Why exercise indeed? Did you know that 20,400,000, people, on average, around the world ask this question each month? God Google tells us so – and given that he is the one counting, it would be a tad brave to argue with him. It is a great question and I’m pleased to see it being asked because when it comes to weight loss some highly problematic assumptions are often made.

Many people with a weight problem assume that we exercise to lose weight, but few realise just how ineffective it is in causing weight loss. Fewer again appreciate how the misunderstanding contributes to the 80%+ weight loss plan failure and subsequent weight regain.

So often I hear people lament, ‘I need to lose weight,’ and in their next breath they talk about their plan to get back into exercise in one form or another. Almost as often, I will hear no mention of changing their dietary intake, no matter how hard I listen! The reason for this has become clear to me over the years – we humans are deeply emotionally attached to the food that makes us fat and we are eternally hopeful that we can lose weight without threatening our loving relationship to food.

Since 1999 the researchers in the know have realised that exercise was not an effective way to lose weight – it was a highly counter-intuitive finding that confirmed eight earlier studies dating back to 1983. Despite repeated replication studies since 1999 (I will come back to these in a moment) I suspect the majority of health professionals today are still not up to date with the research and propagate the myth that exercise is an effective weight loss strategy.

In the March edition of Choice magazine here in Australia, their ‘expert’ doctor (because his mistake is such a common one, I won’t name him) said it was ‘absurd’ that some weight loss clinics were telling people that exercise was not an effective way to lose weight. He then went on to proclaim the seemingly logical argument that the uninformed have used for years: ‘body weight is a balance of energy in and energy out’ and if ‘we burn more energy through exercise than we take in, the body uses the fat to meet the energy requirements.’

This would be true if we were mindless robots, but add in the human mind looking for every excuse to overeat and the equation changes dramatically. I reviewed these psychological processes in detail in Weight Loss for Food Lovers when it was published back in 2006. While I can’t take the credit, in 2009 Time magazine reviewed the research and made it their cover story: The Myth About Exercise. The article was entitled, Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.

There is a simple reason why this fact went unnoticed for so long – most studies combined exercise and diet such that it was impossible to calculate what has come to be known as the relative contribution of exercise to weight loss. Well-designed, long-term relative contribution studies are relatively rare.

Most recently, in 2011, a well-researched paper was published in The American Journal of Medicine by Thorogood et al, reviewing the relative contribution field. What did they find from studies of people exercising to a level that we know most people cannot maintain for a year i.e. 45 minutes four days a week? The average weight lost over a twelve month period was only 1.7kg – waist circumference losses were equally modest at 1.95cm. This modest result is actually better than in many studies – especially those involving women.

It was back in 1999 when the American National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, in combination with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease, convened an Expert Panel on the Identification, Evaluation and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults (Published by Wing RR, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 1999). Only two of thirteen studies found significant differences in weight loss resulting from exercise alone.

To be clear on that point, eleven of the thirteen studies failed to find significant weight loss from the addition of exercise to dietary management!

The weight loss attributable to exercise was gender related as men lost around 2kg and women less than 1kg. The key point here is the time period – one year! Most people on a healthy, intake-focussed weight loss plan can lose 1-2kg in one month. While the relative contribution of dietary management to weight loss is closer to ten-fold, to be conservative, we can safely tell our patients that there is at least a five-fold greater benefit from putting ones (typically limited) motivation into managing our energy intake. This is the critical psychological issue.

Why Exercise – Women listen up!

The final issue is the gender factor. A consistent finding is that the small weight loss benefit of exercise is essentially only relevant to males. In 2003, Donnelly et al published a study in the highly respected Archives of Internal Medicine. This study was particularly notable because it was intense and ran for a longer duration than most – 45min/day, 5days/week over 16 months – and most importantly of all – the exercise was supervised in a laboratory. Men lost 5.2kg on average while women – here’s the kicker – gained 0.6kg. Yes, they were obviously fitter and the weight gain was muscle, but over 16 months they only lost 200g of body fat giving a reduction in body fat percentage of only 0.8%.

I have never met a female patient who was prepared to exercise for three-quarters of an hour five days a week for over a year to lose 200g (7 ounces) of fat. On the other hand I have many patients who exercise regularly for the cardiovascular and stress management benefits of exercise. Recent research is showing that exercise stimulates BDNF – Brain-derived neurotrophic factor – a hot new player on the scene. BDNF promotes neurone repair and growth, thereby promoting creativity and laying down of memories.

