Simone Biles on Instagram, SMART goals & Self-Care: Knowing when to call it

Happy Self-Care Summer Fam!

You watching the Olympics? Even if you aren’t, it’s hard to miss the headlines, right? Simone Biles was a household name before this week. After all, Simone is not only one of very few Black female Olympic gymnasts, but her superhuman abilities have earned her the moniker of greatest gymnast ever. Now, she can add self-care advocate to her CV. Jump into our convo in the Daily Wellness Text thread here. Or just send TEXT to 1(224)302-6224 to join for free.

In the last week, Simone Biles hopped on her instagram and taught us all a very important lesson during these Tokyo Olympic Games. As she dealt with mental health and performance issues, she made the very courageous decision to prioritize her long-term wellbeing over this single competition. And Simone Biles’s IG tells a story that should make her parents so very proud!

As Simone sequentially pulled out of USA gymnastics team events during the Tokyo Olympics, then pulled out of various individual events, a media storm mounted.

Simone turned to instagram with an explanation. She shared practice videos in which she seemed to lose control of her body positioning in mid-air (a phenomenon that gymnasts call “the twisties”). In one video, she dismounts from the bars, does too few rotations and falls to the mat on her back.

Simone captioned the videos:

“For anyone saying I quit. I didn’t quit. My mind and body are simply not in sync as you can see here. I don’t think you realize how dangerous this is on hard/competition surface. Nor do I have to explain why I put health first.”

From www.instagram.com/simonebiles

It was the last sentence for me. Little Sis is so right. She does NOT have anything to explain to us relative underachievers about why she doesn’t feel safe continuing in Olympic competition. What she has achieved in gymnastics proves she’s a mental powerhouse- to say nothing of what she has overcome recently as a survivor of abuse from Larry Nasser. But, she did us all an incredible service by making her thought process plain.

What To Do When Mind & Body Aren’t In Sync?

Biles has enough self-awareness to recognize when her “mind and body aren’t in sync”. She understands that’s a dangerous scenario (one that could leave her severely, maybe even permanently injured). She attempted to correct it, but was unable to. Now, she’s choosing to remove herself from danger by withdrawing from the competition.

How many of us would have been brave enough to do the same? In a single 1-week period she provided an alternative to the Strong Black Woman trap that we so often get caught up in. I don’t know about you, but I have a long track record of sacrificing my own wellbeing to be more productive and more “successful”.

But, when we neglect our wellbeing in the moment in order to meet that deadline at work or show up for our family members, we’re not practicing the self-awareness and self-compassion that Simone Biles modeled.

Sure, we might feel like we’ve reached our short-term goals, but we’re not winning the long game.

Whether it’s ignoring our need for rest or time alone or companionship, this pattern of constantly putting our needs last creates scenarios that truly are dangerous. Maybe our risk profile looks a little different than Ms. Biles’s. We’re not at risk of paralysis or broken bones like Biles is when her mind and body are out of sync during a dismount, but the emotional damage we can cause ourselves through chronic self-neglect is no less drastic.

Why Is It Important to Set Realistic Goals?

Here’s where our Daily Wellness Texts dovetail with Biles’s courage. For the last two weeks, we’ve been texting about goal-setting. We’re using the SMART goal acronym to craft wellness goals that give us the best shot at success. This week, we dove into the A in SMART goals. A stands for attainability, and it points the the question of whether or not we can reasonably reach our goal.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but not every goal we set for ourselves is worth reaching. Like Simone Biles taught us, we should not cause irreparable harm to ourselves trying to reach untenable goals!

Sometimes we set goals that seem completely reasonable based on our past experiences, but some unexpected occurrence pushes that goal out of our reach.

It seemed reasonable for Simone Biles, multi-time Olympic champion, to expect that she could perform well in the 2020/2021 Tokyo Olympics. But, once the “twisties” struck her, that goal of competing in these Olympics became too dangerous.

On the other hand, some goals are unreasonable from the start

-Giving up all your favorite foods forever- without finding acceptable alternatives

-Losing so much weight that you’re at your childhood weight

How Do I Reach My Wellness Goals?

In the Daily Wellness Texts and the #WellnessWednesday Healing Circle workshop, we practiced asking ourselves 2 questions to judge whether a goal is attainable:

1) Am I very motivated to achieve this goal?

2) Is this goal relatively easy for me? (Another way of phrasing this is: Have I done anything close to this before?)

If you answer NO to both questions, your goal might be unattainable- the type you’ll hurt yourself trying to reach.

We borrowed this approach from the science of behavior change (particularly research from Stanford professor B.J. Fogg).

According to this framework, there are 2 main components of behavior change or habit-setting: you and the behavior itself. If you’re motivated enough, you can achieve really hard things. And, even if you’re not very motivated, you can achieve really easy things. But, it’s nearly impossible to build a new habit if the habit is hard and you’re not very motivated.

Check out the Ease vs. Motivation curve above to see where your wellness goal falls. Is it attainable or nah? If not, what are you going to do about it?

Meanwhile, hope you keep enjoying your #self-care summer.

Healthy Happy Living,

Dr. Wuse