LIANNE RAYMOND

martha, martha, martha

I got in!  Martha beck is a life coach who has written books like Finding Your Own North Star, The Joy Diet and Four Day Win (which I reviewed here).  She also writes a regular column in O magazine.  I heart Martha and so when I saw she was offering a life coaching tele-course I was all over it.  But too late. It filled up fast.  Despondent, I whined to the hubster for a few days, I wrote pleading emails to Martha's minions about why they should let me in.  Then a couple nights ago, I got an email saying they had decided to take 20 more students - but there were 40 on the waiting list.  I hustled my butt and signed up, and have been vibrating with excitement since then.  Especially when I look over the course materials and see some of the great stuff that Martha has incorporated - like The Work of Byron Katie - which I first heard about years ago from yoga teacher extraordinaire, Ramanand Patel, and then finally "read" when my yoga buddy, Kim, gifted me the audiobook of Loving What Is.

Martha's course is going to supplement my CTI training in a way that suits me perfectly. Yay!

forgiveness

Have you heard about The Forgiveness Project?

Today, Katy Hutchison was speaking at the school I teach at. Powerful, blow-me-away kind of stuff.  What an example of the power of forgiveness. I can't even imagine forgiving my husband's killer. I'd like to think I'm capable of it, but I don't know if I am.

I am still working on  forgiving someone who did something very hurtful to me. Or am I? Maybe I've just accepted what happened and accepted that I'm probably not ever going to be able to forgive them.

And would you really be surprised if I gave you a book recommendation on the topic of forgiveness?  I thought not.

alignment, part deux

Tuesday's post about synchronicity, dharma, Grace or what you will, was titled "alignment" and someone emailed me to ask why. Well- I had a longer post in mind and never got around to the part that had to do with alignment. Which turned out to be a good thing, cause Kimberly left a comment that just gave me more fodder for the topic.

In the style of yoga I practice, alignment is of paramount importance. Alignment in this case meaning the joints, bones and the spine are in a productive relationship with each other. BKS Iyengar initiated this emphasis on alignment in yoga when he discovered through his own practice that proper alignment allowed the energy of the body to flow freely, whereas improper positioning caused energy blockages. Outwardly, we can observe an ease of movement when the body is in alignment.

I use this same idea when thinking about life. I think of those Grace-experiences as a result of being in alignment - when your talents, your spirit and your desires are in a productive relationship with each other. As a result, the energy flows freely in your life and there is a sense of ease to moving forward and accomplishing your dreams.

The other thing that alignment gives you is space. One of my favourite yoga teachers, Ramanand Patel, once said at a workshop, "Yoga is all about creating space."  Space is necessary for movement to occur. The tendency is to collapse as we age - we actually become shorter due to compression of spinal discs and loss of space in the joints. As the body loses the space, it loses the ability to change, to move, and becomes stiff or "frozen".

And so it is with life.  If you are out of alignment you become too contracted. You lose the openness, the space that allows you to move. Richard Wiseman in the article to which Kimberly linked, put it this way:

The harder they looked, the less they saw.  And so it is with luck – unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else.  They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends.  They look through newspapers determined to find certain type of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs.  Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.

Or from a slightly different angle, life coach Laura Berman Fortgang writes in her book Now What?

Too much focus on one thing makes your vision so narrow that you miss the peripheral clues that are trying to reach you. When you believe that you (and only you) can ultimately control an outcome, you lose the tremendous asset to any dream - the mysterious power of life wanting to be on your side and provide unexpected opportunities.

See, I still want to leave room for a little magic, despite Richard Wiseman's excellent studies. How else do you explain this - when I was visiting New York this summer I had lunch with some friends, including Kimberly. After lunch, we parted and went our separate ways. About an hour later, my husband and I were in Grand Central Station trying to figure out how to get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I was commenting that I wished I had had more time to visit with my friends. The place was packed with people, and suddenly I hear a familiar voice. It was Kimberly. She had gone shopping after we parted and now here she was, right beside me. So we had dinner together and had a really good visit that made my trip to NYC even better.  You can call it chance, but I like to think it was meant to be.

appreciation

Many of the blog posts I read today had some take on the theme of gratitude, what with it being Yanksgiving (that's Canadian for American Thanksgiving) tomorrow and all.

And it reminded me of something I read in What Happy Women Know by Dan Baker:

Psychologist Sonja Lyobomirsky, PhD, at the University of California, Riverside, suggests keeping a daily diary in which you write down things for which you are thankful.  Although she uses the term gratitude, I am more inclined to use appreciation. To me, gratitude involves a feeling of obligation, which is fine, but appreciation is much simpler and every bit as powerful.

