Growing up I had a friend who's mother was a "health food nut" and "fitness nazi". The story I was told is that her parents didn't teach their children (or practice themselves) proper eating habits (a parenting flaw that i am increasingly tempted to classify as abuse) and as a consequence she was very over weight as a child. As an adult she spent as much time or more on her diet and exercise as she did on her career, out of some unspoken fear of ending up back the way she was.
That last bit was a lie. It's not an unspoken fear, that implies irrationality, but rather an unspoken fact. I recently read on tumblr (I know that has all the validity of saying "So I was reading the wall above the pisser..." but hold on a bit) a post decrying discrimination against over weight people. It was countering the "your eating habits and exercise are a choice so we can harass you for choosing to be fat" argument with statistics that show how dismal the success rate of weight loss programs are. These same numbers a quoted in this mini
article from
Cracked (which despite being a list format humor site typically has better citing in its articles than most major news networks). Look around you and you'll probably notice the same thing, I have. All of the limited successes I've seen in the realm of weight loss are people like my friend's mother, people that are willing to make their physical fitness a job, or even a second career. The question isn't "how do I lose weight?" it's "how do I become the kind of person who doesn't gain weight?". Phrasing the question that way may increase your chances of being the statistical anomaly that is successful weight loss. You are not changing your diet, you are changing your you.
In answering that question for myself I took a page from a friend's story. Her continuing and impressive success toward her weight loss goals is almost entirely owed to her taking up recreational/competitive roller skating as hobby. A hobby she invests as much or more time into (and I think considers more important) than her career. For myself I started biking again. I bike to work, I bike to burn off stress, and I bike for charity. Right now the weathers crap so one of my bikes is mounted on a trainer in front of my tv and I bike while watching movies. My physical condition is in no way as impressive as my friend's, but I have not made as many steps toward becoming a healthy person as she has. I know what I need to do, I can see the person I need to become but it's a hard path to walk. It is also not the only path to change I'm trying to follow.
The bit about asking the right question comes from another Cracked
article* :
"...that's the step that gets skipped -- it's always "How can I get a job?"
and not "How can I become the type of person employers want?" It's "How
can I get pretty girls to like me?" instead of "How can I become the
type of person that pretty girls like?" See, because that second one
could very well require giving up many of your favorite hobbies and
paying more attention to your appearance, and God knows what else. You
might even have to change
your personality."
The second question he brings up is an important one for me, although in a some what broader (and slightly less shallow) sense. Of the three points he brings up two i have already made inroads toward. My hobbies took a trimming when i added bicycling in, and for the appearance part i'll refer you to earlier entries in this blog. It's the third part that gets me. You can find people and resources on the 'net (assuming you have some skill in filtering BS) to help you with your appearance, diet and exercise. Those paths are well marked and (even if often abandoned) well tred. Non snake oil advice on how to change your personality seems almost imposible to find.
I have only seen one person make a marked change in that regard, from a people clumsy shy off putting nerd to suave energetic out going nerd. And while I knew him and was working with him while this change was taking place I'm not entirely sure how he did it. I know that during this time he read and recommended I read the much decried book "The Game". The people descibed in that book and infact many of the examples of people who are good in social situations from my own life are what I would call ass holes. I mean some of these guys are my friends but they are dicks alot of the time, to women and people they are working with, and some how this works. The thing holding me back from following the few trail marking or blazing of in my own in that direction is the question "is that who I really want to be?". Honest self inspection raises the question is this a legitimate question/issue or, like disussed in a later portion of the above quoted article, am I sabotaging myself?
I know the answer many people will give me is that the dickishness is a form of projection of self confidence and that it is the self confidence that people are responding to. I know that improving my dress and physical fitness can (and have to a degree: see earlier entries) improve my self confidence. However as I continue to move farther down those paths I am begginging to wonder if they will by themselves take me close enough to the goal of being better with people or if i truely need to find (or create) another path to get there.
Partly this is a post about where I am, where I'm heading, where I want to be that stands in place of pointless New Years resolutions, and partly it is a request for signposts and bread crumbs.
And, like every time I talk about my self improvement, to the people who have helped:
Thank you. (you know who you are)
*Seriously go read
David Wong's and
John Cheese's stuff, thier advice/lifelesson articles despite (or because of) being humor are better than any advice colloum i've ever read.
