Sometimes I find myself reflecting on my younger days, when I had a thriving career with a start-up company and making 6 figures. I was living high on the hog, as they say, I took several vacations a year, wore designer clothes, and had a nice selection of expensive jewelry. 

Every once in a while I see that person in me but she’s really gone. My life changed significantly after being diagnosed with Lyme Disease, most weeks I didn’t even get out of bed, taking my IV Antibiotic Therapy bedside.

The contrast to who I am today is the total opposite of my working years. I no longer wear business clothes, or make-up, make sales calls, and no longer have the remains from that time. I don’t need them. I sold all of my jewelry including my Rolex and tried to peacefully move forward. 

I’ve had some valuable lessons, some came with age, and others from lessons learned. When I was younger and riding high, I thought the good times would never end. I also placed value on items, which is no way to live. After I stripped away all the money and the finer things it could buy, I realized that it was not what I needed to make me happy. I’ve learned the value of saving money.

Today happiness is simple, it is focused on my husband retiring while taking care of my medical needs. Lately, I’ve been spending the majority of the day in bed due to pain and fatigue. A great day is when I’m up, clear-headed, and enjoying my family. 

Do I miss myself from the past? Sure I do at times but would not trade it for who I am today?

I’m centered, know who I am, confident in my choices, and accept this is life with a chronic illness. 

How do you reconcile your past life before chronic illness?

Melinda

If you’ve read my blog for a long time, you know I don’t believe in Resolutions. Resolutions are wish lists, which you write down and never look back on because you’re not vested in making real goals for yourself. Pie in the Sky wishes are not going to come your way unless you have skin in the game to make each goal on the list happen. 

Don’t put pressure to knock each one off of the list. Commit to a goal and work to make it happen. Some goals may take the entire year to complete, so be patient. Then pick another goal and put a plan in place to accomplish the goal which may involve asking someone for help. 

Because of my health issues, I’m realistic about how long the list of goals is. I approach it like work, some goals have to be met, and those beyond meeting your goals are stretch goals. I’ll add a couple stretch goals but don’t feel like I failed if I did not meet them.

2023 has been extremely stressful along with many new diagnoses. My mind has already shifted to 2024. My first goal is to turn my attitude back to being positive. To do that I have two hospitals to file a complaint on and that will help release the scars both hospitals left behind. I feel this is the foundation goal and the others are built from there. 

What I know for sure is that in 2024 each of us has new opportunities our way. We have to have open eyes and open hearts to see through the scammers and garbage to see the real opportunities. 

I’m not against the parties and excitement of New Year’s Eve, I spent many years indulging myself. After many years with Chronic Illnesses, I look more logical this time of year brings. I want to have goals to help keep my mind focused on where I want to be at the end of 2024.

It’s so funny, I met my husband at a New Year’s Eve party. We were the oldest people there so we sat outside around a fire and smoked a cigar. We just celebrated 22 years of marriage.  

Be super safe this holiday if you are out in crowds, wear your mask and if you’re prone to drink passed your limit make sure you have a ride. Life is too short for us to bring negativity or illness into our lives. 

Melinda

Dec 21, 2017 / Susan David

Make this one-word change

Psychologist Susan David explains why a simple switch from “I must go to the gym three times a week” to “I want to go to the gym three times a week” can put your goal within reach.

Ted was a London-based client of mine who became a good friend. He was forty pounds overweight and, because he traveled a lot for work, he found it difficult to get into a healthy routine. After a long flight, he’d show up at a hotel tired, hungry and missing his family. He’d seek out comfort in a cheeseburger and a couple of beers, then he’d graze from the minibar. His wife and doctor were after him to lose weight and exercise, but somehow, knowing what he “had to” do never got him to do it.

Ted married late in life, and he and his wife adopted a boy from Romania named Alex. Alex had been orphaned at a young age and had spent his early years in heartbreaking circumstances. He’d barely been held, touched or spoken to, and was so malnourished he developed long-term learning disabilities.

Despite these difficulties, Alex was a very talented artist. One day, when he was 10, he drew a picture of himself alone, desolate and abandoned. He titled his picture “The Orphan.” Ted was not surprised at the theme — Alex often depicted his early memories — but this time, Ted noted that the figure in the picture was a young adult. When he asked Alex about it, his son began to cry. He said he “just knew” his dad would die because of his poor health habits, leaving Alex fatherless again.

In that moment, Ted later explained to me, he went from feeling that he “had to” change his health habits to feeling that he “wanted to.” He was motivated to get healthy out of love for his child and the desire to see Alex grow up. Ted began to make small changes — ordering salad instead of fries, placing the minibar candy out of sight, and exploring cities on foot rather than by cab — and those changes added up. He lost weight and has kept it off, because he wants to.

When we’re compelled by a wagging finger instead of a willing heart, we end up in an internal tug-of-war between good intentions and less-than-stellar execution.