The misunderstanding as to why we exercise leads to failure experiences

There are two psychological problems with prescribing exercise at the same times as dietary change that increases the likelihood of failure: First, there is an increase in what is know as ‘motivational fatigue’ as limited motivational energy is put into a strategy that after three or four months is likely to show negligible weight loss – particularly in women.

The second problem is faulty generalisation from what does not work to what does – this goes to the heart of understanding the psychology of weight management. This is a major issue for people who believe that exercise should be the most important part of their weight loss strategy. As they fail to see results, motivation dies and their program is abandoned. Sadly, the misunderstanding around exercise has set up another damaging failure experience. Because of the perpetuation of the confusion around the role of exercise in weight loss, almost no one abandons the exercise part of the program while keeping the dietary component – the baby leaves the building with the proverbial bathwater.

There is an association between weight loss maintenance and exercise (although probably not causal). With this in mind, along with the issue of motivational fatigue, I recommend patients change their eating lifestyle in a sustainable way first. During this phase I encourage them just to move more e.g. take the stairs, park further away and walk etc. Once the new eating lifestyle is in place, then we move to developing a regular exercise regime to get all the benefits that regular exercise offers.

So, why exercise? Exercise for the physical and psychological benefits which are legion – to lose weight the primary focus must be on energy intake. Once a new healthy eating lifestyle is in place, work on developing the habit of regular exercise – for its own reasons. To pursue them at the same time demonstrates a misunderstanding of the psychological and physiological science of weight management and how motivation works.

[Endnote: for those interested in reading the Time article click here.]

I been asked to give some background to my upcoming presentation on 28 April. here is the excerpt I have provided to the conference organiser:

Motivation & Values, Meaning & Happiness: Future directions after a decade in weight loss therapy.
This talk will briefly review the key precepts behind Dr Blair-West’s psychodietetics and the underlying restraint theory. It will then cover the issue of ‘motivational fatigue’ with a focus on the role of exercise and recent research findings. Finally, he will look at the relationship between weight loss, motivation, values and meaning and how this led to his third book The Way of The Quest. Dr Blair-West will draw upon the core learnings that have come from his psychotherapy with those grappling with obesity from the last decade.

If you are interested in attending here’s the link again. 

For those of you who have been asking when I will be speaking next in Brisbane, here is the drum. I have been invited to give the keynote at an upcoming conference in a couple of week’s time that will focus on motivating patients to lead healthier lives. I will be talking on what I have come to understand about motivation and lifestyle change and how this led to my third book, The Way of The Quest. The book is all about how to connect with one’s values and how to find meaning and purpose in life as I have come to see that these are the building blocks of personal growth and change.

The seminar wins the award for the world’s longest title: How to inspire your clients to lose kilos, exercise and quit cigarettes (or other ways to improve health). It is not an expensive event and you can attend either Saturday (12-3pm) or Sunday (9am-4pm) or both. It is at the tranquil Bardon Professional Centre. If you are interested in attending click here for more information – hope to see you there.

What is it that makes a true friend? This is a question that has been on my mind for many years. Indeed, my wife and I chose a reading at our wedding (24 years ago this year!!) that spoke of how a true friend is someone with whom you can dare to be yourself. This is no more true than it is of a life partner. There can be no real intimacy if we do not take the risk of being who we really are – warts and all. While we need to be who we are, we also need to be gentle with our partner and our friends who take the risk of being who they really are with us.

On my desk in my office are words that touch on this critical aspect of true friendship. It reminds us to be very forgiving if we call ourselves a true friend. In my research into how we choose our partners – and the importance of dating in this process – i recently discovered the author of these words that are wrongly attributed to George Eliot (thanks to a patient who pointed this out). They were in fact written by Dinah Craik in her novel A life for a life published in 1859. She was one of the most successful English female writers of her day. Thanks also to one of my patients who suggested I share these words more widely – apparently the end of my desk has limited reach amongst the greater population! Here they are:

Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out, just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand
will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping, and then
with the breath of kindness
blow the rest away.

I recently made Weight Loss for Food Lovers available on Kindle and then more recently on the Amazon Kindle Owners’ eBook Lending Library. Could I ask a favour of those of you who have read my book? Could I ask you to put a brief review up on Amazon – preferably favourable! – but say whatever you need to say! (Apparently it’s better to be talked about negatively than not at all.)

