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You are here: Home / Archives for philosophical question

Why Do We Keep Doing That?

April 3, 2013 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

the-thinkerWhen I attended UCLA —

during the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene epochs — a story circulated among the undergrads about the ultimate final exam, which supposedly had taken place in a Philosophy class.

As urban legend had it, the students, bleary eyed from sleepless nights of contemplating The Theory of Forms and defending or arguing whether one can indeed step twice in the same river waited while the professor sauntered into the mini amphitheater, faced them square on, dramatically waiting for silence. Then theatrically, he pronounced, “For your final exam, answer only this one question.”

With staged flourish, he turned to the chalkboard and scrawled:

“Why?”

Most in attendance did not expect this, and ascribing to a more crass philosophy — “If you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with B.S.” — utilized the full allotted period to elaborate on this ultimate of all queries. After all, a question with such far-reaching bounds must be worthy of many pages and much ink.

Yet, as the story unfolds, the student who received the highest grade took no more than ten seconds to pen his rejoinder, strolling from the room almost immediately, while histrionically dropping his blue book on the instructor’s desk.

Simply, he had written,

“Why not?”

Now it’s my turn: “Why?”

“Why do we do what we do when we know that what we do will move us further from health, happiness or success?”

Before the knee-jerk reply, “I don’t,” escapes your lips, consider these examples. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Change, Intentions, mental health, Newspaper Column, Overcoming Temptation, Weight Loss Tagged With: changing habits, creatures of habit, philosophical question, philosophy, philosophy class, unhealthy habits, urban legend

Labeling Results Determines Future Results

July 19, 2012 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

Recently, I stumbled upon some noteworthy details.

First factoid: Supposedly (I say “supposedly” as I’m not sure of its veracity), the average overweight American needs to shed 38 pounds to level the scales at his correct weight. Obviously, some must lose more, and some less. Yet, should one take the collective poundage our citizenry must remove to be healthy, and divide it by the number of citizens who must drop those pounds; the resulting number would be just shy of 40.

Factoid two: That same “average American,” upon deciding to rid himself of the above mentioned 38 pounds, usually quits prior to 16 weeks; a shade less than four months.

The final datum is that — despite pie-in-the-sky claims made by “miracle weight loss cures” falsely proclaiming one can drop five to ten pounds a week — an “average” healthy, sustainable (two important distinctions) weight loss is between one-half and two pounds per week. Let’s split the difference down the middle and declare that number to be one and a quarter pounds every seven days.

From these bits of information, we can make a central deduction.

If the “average person” desirous of losing the “average amount of weight” sheds the “average amount per week” and quits in the “average number of weeks,” he will be approximately half way to his goal when he throws in the towel. (Sixteen weeks multiplied by 1.25 pounds per week = 20 pounds; just the other side of the midway point of 38.)

This prompts a quasi-philosophical question: Is one a “success” or “failure” if she drops 20 pounds, when in actuality, her goal is 38? It’s one of those “half-empty, half-full” scenarios.

The greater issue is not how many pounds one might lose, but how one views how many pounds she has lost.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Beliefs, Diet, Newspaper Column, Overcoming Perfectionsim, Power of Attitude, Self Talk, Weight Loss Tagged With: attitude, correct weight, diet, emotions, motivation, perception is reality, perfectionism, philosophical question, scales, successes

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