The Power of Finding the Positive
I have lived the majority of my life playing a victim. I believed that I had a hard, unfortunate life, and I had the bad luck of being dealt a really bad hand. Playing the victim allowed me to find comfort in the way I behaved. Because my life was so hard, who could blame me for drinking, popping pills, being codependent in my romantic relationships, etc.?
If you have read my story, you know that my personal growth journey started with weight loss. As I started to lose weight, more and more people asked me why I made the choice. When I first started to lose weight, it actually wasn’t a choice I made. It was a result of being on my feet 8 hours a day doing laps around a big box store. When I noticed the weight loss and liked it, I decided to come up with a “why”. I am a type 2 insulin dependent diabetic, and my why became either I lose weight, or I keep eating fast foods and sweets and lose a foot. When the choice was laid out like that, the correct answer became obvious.
I have kept the weight off for nearly 10 years now. I get two questions regarding my weight loss pretty frequently: how did you do it, and why did you do it? While I usually get the two questions, there is only one answer. I was able to lose weight by telling myself I valued my foot way more than I enjoyed fast food and sugar, and because I valued me over my diet, I ate a balanced diet and I exercised. By reflecting on the reason behind why I started to lose weight, it made me view my type 2 diabetes in a whole new light. I became thankful to be a type 2 diabetic. I viewed being diabetic as a positive — if I wasn’t diabetic, would I have decided to lose all the weight? I choose to believe that being diabetic is why I lost all the weight. Because I believe this, I am thankful for the diagnosis.
When someone loses a large amount of weight and they are diabetic, type 2 diabetes often resolves itself, and the person is no longer diabetic. My diabetes actually worsened, and I became insulin dependent after the weight loss. I still remained thankful for the diabetes. If my diabetes had been cured, would I have been able to keep the weight off? I again made the choice to believe if my diabetes had been cured, I may have put the weight back on. I consciously made the choice to view the type 2 diabetes not being resolved as a positive thing.
Could you see another way this could have played out? I certainly could. I could have used the diabetes as the initial motivation to lose weight, and then when my diabetes didn’t resolve like the doctors told me it would, I could have given up. I could have decided life isn’t fair, that I did the best I could, that I had been dealt an unfair hand, and I could have gone out and gotten some ice cream.
I could have made that choice, but I didn’t. I knew that choice would not serve me well. What had served me well in the past, and continues to serve me well now, is doing my best to see the positive in everything. If you look hard enough, there is always a positive spin you can put on anything. Sometimes you really have to think outside the box to find the positive, but you can always find one. The choice really comes down to what you want to focus on your life, and how you want to live your life. If you want to experience more joy in your life, look for the positives — seek them out, and be unyieldingly curious in finding them. It may take some work to see them, but they are there. Finding them could make the difference between you being cast in the role of victim in your life or being cast in the role of survivor. Which role would you prefer to play? The choice is, and always has been, yours.