As I know this takes time and is not the most fun way you could spend your spare time, I am happy to send you two copies of our children’s book for your trouble. If you don’t have your own young kids, you may know some young families that do. This illustrated book is all about teaching children from a young age the critical task of learning to eat mindfully and the importance of getting them involved in food selection and preparation (and don’t forget there’s a song that goes with it on the website).

Click on this link here (Weight Loss for Food Lovers on Amazon) and scroll down to the ‘Create your own review’ button. Just email me (see the bottom of your email notification – or post a comment to this post) giving us the name you put beside the review, include your delivery address and we will pop them in the mail to you.

Thanking some of you in advance!

A key pillar of the Weight Loss Mindset is dealing with the “I deserve some nice food” script. People I work with seem to be able to cleverly come up with this rationale when things in their life are equally either going well or going badly! (And then when things are so-so, a treat seems to make an enormous amount of sense to make life more interesting!)

For people with this problem we need to come up with ‘non-caloric’ ways to treat ourselves when this script kicks in. A patient of mine and I recently came up with this list –  a great starting point for anyone who has this problem. The trick is to print it off and keep it in your purse/wallet and refer to it as needed – the human mind has a strange habit of getting us to forget these strategies at the critical points when they are most needed. Here are some thoughts – as you can see they vary from what can be done at home in a few minutes (the time it takes to prepare and eat a bowl of ice cream) to larger rewards:

• Buy your favourite trashy magazine and then read a few pages
• Buy some luscious teas from the tea speciality shop and enjoy a cup
• Buy yourself a bunch of flowers from supermarket
• Paint nails or toenails (guys are generally less keen on this one)
• Go to movies
• Call a friend (very powerful if loneliness is the emotional driver)
• Shop for costume jewellery and other inexpensive stuff
• Watch favourite recorded TV show
• Internet surfing for fun (great way to allow cravings to pass)

Everyone needs their own, personalised list, so if this is an issue for you (or the people you work with) get writing!

Ever since I published Weight Loss for Food Lovers, I have been asked, ‘When is the sequel coming out?’ Well, after four years of work I should have some rush copies next month, but I need to warn you all that it will not be what you might expect. You see the ‘sequel’ doesn’t mention the words ‘weight loss’ or ‘eating lifestyle’ or any other words around weight management at all. ‘What’s going on, how is that a sequel?’ would be a fair question. Let me try to give you a fair answer.

I don’t know how many people I have worked with on their weight management over the years – it’s been a lot – and then I have trained and supervised hundreds of other therapists with their more challenging patients. What I have come to see is that the vast majority of people who struggle with their weight are unhappy at some level. They are not necessarily clinically depressed, but they are unhappy.

Food is the self-medication. It promises that ‘being-cuddled-in-your-mother’s-arms-as-you’re-being-fed’ primal, soothing experience. It is the same for my patients who drink too much or use recreational drugs. Others are looking for more love (which often reads as ‘sex’). People make the understandable mistake of thinking that having pleasure, in any of these forms, will make them happier, will sooth their troubled soul. The paradox is that trying to make ourselves happier through pleasure will, in the long run, actually add to our unhappiness. Pleasure is fine along they way, but it does not work as a strategy to be happier. Eating to self-sooth causes most of my patients to feel guilty, angry at themselves and more unhappy.

Paradise Lost, Inadequacy found
Modern life can be tough – technology and greater opportunity creates frustration, confusion and a greater sense of not being good enough, a greater sense of missing out. I remember visiting an idyllic tribal village in Fiji ten years ago where they had just gotten TV. The schoolteacher on this gorgeous island was lamenting how these kids, who previously thought they lived in paradise and had all they wanted, now thought otherwise. Television showed them everything else that they could have, that they did not, and their paradise suddenly fell way short. They started to find that their life as they knew it, was no longer enough, it was inadequate, they were inadequate. Read more »

Those of you who have the inclination, might have noticed that I have been rather remiss in the article posting stakes over recent months. My excuse? In Weight Loss for Food Lovers I wrote about how we need to be aware of the unconscious forces that will keep us stuck in the ‘nice idea’ phase of a project for so long that we don’t get  into the ‘execution’, the ‘doing’ phase. If we don’t execute our project, whatever it may be, we don’t finish. If we don’t finish, the greatest idea in the world will be relegated to Unfinished-Idea Heaven – the place that ‘nice ideas’ go to to spend the rest of eternity lounging by a half-filled pool while listening to the first part of all the unfinished songs. Euripides, the Shakespeare of Ancient Greece who wrote over 90 plays, said it simply: ‘Do not plan for ventures before finishing what’s at hand.’

