After talking with my client’s 12-year old daughter about the importance of eating healthy, especially that she trains daily to be a world-class gymnast, especially because she has diabetes, I looked at her and asked, “Did you ever consider that your diabetes might actually be a present, a gift to becoming a better gymnast than you ever thought possible?”
Perked up in her seat. Head cocked to the right. Eyes opened wider … Olivia looked up at me inquisitively and replied, “What do you mean?”
I responded with more questions, “Do you have any friends who talk to a health coach about why it is important to eat healthy?” “What would it be like in your performance as an athlete if you could harness your peak energy, strength and aptitude?” “Do you think you would eat as healthy as you do now, because of your diagnosis, or do you think you would eat like your friends?” “Do you think you can be your very best in life, if your diabetes goes unchecked without this conversation?”
We most often deem an uncomfortable experience or a challenging diagnosis as a bad thing, but when I look back over the course of my life, one of the best things that ever happened to me was getting sick.
Getting sick invited me to think in new and very different ways about health and wellness, about disease and symptoms, about what makes sense to me, and what does not … and especially about what it means to look and feel my very best self!
Like a chain reaction, one breakthrough with my health led to one breakthrough in my life, which led to a one breakthrough in my education, which set in motion a complete and utter paradigm shift about what really matters to me.
As young as she is, Olivia understood what I was saying. She connected the dots.
After I left her mother called me, to tell me she heard Olivia telling her friend that her diabetes was a gift, and that she was thankful she got it, and that she wanted to teach her friend about how eating healthy could help her too.
A change in perspective. A small ‘turn of the dial.’ New ways of seeing things leads to new ways of doing things.
Perhaps you're ready to shift your perspective, ready to look and feel your very best, ready to see things differently, to do things differently. If so, let’s have a conversation to see if coaching might make sense for you. Email me at: carol@carol-egan.com
