Failure is a routine part of managing diabetes. How’s that for a downer intro? But it’s true, at least if we are striving for perfection. Even if we are only striving for mediocrity, we fail to achieve that at times, because our bodies fail us. For some, the pancreas just doesn’t make enough (if any) insulin; for others, the cells don’t respond to insulin the way they are supposed to; for most, their genetic make-up set them up for failure.
This article discusses the importance of our being able to handle failure, which is called resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back when things don’t go the way we want. In diabetes management resilience is critical. If we weren’t resilient, one blood glucose reading out of the target range might send us spiraling into despair. Imagine how we would feel when someone made a judging comment or when we ate something that we know makes our blood glucose go high.
Scenarios such as these happen all the time for people with diabetes. We can’t let them paralyze us; we have to learn from them and get on with our lives. This is easier said than done, of course, but it’s a skill we work on in order to successfully manage diabetes and life. So maybe we use our little diabetes “failures” to grow and learn and get stronger every day. We can use them to build resilience. Who knows? It might just make us more resilient in the rest of our lives as well.