When to abort personal missions

We have heard stories about mountain climbers who have tried to go over the top of the mountain, pushed too hard, lost their way, and died. I recently avoided such a disaster, metaphorically speaking.

In Mar 2020, I picked up Covid while I was living in Sweden. I had post-covid issues that began in April 2020, making day-to-day tasks monumentally difficult for a few months. There were times I didn’t think I would make it back home to be with family as I didn’t know how I would manage a long-haul flight. I eventually made my way home earlier this year and have since spent a lot of time reflecting on my experience of Sweden and the five years I spent there. I came to realize, in retrospect, I had larger issues than the debilitating post-covid issues.
I was living in Sweden for nearly five years, and the longer I lived there, the harder it was for me to acknowledge that Sweden was not working out for me and the harder it was for me to abort that mission of mine. I have always followed the mantra of making new mistakes. To not repeat that mistake, I had to identify the error I made. I then realized that this was not a unique experience. Even if the post covid experience was unique, many people develop chronic health issues. My predicament was more a problem with decision-making when it comes to abandoning projects you’ve been working on for a long time because you become invested in it.

Many of us have been in relationships where it’s time to leave, but we’re too afraid. Many of us have encountered situations where we have made significant investments in an endeavor that we (hopefully)realize isn’t good for our overall well-being somewhere down the road. Have you? And then we sit there, trying to convince ourselves that “ups and downs in relationships are routine,” even when our well-wishers warn you that it is a toxic relationship. You are almost always ‘down’ and hardly ever ‘up.’ We tend to romanticize when something is “hard” or “toxic” for us, so we find it emotionally satisfying to continue fighting. It’s human nature to avoid the pain of this realization, which means that we’ll do anything to avoid admitting defeat. One of the most pernicious cognitive biases, sunk cost fallacy, steps in, and it tells us that we should keep investing in an endeavor because it would be too painful to abandon it. We have spent so much time, energy, and attention on it. You might as well keep on pushing. Right? Those mountain climbers or their families might disagree.

Research shows that going outside your comfort zone and exploring new places and people is good for mental health despite the sunk cost fallacy. I used to enjoy traveling and meeting new people for this very same reason.
It is also true that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger but can sometimes leave you disabled in a coma(think car crashes). 
Antifragility does apply to the human body. Building muscle is a process of tearing down and then rebuilding. When we work out, our muscles tear and then rebuild themselves to be stronger for the next time we try to deadlift that extra weight. But too much your risk fractures or serious injury. Similarly, alternating between ice-cold water immersion and steaming hot sauna has been beneficial for mental health and improved immunity. I used to sauna and jump into ice-cold lakes in the middle of a forest when I lived in Sweden. Personally, it was one of the few things that I enjoyed there. But too much of the sauna can cause severe dehydration and arrhythmia. So, how do we know if we are going too far? Though it makes you feel energized and full of vitality, it can lead to serious negative consequences when taken too far. Too much of anything can result in bad results. Even drinking too much water can lead to death.

Hormesis, a concept first described in toxicology, finds that a substance in large doses is harmful to an organism, but in small doses, benefits the organism. The biological response to low exposures to toxins and other stressors is generally favorable within the hormetic zone. The key, I believe, is to identify your hormetic zone and press ‘abort’ when you cross the zone.

When I thought about applying this to my personal life, I got reminded of a friend asking me to rate how happy I was in India before moving to Sweden. I was at 8/10. Curiosity was at the heart of my decision to move to Sweden. Even when I was happiest, I don’t think I crossed 6/10 while living in Sweden. I did enjoy my trips to other parts of the EU, UK, and the US. I didn’t realize that I enjoyed traveling away from Sweden more than living in Sweden, and I traveled almost every week out of Sweden pre-pandemic on work or personally, so I didn’t have to come to terms with it till covid hit. I didn’t think this scoring was all-encompassing, missing out on various other aspects of life.

Moving to a new place was not new to me. I have lived more than half of my life in 5 different states in India, away from my hometown. Comparing India(28 states, 22 official languages) to the EU(27 sovereign states, 24 official languages) rather than individual countries in the EU does it more justice. Unlike western society, which puts the impetus on “individualism,” the Indian culture is “collectivistic.” It promotes interdependence and cooperation, with the family forming the focal point of this social structure. The term family is derived from the Latin word ‘familia,’ denoting a household establishment. It refers to a “group of individuals living together during important phases of their lifetime and bound to each other by biological and/or social and psychological relationship.” Humans are evolutionarily social animals, and living in the hyper-individualistic paradigm(in Sweden) didn’t suit me.

I have returned home to India and now realize, in retrospect, that I was way outside my hormetic zone, and I should have pressed abort on this mission to live in Sweden long back. But I was swimming in the sunk cost swimming pool and was oblivious to my damage to myself.

Sun rays shining through clouds in Bengaluru, India

I didn’t end up like the mountain climber, but now I have started to put on guardrails to avoid making such mistakes. Reading Fierce Conversations, I came across that living your life out of line with your values can lead to deep unhappiness and can even lead to a lowered immunity. I thought I had a sense of who I was, but I never documented my values. A value is a tightly held belief upon which a person or organization acts by choice. It is an enduring belief that one way of behaving is personally, professionally, spiritually, or socially preferable to another.

We have Leadership Principles(LP) at my current workplace(16 in total), which are the values of an organization, and I have been a massive fan of that. Hiring, promotions, and peer feedback are based on how well you live up to those LPs. A couple of examples of them are below:

Bias for Action: Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking.

Dive Deep: Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.

I was surprised that I didn’t think about applying that to my personal life, and this was the game-changing moment when I realized how I could stay within the hormetic zone. In Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott talks about doing an integrity scan to identify if you live your life according to your values. Documenting my values almost the same way I would write narratives at my current workplace helped me identify my core values.
I have also started to institute a mechanism to do a weekly/monthly review against how I am living my life, be it at work or home, against those individual values. I score periodically against my 11 values(Curiosity, Respect, Self-Direction, etc.). When I start to notice downward trends, I take corrective action, and if I see positive directions, I try to treat myself to reinforce those actions. I also share this document with someone I trust and get feedback regularly to ensure I don’t go too much outside of my hormetic zone. We are all prone to blind spots, and having a person you trust is as important as anything else.
There is tension in the LPs(Bias for action vs. Dive Deep), curiosity vs. self-direction are somewhat at odds, and that is intentional(plus healthy). I might lose some freedom, and my ability to choose from different options reduces when I move to a foreign country. Still, I satisfy my curiosity about living in another place with a different culture. It was curiosity that led me to Sweden in the first place. Ironically, I lost a big part of my curiosity after moving to Sweden. In hindsight, if I had noticed trends in my ‘curiosity’ value sooner, I would have been able to course-correct myself earlier, and I could have nipped the problem in the bud.

Now, I hope to continue living in line with my values and dare to abort personal missions, finding myself outside my hormetic zone. I would love to hear others’ opinions on this, especially if you give something like this a go and other ideas on how others stay within their hormetic zone.

Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.