Beware the seduction of the new, exciting and fascinating

There are several reasons why we don’t finish things we start. As I wrote about in Food Lovers, sometimes it’s failure fear, sometimes it’s success stress. For me it was seduction. Let me explain. Last year while on holidays I started writing a book about how to choose a healthy partner. I was several chapters into it when I realised I was at risk of making another contribution to Unfinished-Idea Heaven. You see, four years ago I started writing another book, a sequel of sorts to Food Lovers, although very different in many ways. I had finished writing it and was in the laborious rewriting and editing phase. This is the most tedious part of book writing, unable to compete with the alluring seduction of researching, writing and falling in love with a fresh, exciting and fascinating new book. In relationship therapy I often see people make the mistake of comparing a fresh, exciting new partner with the too well known, no-longer-exciting one that they have spent the last few years with. You can guess who usually wins. A few years on the exciting new partner is looking a lot like the last one … sometimes worse!

The danger is that we can give up on equally valid, or even more valid, ideas and projects as the shiny new ones grab our attention. To combat this temptress I made a deal with myself that I would not write anything else – blog articles included – until I sent the book off for publication. This happened just last week. So over the coming weeks you can expect to see me bothering your Inbox as I catch up on a pile of articles that came to me while finishing off this last book. Oh … by the way – wishing you all a belated healthy, happy and prosperous 2012.

I have been looking over an interesting website – www.obesitymyths.com and while I cannot vouch for its accuracy, it does  make some assertions worthy of closer consideration. I was particularly interested in their comments on how the obesity epidemic was accelerated by a simple change to the definition of obesity. The site tells us that “35 million Americans went to sleep one night in 1998 at a government-approved weight and woke up ‘overweight’ the next morning, thanks to a change in the government’s definition …  ‘Overweight’ had previously been defined as a BMI of 27.8 for men and 27.3 for women; in 1998 it was lowered to a BMI of 25 for both genders.”

A recognised problem with the Body Mass Index, is that it simply measures our weight relative to our height. It does not allow for muscle. The site goes on to cite a research letter published in JAMA (the journal of the respected American Medical Association) that reported that 97% of players in the National Football League are technically overweight and more than 50% are obese. Celebrities who suddenly found themselves overweight included Will Smith and Pierce Brosnan, while Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson immediately became obese. Tom ‘the sexiest man alive’ Cruise woke up to find himself  obese as a result of his height deficiency against his broad-shouldered, muscled body. Read more »

In July 2011, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) approved the EndoBarrier^® Gastrointestinal Liner (the EndoBarrier) for inclusion on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. The TGA has approved the use of the EndoBarrier for up to 12 months for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity.

It is an interesting approach that is designed to mimic the effects of gastric bypass surgery without the risks of surgery. It looks like a clear plastic sock, open at both ends (see image). It is inserted into the top part of the small intestine just after the stomach. The barrier is placed endoscopically, via the mouth, with imaging assistance so that the doctor can position it precisely. The device works by simply stopping food from making contact with the lining of the small intestine where so much absorption takes place: the duodenum and jejunum. Read more »

I often see people make decisions much more quickly than they need to. It is certainly a habit I am trying to rid myself of. As humans we feel the need, when presented with a question or a problem, to answer it sooner rather than later. It comes from a need, that we all have to varying degrees, for closure, to take the issue off our mind. Alternatively, we can feel we look like we are not that smart if we cannot come up with a quick response. One of my favourite writers, Mark Twain, dealt with our need to respond more quickly than we need to. With his inimitable wit he suggested, “It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Our drive to respond quickly in making important decisions is not a problem if we’re choosing a movie, big problem if we’re choosing a car, a house, a career … or a partner. From a weight management perspective you would be surprised how much less you eat if you slow down your decision making when it comes to choosing what to put in your mouth next. You see all of these choices are initially driven by emotions around these needs for closure, comfort, or not to feel a fool, or to keep up with the Joneses. Over time, the emotions will be replaced by rationality as our higher self  is given the space to do what it does.

