Why You Stop Doing What You Say You Want To Do

It might be the reason you have a hard time committing to goals

As humans, we are hard-wired with certain biological needs: the need to eat, the need to sleep, the need to avoid pain. For the most part, this has served as well as a species. But there are some situations where that doesn’t work in our favor.

Think about a time when you had a really big goal. Maybe it was something diabetes-related, maybe it was something else. You envisioned the goal, you mapped out the steps to get there, and then you got started! How long did it take before you weren’t so sure you wanted this goal after all? A day? A week? A month?

What were those thoughts and feelings rushing through your mind and body? What was it like to experience them? How did you respond?

For some of you, you were able to “power through” those uncomfortable experiences because the goal was important to you, and perhaps you believed that this was temporary discomfort. For others of you, you stopped, pivoted, and went back to the choices that you were comfortable with, even if they didn’t match up with where you wanted to be.

This is experiential avoidance. And it can make improving diabetes management very difficult.