Those who frequent this forum will no doubt be familiar with the the impulse to take drastic, even ‘heroic’, action in the face of some desire to do something or a challenge that needs to be overcome. This can range from trying to make sure to stick to a daily meditation habit, or it can mean learning the meaning of 5000 words in a new language. If I can just hit the problem smack in the centre with the right combination of energy and determination, the argument runs, then I’ll probably be able to get through to my goal.
There’s a lot of science which suggests that things aren’t necessarily this easy. Some goals are hard to keep plugging away at on an ongoing basis; witness the failure of most new year’s resolutions. It’s hard not to be seduced by the idea, though. Many parts of the dominant Anglo-American culture seem to push us in that direction. ‘The American Dream’ encourages hard work in the face of obstacles to reach new stations and status in life. Countless diet, health and self-improvement programmes of all stripes encourage this kind of heroic action. As a corollary, failure is an indication that not enough effort was applied. How often are the overweight told that they are just not trying hard enough?
The rigours, rules and rubrics of Beeminder can sometimes encourage this kind of thinking. There’s a good deal of wise counsel on the blog and in this forum which suggests otherwise – that working on smaller improvements might be a better idea than the path of the hero – but it’s hard to kick a habit, I guess.
Beeminder, My Health and Me: an Interlude
Before I get to the core of what I wanted to write, a little background is perhaps necessary. I’ve used Beeminder for several years, with mostly excellent results. I hammered out 100,000 words of my PhD (a ‘shitty first draft’) over the course of a couple of months in 2012. I’ve kept up with a daily meditation habit more or less continuously for the past couple of years. I started a flossing habit (for which I no longer need the Beeminder prompt). I enforced a challenge to study Arabic for a 100 hours of deliberate practice prior to taking a summer course this year. I could go on. Beeminder is a big part of why I consider myself successful in a variety of parts of my life.
In 2011 I got sick, following some routine dental surgery. The ins and outs of it would be boring to detail, but I had a mix of things involving heart arrhythmia, anxiety, panic attacks, abdominal pain, kidney issues, inflammation and food sensitivities. It included a lot of time spent visiting doctors and hospitals. All this has happened off and on, for the past four years. It was these health issues that first led me to the quantified self movement as a way of approaching my health. Beeminder was an early addition to my quiver of self-care. I added in various things to keep plugging away at to support my recovery.
Add to my personal health issues the fact that my mother got extremely sick and I ended up having to stop my regular work, move to Holland and back home to live with her. I had initially discounted the stress that being the default caregiver in cases of chronic illness – first cancer coupled with surgery and chemotherapy, then severe heart failure followed by a serious stroke – can bring, but I think it made just as big an impact as my own health problems.
Introducing the Lion, or How Success Spirals Can Turn Septic
At some point, my desire for change and my self-belief that I could some how heroically pull my body and my illness into submission started to get in the way of my recovery. I recognise this mostly in retrospect. At the time, the only thing that indicated something was wrong was the sea of Bees (my non-canonical term to describe Beeminder goals) on the screen in front of me, most of which were Red or Yellow. I was constantly teetering on the edge of failure. Every three or four months I’d dramatically flop on my face, default on a bunch of goals, nurse my defeat for a week or two, only to get right back on the horse. Every time I’d tell myself to start slowly, to create goals with a realistic chance of being able to keep going with them in the long-term. I’d start out with two or three core goals, then would gradually increase them as I felt more comfortable and confident. A few months later, I’d have a dozen or two, and keeping up with my Bees would be the core of what I did each day.
All this reflected the values of what I’m going to call my inner lion. The lion believes that it’s possible to force yourself through difficulties, through pain. The lion says, “I can take anything.” The lion says an emphatic ‘Yes!’. The lion is no stranger to aggression or to the belief that struggle is a core part of what it means to be alive. The lion’s motto is “ALL THE BEES!”
Writing all of this down, I can see how it looks. To describe it this way makes it seem self-evident that this approach wasn’t working. But at the time, it made sense. I don’t know what proportion of Beeminder users have over a dozen goals, but I’m guessing the tendency towards what Bethany has called the ‘Type Bee’ personality makes it likely that people over-invest in a system like this, especially if it’s working for them. At the time, I didn’t start out with the idea of creating twenty-plus goals. It was an incremental process: add one, success, add one, success, add one…
Team Ladybird, or How Following the Rules Sometimes Isn’t Enough
Cut to a few months ago. My abdominal pain had led me down a bunch of different paths, but the one that ended up having the most success was broadly modifying my diet according to the specifications of the auto-immune paleo approach. Known as AIP, this diet is a pretty strict kind of elimination diet. Most people on it tend to have really serious full-blown auto-immune conditions. Hashimoto’s, rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis are examples you may have heard of, but the list is huge. (See here for more). I found I was less symptomatic when I stuck to the list of ‘approved’ foods, even if I didn’t have anything approaching the kind of full-blown autoimmune symptoms that many adherents report.
