This Time I Mean It

Getting Past What Holds You Back with Baby Boomer Weight Loss Expert Scott 'Q' Marcus

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Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

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As I remember the broad strokes, college students – the guinea pigs of most psychology experiments – were divided into two sections.

Both groups were given monologues that they were to earnestly perform for an audience. One group was well compensated for their involvement; the other was not.

The content of the scripts was what sensible, civilized, average people would find distasteful, even abhorrent. As illustration, the Jewish people should have been exterminated in World War II, or slavery was actually positive for African Americans and should be reinstated.

Using a psychological evaluation prior to their performances, each actor was rated on a one-to-five scale as to how much their beliefs were in alignment what they were about to perform. Upon completion, they were again assessed as to their level of agreement. The purpose of these measurements was to understand if the students’ beliefs moved in the direction of what was espoused in their scripts after they performed them.

The results were striking.

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The Careful Use of Words

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Limericks are humorous, frequently risqué verses of three long and two short lines that rhyme in an “aabba” pattern.

They were popularized by Edward Lear, in the late 19th century. (Fun fact: It is said that the term, “limerick” is from the chorus sung between improvised verses from the song, “Will you come up to Limerick?”) When done well, limericks use puns, spoonerisms, and double-entendres. The earliest known American limerick (1902) is:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

Putting words together in playful patterns is fun. Remember the long-standing children’s poem:

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair.
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t very fuzzy, was he?

Another example of linguistic mischievousness was a novelty song from World War II:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey.
A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe.

It’s more fun to say than any sense it appears to make. However, the bridge of the song explains:

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear,
a little bit jumbled and jivey,
Sing ‘Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy.’

Okay, it’s antiquated and trite – but c’mon, it’s amusing; admit it.

How we arrange words gives us a sense of joy and satisfaction.

Say “Aluminum Anemone” out loud. Go ahead. No one’s listening. Notice how it feels on your lips? No, it doesn’t make sense; it’s just pleasurable to pronounce.

More importantly than poems or limericks, words are the bedrock for our thoughts.

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Who is YOU?

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Who is YOU?

(That’s not a grammatical error.)

When asked, “Who is (your name),” what do you say?

Do you reply with your name? Do you say “I’m a man (or woman).” Is your response, “mother, father, son, daughter”? Do you label yourself by what you do for a living or your religion or even where you live/

Again, who is YOU?

We are incredibly complex beings and we have many different labels.

For example, I can be “man” at the same time as I’m “happy.” I can be a “resident of northern California” while “native of Detroit” and both are equally true. I can be “a person of faith” and I can be “doubtful” in the same place. I can be “overweight” and I can be “proud” together.

Why does this matter?

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The Road from “Never” to “Now”

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never-land-&-now-road

Changing a bad habit can be messy, frustrating, and unpleasant.

After all, if it was easy, we’d all be dropping bad habits willy-nilly, wouldn’t we?

It becomes easier if, instead of looking at it like, “One moment I’m here. The next minute I have to be all the way over there,” we understand it more as a series of stages.

I’ll assume one has left the initial stage of denial, and decided to — for example — lose a few pounds; accepting that either forever gaining weight or making a change are his only options.

He lands firmly in stage one: “Never.”

Here thoughts and feelings are extremely negative, perception being an excessive, laborious amount of work and discomfort for what appears to be a pipe dream result. Internal dialog is, “I will never be able to do that” with the obvious coda being, “…so why bother to try?”

In our example, the thought of sweaty, painful exercise; a starvation-level diet; anal-retentive tracking of calories; tasteless recipes; extensive shopping pattern adjustments; and – in general – being forever, always, never-ending conscious; triggers our synapses to scream, “No way! Can’t be done, ain’t gonna happen.” Crossing our arms, scowling, and firmly planting our feet, we refuse to budge.

Or so we think.

You see; the problem is that once consciousness has been raised it cannot never again be buried.

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Scott "Q" Marcus 707 442 6243 scottq@scottqmarcus.com

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