The Art of Managing Toward
Managing Toward What You Want: A Journey from Fear to Wisdom
"Manage to what you want, not to what you don't want," is what my brother-in-law told me in one of our monthly catch-ups. This simple phrase stopped me in my tracks. Here I am, decades removed from my initial confrontation with mortality at fifteen, and yet these words revealed something profound about the entire arc of my healing journey—from cancer survivor to wounded healer, from managing fear to cultivating wellness.
The Adolescent's Simplicity
At fifteen, facing cancer felt more like a process than an existential crisis. Youth provided me with a kind of protective simplicity—I couldn't yet articulate the deeper questions about death, meaning, or what this cancer might cost me as a human being. I relied on the adults around me, their encouragement, their optimism, their assurance that everything would be okay. Combined with my natural fighter's spirit, getting through treatment became about putting one foot in front of the other rather than grappling with life's deeper mysteries. No wrong was being done, it was simply not time for me to explore those questions; but cancer left me with an unwelcome companion: the constant fear of getting sick again.
Am I sick now and they don't know it? Is something wrong with me?
These questions churned inside me, creating a hypervigilance that would become a life partner. I had been initiated into the psychology of managing to what I didn't want—to not be sick, to not feel afraid, to not face uncertainty again.
The Pursuit of Not Being Sick
College provided a wonderful distraction, a safety bubble where I could ignore the hard stuff and simply enjoy life, although all my fears still bubbled deeply in my subconscious manifesting as perfectionism while fighting body dysmorphia (that I didn’t know I had) and forcing my body to be strong and high-performing. Steroids, weight-lifting, and consuming massive amounts of protein were my new normal. I had associated small and skinny with being sick with cancer and I wanted nothing to do with that.
When I entered the workforce, all those adolescent fears resurfaced with a vengeance while I continued to manage to what I didn’t want. I channeled this anxiety into an intense work ethic, seeking corporate success as a method to not feel the deep lying fear and anxiety firmly planted inside of me.
The "work hard, play hard" mentality served me well in the corporate world. Yes, I was achieving success quickly, climbing the corporate ladder, and with the money and success came intense stress. Playing hard was an acceptable coping mechanism to offset the stress until my body failed me again.
The backdrop of life was different, but the outcomes were the same. Two years in and I was launching into corporate burnout, having recurring MRSA infections, then an emergency surgery due to a ruptured sigmoid colon that was severely infected—suddenly I was back in the familiar territory of medical tests, antibiotics, and CT scans. I couldn’t work, I lost 40 lbs, and I felt sicker than I ever had.
I leapt into what I knew how to do, figure out how not to be sick anymore and each doctor visit, test, scan, screening, and antibiotic regiment was an act of managing to what I didn't want.
I was living in opposition to illness rather than in service to wellness, and this distinction would prove to be everything.
The Transformation: Learning How to Be Well
During this time, my desperation made me open to try anything, including acupuncture. Little did I know that acupuncture would change my life's trajectory. In one session, my acupuncturist made something crystal clear by saying: the way I was living was killing me. Her words granted me a moment of recognition, and I made a fundamental shift. I stopped trying to manage not being sick and set out to learn how to be well.
This wasn't merely a semantic change—it was a complete reorientation of my entire approach to living. Where Chinese medicine once seemed foreign, it became my gateway to understanding the rhythms of my own health, the intricate dance between mind, body, and emotions within the larger symphony of nature's cycles.
Today, after seventeen years of studying and practicing this medicine I have developed a deep resonance with the ancient principle of yin and yang. When I focus solely on what I don't want—the yang of denying, resisting, fighting—I miss the yin of receiving, accepting, and nurturing what I do want. True harmony arises not from eliminating one aspect but from recognizing their interdependence. Joy and suffering, health and illness, expansion and contraction, devotion and discipline—these aren't separate entities but interconnected aspects of the same whole.
The Five Elements of Transformation
My journey through Chinese medicine revealed how profoundly humans exist as microsystems within the macrosystem of the universe. Just as spring follows winter in nature's eternal cycle, my own healing followed the Five Element progression—each phase necessary, each transformation emerging from the previous then dying into the next.
The wood element gave me the flexibility to bend without breaking, to grow toward new possibilities rather than remaining rigid in old patterns.
Fire brought the warmth of connection with others and nature, the joy that can exist even in darkness.
Earth provided grounding stillness, the ability to trust that I could stand on my own feet and feel deeply that I am okay.
Metal taught me the art of letting go and grieving, releasing what no longer served while honoring what had.
Water offered the wisdom that comes from flowing around obstacles rather than trying to break through them in pursuit of my purpose.
While each element corresponded to many physical aspects of my health that needed healed. They also helped me to understand ways of being in the world. I wasn't just healing my body; I was learning to live as a complete human being in relationship with the natural order.
The Wounded Healer's Recognition
I used to resist the archetype of the wounded healer, but now I see how perfectly it fits. My woundedness became my starting place, my motivation to become a practitioner first for myself, then for others. This path taught me to transform trauma into purpose, to move slowly and confidently towards the vision for my health and wellness, to accept what I can’t control, to steward my internal resources, and share my wisdom to support others on their healing journey.
It taught me how sit with others in their illnesses (big and small), in other’s trauma and grief without trying to fix or take on their suffering, and to be a constant for one special person who lost their battle with cancer.
The key insight? No matter how different the content of our lives may be, it all distills down to fundamental human experiences: fear, joy, the need to face our inner torments, the requirement to accept our frailty and limitations, the possibility of transformation, and the opportunity to share ourselves with the world to make meaning of it all.
The Art of Managing Toward
When someone says, "I don't want to feel anxious anymore," what if we gently asked, "What do you want to feel instead? What would contentment feel like in your body? What would peace look like in your daily life?"
When we hear, "I don't want this disease anymore," we might explore, "What is this illness taking from you that you value? How might you relate to those precious things in a new way that allows for both the reality of your condition and the life you want to live?"
This isn't about positive thinking or denial. It's about recognizing that to have a whole approach to anything, we must see both what needs attention and what doesn't need fixing. We must find balance in the complexity that's constantly changing from moment-to-moment.
Chinese medicine teaches us that health and wellness are always changing within the cycles of nature. Nothing remains static. The yin of rest follows the yang of activity. The contraction of winter gives birth to the expansion of spring. And within each of us lies what Chinese medicine calls our shen—the deepest essence of ourselves that remains constant even as everything else transforms.
A Different Quality of Experience
When we learn to manage toward what we want rather than away from what we don't want, we align ourselves with our heart's desire. This doesn't guarantee an easy path—it may still take years or decades to unfold. But there's a different quality of experience when we lead with intention rather than reaction, when we cultivate rather than just eliminate.
This approach allows joy to thrive even in our darkest hours. It gives us permission to trust that when we're sick and things look bleak, they can get better. It helps us recognize that when we feel driven to push and achieve, there's another part of us that simply wants to rest and find joy in connection and relaxation.
For those of you struggling in any capacity—whether health-related or otherwise—I invite you to consider this shift. What would it mean to manage toward what you want? What would it feel like to align your daily actions with your deepest desires rather than your greatest fears?
Remember, life is an ever-unfolding process of transformation. Through acceptance and perseverance, we can change from a state of disharmony to a state of harmony. And in that harmony, we find not the absence of challenges, but the wisdom to dance with them.
What are you managing toward today?