Medals analogy

The "medals analogy" is one of the key analogies we use at OptimalWork to explain the various levels by which challenges are embraced and growth is undertaken. The original medals analogy was coined by Dr. Guy Meadows, and we have adapted the analogy (with one significant change!) for our purposes.

Guy Meadows' Analogy Applied to Sleep

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In The Sleep Book: How to Sleep Well Every Night, Dr. Guy Meadows presents a novel approach to insomnia that is founded on the tenets of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

The book introduces what Dr. Meadows calls "The Olympic Podium of Night-Time Activity" to describe the different levels of success that one can have when trying to get a good night's sleep.

According to this schema, if you're able stay in bed all night, no matter how awake or upset you are, you get a medal. On the other hand, if you're having trouble sleeping and then get out of bed, trying to distract yourself from the frustration that comes with staying awake, you don't get a medal.

Guy Meadows' Gold Medal

"The gold medal goes to you when you are lying in bed asleep, as this is when you conserve the most energy and get rest."

In other words, you get the gold medal when you've successfully conquered insomnia for the night. Since sleeplessness is the "symptom" that you are trying to conquer, we can think of the gold medal as being awarded for no symptoms.

Guy Meadows' Silver Medal

"The silver medal is given when you are lying in bed with your eyes closed in a state of quiet wakefulness, while waiting for sleep to come.

"Here you accept the fact that you are awake and are willing to ‘watch’ and ‘welcome’ any of your wanted or unwanted thoughts, memories, images or sensations that arise in your mind and body moment by moment. You take the position of a peaceful bystander who watches over your internal world without judgment or comment.

"You recognize that paradoxically the key to sleeping is having an accepting and relaxed attitude towards being awake at night."

The silver medal, therefore, involves perfect acceptance of sleeplessness. You may be awake, but you're completely willing to remain awake, welcoming whatever thoughts and feelings come with it. (As Dr. Meadows describes above, the willingness to be awake is crucial for anyone struggling with insomnia!) We can thus think of the silver medal as symptoms with acceptance (or without frustration).

Guy Meadows' Bronze Medal

"The bronze medal also goes to lying in bed awake, except in this state there’s less acceptance and more struggle, anxiety, frustration and resignation. Here your unwillingness to experience wakefulness or any of the thoughts and sensations that present themselves begins to amplify your insomnia."

The bronze medal is what you get for "white-knuckling" the experience of trying to sleep. You don't give up trying to sleep, but you're frustrated, tossing and turning. Unpleasant thoughts occur to you — usually about the fact that you can't sleep! We can think of the bronze medal as symptoms plus frustration (i.e., without acceptance).

Aiming for Silver: Strengths and Limitations

The principle of Guy Meadows' analogy is that you never aim for gold. Aiming for gold is the same thing as hoping for no symptoms, no discomfort, in the face of a challenge. Aiming for gold opens us up to frustration because the second we encounter any trouble — anxiety in anticipation of a challenge, or an initial difficulty in falling asleep — we can feel that we've failed. Instead, Dr. Meadows' lesson is to aim for silver, and in so doing, to practice full acceptance of unpleasant thoughts and emotions in the midst of a challenging situation. By aiming for silver, night after night, challenge after challenge, we can start consistently achieving gold.

This model can be very helpful, and in fact its progression from bronze to silver parallels the progression from Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy to the third-wave behavioral therapies such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy — which incorporate the principles of, first, challenge; and, second, mindfulness.

At OptimalWork, however, we started to encounter some limitations with this model.

• First, it turns the gold medal — indicating the greatest success! — into an outcome. This is limiting because outcomes are, to an extent, always out of our ultimate control, and it wouldn't make sense to award a medal for a result that you can't control.

• Second, it assumes that lack of difficulty is the goal — whereas we know that the true goal is growth in the face of any challenge, which requires emotions such as anxiety to be present.

• Third, and relatedly, Dr. Meadows' model lacks the highest level of willingness with which one can embrace a challenge: that of reframing. More on this below, where we present our updated model.

The OptimalWork Medals Analogy

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As described above, Guy Meadows' analogy describes two degrees of willingness you can have when facing a challenge that requires you to grow. Here, we add a third degree.

Let's apply this model beyond the realm of sleep. Whenever we face a challenge that's going to stretch us, we know that this will involve the surging of adrenaline and the choice either to embrace or avoid that challenge.

At the end of each day, you can look back at your day, and ask yourself: Did I give in to avoidance in the face of a challenge? If you did, that’s okay; you can improve by resolving how to approach similar challenges the next day. But if you didn’t give in to avoidance, you can give yourself a medal for that day.

Bronze and Silver

Our adapted analogy leaves the bronze and silver medals untouched, though it will help to clarify them below:

The bronze medal is the first level of willingness. In the face of a challenge, you get a bronze medal if you merely tolerate your challenge without giving in to avoidance. You may not enjoy it, you may be gritting and bearing it through the entire duration, but you nonetheless endure. We can thus describe the essence of the bronze medal as tolerance, or "pure challenge." The "bronze" approach was the approach of the original behavioral therapists who made use of exposure therapy — often to a heroic degree! — to help people extinguish their threat responses in the face of a stimulus.

The silver medal is the second level of willingness. Amid a day full of challenges, you get a silver medal if you use mindfulness of the negative sensations that accompany challenges, at least occasionally during the day. By fully opening up to the emotion that comes with a challenge, you can make that emotion much more finite and palatable. The essence of the silver medal is thus acceptance, i.e., challenge plus mindfulness. With silver, you're still approaching challenge throughout your day, but you've added the element of mindfulness to it. The "silver" approach, as mentioned before, is that of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and the other third-wave cognitive-behavioral therapies, whose primary contribution to the behavioral tradition is mindfulness.

The True Gold Medal

We can now redefine the gold medal as the third and highest level of willingness. You get a gold medal if you were able to flip your view of a challenge from dread into excitement, energy, and growth — that is, if you've discovered how to welcome and love a challenge. The essence of the gold medal is therefore love, which encompasses all three of reframing, mindfulness, and challenge. With gold, you're still approaching challenges and accepting all uncomfortable emotions, but the element of reframing is now added.

In this context, reframing a challenge involves:

• Flipping one's view of the adrenaline that accompanies the challenge. Rather than dreading adrenaline as a potential threat — thus turning it into anxiety — we can reframe adrenaline into excitement, a thrill, and ultimately, a performance-enhancer.

• More broadly, reframing involves seeing the challenge itself in its widest possible context: that is, as the situation by which we can effect our greatest growth. We not only reframe the emotion, but we can reframe the entire situation, which encompasses all of our uncomfortable thoughts and emotions.

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