Last Updated on August 10, 2020
When we are organized and is very focused towards our goals, we tend to have less appetite to eat, or less tendency to overeat.
This is something that I am beginning to notice among the highly driven and focused leaders and managers that I have came to know.
The traits I’ve noticed:
- they are very clear about what they want and want to achieve from their career
- they are highly organized and are able to priortize very well
- their mental energy is focused on how to solve a problem or improve the situation or work on a project, leaving them no interest to snack or eat
- they are able to resist high calorie food due to their disciplined nature
- they do not let emotions get in the way in their work, and hence do not let emotion get away to make them want to eat
- they do not need food to make them feel happy- they find enough motivation in work, goals and purpose
Not all of them is able to achieve the work-life balance- which does get harder the higher we rise and the more responsibility that we get. But at least for this time, they had made peace and compromise on their priorities.
Of course like us, they would also feel physical hunger. Sometimes they had a light lunch or had skipped lunch and get hungry in the evening. But their minds would be focused on clearing up the tasks that they either ignore the hunger or they take just a quick, light bite. If only biscuits is available, they take one, maybe two but not 5, or 10. They would not polish off that whole pack of crisps.
When we have a clear goal or life purpose and are constantly working towards achieving them, our mind would not be thinking of food. By learning to identify what it is that we really want and then creating clear strategies to work towards what we want, our life would be filled with a sense of purpose.
If we find ourselves always having craving for food that we are unable to resist, instead of getting angry with ourselves for being ‘weak’ or ‘bad’, perhaps we can to see if the root cause is due to something seemingly irrelevant like:
- is it because we have very little job satisfaction? What can we do to improve that- why not learn a skill to get us to our real interest, find a new purpose our work to motivate us, etc?
- is it because we feel unhappy, lonely or empty while others seemed to have it all? It’s not possible to have everything we want in life- because our wants would never be enough. Find a way to settle- or instead of focusing on the lack-offs, find our strengths and do something with them.
If we are doing something we love, it would give us energy and motivation. If not, then we suffer from energy drains. But we can never find that we love 100% of our jobs. Some parts of it, example writing reports, compiling data, investigating problems, figuring process improvements, etc may leave us feel highly demotivated, and if we are not good at it, it may leave us questioning our own credibility. But like everything- we take the good and the bad of a job.
The problem would come if we spend most of the time hating most of it about our jobs. Through my own experience, I find that sometimes the issue is not the job- it could be from within. This is especially so if we like to complaint about everything and chooses to see the negative side of things. It is not possible that everything else is from other people’s fault.
If we do that, forever we would feel not empowered and reach for that packet of potato chips and mindlessly gobbling all its content. By doing that, we are on the losing end because what we are doing is adding on to our waistline which would make us feel worse about ourselves. It’s not worth it and yet many people are taking off their power and giving it away to external things and events.
Read books on leadership or have the entrepreneur mindset, that is our job is our business. Problems at work? Find a way to solve them. If no solution is found- because it is not within our jurisdiction, then why let it get to us and affect our well-being?
