What the New Year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the New Year. – Vern McClellan
WHO ARE WE?
In this new year, if you are new to our blog, we are solution-focused diabetes care and education specialists. We are passionate about doing diabetes care and education differently. Too much of life is spent focusing on problems. Instead, we believe in turning attention to possibilities, opportunities, and a fresh vision for the future. We see the benefit in stepping alongside our clients as “think partners” to focus on what’s important to them, what’s already going well, and build upon that to reach their goals so that they may live life to the fullest. We invite you to join us in doing the same if this is a new paradigm for you. We are advocates for person-centered, strengths-based language, and believe that self-compassion is essential when living with a chronic condition.
OUR MISSION
As we welcome the new year, our Mission continues to be that We guide healthcare professionals in taking a solution-focused approach to practice to enable clients with diabetes to embrace possibilities, opportunities, and a fresh vision for the future.
Our interest and passion around taking a solution-focused approach to practice (and life), means acknowledging what has gone well, acknowledging how that success was achieved, then identifying how to do more of that and build upon that moving forward.
8 TIPS TO TAKE INTO 2022 WITH YOU:
With the start of the new year we’ve been doing alot of reflection. We’ve pondered what has gone well for us, how we were able to achieve that, and how we can build on that. Today we’re sharing 8 tips that we’re taking into 2022 with us and we challenge you to do the same as well as share with your clients:
- Make yourself a priority once in a while. It’s not selfish. It’s necessary. Skimping on personal needs can be harmful to our overall well-being. When we don’t put ourselves first and take care of ourselves, certain mental and physical risks can develop and lead down an unhealthy path.
- Smile often and laugh more. Finding humor and laughter in the everyday world is a key opportunity to reduce stress. It can also decrease anxiety, fear, and help people cope with challenging situations. Personally, we often feel rejuvenated and ready to face the world again after a good belly laugh or a few silly moments. Suddenly the weight of the world is lifted off our shoulders. Learn more in our blog here.
- Learn something new. Many studies show that learning new skills is a way to improve your life. Learning something new can even tie in with #1 above. It may be an “excuse” you need for some “me time”. An appointment with yourself – so to speak – and a break from work or family. Our big “learning something new” in the new year is learning how to host a podcast! Stay tuned, more to come on that!
- Take a daily gratitude walk. As you walk, reflect on and express gratitude for what you are thankful for in the day. It can help you feel less stressed and focus on the good. Find other tips to get started with daily gratitude practice in oru blog here.
- Talk positive to yourself, instead of listening to yourself. Rather than listening to your mind’s fears, doubts, and complaints, speak to yourself with words of affirmation and encouragement. Learn more about the power of self-acceptance and helping cultivate it in others in our blog here, and positive affirmations here.
- Focus on “get to” rather than “have to” each day. It’s not about what we have to do. It’s about what we get to do. It’s easy to act as if we don’t have a choice, but in reality we DO have a choice on a great many things in life. We can choose our attitude, our actions, and how we view life.
- Remember your “WHY”. Remember WHY you do what you do. When we forget the WHY, it’s easy to get burnt out.
- Look for ways to serve and care. Referring back to #2, smiling is an easy way to show you care and takes nothing but a little effort. Maybe it’s helping someone achieve their goals or shovel their walk (this is top of mind for Tami as we write with 6-inches of snow outside her window). Think about it, if we do one act of kindness each day of the year, that can change 365 lives!
We were hoping to add “Travel whenever possible” to this list since we both were avid travelers before the pandemic. But not this year with yet another Covid-19 surge. So we’ll save that one for next year (fingers crossed)!
WHAT’S TO COME?
Throughout 2021 we launched a series of posts related to applying a solution-focused approach to diabetes technology. What will we write about in 2022? To start off, we will be sharing practical tips to transform primary care visits by incorporating solution-focused tactics to support diabetes management.
We hope that 2022 will be kinder to all of us and that together we can learn how to help people with diabetes live their best life!
We welcome anyone interested in our approach to Subscribe to our blog and we’ll email you when a new post is published!
If you are a health care professional and interested in learning more about our solution-focused practice and approach, when you subscribe to our blog, we’ll send you in return a FREE resource of 10 Solution-Focused Questions to start a solution-focused discussion with your clients.
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Deb is employed by Dexcom, but her words and opinions in this blog are her own.
Tami is employed by the University of Kentucky HealthCare Barnstable Brown DIabetes Center, but her words and opinions in this blog are her own.
