At the end of the last chapter, I told you we were going to need some light.
But not just any light.
A Searchlight.
Because all lights don't have the same assignment.
Some lights warn you.
Some lights illuminate a room.
But a Searchlight?
A Searchlight is directed toward something you're trying to find.
That's important.
Because when something isn't working in our lives,
many of us have been trained to immediately ask:
How do I fix it?
Something happens.
We don't like what happened.
We judge what happened.
Then we start looking for a solution.
Problem.
Panic.
Judgment.
New plan.
And sometimes we start correcting things before we've even taken the time to understand what
we're correcting.
I've done it too.
But I've learned something:
You cannot intentionally adjust what you have not clearly observed.
Sometimes the first thing you need isn't another plan.
Sometimes you need to stop moving long enough to see what's actually happening.
That's what we're going to do here.
We're not creating some brand-new light.
The light isn't new. We're learning where to shine it.
And we're going to shine it on one specific thing.
Not your whole life.
Baby, put the autobiography down.
We are not examining every decision you've made since kindergarten.
We're looking at one thing you've been trying to understand.
And before we try to fix it, we're going to search.
I Thought I Already Knew What the Problem Was After losing 115 pounds, I experienced something I wasn't prepared for.
My uncle passed away unexpectedly.
And this wasn't just any uncle.
This was my favorite uncle.
He had been very active in the formative years of my life, so his death wasn't something happening somewhere on the outside of my world.
This loss was close.
I was grieving.
But I wasn't the only one.
At the time, I was also raising four small children who were grieving this loss.
This was the first time they had experienced a death this close to them.
So while I was trying to understand my own grief, I was also helping four little people experience theirs.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I started gaining some weight back.
Now let me tell you what I knew how to see.
The weight.
Oh, I could see that.
I had lost 115 pounds.
I knew what I had accomplished.
I knew what the scale had said before.
And I knew what it was saying now.
So when some of that weight started coming back,
I was hard on myself.
Very hard.
I didn't need anybody else standing over me with a clipboard.
I had it covered.
Self-judgment coupled with grief were in a full-blown affair, and I was suffering while smiling.
That's a whole other conversation for another day.
But it matters here because, at the time, I wasn't necessarily seeing everything that was standing in the room with the weight.
I could see the weight regain.
But there was also grief.
There were four grieving children.
There was the responsibility of helping them navigate something they had never experienced before.
There was my own loss.
There was self-judgment.
There was life happening around what I had reduced to:
“I'm gaining weight back.”
Now, I want to be careful here.
I'm not telling you that grief caused my weight gain.
I'm not diagnosing what happened to me.
And I'm not telling you that everybody who experiences grief will respond the way I did.
That's not the lesson.
The lesson is that the thing I was judging wasn't happening by itself.
There was an environment around it.
And I hadn't really been looking at the whole environment.
What Else Is Standing in the Room?
That's one of the questions the Searchlight has taught me to ask.
What else is standing in the room with this problem?
Because sometimes we isolate the one thing we don't like and start attacking it.
“I keep skipping my walk.”
“I keep staying up too late.”
“I keep putting myself last.”
And then we jump immediately to:
How do I stop doing this?
Wait.
Before we fix it:
What else is standing in the room?
What happened before it?
What was going on around it?
What responsibilities were present?
What changed?
What were you carrying?
What did the day actually look like?
What happened afterward?
We're not asking these questions to create excuses.
We're asking because context is evidence too.
And if we're going to make an intentional adjustment later, we need to understand what we're actually adjusting.
That's what a Searchlight helps us do.
It doesn't need to illuminate your entire life at once.
We direct it.
We search.
We look.
Then Something Happened Years Later Years passed.
And eventually, I experienced another major loss.
My grandmother passed away.
Anybody who knows me knows that losing my grandmother was major for me.
I don't need to unpack that entire relationship here for you to understand this:
That loss mattered deeply.
But this time, something caught my attention.
Something in me grieved differently.
That's it.
I'm stopping right there.
I know.
You thought I was about to tell you exactly why.
What changed?
What did I learn?
What did I do differently?
What was the breakthrough?
Baby, I said we're looking.