I consider appreciation the highest order of love because there are no strings attached. When you walk in to look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, you stand in awe, as other do watching the sun set on the Santa Catalina mountains. Appreciation is the highest emotional experience. It is sufficient unto itself, and it's what I suggest you go looking for - everyday things in your life you can appreciate, from the first snowfall in  Vermont to the first smile of your newborn baby, from the gentle breeze you feel through the window after a vigorous yoga practice to the delight on a child's face as she learns to ride a two-wheeler.

It's a subtle difference, but one I like.

The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.
-Dalai Lama

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!

 ETA: As usual, Andrea puts it beautifully.

appreciative inquiry

In April of this year I was introduced to Appreciative Inquiry at the BC School Superintendents' Spring Forum. I immediately liked how it focuses is on what is working as opposed to problem fixing:

Traditional approaches to change (e.g., self studies, strategic planning, problem solving, assessment and evaluation, needs assessments, etc.) typically involve focusing the organization or group on what's not working in a system: identifying problems or gaps. People then develop plans to solve the problems or close the gaps. In a sense, the traditional approaches focus attention on "failures" in the system and "root causes" of those failures. While the traditional approaches work very well as ways of trouble-shooting mechanical and electrical systems, e.g., linear, cause-and-effect systems, they work less well as ways of bringing about positive change at the group or organizational levels.

AI focuses the organization or group on what's working and then identifying the "root causes of success" and creating more of those conditions. AI assumes that organizations--human or social systems--are like organisms. That is, they are living, breathing entities that stay healthiest when they are focused on their positive life-giving characteristics, rather than their problematic aspects.

(full article)

Using the AI approach at my school has already resulted in numerous positive changes - including implementing a recycling/composting program, lunches with the Principal for students on the honour roll, recognition of student birthdays and a new form of student government that is open to all who would like to participate - no more popularity contests elections.

Being in the middle of my coaching course work and my own change process when I attended the forum, I also saw the potential for using this approach with individuals.  I did a little googling and found  Sara Orem's book, which takes Appreciative Inquiry as a basis for approaching the coaching process.  I highly recommend the book for coaches - as well as the audio interviews with Sara available on her website. And personally, learning about this approach was what really hit it home for me that I really didn't want my weight to be my focus - that it would be much wiser to focus on increasing fulfillment in my life.

How would our lives be different if we focused on what was right with us instead of what was wrong with us? On our possibilities instead of our limitations? How would the world be different?

battle of the beck books!

Not really. But sort of.

Just before starting this blog I bought two books that claimed they would help re-wire my brain such that I would be able to end my contract as poster girl for yo-yo dieting. One was Four Day Win by Martha Beck and the other was The Beck Diet Solution by Judith Beck. (The authors are not related, as far as I know.) After spending quality time with both, I found I much prefer the Martha Beck book, Four Day Win. Let me explain why.

Judith Beck, in her book The Beck Diet Solution, takes a very task oriented approach. The book is made up of chapters consisting of daily tasks – for a total of 6 weeks. There is no research demonstrating the efficacy of said tasks in the book, although it does state that the approach is based on clinical research. Many of the daily tasks will be very familiar to those of us who have done some reading on losing weight. Each day you add a new strategy and as the days go by, the shear number of tasks on your daily to-do list seems to me to become overwhelming. The first two weeks of the program are designed to prepare you for dieting with tasks like: eat slowly while sitting down, plan and write down everything you eat, get rid of temptations in your environment, and consider the advantages of losing weight. On Day 15 you actually begin the diet of your choice. If you have made it that far.

There were definitely some strategies I liked in this book - like enlisting a diet coach, writing down your goals, relaxation strategies and self-talk strategies. I also think a lot of her strategies were just standard issue weight loss tips that have been around forever - like park your car at the far end of the parking lot so you get in more walking. Does that really have anything to do with cognitive therapy?

But while there are some good strategies in The Beck Diet Solution, there was an underlying tone of negativity and condescension throughout that made the book less palatable. Partly, as Jen notes in her comments on the book, there is a fatalistic, heartless air to it. Basically, I gleaned a few nuggets from this book, but much of it didn't speak to me. You can read an excerpt and see if you find the same sour note.

In contrast, Martha Beck's The Four Day Win is full of heart. She takes an “I’ve been there” approach and her book has more of a narrative structure – with liberal doses of humour throughout. Although at first I found it hard to believe she had ever suffered from a weight problem given she has been quite thin as long as I’ve been aware of her. But as I read the book, it became apparent as she shared her personal experiences that she had authentically experienced the same problems around food and eating that so many of us women do – whether it shows up as being overweight or some other eating disorder. So on that level, the book feels like a friend sharing what has worked for them.

At the same time, she describes numerous research studies that flesh out the points she is trying to make. The critical thinker in me finds this invaluable. I am fascinated by the workings of the human brain and find that having that knowledge bolsters my confidence in the techniques presented. She also goes deeper than the surface behaviour and asks the reader to explore what thoughts and emotions are behind the behaviour.