When we double down on discipline and willpower, this rarely leads to the best results. You may drag yourself to the gym, but how often does that lead to you sticking with an exercise routine? You may call up your relatives out of obligation, but how often do you have a meaningful conversation? When we’re compelled by a wagging finger instead of a willing heart, we end up in an internal tug-of-war between good intentions and less-than-stellar execution.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Plato captured this inner conflict with his metaphor of a chariot being pulled by two very different horses. One horse was passion — our internal urges — and the other was intellect — our rational, moral mind. Plato understood that we are constantly pulled in two opposing directions by what we want to do and what we know we should do. It is our job, as the charioteer, to tame and guide the horses in order to end up where we want to be.

Modern neuroimaging tells us that whenever the impulsive, reward-seeking system in our brain (passion) conflicts with our rational, long-standing goals (intellect), our brain tries to — pardon the pun — rein things in. Let’s say you’re trying to eat better. You’re at a restaurant, and you spot chocolate mousse on the dessert tray. That triggers activity in your nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain associated with pleasure. You want that chocolate mousse. But, no, you remind yourself, I can’t have it. As you muster up the strength to pass on dessert, your inferior frontal gyrus, a part of the brain associated with self-control, kicks in. With both areas activated, our brain is fighting with itself while we try to decide whether to dig in or abstain.

To make matters more complicated, our baser instincts have a head start. According to brain imaging, when we’re faced with a typical choice, basic attributes like taste are processed on average about 195 milliseconds earlier than health attributes. This might explain why, in one study, 74 percent of people said they would choose fruit over chocolate “at some future date,” but when fruit and chocolate were put in front of them, 70 percent grabbed the chocolate.

Want-to goals reflect a person’s genuine interest and values, while have-to goals are imposed, often by a nagging loved one or by our own sense of obligation.

Fortunately, there is a tiny tweak we can make to help us sidestep this competition between the two horses. Like Ted, we can position our goals in terms of what we want to do, as opposed to what we have to. When we tweak our motivation in this way, we don’t have to worry about which part of us prevails — our passion or our intellect — because our whole self is working in harmony.

Want-to goals reflect a person’s genuine interest and values (their “why”). We pursue them because of personal enjoyment, because of the inherent importance of the goal, or because the goal has been assimilated into our core identity. But most important, these goals are freely chosen by us.

Have-to goals, on the other hand, are imposed, often by a nagging loved one (“You’ve gotta lose that gut!”) or by our own sense of obligation, sometimes related to avoiding shame (“Good grief! I look like the Goodyear blimp! I can’t go to the wedding looking like this!”).

You can choose to eat a more healthful diet out of feelings of fear, shame or anxiety. Or you can choose to eat well because you view good health as an important quality that helps you feel good and enjoy life. A key difference between these two kinds of reasons is that although have-to motivations will allow you to make positive changes for a while, eventually that determination is going to break down.

Studies show, for instance, that two people with the same goal of losing five pounds will see that same serving of chocolate mousse very differently depending on their motivation. The person with a want-to motivation will physically experience it as less tempting (“The dessert looks nice, but I’m just not that interested”) and will perceive fewer obstacles in sticking to the goal (“There are other, healthier options on the menu”). Once she’s tweaked her motivation, she no longer feels like she’s struggling against irresistible forces.

Want-to motivation is associated with lower automatic attraction toward the stimuli that are going to trip you up — the old flame, the martini passing by on a waiter’s tray — and instead draws you toward behaviors that can help you achieve your goals. Have-to motivation, on the other hand, actually ramps up temptation because it makes you feel constricted or deprived. In this way, pursuing a goal for have-to reasons can undermine your self-control and make you more vulnerable to doing what you don’t want to do.

I’m not suggesting we should all simply think positive and ignore real concerns. If you can’t find a want to, then that could be a sign that change is in order.

If life is a series of small moments, each of which can be adjusted ever so slightly, and all of which, in combination, can add up to significant change, imagine how much ground you could gain by employing this simple tweak and finding the want to hidden in the have to. We all fall into these subtle traps of language and think, “I have to be on dad duty today,” or “I have to attend another boring meeting.” When we do this, we forget that our current circumstances are often the result of earlier choices we made in service of our values: “I want to be a father,” or “I love the work that I do and want to excel at my job.”

To be clear, I’m not suggesting we should all simply think positive and ignore real underlying concerns. If you can’t find a want to in some particular facet of your life, then that could be a sign that change is in order. If you entered your field because you wanted to make a difference in the world but your company is focused more on the bottom line, it may be time to switch jobs. Or if you’ve come to realize that your significant other is not the person you thought he was, you might need to seek a new relationship. Finding a want to is not about forcing any particular choice; it’s about making it easier to choose things that lead to the life you want.

Excerpted with permission from Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life by arrangement with Avery Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2016, Susan David PhD.

This is a book you might want to add to your shelf or audio to rely on as you face each challenge of “have to” and “want to”.

Melinda