over the past few years we have been unable to achieve good blood sugar control. I say we as I try to work with my patients not only as their doctor but also as their health coach in helping them to achieve better health.
Through the year she stopped working with her endocrinologist, and neither I nor our office nutritionist had been able to help her control her blood sugar, lose any weight or get her to follow a diabetic diet. Of course she was counseled on the traditional medical concerns about uncontrolled diabetes leading to kidney failure, blindness, heart disease and amputations, to name just a few diabetic complications, but nothing seemed to make a difference. It seemed all we could do was to increase her dose of insulin at each visit.
Rather than the ‘tough love’ approach that many providers resort to, I empathetically asked her, “So what are we going to do?” She timidly responded, “I don’t know, I guess I have no motivation.” I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly and asked her to repeat what she just said. Again, she stated a bit louder, “I guess I have no motivation.”
I thought about this a moment and then with the greatest clarity in my mind, thinking about how I’ve tried to motivate not only my patients but also myself throughout my life, something so clear, so simple yet so powerful came to my mind.
I turned back towards her and realizing that she had 3 children I asked her, “Did you get your kids off to school this morning?” She responded, “Yes of course!” I asked if she had made each of her children lunch for school. She stated with great pride, “I would never miss that!”
With a renewed energy I then expressed to her, “see you actually do have motivation!” She seemed a bit puzzled but I went on to explain that although she just told me that she had no motivation that in fact she did. She, like the rest of us, had motivation for those things that she placed a ‘high value’ on. In fact, she had so much internal motivation to take care of her kids that she didn’t even consider this motivation at all.
I was actually thinking this out myself as I was discussing it with her. I paused and then with a look of surprise and delight she looked at me and said, “So I guess I do have motivation and have had it all along, just not towards my diabetes or my own health”. She then asked, “Well how do I find motivation for that?”
That’s when it hit me, the key to finding motivation for anything is to place a value, a ‘high value,’ on what you want to achieve. Your motivation will then find you.
In this case, the item of high value that was missing was her health, her weight and her diabetes. She just had not placed a value on this. Not because she didn’t care, or she didn’t understand diabetes, she had just directed her motivation to other areas of her life and internally had assigned ‘no’ value to her health.
I went on to explain that if she placed a high value on her health and diabetes, her motivation would internally drive her to embrace the changes she needed to make in her life to control her blood sugar, and work towards being healthier and literally living longer. She would also simultaneously be decreasing her stress as she would now be living consistent between her goals and her actions, or stated another way, between what she valued and how she lived.
As she was leaving I asked her to think about what we just discussed and to begin to think about placing a ‘high value’ on her health. Not for me, not for her anyone else, but for herself. I could see that she immediately felt more empowered and less helpless, no longer feeling destined to succumb to the negative consequences of uncontrolled diabetes. On her way out she made a follow up appointment with our nutritionist.
I saw her back 2 weeks later. Her entire mood was uplifted, she was smiling and she came down the hall to give me a hug and thank me. She was beaming and couldn’t wait to tell me that after realizing she did in fact have motivation, she internally decided to make her health a ‘high value’, and in less than 2 weeks she had lost 6 pounds. She was already feeling better, and immediately noted better blood sugar control.
She said, “I don’t know why but it seems so simple now. I am eating better, and found myself waking in the morning almost an hour earlier (with no alarm clock) to try and walk or get some sort of exercise before my husband or kids even needed to get up”. She added that she realized herself that she needed to stop finding excuses and start finding solutions. She responded, “Who was I kidding that that I didn’t have time to make my own healthy lunch, I was already making lunch for my 3 kids every morning. How hard was it to take out an extra plastic bowl or brown paper bag for myself?
I was very excited for her, and in return, thanked her. Despite the tremendous volume of information about motivation, most of us just don’t know how to make it happen. It’s usually not enough to merely tell yourself or anyone else to just find their motivation and get going. The key is understanding what actually motivates us.
This patient encounter helped unlock the key to that elusive question, how does one find their motivation? Answer, place a high value on what you want to achieve, and your motivation will find you.
Stay fit, fearless and fabulous.
– Dr. V
