Healthy Living is Professional Development

Over the past few years, the leadership team of the Indy Chamber has been working with Bryan Brenner, Hank Orme, and the amazing team at FirstPerson on strategic visioning and organizational culture. During this time, we've refined our mission to empower business to assure all in our region have the opportunity to succeed, assured timeline accountability through the addition of a new Orr Fellow to our team, and built employee-led task forces to address priority areas and contribute to collective solutions.

One of these task forces focuses on employee performance and well-being, investing time and resources in the physical and mental health of our team to not only improve output for an externally-facing organization like the Indy Chamber, but to show our employees the importance of personal growth and how it benefits the unit as a whole.

The efforts of this task force needed a jolt of adrenaline, and boy did it find one in Erica Ballard, a certified health coach and relentless force of nature for personal improvement through her B-Method program.

This 3-month journey started with a direct request: dive in or stay out of the pool. Participants needed to be committed to progress, otherwise they'd continually spin their wheels and get nowhere in the process. I thought about this commitment for a few days, ultimately deciding that, once-and-for-all, I needed to get serious about my personal health.

I'm assuming I'm not the only one who typically looks at health programs with a heavy dose of skepticism because I see impossible diets and unsustainable gym routines in my immediate future. The secret sauce of this program has been incremental changes over time; while at times I felt like I wasn't moving fast enough, I had to step back and realize that these changes were being made for the long haul, and years of doing the same things over and over again were going to take some time to amend.

I also recognized through Erica's help that I was celebrating personal and professional wins in unhealthy ways. For those that know me well, they know my lifelong relationship with Dr Pepper. This fizzy delight became my answer to any emotional reaction I encountered: joy, anger, sluggishness, boredom, celebration. In office culture, it's important to celebrate wins no matter their size to show appreciation for the moment and recognize those who helped achieve them. But my brain is wired for "doing:" reaching the goal, crossing the finish line, and jumping into the next priority. My only reflection was to sit back with a Dr Pepper, relax for a few moments, and then move on.

I realized through my sessions with Erica that getting out of the office and taking a walk was enough to clear my head and celebrate wins. I didn't need the Dr Pepper; I needed the reward, and a little stroll downtown would fulfill this need.

I'm by no means perfect in my health journey; I still have pounds to lose and challenges to overcome. But the incremental approach of this program gives me the confidence that I'll keep moving forward. It also provides me a new framework for tackling projects, employee management, consistency, and focused energy.

Healthy living is professional development, and I'm proud to say I now learn new facets of this lesson everyday.