Nourishment and Space
Have you ever gone “all in” with a game plan to improve your health and hit a wall for no apparent reason?
In spite of the plan working and feeling great, one day your mojo is gone, leaving you wondering “what happened ?!” and with thoughts about “what am I going to do now?”. In an earlier posting, I mentioned grief as a possible cause for this mysterious change of heart. Today, we’ll explore another aspect of this phenomenon: Space. Not the final frontier mentioned in Star Trek, but brain space or the amount of emotional energy one has for taking on life and all its responsibilities.
What does brain space have to do with nourishment you might ask?
Well…everything. Psychologists tell us that folks make over 200 decisions a day about food – when they are not trying to make diet changes. That number goes up if you are trying to make any changes (food related or not). Every decision requires some amount of concentration and focus. Think of it as adding to your current list of multi-tasking items. Without enough emotional energy, the ability to make decisions, big or small, will begin to wane, if not just stop. Imagine the amount of emotional energy any of us have as the size of a video console. Now begin to divide that space up by the people and activities that need your attention. I usually assume a large amount will go to children and your partner, maybe you have sick parents who need help, maybe a big project at work that demands extra time, maybe a demanding chronic illness and the list goes on. When I’m working with clients I usually find the amount of brain space they have for changing their diet or adding exercise or meditation to their life is about the size of the nail on their little finger. It’s not much and if it shrinks even further by default (let’s say you have to pick up your sick co-worker’s responsibilities or your car breaks down) your emotional energy will shift so there is enough to deal with the current higher priority. Usually, energy is taken from the lowest priority or the one that will affect only you, i.e., your self-care game plan. If we need to draw energy from other areas quickly, as in the examples above, then we may find the new behaviors, or parts of a new game plan, just disappear because the other events are more important.
I’ve found most of us start new goals, especially ones that demand much discipline, during times when there is extra brain space available, i.e., you’ve just finished a big project at work and the next few weeks promise to be quiet or your children are visiting their grandparents for the summer. It is easy to forget these are temporary times and eventually our emotional energy will need to go back to the higher priority areas. If this shift hasn't been planned for, the new game plan quickly goes away as we reprioritize our energy, usually just as you were starting to enjoy the results of your commitment to new habits
So what to do?
The answer is to honor your brain space as finite (think about that little fingernail) and plan for the time when your emotional energy may have to shift away from your new goals. I think the idea of finite anything is especially difficult for overachievers and perfectionists. We are used to stepping up to the plate and making things happen!! No matter the cost – whether emotional (suck it up and make the hard decisions others won’t) or physical (not getting enough sleep, missing our time at the gym), we get them done!...using up every ounce of our emotional energy and oftentimes, then some.
Reflection:
Think of all that is expected- or required- of you in the course of a day. Consider a diary that serves to highlight the categories of where and how you spend your time each week. Work, childcare, sleep are obvious categories, but others might include care-taking extended family and/or neighbors, volunteer work, church/activities, book club, etc. This is not to discourage you from any of these activities but to highlight why it may be difficult to find enough time for self-care goals. As with all things nourishing, the more you know about yourself, and your priorities, the more likely you are to be successful in tailoring a game plan to your needs. This is where the spirit part of mind-body-spirit comes in. Who is your True Self? And are you honoring that part of you?
Practicing for the future: Think back to a time when you were enjoying much success with a game plan and either life interrupted your plans or you suddenly lost interest. What outside factors or higher priorities may have cut into your plans? Consider a lack of brain space and list ways you can re-prioritize your goals while finding the middle ground between what has to be done and what you would like to continue doing. It might be helpful to think in terms of the number of hours per day you have to work with. If the change in events only leaves you 20-30 minutes per day to attend to your goals, your solution will look quite different than if you are still left with a full day per week for yourself.