The man was tired.
Tired of fighting.
Tired of trying to outpace the diagnosis that had shaped his life and stolen his sight, one blurry corner at a time.
Diabetes wasn’t just a disease to him; it was his inheritance, a sentence passed down like an heirloom from his mother.
She’d lost her own battle young, and he figured he was bound to follow.
His doctor sent him to therapy, concerned that his stubborn mental habits were finally catching up to his body, wearing him down in ways he hadn’t imagined.
When he came to see Amy Morin for therapy, he already knew all the steps to manage his blood sugar, but he’d given up on trying—just didn’t believe the effort would change a thing.
So when he reluctantly agreed to make one small change- give up his two-liter-a-day Pepsi habit, it wasn’t with much conviction.
He didn’t expect anything miraculous, just the faint possibility that maybe—just maybe—he could change something.
And he didn’t like Diet Pepsi, told me so every single week.
Yet he kept on with it, trading one habit for another, sticking with the bitterness he’d chosen over the sweetness that had once been his comfort.
And then, one day, he noticed a small shift in the numbers, a whisper of change.
It was slight, like the tiniest light slipping through a crack, but it was there.
That was all he needed—a reminder that life could respond to a person’s actions.
Slowly, he started shifting more things.
He swapped out the nightly ice cream for something with less sugar.
He bought a clunky old exercise bike at a thrift store and set it up in front of his TV, pedaling away every evening.
He wasn’t looking for a revolution.
He was just trying, in his quiet, unassuming way, to make it a little better.
One night, while pedaling, he realized the TV was just a touch clearer.
The world came into focus—not much, but enough to know it wasn’t static.
It was moving, changing, evolving right along with him.
He set a goal, one that would have seemed impossible months earlier: to get his driver’s license back.
That license was freedom, a way to go places on his own, to stop feeling like a man cut off.
By the time he walked into my office for our last session, there was something different about him.
He had found a new place within himself—a quiet, unshakeable strength that was his alone.
It wasn’t about fighting fate anymore.
It was about knowing he could make small changes and trust they’d lead him somewhere he wanted to go.
Here's the takeaway:
Small actions can open doors to big changes.
That man’s story?
It’s proof that one small habit, one choice to stick with it, can be all it takes to shift everything.
When he stopped asking if it was worth it and just tried, the world opened up a little more each day.
So think about it.
What’s one thing you could change, one small move you could make, today?
Don’t worry about the endgame—just take that step.
Because those little moves? That’s where real strength begins.
This post was inspired by Amy Morin's Ted Talk, The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong.