Introduction
Self-awareness is the first component of emotional intelligence, as well as a major character feature of a successful leader. It is important to understand one’s emotions, strengths, and weaknesses, and to be able to evaluate how they impact one’s projected image as a leader (Goleman, 2004, p.4). I realized that I had gained extra weight when it started affecting my health, my level of fitness, and my social communication. The realization that I needed to start working on it soon followed, but I couldn’t find the correct motivation to do anything about it, and the issue got worse due to inaction.
Symptoms of lack motivation
During the whole period, I was acutely aware of a slowly growing problem. Initially, I ignored it by persuading myself that the weight issue hasn’t become that serious yet and that physical changes weren’t particularly noticeable, and that I could resolve the situation at any time I wanted. This false point of view was further reinforced by the commentary of acquaintances, who met my voiced concerns with smiles, reassuring me that I was paranoid.
When the problem began reaching a more severe stage, I started making attempts to motivate myself properly. I developed a weight loss strategy, which consisted of a healthier diet, workouts, and self-motivating messages and notes, as well as imploring people of my surroundings to help me motivate. However, I found it hard to sustain motivation, due to believing that I had more important responsibilities to attend to, due to the methodology seemingly not providing the results in the span of time I desired, or due to achieving minor success, and losing motivation after.
I realized that the situation became critical when my excess weight reached 45 kg.
Causes of lack motivation
Despite recognizing the presence of a problem, feeling a personal and social need to resolve it, and making attempts to motivate myself, I was obviously not reaching any success.
In the end, I realized that I needed to develop a new approach for fighting with extra weight. But developing that new approach heavily relied on finding why, despite having a reason to improve myself, I was unable to turn it into motivation, and why my motivational efforts were unsuccessful.
First, I determined that previously I attempted to motivate myself by considering the impact fat has on my social image, and how it goes against the existing norms. I also motivated myself by considering the long-term dangers of being overweight. When I did this, I set myself a goal of taking the necessary actions to restore my weight to a comfortable normal.
Also, at the later stages of my problem, I attempted to motivate myself through stern talks, trying to use coercive style of managements on myself (Goleman, 2000, p 82).
With all of these methods, the results were short-lived, if present at all. It was very each to lose motivation, or to find a reason to indulge myself in ways that were unhealthy (stressful day at work, needed a “reward”), which was followed up by a sense of defeat and self-loathing after I had broken the diet or skipped on the morning jog. This feeling only increased the sense of pointlessness of my attempts to fight extra weight and demotivated me further.
I determined that externalizing motivation by emphasizing my public image created a very fickle reason to lose weight. I realized that why I am considerate of other people’s opinions and thoughts, I am also sufficiently independent, and a prolonged appeal to “What will others think?” argument eventually created a semi-aggressive response of “Am I that reliant on other people’s opinions of me?” Along with coercive talks I tried to motivate myself with, this approach created a semi-conscious desire to oppose these arguments. This is the result of what Frederick Herzberg defined as Negative Psychological KITA (“Kick in the pants”)(Herzberg, 2003, p.3). Such psychological influence is not motivating, and more of a push in a direction desired. Due to its negative nature, the mind is fighting the suggestion even to its detriment, and progress stops once pressure stops.
Long-term effects of being overweight were also not an adequate motivation, due to the attitude with which I started trying to lose weight. As mentioned before, my goal was to return to my original body weight, and I was willing to put myself into temporary discomfort to achieve this. Me having a high expectancy for the fat loss regime conflicted with the long-term nature of the undertaking. I allowed myself to return to bad practices at the first sign of results, which, of course, negated all of the successes and created a feeling of failure (Jones & George, 2013, p.403).
My methods were flawed as well. Since I conditioned myself to view dieting and working out as a temporary measure aimed at achieving my goal, I took a very dictatorial approach towards myself. I denied myself all of the potentially unhealthy foods and activities, set myself into a very strict regime of workouts, and denied myself a lot of “treats” until the moment I would succeed at losing weight.
While briefly effective, this approach created a sense of mental and physical exhaustion and even a feeling of resentment towards me and others for not being able to enjoy life the same way as other people in my surroundings. This self-resentment only increased if these feelings caused me to break my regime.
As we can see, all of these methods created a vicious cycle of “trying to motivate me” > “starting work on the issues” > “failing” > “losing motivation” > “situation becoming worse” > “trying to motivate myself again”. After a while, I had extremely low expectations of my success, which, as we have learned, creates low productivity (Livingston, 1988, p.6)
Solution
After analyzing my failings, I started making changes to my attitude. First of all, I realized I needed to move away from short-term motivation, and choose a more long-term approach, which, however, would remain relevant in short-term as well. I changed my goals from “becoming slim” to “staying slim”. This meant focusing not on a healthy regime, but on a healthy lifestyle. To achieve it, I needed to refuse myself all of the harmful attributes daily life and to find healthy replacements for them. For example, I got used to treating myself to fruit instead of sweets, making myself expensive, delicious tea instead of hot chocolate, going on hikes with friends instead of spending weekends on a couch. I also had to get rid of the feeling that I was missing out on life and stop putting off things of interest (like trips to the seaside or making new social connections) until after I was fit.
Finally, I realized I needed a way to track my achievements in a way that I would recognize them (Herzberg, 2003, p.7). I made a photo album which I used to observe changes to my body as I got slimmer, and also kept notes of the changes in weight.
Ultimately, this allowed me to not only lose 45 kg of fat but also maintain that result, as well as improve my lifestyle. This improved my self-regulation skills, my motivational skills, and rebuilt my confidence.
References
Goleman, D. (2000). Leadership That Gets Results. Harvard Business Review.
Goleman, D. (2004). What Makes a Leader? Harvard Business Review.
Herzberg, F. (2003). One More Time. Harvard Business Review.
Jones, G. R., & George, J. M. (2013). Contemporary Management (8th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
Livingston, J.S. (1988). Pygmalion. Harvard Business Review.