Dropping Weight: Redefining Our Goals for Ourselves
“Were you an athlete in high school?” someone training at my gym asked me.
“No. I played volleyball, but I don’t know.” I let my voice trail off into the floor where I was positioned to finish the current exercise. Though I had played an organized sport, I hadn’t considered myself an ‘athlete’.
Before I could consider if that particular definition mattered to support me in what I was doing, he followed up, “So, why did you start working out?”
I really didn’t want to answer that question, because deep down I knew it had always been about vanity, arbitrary numbers, and not about not becoming something I wanted, like ‘strong’ or an ‘athlete’ even. Why are we participating? Why are we engaging? What are we doing here, or anywhere, and what do we think about it? Often more important to us, what do others think about it? These are not isolated questions. They follow us, because they are us. The question of ‘working out’ followed me to work.
“The Freshman 15. The COVID-19. The 2020, 20.” Our Dean of Extension laughed as he delivered those numbers on an organizational webinar.
“Not me, I thought when I heard his comment. Except, why had I started working out? Why did I continue to push so hard? What was I training for? Why do others make different choices? Set different goals? Give up? And, the ‘F’ word, why do people fail? In all honesty, the real answer to that question was about numbers.
In our work with youth programming there is also another very real danger of working for numbers. Weight. Size. Participant numbers. Expectations follow us everywhere. Much of how the world we live in was and is built, we have little control over. However, my head and my emotional reactions, the internal world I live in on a daily basis, I build that world. Compassion. Empathy. Working with youth, we know these are feelings for others, but when we don’t practice the idea of our own standards for ourselves, we are less likely to value them in others. Worse, we create feelings of shame or use deficit language.
The gym will always be difficult for me to reframe my description of myself in my own words. However, I was able to make gains in another aspect of my learning. My trip to Israel was cancelled due to COVID-19 so I went from studying an hour a day to almost never. I hesitated to pick up the flashcards again. I did pick them up recently one evening. I remembered some, but not most, the first time around. I was still too nervous about what skills I have left conjugating verbs. My stomach turned in knots as I addressed the question, if I fell off my original timeline, or never reached my goal at all, were the previous hours to this point wasted?
Yet, as I consider this blog post, the most important question, and distinction is, Am I disappointed or do I feel ‘disappointing’?
My sincere answer is the second one, but I have no evidence to support this, because in fact, my niece recently told me that she loves everything I do for her, which is not contingent on Hebrew fluency. My negative feelings are not because I’m disappointed. My ‘spark’, my interest to engage remains. In this current context, I am allowing myself to feel ‘disappointing’ to others. And, in our work providing supportive relationships, it is not our role to judge at all.
Moving forward, I must consider: Has my goal changed? Or, how does it need to change?
In reality, my goal was never to become fluent in Hebrew. My goal was to connect more easily with my niece and nephew. And, I am still doing that, even with limited Hebrew.
As if to illustrate the point full circle, work and the gym intersected again, reflection points for each other. One day after class my trainer and I discussed the options for returning to school in the fall, the financial cost and the anxiety. Easily, I said, “Well, we created the standards. It’s like when I give you a dirty look because I’m tired, but I could drop my weight. There’s research, sure, about building muscle and best practices, but in the end I created the expectation. I need to decide what to do with it.” And, it’s why setting my goal, and understanding it as something that is alive and can change and grow, matters. One that is relevant and that matters not to others, but to me.
Youth. Adults. School. Activities. Program content. Supportive relationships. If you force them, you’ll hurt yourself. Drop the weight. Check your goal. Readjust. The muscles are still working.
So, why does this matter in our work with youth? First, as adults, we are examples of experience. With lived examples we can illustrate how we navigate expectations that changed or goals that need to change. Second, in the spaces we create with youth, through dialogue we can assist youth to celebrate all their action steps forward, no matter the timeline or how effective they may appear in any given moment. Our most valuable goals help us develop the value in who we are, not what we do, not any arbitrary number, 15, 19, 20, or otherwise.
RESOURCES
“Shame, it’s like a paralyzing force,” the video How Shame Blocks Accountability begins. This is a perfect echo of youth feedback during the focus groups I conducted at the beginning of this year. The narrators explore the implications and effects of what happens when you feel like you don’t match expectations, “the fantasy of who you are supposed to be and the reality of your life”.
Win in the Dark Supportive adult relationships are found in all places. As an adult, one of my most productive supportive adult relationships is my trainer at the gym. She recommended this book. This is a fable driven narrative by Joshua Medcalf that explores how to combine your passion, ‘spark’ with actions that prevent you from getting in your own way. The dark can be many things: your lack of confidence, feeling alone, questioning your decisions, in short your own worst enemy instead of your best coach. You can listen to an author interview on the podcast ‘Game Changers’. https://mollyfletcher.com/podcasts/joshua-medcalf-fall-in-love-with-the-process/ On this episode, Joshua shares the difference between being goal-driven vs. mission driven, the true meaning of mental toughness, and what happens when we confuse what we do with who we are.
Divergent I rely on young adult literature for continued youth perspective, for interactions with diverse characters beyond my immediate community and as a means to reflect on who I am and what it felt like to become an adult since those memories faded. Veronica Roth’s novel was my first YA read with those goals and one of the most explicit opportunities I had to interrogate how I choose what matters against outside messages. In summary, Beatrice Prior’s society is divided into five factions—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). Beatrice must choose between staying with her Abnegation family and transferring factions. The subsequent movies did not do the character reflection in this novel justice. Between those pages, I left my ever present battle of who I want to be and who I usually end up choosing to be.
Community Conversation Briefs are an example of Division of Extension summarized work in this area. CommUnity Conversations were held throughout April, hosted by the CommNS and the UW Extension Organizational and Leadership Development Program. We are pleased to share the full series of COVID-19 CommUnity Conversation briefs, which are now available on the new CommNS Knowledge platform. These documents summarize key themes from conversations among nonprofit professionals, funders, researchers, students, job seekers, and others – all on the emerging impacts of COVID-19 on the third sector. Since these CommUnity Conversations, the CommNS has also been part of a statewide effort – led by the Helen Bader Institute and the Institute for Nonprofit Management Studies at UW-Whitewater – to survey nonprofit organizations in Wisconsin about the impacts of COVID-19. To learn more about these efforts and download the first set of reports, visit the project website.