After several months on the most restrictive version, the idea is that you can start introducing certain foods and food groups back in to see if you have a reaction. AIP is extremely restrictive in many ways. No dairy, no nuts, no legumes, no gluten, no grains. Lots of things are completely off the menu. Couple that with the fact that I was also low-FODMAP at the same time (see this New Yorker piece), I was forced to be fairly creative about what I ate each day. The restrictions of the AIP are such that it’s also more or less impossible to eat out any more, since you can’t guarantee restaurants won’t use certain ingredients in their cooking.
That said, the AIP approach can offer an extremely healthy template for what to eat. It’s a very pure way of cooking: everything is fresh; it includes lots of vegetables and a mix of meat and fish; the core emphasis is on maximising nutritionally-dense ingredients (think organ meats and dark leafy greens). I found quite quickly that my metabolism started humming away very contentedly after a month or two of exclusively following the AIP-approved food lists. Removing the rubbish from my diet meant that my system (read: my body, my digestion, my energy levels) started to function well and I started to feel better. A lot of my symptoms became less severe after a while. Some disappeared completely.
But it didn’t clear everything up.
This is when I discovered my inner ladybird. I read a book whose title I’m even vaguely embarrassed to write on the page here, but I’ll do it anyway: The Loving Diet by Jessica Flanigan. The core thought that I took away from this book was that sometimes AIP isn’t enough. It’s something that you’ll find everywhere among advocates and clinicians who recommend the AIP approach, but often it’s just lip service. Everyone these days knows on some level that too much stress can confound progress in a whole bunch of issues, but it’s often left to a side-comment or a footnote. Jessica Flanigan puts that back to the forefront. She argues that if you don’t find a way to work on things like self-talk, mental attitudes, and general acceptance, all the effort you put into the dietary restrictions might not bring much in terms of results.
(By the way, apologies if you find the metaphor distracting / off-putting; believe me, I was in the same boat when I first came across it.)
The ladybird stands for love. Self-care and a slow gentleness are core values. The ladybird takes time for reflection and mindfulness, and has the humility to change course when things aren’t working. The ladybird is open to change. The ladybird likes to say “No”, and embraces minimalism. Needless to say, the ladybird lives in a different part of the jungle to the lion.
I’m generally wary of diametrically opposed characterisations. Nothing is ever that simple and I love to inhabit the realm of shades of grey.
But the more I read in Flanigan’s book, the more I found value in what she was saying. Medical testing showed that my sympathetic nervous system is consistently overfiring. My cortisol levels are in a more or less permanent state of arousal, slowing only gently towards the end of the day. On one hand, it helps explain how I’ve been able to harness my inner lion for so long. Energy is rarely in short supply and I’m usually able to push forward with tasks. Cortisol is the Lion’s best friend. Long-term, though, this is unsustainable. At some point, my adrenal glands will become exhausted. Most likely, a lot of my abdominal systems relate to this over-stressed system. It’s never a good idea to be in a constant state of fight-or-flight.
So I’ve been trying to embrace my inner ladybird. I’ve been trying to encourage my parasympathetic nervous system (read Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers for a great explanation of how the interaction between the two works). This doesn’t come naturally to me. My default pathway is that of the Lion. I still have to remind myself to breathe, to take time to notice how my body is feeling, to try to live more in the present moment instead of reaching for something in the future.
So, of course, I started a few new Beeminder goals. My meditation is ongoing – now accompanied by a Muse brainwave-reading sensor – as is my use of the Emwave heart rate variability trainer. I’m making sleep a priority. I’m taking one day a week where I don’t use any technology that involves a backlit screen (laptops, phones, and televisions, but not my old-generation Kindle). I’m trying to encourage a gratitude habit.
Middle Ground, Kaizen and Long-Term Approaches
So why did I write all this, and why am I posting it on the Beeminder forum. I guess I thought thinking about some of this out loud might resonate with some of you. I’m especially curious as to how you have navigated this tension between heroic action and a more reflective, self-care-dominated approach? Perhaps none of you have this tension, which would in and of itself be interesting.
Beeminder, of course, can facilitate both modes, and I’ve used it here more as a placeholder around which to discuss more general issues.
Perhaps long-term thinking, the attempt to improve things by just 1% as in Kaizen provides a kind of antidote. As with most things, the middle ground is probably a mental habit I need to find a way to encourage.
I really struggle with preventing myself from overcommitting. My inner Lion seems constantly on the verge of dominating my approach, as is the case for the upcoming week. I’m writing this, on my laptop, on the day I’ve allocated as my ‘tech-free’ day, and I’m beginning a maniac week tomorrow. So much for limiting my stress.
I’d be interested in hearing from any of you for whom any or parts of this ring true. Thank you for reading, if you managed to get all the way down here.
