When I was sixteen, eight years before I developed type 1 diabetes, I purchased a poster of a speech given by Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers. The speech on that poster was titled “What it Takes to be Number One,” and it was Lombardi’s manifesto on winning. It begins with:

“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing . . .”

Something about Lombardi’s decisive belief and determination in this speech spoke to me, and I had to have that poster for my room. Maybe it was because I had spent my entire childhood without ever getting to experience the exhilaration of winning at anything. From the age of three, I had been raised in an oppressive religious cult that beat me down and taught me to live every day in fear. I was taught that aspiration and competition were evils, so I was never allowed to play sports and vie for number one against my peers in any endeavor.

Fortunately, my parents left the cult when I was fifteen. But by that point I had missed out on so much. I’d lost twelve years of getting to be a kid. As I got older, I desperately wanted to achieve success, to triumph, to win. So I framed that poster and hung it on the wall opposite my bed so it would be the first thing I saw each morning when I woke up.

I’ve often thought about that speech within the context of diabetes and how on the surface it just doesn’t seem to apply to us. We can’t always win; we can’t get it right all of the time. Our blood sugar levels are going to run high sometimes and low at others. No matter how much effort we put into self-management, we will still have these fluctuations, be at higher risk for stroke and heart attack, and have some risk of developing complications such as kidney disease.

But if you read this speech in its entirety and pay close attention to Lombardi’s words, you begin to get a real understanding of his message. It also helps if you know a little bit about his history as a coach. Vince Lombardi didn’t win every game he coached. He won an impressive 71.9% of the NFL games he coached and 90% of the playoff games. Lombardi knew that you couldn’t win them all. The message I take from this poignant speech is one of attitude. We may not be able to win every game or keep our blood sugars in the perfect range of a non-diabetic, but we can keep a winning mentality, drive, and focus as we engage in our daily battles with whatever challenges or adversities we face.

What it takes to be number one for us diabetics is to start every day with the attitude and belief that we can achieve success in our diabetes self-management. If we do this long enough, it will become that winning habit that Lombardi speaks of, and that will guide us toward the highest levels of success possible.

(Excerpt from The Gift of Diabetes: How a Problematic Pancreas Helped Me Conquer Fear, Find Hope, and Discover the Truth of Destiny! by Tad Roberts, Unpublished, 2017)

P.S. Here’s the speech in it’s entirety (even today it sends shivers up my spine):

“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all of the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that’s first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don’t ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.

Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he’s got to play from the ground up – from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s O.K. You’ve got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second.

Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization – an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win – to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it is.

It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That’s why they are there – to compete. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules – but to win.

And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat.

I don’t say these things because I believe in the ‘brute’ nature of men or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour — his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear — is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.”

– Coach Vincent T. Lombardi