We're not fixing yet.
At this point, I don't need to explain the difference.
I need to notice that there was a difference.
That's evidence.
My uncle died, and I can look at what was happening in my life around that loss.
Years later, my grandmother died, and I noticed that something about the way I moved through grief was different.
That doesn't give me permission to immediately build a theory.
It gives me another place to shine the Searchlight.
Something changed here.
Record it.
We'll come back.
Don't Assume. Search.
That's the shift I want you to practice.
We are quick to assume we know what the problem is.
“I don't have discipline.”
“I'm lazy.”
“I need to start over.”
“I need a better plan.”
Maybe.
But before you decide what needs to be fixed:
Search.
Look at what actually happened.
Not what you think always happens.
Not what you've been calling yourself because it happened.
Not the solution you already decided you need.
What happened?
Shine the light on it.
Shine the Light On It™ Choose one specific situation connected to your wellbeing that you want to understand better.
One.
Not:
“My whole health journey.”
Friend, this Searchlight has an assignment.
Pick something you can actually observe.
Maybe:
“I planned to walk after work and didn't.”
“I skipped lunch during my workday again.”
“I stayed up much later than I intended.”
“I canceled something I had scheduled for myself.”
“I stopped doing something that had been working for me.”
We're not deciding why yet.
We're looking.
1. NAME IT What specifically are we shining the Searchlight on?
Describe the situation without judging yourself.
Not:
“I'm terrible at taking care of myself.”
REFLECTION
What happened?
Keep it specific.
We need something we can see.
2. NOTICE WHEN When did it happen?
What day?
What time?
What part of your routine?
Was it before work?
During work?
After everybody came home?
Late at night?
On the weekend?
After an appointment?
During travel?
After something unexpected happened?
Don't turn one occurrence into “always.”
Just record when this happened.
When did it happen?
3. LOOK BEFORE IT Now move the Searchlight slightly backward.
What happened immediately before?
What were you doing?
Where were you?
What had just happened?
What responsibility were you handling?
What changed?
Again, don't explain it.
Don't diagnose yourself.
We're collecting information.
What happened before it?
4. LOOK AROUND IT Now widen the Searchlight just enough to see the environment around the situation.
What else was standing in the room?
What responsibilities were present?
What did your schedule actually look like?
Who needed something from you?
What resources did you have available?
What was happening with your energy?
What changed in your normal routine?
What happened immediately afterward?
Remember:
We're not looking for excuses.
We're looking for evidence.
What was happening around this situation?
5. FIND THE EXCEPTION Now this one matters.
Can you remember a similar situation where things went differently?
Maybe you did follow through.
Maybe you had the same responsibility but responded differently.
Maybe the same problem didn't happen.
Maybe you noticed yourself making another choice.
Don't explain why yet.
Just find the exception.
When did something similar happen differently?
And once you find it?
Don't build a theory.
Record it.
6. DON'T FIX IT YET. RECORD IT.
I know.
You came all this way and now you want me to tell you what to do about it.
Not yet.
Look at what you've collected.
You have:
What happened.
When it happened.
What came before it.
What was around it.
What happened afterward.
And an example of a time something similar went differently.
That's enough for today.
Because the victory in this chapter isn't:
“I fixed it.”
The victory is:
“I can see it more clearly than I could before.”
That matters.
Clarity Before Correction There was a time when I could look at weight regain and immediately begin judging myself.
The weight was real.
The change was real.
But those facts weren't the only evidence available.
There was more to see.
That's what the Searchlight gave me permission to do:
Look before correcting.
It didn't remove responsibility.
It gave responsibility better information.
And that is what I want for you.
I don't want you building solutions for problems you haven't clearly observed.
And I don't want you shining the Searchlight on yourself like you're conducting an interrogation.
The Searchlight is for seeing.
Not shaming.
One observation gives us information.
But sometimes?
You notice something again.
Then again.
And you start wondering:
Wait a minute. Does this keep happening?
Now we're getting somewhere.
But you can't answer that from one moment.
If we want to know whether we're looking at a pattern, we're going to have to stay with it a little longer.
We're going to have to keep the light on.
Ready to put this chapter to work?