Designing Your Health
I’ve seen driven people, couples, and families spent more focused effort and time on planing a house remodel, business idea or even family meal, and less (if none) of that dedication on designing their health. A hunch formed, and my informal research continued while I lived in Southern California, and regularly visited Germany — always a convenient cultural studies reality check.
Take for instance, this one committed couple that turned a suburban house into a manifestation of their dreams. He is a handy salesman and home-bound maker, who also poured his own concrete bathtub. She is a SoCal nutritionist. Their kitchen was remodeled without any contracted help. Each drawer handle, tile color and further detail was discussed and made conscious in their free time during weeknights and each week’s end. Their green toned and birch wood, modern hearth is fabulous yet I also learned that they were drained over time and the remodel took a toll on their relationship and personal health.
In another example, a driven entrepreneur has a deadline and works two night, skips sleep and is sold out by his co-founders. With too much stress and too little sleep, he wants “it” to end, hurts himself leaving a scar. He awoke, left with big scar, and later a deal that makes him a multi-millionaire.
In a third example, a scientist pours all of his efforts into an idea, then a startup that attracts a group of think-alikes, which then becomes a venture that requires all of his energy. Meanwhile, he meets his future wife, quickly starts a family and lives on a tight budget in a success- and career-oriented culture. As his business takes shape and requires all of his focus, his personal life is drained, his marriage deteriorates and when he makes the big deal, she leaves him.
Be assured that each of them are fine now making sense of these events and moving along in life. As an inquisitive person that I am, I pay close attention to narratives — the active storytelling that has accompanied their experiences and what ensued. What was attributed to chance? What was attributed to own achievement or that of others? Is there fault, shame and blame language? I am fascinated with it. And as a trained systemic therapist, I openly (or not) asked “What’s your piece in it?” I aimed at accountability, a prerequisite for learning, insight and while uncomfortable at first, powerful in the end, because you see “your piece” and remain in control. Since Seligman, depression is also understood as so-called learned helplessness. So down the road, it is good to know what you can and ought to control.
Before I continue, I will share about myself. Speaking so openly about others’ vulnerabilities demands for more openness on my part, I believe. This belongs to being an experiential therapist, one that has empathy and connects through shared experiences while remaining professional enough.
In my own journey, I definitely spent (i.e. exhausted) myself on school, study, and degrees. I drained my batteries so much that I had to halt and muse about self-care. Self-care is a big tomb of topics. I learned about German culture in which emotions tend to be outcast, or how 2nd and 3rd generations after WWII, family members inherit a certain harsh stance towards tender needs. I learned that a certain Protestant work ethic pervades German behavior. Most definitely, self-care requires a certain self-knowledge, which was a big part in my training as a family therapist. It was tougher than big textbooks and 30-page essays, believe me.
In my musings, I experimented with personal therapy, relaxation techniques and went on a quest. I peeked into a yoga studio in 2008, and began my teacher training shortly thereafter. Over time, I experimented with less is more, meaning that I did not bring the study material into the gym, read non-fiction books more often, exercised without goals and learned to enjoy Savasana, the most threatening yoga pose for some go-getters. In 2017, I still seek and actively work in my balance. I thought of it once as the “two-leg metaphor”. If one leg was intellectual engagement, and the other emotional, I definitely needed both legs to be strong enough to walk sustainably.
For the past 10 years, I dwelled, worked and mused in the startup and tech field as a systemic psychologist. Right about when I had already married and had my first child, I came across Brad Feld and Amy Batchelor’s book “Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur”. With haste, I turned to the chapter on having children, and to my surprise, in less than a paragraph of an entire book, he pretty much advised entrepreneurs to best not have a family (yet). I was disappointed and in disbelief. Of course, it was also a great challenge and impulse to continue on my journey to provide services for people that are foolish enough to pursue their dreams.
Then design thinking presented itself to me as a wonderful playground to merge it with systemic therapy approaches. If you wonder: in traditional therapy, you have psychoanalytic and cognitive-behavioral therapy, for example, and in less traditional truth-oriented therapy theories, you have narrative, solution-focused or emotional-focused therapy. And if you wonder about design thinking and doing: it is more than window-dressing or interior design, it is an impactful method to revise products and services, and even personal situations. In a way, design thinking neither presumes truth and instead, subscribed thinkers research, iterate and adjust innovative solutions supported by human feedback along the way.
In my workshop series, Design Your Life, I combine systemic therapy and design thinking, to tackle various topics in life. Design Your Health is a workshop where we think about health as in optimal functioning in areas such as your body, your mind, your work, your loved ones, and even finances. Drawing from two tool boxes of techniques, I can offer a wealth of concepts and exercises that compose a program that is both invigorating as well as profound.
For instance, a warm up activity to dump out our assumptions around health, loosens up our apparatus, and brings out beliefs beautifully black on white (or sharpie on post-it). With judgment postponed, we found “broccoli” and “sleep” on there, and learned quickly that you can describe health with silly terms, and that it is more than whether you sneeze or not.
There is no way around sharing our stories around health. So participants can share their personal experiences and let others see their human ordeal as well as human hopes to stand stronger. In workshops that are human-centered, it is critical to remain human enough to allow for critical insight and growth. While it is not psychotherapy, there are therapeutic moments — those that feel like “heureka” and stick with you. With each participant’s story, there is learning from a failed or untried attempt. Participants benefit from spending focused time and energy on witnessing each others iterations on improving their health situation.
In another exercise, a blank notebook was distributed as tool to externalize thoughts and prototypical ideas around health. The ask was to write down your ideas without censoring. Dirty this book with your half-baked content, go! From a freestyle opening, this activity then zeroed in on a set of steps. Affirmative Journaling. Third person narrative storytelling. Or Bullet Journaling. Each method powerful on its own, yet I won’t do them justice if I just list them, brush over them quickly and lightly. The power lies in the curated and guided experience. That’s why I stop here.
Designing Your Health is an important activity that is design thinking and doing. If you are a driven professional with a vision and a limited number of attempts on actualizing a dream, put self-care on your daily agenda — at the top of your list.
If you wake up and feel drained, don’t postpone tackling it first. If you wake up and feel your stress is up to a 8 or above on a scale from 0 to 10, then act right away. If you feel like a stress level 5, proceed but attend to your needs by midday, and if you feel like a 2, intersperse your day with short moments of refueling steps. You are the most critical element in monitoring yourself and making it all happen, so treat yourself like a fancy car, the most expensive laptop you could ever own or the child you’ve conceived and love to pieces.
If parts of this story resonate and if you wonder what steps to take first, send me an email with your questions. I offer free first coaching conversations or tailored workshop for your team.