In certain situations, one has to make lightning fast decisions. The following comes from a pre-flight briefing from a Canadian Starfighter F104 instructor (thanks to Noel Whittaker the financial guru who sourced this lovely quote). These jet fighters were the first combat aircraft capable of sustained Mach 2 flight – yes, that is twice the speed of sound – and at full noise, it could go quite a bit faster again! NASA later used them for spaceflight training. So things happen very quickly in these machines and they did not have a great safety rating. Indeed, the Canadians’ nickname for it was the ‘Widowmaker’. Accordingly, the briefing by the trainer to trainee co-pilots went like this:

‘If you hear me yell, “Eject! Eject! Eject!” the last two will be echoes.

If you stop to ask “Why?” you’ll be talking to yourself, because by then you’ll be the pilot.’

Fortunately, we can generally make decisions more slowly in life. I would suggest that as a rather obvious guideline, the more important the decision, the more time should be put aside to make it. So a movie, several minutes; a car several weeks and a partner several months – and then a couple of years more before embarking on the complete lock-in – having children!

When I have to make an important decision, my first response is a question: When is the deadline? Read more »

In response to my last article on meal replacements, I had this insightful response from Cindy, so insightful I want to reprint it in full. Here is what she said:

I have been on the Tony Ferguson meal replacement diet, and it has worked well. It has a Progress phase where you add in normal meals and snacks with some MR. This has been great in learning about food, carbohydrates in particular. It also encourages mindfulness, and after shakes for a while, every mouthful of normal food is a taste sensation and I certainly enjoy it.

What Cindy did not know is that I did some consulting to Tony Ferguson (TF) and actually developed their Progress program. I was very impressed by their preparedness to embrace the principles of the psychological research that I cover in my book. To clarify a couple of points, right from the start the TF program encourages having at least one healthy meal a day made up of lean protein and salad or vegetables. In the Progress phase, this is increased to two meals on some days as we gradually rebuild our relationship with food. This is the phase where we also add back in the more fattening foods that people love like chocolate and cheese. The trick is to learn to eat these foods on your terms, where you control them rather than them controlling you! The reason why diets fail is because people a) feel deprived of these foods and b) when they sneak back into the person’s diet, they go back to their old ways of overeating – having  not learnt to eat them mindfully as Cindy reminds us. Read more »

From time to time I’m asked why it is that I use meal replacements (MRs) in all their forms – shakes, soups, food bars etc – in working with people to lose weight. How does this fit with me repeatedly saying the ultimate goal is not weight loss but developing a new relationship with food and a healthy eating lifestyle?  The short answer is that when it comes to weight loss there is a hierarchy of the totality of interventions that can be used – starting at the bottom. These are outlined in the pyramid on the right.

A couple of key points to note. The most effective form of weight loss and the inevitable one if all those below it fail, is premature death! As you can also see from the pyramid, working on an understanding of the psychological issues that lead to sabotage sits over every intervention.

In the first instance, of course, as any good dietitian will tell you, we should try to manage our weight by eating in a healthy way.  But the question is what to do when this fails? This is when we start to move up the hierarchy – hence my interest in the next level up of MRs because after this level things get more problematic. Read more »

Rules for Being Human were first popularised by Jack Canfield in his bestselling  book Chicken Soup for the Soul. They were published as by ‘Anonymous’ simply because that was the way they came to Jack. It was Dan Millman, author of The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, who set the record straight and contacted Jack to reveal the author. They came from the book If Life is a Game, These are the Rules by Cherie Carter-Scott. Amongst other things she was inspired in writing this book by Helen Keller. To remind you, Helen Keller became deaf and blind at the age of 19 months. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree and went on to become a prolific author and social activist. Carter-Scott references, in particular, this quotation by Helen Keller, “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”

It is worth being reminded of the 10 Rules even though you will probably have seen them. The only one I could not leave alone was Rule Nine. Whenever this principle is spoken about I am compelled to qualify it as sometimes an inner voice can get us into trouble or hold us back.

