Change a Behavior and Finding God May Follow

The Business Self Help Book That Helped Self

Influencer: The Power to Change Anything isn't deep philosophy.  It isn't say, The Varieties of Religious Experience, where we will end up today.  But it is one of the best books in the self-help / business segment genre that I've read- I'll be adding it my shelf with First, Break All The Rules (a book that every parent should read on behalf of their children and every high school student should read for herself), The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Getting Things Done (issue these two books and a good secretarial manual to each new college graduate).

A self-help book must give a prescription for change, preferably in a numerated list.  Influencer offers in the categories of personal, social and structural solutions a prescription each in the motivational and ability categories- six total.  For best results, the authors recommend throwing all six solutions at a problem.  Best of all, the book explains that these methods can be used not only to influence others, but to influence yourself.  The example provided is of a man who lost a large amount of weight; a real person.

Another requirement of the self-help book is that it speak from authority.  Statistics and case histories are presented to illustrate that the author knows more than you do.  Much more.  Your job, therefore, is to not worry about thinking but to simply follow the prescription.  I did, and I've lost eight of the 23 pounds I've gained since my last VFT (Virgin Fat Territory- a lowest number ever seen in a weight loss journey).

The particular lesson that influenced me was told in the history of the fat guy: Influence must be aimed at behaviors.  A goal does not contain within it the elements of influence that will lead to the goal being achieved.  My New Year's Resolution included getting to onederland (a weight starting with a one) this year.  Twenty-three pounds up was not getting me there, but the desire to get 23 pounds down wasn't enough to make it happen. 

What was a behavior that I could change?  Overeating is so complicated.  There are so many different reasons I overeat.  I recently saw a study that claimed the average adult made more than 1,000 decisions per day about eating.  I've spent more than a decade now with therapists and overeating comrades analyzing my eating.  All I needed was one behavior.

I decided not to eat food the minute it was in my possession.  Specifically, I decided to wait five minutes from having food until eating it.  For the most part I haven't waited five entire minutes, but I have broken the cycle of grabbing food and stuffing it in my mouth.  While I wait, I "write-before-bite", another important behavior in controlling eating but not the primary goal.  I also do general journal writing, which has been missing from my life because I "don't have time" for that.  I've lost those eight pounds.  But most importantly, I feel in control of my eating again for the first time in more than six months.  One behavior.

Where God Comes In

I have been meaning to write a post about the limiting nature of happiness, to go with the post on the limiting nature of strength.  You know the old footprints poem: God is rarely seen in happy times.  For an addict having the time of her life with good health, a great job, and fabulous friendships, getting one inch past Step One into that God stuff is difficult.  I'm a proclaimed theist of the Christian variety, but my sense of spiritual connection has been at an all time low.

And yet notice what happened when I started pausing before my food.  My selected behavior was not prayer, which would be more directed toward God and would be another means of pausing, and yet the behavior of pausing just for the sake of the space caused me to start writing in my journal again.  Not in itself prayer or intended meditation, but a space for a spiritual experience.

William James considered this space to be important.  On a separate page I offer a lengthy excerpt (pp. 395 - 398) from The Varieties of Religious Experience for those who wish to read it.   It is an excellent defense of creating space for spirituality through practices of asceticism.  Waiting a few moments before eating is a tiny asceticism, but an effective one in a life that is just too easy.  James, referencing the ease of 1902, wrote:

...it is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty amongst the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers. (p. 403)

Poverty isn't just a matter of zip code, it's a matter of separation from ease.  It is an asceticism enforced or chosen by interactions with the outside world.  Avoidance of poverty at all costs includes the willingness to sell one's soul at any cost; this is what makes it a moral disease.  Single-minded devotion to the things of this world is what makes it a spiritual disease.

Many years ago I read an a book of existentialist psychology.  There is no possibility I could recall the identity of this book, but it made the argument that addiction is a kind of necrophilia- a chasing after death.  When I mentioned this to my therapist he was so startled that it ended the conversation immediately.  Reading James, I realize that the concept was wrong.  Addiction is a maladaptive chasing after life.  One thing that the fat on my body says is that I have provided life for myself.  One thing that choosing food before anything else says is that I choose nourishment and life.

American culture has made an idol worship of not dieing- we don't spend a quarter-million dollars on the last few days of life on accident (the cost of the typical American dieing process); it is the final sign of respect to the idol.  According to James, asceticism is about increasing life through an acceptance of death.  The final paragraph from the excerpt mentioned above:

The metaphysical mystery, thus recognized by common sense, that he who feeds on death that feeds on men possesses life supereminently and excellently, and meets best the secret demands of the universe, is the truth of which asceticism has been the faithful champion.  The folly of the cross, so inexplicable by the intellect, has yet its indestructible vital meaning. (pp. 397-398)

I happened to finish reading  The Varieties of Religious Experience this week.  Much of it is relevant to  my spiritual struggles, and I shall surely be devoting a post just to wrapping up my interaction with the book.  The book is wide and souring and exactly the kind of philosophy that is central to my existence as a human being, but I know that this specific topic required changing a behavior first and letting the meaning follow.  As I mentioned in a previous post, without any experience of life the book was meaningless.  With the experience of one tiny, very tiny, behavior a "metaphysical mystery" became clear.