StarLightWalker – Personal and Spiritual Growth

Weight Loss – Problem Solving versus Creating

 Print This Post February 19, 2008 on 7:29 am | In Creativity, Physical | 3 Comments

Weight loss seems to be a topic of universal interest in America.  Judging from our mass media and advertising, we are a society that is obsessed by physical beauty yet plagued by obesity.  Based on the number of best selling diet books that come out each year and the wide variety of regimens advocated therein one would have to conclude that weight management is a very complicated affair.  And yet at the end of the day is there a really successful weight management program that doesn’t simply boil down to: eat healthy, eat less, and exercise more?  In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that anyone who is currently at a fairly steady state weight can achieve weight loss by following that simple recipe!  So why the continuous torrent of new and improved ways to lose weight?

 One of the most powerful distinctions I learned during Robert Fritz’s “Your Life As Art” workshop was the difference between problem solving and creating.  This distinction is a fundamental difference in both the focus and orientation of the activity.  Problem solving is focused on making something go away – the problem.  The orientation is to move away from an undesired state or situation by removing or eliminating something from one’s life due to its “problematic” nature. 

In the case of weight loss the problem could be defined as the excess weight (or more specifically, the excess fat) that a person is carrying.  So the focus – the goal – of a typical diet is something like “to lose 15 pounds by the end of March”.  Now in the traditional problem solving mentality that is a perfectly reasonable goal.  Indeed, it conforms to the guidelines problem solvers often advocate for problem solving: the so-called SMART criterion.  This weight loss goal is SMART in the sense that it is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely:

• Specific: the amount of weight to be lost is 15 pounds
• Measurable: a bathroom scale will very nicely serve to measure how many pounds a person loses!
• Attainable: Depending on the person’s general health and the time frame set, this is certainly an attainable goal
• Realistic: Assuming the person is able and willing to work towards this goal, and truly believes it is attainable, then this would also qualify as a realistic goal
• Timely: The goal is time limited in that is specifies a particular date (end of March) by which it will be achieved

Many people set goals using these SMART criteria and achieve incredible success, so I don’t want to criticize this approach, much less nitpick the sample I gave.  I am sure there are many ways the example goal could be made better – for example specifying that you want to lose 15 pounds of fat, not just 15 pounds; or by specifying that the goal be achieved in an easy and pleasurable manner, and for the greatest good of all.  Rather than refining or improving the goal, I would like to introduce you to a completely different orientation towards the goal of weight loss.

First, please notice that the focus of the problem solving approach is to make something go away – namely the problem.  In my example above, the problem is 15 pounds of excess weight, and the focus is on making this excess go away.  Indeed the simplest way of stating the goal with this approach is to “lose weight”. 

One of the central features of the problem solving approach to life is its orientation: it is a moving away from an undesired state, an attempt to make the undesired state or situation go away.  As a consequence, the central motivating factor in a problem solving approach is the problem itself.  The larger the problem, the more intense the motivation; conversely, the smaller the problem, the less intense the motivation.  I will investigate the structures that underlie this orientation in a later post, but for this post I want draw the critical distinction in between this approach and the creative approach.  The important point I want to make here that the focus of problem solving is on the problem.

The orientation of the creative is towards bringing into being what the creator has envisioned.  That is, it is an orientation towards manifesting the creation.  The orientation of problem solving solving is away fromthe undesired state or situation.  This is a fundamental distinction, because in the creative stance the creator is taking action to move toward and bring into being a desired state or situation whereas in the problem solving stance the problem solver is taking action to move away from and eliminate an undesired state or situation.  This is a crucial distinction because our minds  tend to automatically marshal the resources we need to manifest whatever we focus on, and in the case of creating we are focused on the desired state whereas in the case of problem solving we are focused on the undesired state.  And guess what we often tend to manifest when we adopt the problem solving stance?  More of the undesired state, even though our intent is to make that state go away!

By way of analogy I would like to share a story that shows an inherent tendency that manifests whenever we focus on an undesired state, even if our intent is to avoid it or make it go away. 

Several years ago, while I was living in England, I had to learn how to drive a motorcycle.  I will save the details of why I had to learn to drive a motorcycle for a later post (it’s a pretty funny story, at least in retrospect), but getting a learner’s permit involved taking a one day practical training course at an abandoned airfield not far from where we lived at the time. 

After we had practiced maneuvering our motorcycles around the runways of the abandoned airstrip for a half a day, it was time for us to receive some practical instruction in a live traffic situation so we headed out to a nearby village to do some training in the traffic. 

For this type of practical training each student is wearing a helmet with headphones built into it, and the instructor who is leading the class simply gives instructions through his helmet, which has a built in microphone.  I can still clearly remember his instructions as we made our first foray into a live traffic situation: “Okay, let’s make a right turn at the next road and then we will go the second roundabout and make a left turn.  As you can see school has just let out so be careful of the pedestrians on the sidewalk.”

As I looked over to where we were going there were indeed a lot of children on the sidewalk – running, skipping, laughing, teasing each other, and generally behaving like kids that have just gotten of school and have the whole afternoon in front of them: free at last!  As a father of three I obviously wanted to make sure that I steered well clear of the children on the sidewalk, and made a mental note of where the sidewalk was and focused on avoiding it. 

Guess where I steered my motorcycle as I executed my turn?  You got it – straight onto the sidewalk!  Luckily I was not going fast and was in control of the motorcycle’s speed, so I didn’t hit anyone although I did give the children a bit of a thrill and a story to tell their friends and family.

After I had maneuvered my motorcycle back onto the road, the instructor pulled me aside to ask me what had happened, and I told him that I had no idea – I was really focused on not hitting any of the children, but it was like the motorcycle had a mind of its own and started moving towards the sidewalk despite my intention.

My instructor explained something to me that day that has never left me since, and guides me to this day: we tend to go wherever we focus our attention.  The motorcycle did not have a mind of its own, but I did – and I was using it improperly.  “The key to driving a motorcycle is to always focus on where you want to go, not on what you are trying to avoid!”  He went on to explain that once we have a feel for how to balance on a motorcycle, our body learns to automatically adjust the way we steer and balance the motorcycle so it goes toward whatever we are focusing on.  And where had my focus been?  On the sidewalk, of course – so naturally I steered straight towards it even though my intent was to avoid it.  By focusing on what I wanted to avoid, instead of where I wanted to go, I manifested precisely the situation that I was trying to avoid.

As my skill level driving a motorcycle improved I developed more of an innate, intuitive sense for this truth.  As you maneuver around tight turns and bends you will naturally adjust your balance and steering properly if you look far enough down the road towards where you are going.  Balance and steering problems tend to manifest themselves when you are not looking far enough ahead or are focused on something other than where you are headed.  Indeed, it is easy to spot someone that is going to have a problem negotiating a turn by looking at where their head is pointed – if they are not looking “through” the turn to the road beyond, it’s a good bet that they will have problems completing the turn successfully.

I have found that the same advice my motorcycle instructor gave me applies to life in a much more general sense.  One of the keys to living a fulfilling and rewarding life in general is to focus on where you want to go, not on what you are trying to avoid or eliminate!