Beyond All-or-Nothing: Cultivating Nuanced Decision-Making in Leadership
My experience slipping out of a gluten-free diet taught me a few lessons about the power of choice, experimentation, and deliberate disruption. All are key to navigating uncertainty and leading with confidence.
Photo by Lovleah
I often have clients tell me just how impossible change it, particularly when it comes to lifestyle or dietary adjustments. Even if they know they "should," they just "can't" do it. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who succeed at the change and then apply their new personal rules to the point of obsession.
Change is hard. Resistance is real. And if you implement it, holding on fast can ensure it doesn't slip away.
Breaking through Impossible
A friend and I giggled together the other day about how much we hate being boxed in. How it makes us antsy. I'd like to name it a drive for freedom, and my daughter, perhaps more accurately, calls it the "Spite Principle." Tell me no and I'll do it to spite you. Whatever. It's a temperament thing. I own it.
I even use it for good. Years and years ago—20!—my GP understand that's how I function and told me he didn't believe I could give up smoking. Well, I showed him! I haven't touched a cigarette since. I am forever grateful to him, btw.
So imagine what it was like, some 13 years ago, when a naturopath recommended I give up gluten. I was a trained French chef, living in France. It seemed so unthinkable. I could imagine giving up baguettes, but never ever the butter croissants! I put up a great wall of resistance. It was impossible.
And yet, my curiosity had been sparked. I had just been diagnosed with a thyroid condition, and my knees hurt so badly I limped. I'd always been very active. I felt like my world was shrinking. My life was changing. How would I raise my three-year old if I felt grumpy all the time and could barely make it up the stairs? What if this could help?
So I tried going gluten-free. And two weeks later I was on the ski slopes, a mile-wide smile on my face, joint pain completely gone. I have never looked back.
Breaking the Fast
Until Valentine's Day 2021. I asked my husband what his favorite meal would be. He recalled a puff pastry, sea scallop, truffle dish I had made when we first met. That was a pre-gluten-free era, when I was particularly renowned for making a mean puff pastry, gorged with butter, crispy and flaky as you can get it. Did I still have it in me? And would I eat it?
I found just the right wheat flour and worked in the layers of butter over two days. I also purchased Gluten Guardian enzymes to help with digestion.
And out of love and a recollection of the unique pleasure of biting into freshly baked puff pastry, I broke a 13-year gluten fast.
Do I regret it? Not for an instant—that ephemeral moment of sharing a singularly delicious meal with my family was worth it. Although two weeks later, I was still feeling all kinds of odd aches and pains and trying to get my digestive system back on track.
Lessons Learned about Change
This life experience taught me a few things:
Curiosity is a powerful driver for change. It goes hand in hand with experimentation.
An experiment is just that, not an obligation, not a never-go-back imperative. It's a test. A first step. And then, if the results are worth it, the next step is easier.
Choice plays a key role in sustainable change, including the choice to play around with the choices we've made. To shift them up. To test them out regularly.
Balance is a moving target.
These truths from this one personal life experience apply to everything, I’d say, and make navigating uncertainty easier.