It's just a number!

Yesterday I had the dreaded yearly check up appointment with my primary care physician. As if taking time out of my day to basically be told I am healthy and to keep doing what I’m doing isn’t bad enough, what’s the first thing they do when you get in the office? Make you step on that darned scale! Maybe the theory is to get it over with quickly? Anyway, I obliged and learned that I was 2.5 lbs more than last year. Uggg!

Now I know what you are thinking “2.5 lbs is nothing….I gain and loose that in a day!” And yes, I agree that it’s nothing to get worked up about, but it got me thinking about numbers. People always say that your weight is just a number and to not focus too much on it. But I realized that we base so much of what we think of ourselves on numbers. The number of dollars in our salaries, the number of square feet in our house, the number of cars we drive, the number of minutes it takes to run a race, the number of miles run in a week, the number of friends we have, the number of promotions we’ve received at work. I could go on but I think you get the idea.

I’m not really sure what my point is, but I think I’m saying that its hard not to focus on the numbers. Not all the numbers are bad as some of them make us feel good about ourselves. But focusing too much of our energy and self worth on numbers might leave us scratching our heads and searching for a calculator. My appointment and 2.5 lb gain (really, I’m fine with it!) was a good reminder to sometimes be more qualitative rather than quantitative. As an engineer, I am programmed to be quantitative, but I also know that numbers can lie and don’t always give you the full picture.

I guess, as with all things, it’s a balance I’m still trying to figure out…aren’t we all??