The gift I gave myself which changed my life

 Overweight, unhappy and unrecognisable; that’s how I felt on January 2, 2019. 

As I stood in my bathroom and looked down at my body and the number on the scale, I realised that I had not been treating myself- and indirectly my family- kindly. I at times had allowed the stresses of life to hijack my nutritional choices, emotions, my rational thinking and ultimately, my physical appearance. I had been taking in the stresses of life the wrong way. In that moment, I didn’t recognise myself and decided to do something about it. I don’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions because I believe that every day, we can make a choice to take a chance to change our life; I decided to change my life that day. 

Acknowledging I had to get control over my weight led me to make lifestyle changes, but that was just an outward effect of how I was feeling. Immediately I made better food choices, I stopped drinking alcohol and made time in my calendar for exercise – of which taking on a trainer helping me exercise right. It allowed me to take the opportunity to think and decompress after. Decompression is important. In those moments I let go of what was weighing me down so that it did not manifest itself in another way e.g. eating something naughty or hijacking my emotions.

I also decided not to attend every business dinner and instead be with my family and by this, I mean truly be present with them. I needed this time with them to feed my soul and so did my teenage daughter whose hormones of late often hijack her emotions and rational thinking. Can you imagine what our dinner table would have been like had I not decompressed before arriving home?

Making these changes transformed my life. I was able to align my physical, emotional and rational being and they began working in harmony which had an effect on the world around me both at home and in the office. Where in the past I noticed I could get emotionally highjacked very easily, I saw that this was happening less without losing my authenticity. I was also able to better rationalize ownership, situations and not carry everything on my shoulders and this includes emotions and stress that were not mine to own. My grandmother always used to say, “what’s theirs is theirs and what’s yours is yours”……only now do I understand what she meant. 

At RB, we passionately encourage our leaders to bring their full, authentic selves to the table. For some people this is hard because they feel uncomfortable being vulnerable for fear of how it will be perceived. And there are those leaders who don’t quite understand the concept.

This year my HR Leadership team piloted a very different style of leadership programme for our top talent across the business. Partnering with a company called CHX, we took leaders to the mountains of Chamonix where we leveraged learnings from the outdoors and brought the emotional, physical, rational and altruistic side of people together in a business context. High up in the mountains people get confronted with becoming their true self and learn how to balance and allow the triangle to operate in harmony.  When we are in balance, we become conscious. We’re aware of ourselves and our surroundings and I believe this makes us better human beings who care for others, bring out the best in situations and ultimately, we perform better.

Almost a year on from the day I stood on my scale and decided to change my life, I am 20kg lighter. I am a conscious leader; a better reflector and I bring the full ‘me’ to the table. I gave myself a gift that day in deciding to change my life and now I give to my loved ones, myself and to my job in a different way than before. 

As 2020 and a new decade approaches, I am excited about what the HR landscape will look like in the future of work as more disruptive technology comes into play. However, regardless of whether AI or robots become the future of business, the sweet spot of the before mentioned triangle remains unique to humans and will be always be a space for HR to operate.

What gift will you give yourself and hence your environment this holiday season?