Habit

By Scott Coulter There was a comment on my previous week's blog entry, "there is merit in habit." The comment was in reference to building and maintaining healthy habits, both in terms of emotional health and in terms of physical well-being. It was a great comment, and one that stuck with me. I think for most people, "habit" has a negative connotation. We often talk about "not slipping into bad habits," or "breaking the habit." When we DO talk about good habits, it's usually a suggestion for something we SHOULD do, but don't do often enough. "It would be a good habit if you'd try…" Diabetes is full of good habits, and we should recognize this. Foremost among the habits of Diabetians (it sounds like a line from a nature documentary — The Habits of Diabetians) is that of monitoring. We monitor everything — food intake, insulin ratios, physical exercise levels, caloric totals, blood pressure, A1C readings, signs of hypoglycemia, and the list goes on. All of this monitoring is a habit we can't help but develop. And it does something very useful for not only our diabetes care, but for our overall intellectual development. We become very good at managing and tracking complex systems capable of dynamic change. Let me put that another way: We're good at multitasking, and we can handle unexpected changes. Good habit number two for people living with diabetes: We maintain a constant awareness of our physical state as we run a 24-hour, nonstop scan in the backs of ...
Source: Diabetes Self-Management - Category: Diabetes Authors: Source Type: blogs