Fueling Your Body - by Dr. Peggy Marshall
Most of us think about what we eat when we hear the concept “fueling” our bodies. In fact, there are over 242,000,000 results for the topic of nutrition when researched on the internet. Although fueling your body is about what is eaten, it is much more than that. The concept takes in what you do on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level. Fueling our bodies effectively is also a protective factor in resilience. We can live more fully when we discover ways to fuel our bodies differently and commit to them.
Physical
The physical component of fueling your body is comprised of nutrition, exercise, sleep, and recovery. Recovery is often overlooked because for many people it doesn’t resonate with care of the body. Jim Loehr, in “The Power of Full Engagement” shares a number of recovery rituals from moving away from your desk at lunch to eat and go for a walk to shutting down work at a specific time daily and committing to that time. Other rituals can be as simple as taking time for deep breathing and meditation. From a nutrition perspective, it is your responsibility to know your body including what foods energize it and which foods deplete your energy. How often and how much you eat also factor into analyzing this aspect of fueling your body. Tom Rath and Jim Harter in “Wellbeing” share “with every bite and drink we take, we make a choice. We can select something that is net positive and benefits our health or we can choose something that is a net negative.” This is a great way to evaluate your diet. Next, physical exercise boosts energy levels and leads to significant increase in mood. Finding the right exercise for you is key because if you like doing the exercise you are more likely to maintain a regular schedule with it. Finally, we need 7-8 hours of sleep each evening. Rath and Harter believe that sleep is our body’s way of hitting the reset button. Most of the recent research shows that without sleep our bodies do not repair daily damage on a cellular level and our brains do not recover. John Medina in “Brain Rules” shares that loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.
Emotional
We fuel ourselves emotionally when we accept our feelings and learn how to manage them differently. Marc Brackett in “Permission to Feel” shares that until the 1980’s emotions were widely viewed as noise and only got in the way of achievement and success. He adds that when we suppress our feelings, they only get stronger. Much of the work that came from Emotional Intelligence publications in the late 1990’s, including “Working with Emotional Intelligence” by Goleman suggested that self-awareness followed by emotion management was the key to addressing emotions. Brackett has a counter-view to that perspective as he believes that labeling the emotion being felt is essential to successful regulation of the emotion. He has a RULER technique that begins with Recognizing what is being felt, followed by Understanding what is being felt. Brackett encourages us to become emotion scientists seeking to understand what is being felt without value judgements followed by a desire to listen and learn from our emotions. Next comes the Label. Historically, research suggested that people could name between three and six emotions. Now Brackett’s list includes over 100 which individuals can explore to be more precise in naming what is being felt. Once you have the best label you can move to a decision about how to best Express the emotion. And finally, the emotion is Regulated. I have been using the RULER technique with clients recently and they are experiencing greater success with emotion management when the first three steps are completed prior to trying to manage the emotion.
Mental
Fueling the body mentally challenges us to create mental flexibility and powering ourselves by focusing on what matters most. It’s also the space where we check in on the stories we are telling ourselves. A perfect question for this component is to ask yourself if the story you are thinking or sharing is taking you into the best version of yourself or away from it. Mental strength also requires us to manage the noise in our lives. Shawn Achor in “Before Happiness” shares that noise is any information that is negative, false, unnecessary or prevents us from being able to reach our full potential. He places noise in four categories; unusable, untimely, hypothetical, or distracting. A needed skill for everyone is to build the ability to filter through all of the information received on a daily basis to determine what is factual, usable, timely and relevant. How often do you evaluate the external noise in your life based upon these criteria? Achor contends that if we just reduce the noise by 5% we can be considerably more successful with the endeavors we are engaged in.
Spiritual
Our spiritual fuel is a commitment to our passions and our purpose. Are you aligned with your purpose? It is truly when you align your activities with your purpose that deeper feelings of satisfaction and contentment emerge. Simon Sinek in “The Infinite Game” likens purpose to “just cause”. A just cause is “a specific vision of a future state that does not yet exist; a future state so appealing that people are willing to make sacrifices in order to help advance toward that vision”. Another author, Jim Loehr in “The Power of Story” captures the essence of identifying one’s life mission/purpose. He suggests that your purpose should continually renew your spirit; get you going every day; provide an indomitable force towards action; and ground you in your quiet moments. The essential question that we are called to answer about our mission/purpose is that of legacy. What is it that we want to be known for? What do we want to leave behind as a testament to a life well lived? As a graduate of Antioch University, I often reflect on our mission; a quote from Horace Mann “Be Ashamed to Die Until You Have Won Some Victory for Mankind.” What quotes or thinking inspires you into deeper connection with your purpose?
Take a moment to go back through the list to identify areas of strength as well as areas of opportunities. Reflect on where you would like to be more efficient in fueling your body and make a plan to integrate two or three new behaviors into your life. Keep track of the improvements and notice when you see changes in how you feel, think, and behave.
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MESSAGE FROM THE FOUNDER
As we take a break this summer from live webinars, our blogs will focus on information that will help with professional and personal growth. This month’s blog is focusing on “fueling your body”. As one of the nine protective factors of resilience, I believe it’s an opportunity we have to examine where we are on the continuum of fueling ourselves and make adjustments given the VUCA environments we are in and as we approach returning to offices. With this pause in live webinars, you might also want to review recorded webinars on topics that are of interest to you. Global IOC had an intern this summer who spent many hours editing them for your listening pleasure. In the meantime, take good care of yourself this summer and we look forward to being back with you live in September.
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