Here they are: Read more »

It’s not often that I watch a movie twice. Often, if it’s not what I’m looking for, I don’t watch a movie to the end once! And I’m not really into football. My wife says one of the reasons she married me was that I had no interest in spectator sports. I have enjoyed State of Origin, but only because I was lucky enough to be invited to watch the last two games, the equaliser and the decider, from private boxes. At lunch with my wife’s family for her mother’s eighty-something birthday, for the brief period that I remain a world authority on State of Origin, I was sallying forth on football. My father-in-law waded in and argued that League wasn’t real football, Rugby was the game.

Now to be honest, I’m sure there’s a difference between the two sports but be blowed if I have a clue what it is. My nephew chimed in with ‘Rugby is not life and death, it is more important than that.’ So, feeling out of my depth, I went to safer ground and asked if they had seen the movie Invictus. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it is about Nelson Mandela’s first days in office as the President of South Africa and how he brilliantly uses the Springboks rugby team to reconcile the races and their tinderbox tensions. Matt Damon plays the captain of the team while Morgan Freeman does a magnificent job as Mandela. I was more than happy to watch the movie again, because it is not about rugby, it is about inspirational leadership and Mandela’s amazing capacity for forgiveness. Having read his autobiography, I, like the rest of the world, have a deep admiration for this unusual human. So the next day, as we had ten of us at our place watching the film for the second time, I noticed things that were not so evident to me the first time round.

A couple of times Mandela referred to the poem that saw him through his 27 years in prison. Afterwards, I found myself returning to the last lines of the poem, ‘… I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.’ A message I am repeatedly trying to deliver in psychotherapy. Read more »

Have a listen to this beautiful song and then read the story behind it … then listen again – click here: Man In A White Shirt.

The Story Behind The Song

Most of the population have no real idea what we do in psychotherapy, especially group psychotherapy. They often assume it’s about getting advice and who would want advice from unqualified strangers!? One of the things forbidden in group therapy is, in fact, giving advice. I’m the only person in the room qualified to give advice and one thing drummed into me in my training was not to give advice. It’s all about helping people to come to their own awareness of the values that they want to live by and the dynamics they have learnt and stored in their unconscious that determine why they do what they do. These dynamics often stop us from living by our values. Once you have worked out  the dynamics that hold you back from meaningfully pursuing your values, you can start to more powerfully author your own life. To do this you need to assimilate this awareness at an emotional level, rather than at an intellectual level. Group therapy, because of its experiential and confronting nature, is a powerful tool for bringing about this emotional shift.

As a group member explores his or herself in the safety of the group, others from their distance, can more easily see how their own values and dynamics work. In short, psychotherapy, group and individual, is simply accelerated personal growth. Read more »

Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while. My Muse has channelled my writing energy into completing my next book – but more of that in time.

Today I want to write about wisdom. I was at a workshop recently with Professor Kelly Wilson from Mississippi. He is one of the founders of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and while he was rather scatty, he made some stimulating points. One was that wisdom is essentially the capacity to shift perspective. People who start with only one perspective and doggedly stick to it (also known as a ‘teenager’) would be considered the least wise.

A person who is slow to adopt a particular perspective, and who, along the way to doing so, considers multiple perspectives is what most of us would see as more wise. Some of these perspectives may be what Edward de Bono would consider to be more ‘lateral’ i.e. they are not perspectives that the majority would come up with as they abandon the usual presumptions.

This got me thinking about wisdom in another way, from another perspective. Group therapy has a surprising power – a power that I have been awed by on many occasions in my 20+ year career as a group therapist. When you have eight people in a room considering an issue, you automatically have multiple perspectives. No one person may be particularly wise, but ‘the group’ is, at its very essence, a wise entity. Diversity is the key. This wisdom gives group life-changing power. Teams in the workplace that work well, where people respect each other’s different perspectives can harness industry-changing power – think Google, Apple, Microsoft (back in the old days).

Which, finally, brings me to the smallest and most important group – couples. As a relationship therapist, the greatest tragedy I witness, day after day, is people not appreciating that their partner’s perspective, being different from their own, is a wonderful gift of wisdom. Our egos, being the narrow-minded, precious things that they are, feel threatened by another not agreeing with us. Deep down their different view might leave us worrying that we are not smart enough, or that to accept our partner’s view means we are ‘wrong’. This is the greatest relationship natural disaster known to humankind. In this way, we can take the gift of wisdom and not just completely negate it, but we can turn it into conflict. Read more »

I’ve been asked to talk abit more about Urge Surfing, given its wide application for managing all urges not just those of the food craving fraternity. Indeed Urge Surfing was originally developed to help people manage alcohol and other substance cravings (could it have been that there once was a surfie with a marijuana problem – what would be the chance of that?!). Successful Urge Surfers are to be found in all walks of life – usually at the top end of their game – resisting the seduction of all kinds of problematic urges.

