By Liz Sanner Davis

Certified Personal Trainer

 

Susan, age 37, turned down the HR director position at a major health care facility in TX because she didn’t feel able to face the pressures of leadership. Dan, age 47, took a leave from his 6-figure job as the chief of a large nursing division following a heart. Paul, age 57, stepped down from his high-profile position as the Assistant Dean of the School of Medicine at a highly rated university hospital in the East and moved to a cabin in West Virginia. All were qualified to lead in every principled way using integrity of character and focusing on the well-being and elevation of the team and the institution. All three were offered or were paid high-end salaries with potentially significant rewards for success.

 

Susan was emotionally insecure. Dan was 50 pounds overweight. Paul was a functioning alcoholic. All three had excellent character, were hard-working contributors to the healthcare industry and equally equipped to lead teams and grow an organization, but none were fit to lead.

 

Susan   This energetic and charismatic younger woman was beloved at work and entirely insecure outside the healthcare setting. She did not exercise, loved gifting creative home cooked concoctions and was viewed by others as capable and amiable. But inside her head, Susan was scared to death of failure, constantly overspending her income to compensate for her feelings of inadequacy and doubly depressed because of both.

 

Dan   Tall, potentially athletic and a workaholic, Dan was a visible candidate for heart trouble, so focused on work for the sake of work that he neglected himself in nearly every way. Leafy greens? He did not know the genre. Low salt, low fat, high fiber were jargon that didn’t register any more than the neon lights on the 24-hour gym he passed on the way to work at 5:30 each morning. Dan’s goal was team elevation, not self-promotion.

 

 

Paul was appointed interim dean during a chaotic time at the institution and two years later a permanent leader had yet to be hired. He earned the position because of the respect his ethics had garnered and for his impeccable skills as a surgeon. Paul’s moral compass placed him at constant odds with the existing upper administration’s policies but he felt obligated to be fair to both entities of the clinical staff and the organization at large, taking his solace in alcohol. Paul’s stress drove him to drink.

 

There is a common denominator to the health problems of Susan, Dan and Paul. Although the three functioned at different levels within healthcare, all had created their own obstacles to quality leadership, and all had succumbed to easy addiction. The three also had access to the same potential solution: Nutrition, exercise, meditation.

 

Susan’s Solution   If Susan had been physically fit and cooked up quality calories in her kitchen, she would have felt better about herself, and by feeling better about herself, she would have been open to healthier activities to enjoy in her spare time. She would also have had more emotional strength for accepting challenges outside her comfort zone. Susan made a conscious choice to get fit and she is now the director of an established HR division in a large healthcare hospital in North Texas. She still wears Prada.

 

Dan’s Do-over   On a whim, Dan stopped at the gym during his recovery and met a young trainer who showed him around the circuit and handed him a complimentary copy of The Mediterranean Diet for Beginners. Because he was a Scorpio who always attacked challenges with passion, Paul returned to his position in good health, stopped showing up at the hospital before he and the birds had eaten, and dedicated himself to training four days a week plus Saturday Yoga, where, incidentally, he met a lovey Pisces.

 

Pauls’ Pathway   The Appalachians and Shenandoah’s were such a relaxing change from the hustle of the university that Paul started hiking in a very different fog, eventually starting his own group of Fit Physicians. He made the easy choice of giving up alcohol in favor of the rocky ridges and tranquil trails and currently enjoys fixing broken bones 30 hours a week at a surgicenter way west of metro DC. His wife owns a small mountain shop that features “greens and tea for two.”

 

These are fit and happy solutions to three leader’s health problems. Susan secretly wanted to be a leader and conquered her fear through fitness. She discovered that she could be stylish and fearless at the same time. Dan loved the leadership he had chosen and he finally figured out how to be fit to lead with his heart. Paul had always wanted to be an ethical surgeon, not a leader. He discovered that leading himself to serenity and being in charge during surgery were a doable combination in which he did not have to sacrifice his ethics.

 

You can choose to be healthy and fit, you can choose to be a leader, and you can be selective about both.

 

Liz S Davis, BS MusEd, PFT

Certified by The Cooper Institute, Dallas, TX

ProSynEx Health and Wellness Contributor