“Get comfortable being uncomfortable” is a phrase I first grew familiar with when I developed a more serious workout regimen a few years ago.

My daily exercise usually consists of walking my dog, then spending 30-45 minutes completing a workout video of some sort. While these workouts vary in terms of exercise type, one thing remains consistent among them all…and that is the ferocity of the trainers, who besides showing me proper form and technique, also do their part by shouting motivational phrases as I sweat.

“It doesn’t get easier, you just get stronger!”, “You don’t wish for it, you have to work for it!”, and of course, part of the title of this blog post…”Get comfortable being uncomfortable!”

During a particularly challenging workout, that saying stuck out to me. Suddenly, it was dawning on me that this was an extremely good way of summing up life with diabetes. After all, nobody asks for diabetes to happen to them – it just does, and it’s up to people with diabetes and their care teams (loved ones, healthcare providers, and so forth) to accept it and adapt to it.

And let’s be real here: There’s nothing comfortable about diabetes. In fact, there’s a lot of uncomfortable things about it. Constant pokes and prods from sharp needles, interrupted nights of sleep, gadgets that alarm at inopportune and sometimes awkward times…and these are just a few of the things that keep me and other people living with diabetes walking on a tightrope at times.

Despite the often-disagreeable ways of diabetes, it’s important that those of us who live with it find comfort in embracing it for what it is. We can’t change diabetes itself, but we do have the power to change how we perceive life with it. So while diabetes has the ability to make me physically uncomfortable (and frustrated, sad, annoyed, anxious…a whole laundry list of emotions), it’s on me to get comfortable with these feelings and live my best life in spite of them. And like exercise, though it can be an exhausting, challenging, and the very last thing I might want to do sometimes, it’s also something that benefits my body and mind in the moment and in the long run. Why not think about diabetes in the same way, or even move past comfortability with it and into embracing it?

At this point in my diabetes journey, I think I’m mostly there…and therefore happy to say that I am comfortable being uncomfortable.