I came across this concept (yet again) from a TV show that Jaya and I watching. It is one of those shows where they introduce (mostly) behavior psychology related concepts, and I cannot watch the show without notes open on my cell phone.
Ulysses Pact: A Ulysses pact or Ulysses contract is a freely made decision that is designed and intended to bind oneself in the future. Here is an excerpt from an article that illustrates the Ulysses contract (The Ulysses Pact: An Ancient Technique for Building Better Habits – Nick Wignall ) Also known as a commitment device, The Ulysses Pact is a technique from behavioral psychology that allows us to make a choice in the present that binds us to or “lock us in” to an action or decision in the future, usually by means of a structured system of external constraints or incentives. I will endeavor to expound how this pact is applicable to my challenges with diabetes (what else? :D) and urge you to adopt a pact or two of your own for a happier and healthier future.
We all tend to make a Ulysses pact (of sort) whenever we have a significant event in our life. Be it a health crisis (diabetes in my case) or be it having a child. Following a healthy lifestyle supplemented by medications as in my situation in case of the former or having a structured financial plan to fund the future education in case of the latter. We were, or at the least I was not aware that it was called so called Ulysses pact.
The action plan associated with one’s Ulysses pact will certainly have two attributes. The capabilities incorporated into the action plan and the ability to act on it. I want to distinguish between the terms capability and ability. I used this set of definitions to set the context of this article, and it is germane to theme of this article as you can see soon.
What does ability mean? Ability is a noun. It refers to possession of the means or skill to do something.
Someone with superior athletic abilities is very good at sports or other physical games. A writer of great ability is considered to be an excellent writer. In both cases, ability is used to refer to the qualitative nature of the person.
What does capability mean? Capability is also a noun, and it also refers to the ability to do something. The difference between capability and ability is usually one of pragmatics.
Capability usually refers to either/or propositions in a potential scenario: a corrupt regime may have nuclear capabilities. It can either launch nuclear missiles, or it cannot. A fighter jet may also have stealth capability. It either has this capability, or it does not. In this sense, capability is a quantitative marker.
I was first diagnosed with Diabetes type2 in 1995. One of the prescribed solutions was to lose weight. Every three months I would assure my doctor that I would lose (some) weight by the next visit. It was an empty Ulysses pact because there was no action plan backing it. That saga continued and around 2014 my doctor told me that I maxed out on my medications, and I need to go on Insulin. I was resisting hard to switch to insulin and asked if there is anything at all I can do as a last-ditch effort and lo and behold, the answer is to try losing weight. This time my yet another Ulysses pact is backed by an action plan and a capability (weight loss program) is put in place and the ability to follow through the program is also present. At that time, I was coming in around 220 lbs. I joined a medically supervised weight management program and dropped my weight to around 190 lbs and my HbA1c dropped from 7.2% to 6.2% and halved my medication doses. All this happened in about a year’s time.
That plan pulled me through 2019 as my numbers crept back up to 7.2 and my ability to keep up with plan diminished over the 5 years period and my capability has also been reduced due to age. After all, diabetes is a progressively degenerative process. I have regained about 10 lbs of my lost weight in the previous five years. Around this time came a new drug into market for controlling sugar levels. The GLP1 sub hormone injectables have just been introduced and my doctor suggested augmenting my medication regimen with one of them. My body received the new medication very well and within a month my numbers came down to 6.2 again.
Six years later, I am back at 7.2. I have been true to my pact and kept up (mostly) with my action plan. My new Ulysses compact is to lose weight and action plan includes a new medication that is a compound of GLP1 (all the rage for weight loss these days) and GIP (Glucose Activated Insulinotropic Peptide). The new medication did give me some hard time and for the first time in a while my body took about 4 weeks to get used it.
If you hang in there long enough, hopefully you will find a better solution to your problem. I have had two opportunities to delay the onset of debilitating effects of diabetes and hopefully continue to delay them through my Ulysses pact.
Let me illustrate my point with the following two images. The image was taken in 2014 (serendipity in full force). At that time, my photo editing software did not have any capabilities to mask objects, my abilities were much less developed, and the changes were made across the image. So was my medication which is a sulfonylurea and causes frequent hypoglycemic episodes. It was a brute force medication.
The second image above reprocessed in the latest version of the same photo editing software has much more refined abilities to make edits to different areas of the image differently. So are my current medications. I take three different kinds of medication that act on three different pathways albeit in a less brute force way and minimize the side effects. None of them cause hypoglycemic episode as frequently as sulfonylureas.
Epilog: Like the capabilities in the photo editing tool, like my ability to use those capabilities, my medication regimen has new capabilities, and my ability to use those capabilities has gone up too. I fervently beseech you to make a Ulysses pact backed with an action plan that incorporates capabilities and strive to the best of your ability to execute on it, especially if you are ailing with lifelong disabilities like my diabetes.
P.S. My wife Jaya suggested that I incorporate capability and ability into the article when I was talking to Jaya about how fortuitous my decision to lose weight in 2014, which resulted in two additional opportunities to extend the successful management of my diabetes. she said you mean you have more capabilities now and you are able to do a better job of managing my diabetes became the inspiration to define and differentiate the terms capabilities and abilities in a linguistic pragmatic way.
