The agency that I work at has a pretty large free library of business related books, so I have definitely been taking advantage of this lately. I like to read these business books because they give me a lot of motivation, not just for the business world, but in my personal and diabetes world as well. I just recently finished, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.
This book was awesome. Let me give a quick background. About 3-4 years ago I could not stand Apple. I hated everything Apple, I hated Google, I hated all that hip stuff, I thought you were a douche bag just because you owned it. Well, I purchased an iPhone 2.5 years ago and my entire life changed after that. I still own an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook Pro, and am purchasing an iMac very shortly. I am now part of the Apple culture. And with that, Steve Jobs is now one of my idols. The book is about his presentation skills and how powerful his presentations are. When he speaks, people listen. He gains people’s attention, their lives stop to hear what he has to say next. There were a few quotes that stood out to me in this book. The first one was when Steve Jobs had said, “Doing the right thing can never be the wrong thing.”
At first, I was like…well yea, duh, if it’s right then it can’t be wrong. But then when I thought about it more, doing what you feel is the right thing to do does not always turn out with the best outcome, but that does not mean that it still was not the right thing to do. I related this to my diabetes by saying that eating ice cream at my niece’s birthday party is the right thing to do, no matter the outcome. Testing my blood sugar and eating healthy foods is the right thing to do. Even if my blood sugar spikes after a perfect meal, I am not going to let it get me down, because I did the right thing, and that can never be wrong.
The next quote that moved me, which there are plenty of quotes similiar to this, especially from Gary Vaynerchuk (this is a link to a post on my other blog about why I was fired because of my passion for owning my own business several years ago). But Jobs had said, “I’d rather live my passion then be buried a rich man, if you are not happy, make a change.” This doesn’t just go for money and wealth, but it relates to my health as well. You know what, I have been extremely unhappy with the way my health has been going down hill, and 2 weeks ago, I made a serious change in my life and I have lost weight, and I can see the differences in my body. I wasn’t happy, so I made a change. I stopped bitching and complaining and hoping for a change, and did something about it.
Finally, my last piece of motivation for this post has nothing to do with this book, but something that I go back to all the time, whenever I need a boost of motivation is this amazing video. Please, it is 5 minutes, just watch it:
And for me personally, where he says cancer, I say diabetes.
I think we all need a little push at times when it comes to motivation. Well sometimes a big one! But even if it’s not related to diabetes, there is inspiration out there that we can relate to it. I’m glad you were able to make the changes you were looking for. It’s not always easy to do that. Keep it up!
As Steve Jobs said, you have to connect the dots, which can only happen after some years dealing with a situation. Although I don’t like having diabetes, I’ve been able to help and encourage thousands of people with diabetes through my blogs.
Keep the motivation!
From another Apple fan 😉