Introduction: Case for Change
Have you given up on New Year’s resolutions because of repeated failures to achieve your goals? Are you searching for the right way to get sustainable results? Has the scale betrayed you again in this new year as you struggled to manage your weight amidst a work from home or constant adrenaline rush lifestyle? You are not alone. As so many of us do, we look back to our learnings from the past to inform our changes for the future. We are taking a different spin to a prior post in the context of supporting your wellbeing in this new year.
The Challenges:
As we enter a new year and vow to make changes in our personal and professional lives, we struggle with how best to do that, particularly amidst what we may hear about the failure rate of New Year Resolutions. In our efforts to find an example that might be universal, 2020 found many of us struggling with weight maintenance given our moving less and staring into a computer screen for 8-10 hours/day. While there is great literature on successful habit cultivation, they often fail to take a systems’ and mindset perspective necessary in dealing with complex situations.
2020 has required us to create structures AND be flexible and adaptive; leverage what we know as we advance into what is not known; honor existing familiar traditions as we create new ways of being with each other. In revisiting our post from May of 2020 on taking ourselves seriously and taking ourselves lightly, we present this spin as it relates to improving personal health goals around weight management.
Leveraging taking ourselves seriously and taking ourselves lightly:
At SixSEED Partners, we help our clients integrate both/and thinking in addition to traditional problem-solving- either/or approaches. The elimination of perceptions of “good or bad,” “right or wrong,” helps our clients to take a more systems-oriented approach to complex challenges. In the polarity map pasted below, you will notice a common tension of a serious/structured weight management approach and a more playful and spontaneous approach to weight management and health. Effective and sustainable weight management requires leveraging both upper poles, and mitigating the risk of overdoing either, to the neglect of the other.
When we take ourselves too seriously to the neglect of a lighter approach, our inner judgers become active when we find that we’re not meeting our health goals and we’re not enjoying life. If we overfocus on a more spontaneous approach to weight management (as just one common health attribute), we’re having fun but not meeting our physical health goals. Using a polarity thinking frame helps us to see ourselves as a system that requires leveraging both poles.
What can you do? (action items and warning signs):
Even as I write this blog, I notice physical signs where my breathing becomes more shallow; there is a sense of tightness and heaviness and I notice my active judger interfering with my free flow of writing. As I notice my own warning signs of taking myself too seriously, I open my chest more to allow easier breathing; I laugh and put this blog in the context of other problems in our world today; and I take a time out to exercise and move my body which amazingly impacts my movement in thinking. I also access others more expert than I to help modify and edit, knowing I’m not alone in this work. See our sample map below for actions you might take for success in weight management and other similar thorny challenges.
Let’s hear from you:
What have you found helpful in leveraging taking yourself seriously and taking yourself lightly? In our next blog, we’ll be focusing on our leadership development seed as we discuss a common challenge of holding others accountable AND giving them freedom in doing their job. If you’re interested in learning more about how our team can help yours, contact us today!
Reviewing this polarity map with welled up energy in me and a huge smile on my face! I can think of many friends, family and clients I want to share it with, and I’ll start with self! Thank you!