What to do?

So what does being a cool urge surfie look like? Imagine your desires to be like ocean waves. (Which also means there’s no shortage of them and they just keep coming – that’s the human mind for you.) You’re a cool surfer dude/ss and you catch this nice-sized wave and start riding it. As soon as you’re on the wave you start to pay it close attention – your safety and well-being depends upon it. You realise this wave is a dumper, stick with this wave and there’s a good chance that you could be eating sand, or worse, end up on the rocks just over there. What to do? Exit. Pull a turn up the face of the wave, slide over its back and let it go. Let’s paddle back out and wait for the next wave. Take too long to make the call and you won’t have a choice as it turns into a vertical wall of green mashing power and takes you down. In effect, we thank mother nature for all the waves, but we only stay on the ones we want to.

In the same way, we will find ourselves with a desire that’s a problem – a craving for an unhealthy food, drink or smoke. The trick is to see it for what it is and decide early on: Are we going to ride it all the way home or let this one go? You might decide to eat that donut or have that glass of wine. Fine, but on just one condition – you’re going to mindfully savour it and enjoy it to the max. If you decide to use this urge surfing strategy, you will let the craving roll on without you. We’re not going to do battle with it, just, in a Zen way, notice it and let it move on.

First, acknowledge its fullness by saying to yourself, “Thank you mind for that old strategy for dealing with my current emotions, but I would like to see if I can come up with a healthier solution.” You do this, in essence, by giving yourself something healthier to do that will occupy your mind e.g. work on a project, go for a walk, watch TV, take a shower, read a good book/magazine or distract yourself. Make a list of what you can do at these times and keep it in your purse/wallet and refer to it – we often can’t remember what we’ve decided to do when our cravings cloud our mind. Check back in fifteen minutes later. If the craving is still rampant then you may decide to give into it. Remember when it comes to food, the mantra is “I can have it if I really want it, but is it worth the calories?” – but then note the one condition above, if you’re going to ride that bad boy all the way up the beach then do it on your terms and enjoy the hell out of it!

Sacrifices to the God of Work need to be made with extreme care.We typically give  the best waking, fresh, virgin hours of five or more days a week to this insatiable God. Meaningful work is central to living a rewarding life. Now there is research that takes it a step further. Peter Butterworth and colleagues from ANU, just published research from a large study in Australia of over 7,000 people. They found that some jobs result in poorer mental health than having no job at all. Yes, you are better off dealing with the depressogenic effects of unemployment than some soul-destroying jobs.

Jobs that fall into this category have the following characteristics:

• afford little control and freedom to make decisions  i.e. little autonomy
• are overly demanding
• provide little support
• provide few rewards (not just financial)

Jobs that are meaningful are high in

• Autonomy
• Developing an ongoing sense of Mastery
• Purpose that goes beyond ourselves – to in some small way making life better for others, the planet or its plants and animals

Where does your work fall?

In a comment to this site, Joanne asked me to write about “purpose and the daily manifestation of joy.” I thought I would start with Joy. I have to be a little careful here, because it is a small word that people expect a big emotional experience from. It is learning to appreciate the smaller joys to be found in the now that is the real ‘daily manifestation of joy’. I have tried to capture it thus:

AN ODE TO JOY IN THE NOW

Amidst the unending demands of day to day life

Please help me to be aware of your constant presence

From your small forms like a single cloud in a vast, blue sky

To the large forms like the antics and laughter of the innocent child

Keep me in touch with that same child within me that enjoys to joke and laugh

And remind me to appreciate the good things of my life which I tend to take for granted

Help me to leave my fears in the future where they may or may not come to be

While doing what I can today to prevent their outcome

So that I may return to my appreciation of your eternal presence in the now

Help me to learn what I need to from the pain and sadness of the past

Such that they no longer need to haunt me in the present

So that I may return to my appreciation of your eternal presence in the now

Allow me to receive the care of those who are so kind as to offer this treasure

Appreciating the very full value of your presence at these times

Finally, help me to remember how to be the best that I can be, for that is you within me.

by George Blair-West