Leadership Notes Dec 1 08

I've just finished a 10 k run and am feeling very strong. Although it sounds perhaps trite, there is something very powerful about feeling fit. For those of you who have not seen me in the past year or so, or who have not met me, I have lost 60 pounds in the last 18 months, so I intimately feel the difference between being fit and not being fit.

I have been asked by any number of people how I did it, and my usual response has been that I tried something new, exercise and eating right! There is a third factor, that I've come to realize is as important. I've been working on myself internally too. I've been using the metaphor of "fighting dragons", exploring the deep issues of my self that have been at work in my life for these many years. When I told my closest friend that I had officially reached the 60 pound mark, the reply was deeply touching, "that's a lot of dragons!"

The work on self has many facets and one is that we need to free our hearts. For many of us, our hearts are encapsulated, protected, and blocked off from our workplaces and from ourselves and our co-workers. In fact, one way of thinking about excess weight is that it is in some sense both protecting and blocking access to and from your heart. And it is your heart that makes you a leader!

If you're having difficulty losing weight and keeping it off, it might be time to do away with the diets, and start to consider what work you need to do with yourself, what dragons do you need to fight? And once you've dealt with some of them, the pounds you worked so hard at losing may well stay off.

Have a wonderful week!

Alisdair