The Most Important Thing You Can Do To Live Chronically Well
Do you ever wonder what it would take for you to thrive with chronic illness?
To feel like you found your balance? To feel like you are getting the right support? To feel like you are in charge of your life and your health?
While each person living with chronic illness has differing diagnoses and life circumstances, the most important thing that each of us can do to live well with chronic illness is actually common among all of us.
To thrive with chronic illness, we must each take the wheel of our life and health.
Realistically, how do you take the wheel? And, how do you do it when you are truly not feeling well?
Here are 3 Ways To Take The Wheel Of Your Life With Chronic Illness
1. Recognize that you have agency over your life and health
Simply becoming open to the idea that you have agency over what goes on in your life and healthcare is incredibly important. This means taking an active role in your life and health, not a passive role.
Sometimes it can be difficult to take the wheel of your health. It can be a lot to manage when you are exhausted, have multiple providers, prescriptions, appointments and treatment protocols. It can be very attractive to wish for your fairy godmother to appear, take care of you and tell you exactly what to do. However, over the long-term, this is not very realistic for obvious reasons and might not end up reflecting what you want for yourself anyway.
Beyond that, taking a more active role in our life and lifestyle can have substantial positive impacts. Simply following doctors orders is usually not enough to find your balance with chronic illness. I believe that there is a lot that you can do for yourself through lifestyle choices that relate to reducing stress (physical, mental and environmental), better nourishing your body, etc. While you may or may not be able to cure your illness, you can certainly make a positive impact. In my case, feeling empowered to take a more active role completely changed my life and health for the better.
For more reading on taking on recognizing how much agency you have, read this blog post.
2. Recognize that you are the expert on YOU
Who knows the most about your symptoms, your experience, your values, your responsibilities, your hopes and how that all fits together into your life? You do!
Recognizing how much expertise you have can truly empower you to make decisions that work best for YOU! The reason this works is because you know yourself and your situation better than anyone else. And, you have the most at stake.
This is especially important because there is no one-size-fits-all approach to living well with chronic illness. You have a lot of value and expertise simply by being you. Your opinions matter because no one knows your situation better than you do.
You know what can trigger your symptoms. You know when you are running out of energy. You know how your illness impacts the rest of your life.
By seeing this as expertise, you can help to make more empowered decisions and to find the right support you need - in all aspects of your life.
3. Be Your Own CEO and Get the right support
Simply put — if you don’t know what is going on in your life and health, who does? If you are not in charge of making things happen, who is?
This is why it is important for you to step into the role as your own CEO.
Health
The path to truly taking control of your health (to the extent it is controllable) is by becoming your own CEO. This means becoming a partner or collaborator with your healthcare providers rather than taking a passive role. Since we already established that you are an expert on living with chronic illness and how that impacts your life, use your expertise to work with your provider.
Gaining more agency over your healthcare will result in improvements to your health and quality of life. It will help you to get better, more personalized care that works for you. And, it will put you in the driver’s seat of your health.
To learn more about advocating for yourself in the healthcare system, read this blog post!
Life
This sentiment also applies to other parts of your life. If you find that you need more support at home, at work, with your responsibilities, you are going to find a more tailored fit for what you need if you are the one asking for the right support.
This could look like asking friends or family for support with these tasks, or by paying a person or service to take a task off your hands - like housekeeping, cooking, errands, childcare, etc. This will look different for each of us based on our own life situation, what can be delegated, and what resources we have available.
Delegating is crucial for so many of us with chronic illness. When we can clear our plate a bit, we can focus more on what we need to manage our chronic illness or promote healing where we can.
To read more about calling the shots in your daily life, read this blog post!
Taking the wheel….
Means advocating for yourself. For more information about advocating for yourself in all areas of your life, check out all my posts on self-advocacy here.
Becoming your own CEO might sound a bit overwhelming, especially if you are having a rough go with symptoms or if you are newly diagnosed and just trying to figure out the terrain. If this sounds all sounds like a bit much to you, please know that becoming your own best advocate can be a long-term process. But, chronic illness requires us to play the long game and usually involves one step at a time. However, becoming open to the idea of taking the wheel is an important step in finding your path to living Chronically Well.
To recap, you can take the wheel and become your own best CEO by doing the following:
Recognize that you have agency in your life and health
Become proactive and engaged in decisions
Recognize that you are the expert on you
Work with your healthcare providers by sharing your expertise
Make empowered decisions about your healthcare, providers and treatment plan
Find the support you need at home, work and in daily life
In truth, becoming the CEO that you have been longing for takes time. However, when you have a chronic illness, you are playing a long game. When you start to take more agency and make empowered decisions (even if this happens little by little), each action is getting you closer to living Chronically Well!
What ideas do you have about how to better meet your needs and live Chronically Well?
How can you be proactive about making that happen?
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