One of the core concepts in The Four Day Win is about cultivating mindfulness – which is a way of saying being awake and aware of what is going on in the present moment – as opposed to being on autopilot. This was one reason why I liked it so much. I am familiar with this territory through my years as a student of yoga (and eastern philosophy as an offshoot of that). Beck calls this mindfulness “the watcher” in her book and puts her own spin on it. It is a form of meditation, in situ. I believe that this is definitely a big key in rewiring the brain. And there are many studies that show it.

I also think that Martha Beck's approach as a life coach also spoke to me more than the "barely beyond behaviourism" approach of Judith Beck. All the research and reading I've done on motivation as well as my own recent training as a life coach have really cemented in my mind the importance of connecting to the bigger truth of what you want your life to be and your dreams for yourself.

Just to contrast the two books, here is an example of how they each approach the topic of "forbidden food":

Judith Beck:

Remove your personal temptations. Open all of the food cabinets and, if at all possible, give away or throw out the foods that could tempt you to go off your diet plan.

Martha Beck:

If you're following a published fitness program, it probably includes instructions about removing all forbidden, fattening foods from your house. This is one of the most common things I hear from diet advisors. Personally, I've never seen it work.

First of all, removing all fattening food from your house to make yourself eat less is about as effective as Prohibition was in making American's drink less. If we crave unhealthy food (and everyone with famine brain does), we'll get it and eat it. Remember the guys in the Ancel Keys study, who became obsessive bingers after a few months of dieting? They didn't start out fat or binge-prone, though they all had plenty of food available. It was limiting their food intake, once they'd gotten good and hungry, that caused them to obsess about forbidden food, to hunt it, hoard it, steal it and eat up to 10,000 calories of it at a single sitting. Deprivation, not available food, pushes people into famine brain.

To sum up, The Beck Diet Solution doesn't feel like a solution at all, but is largely comprised of the same advice dieters have been hearing for years. I have no doubt it works but I don't see it as the long term change-my-brain approach I am looking for. I certainly can't see myself following it for life. The Four Day Win, on the other hand, combines research in both mind and body (she discusses Seth Roberts' work, for example), individualized approaches, psychological responses and offers ways to really change how one relates to food and connects it all to the bigger picture of whole life satisfaction.

I'm sure each book has it's audience and what works for some doesn't work for others. But I know which one I'm going to be keeping on my nightstand.

are we there yet?!?

Thanks to all who have been reading my blog and leaving comments or sending emails. I truly feel that this blog is a way for me to clarify my own thoughts rather than to write for an audience - but it does give me a little boost to know that there are people out there who appreciate those thoughts. And thanks for bugging me with emails and comments and holding me accountable!

I have to laugh at myself. I wrote here on June 1st that this was it - the time for action had arrived. Now why in the hell would I do that knowing what June is typically like for me? I've only been teaching since 1989, ya think I would have remembered that June is pretty much *the* most hectic time of the school year. Graduation, awards banquets, year-end dinners, committee wrap-up meetings, retirement parties, year-end reports, inventory, report cards, and so on...

Needless to say, I did very little of what I had planned around fitness - particularly getting out on my bike - but then did a very good job of beating myself up for not doing much. In fact I did an even better job than usual knowing that I had announced here on my blog that I was in the action phase. I think I got out on my bike once in all of June. It didn't help that this June was the coldest, wettest and cloudiest June on record for Southern BC - but I'm pretty sure that was my fault, too.

I finally stopped the flogging long enough to step back and see that I was still stuck in willpower country. This is the land where I can do anything as long as I have enough willpower. If I had enough willpower, I would have biked every single day in spite of the busy-ness and time constraints. And if I really had willpower I would have biked in the dark, in the rain, in the cold and for at least 3 hours at a time. And if I really and truly had willpower, I wouldn't be watching the Tour de France - I 'd be the first woman doing it!! What a slack ass I am.

And here’s the really clever bit - when I realize that I’m beating myself up and that’s not productive, I stop beating myself up for the lack of willpower and switch to beating myself up for beating myself up. *le sigh*

What I need to do is stop, breathe, and show myself some compassion. And remind myself of the research that demonstrates that willpower has nothing to do with successful, sustainable change. Tara Brach in Radical Self-Acceptance talks about a breakthrough moment she had when she was asked how she would treat her best friend in her same situation (this is transcribed from an audiobook, so mistakes are all mine):

I remember when I was in college and doing a lot of psychotherapy and working hard on myself and I went on a weekend trip with a friend - an older, wiser friend of 24. And she was kind of describing her process and how she worked with herself and that really what she’s learning now is how to be her own best friend. Now that phrase I’ve heard many, many times, but for some reason in that moment the flood gates opened and I was just hysterical, breaking down sobbing and sobbing because it was so clear to me how I was the furthest thing from my own best friend. I was my worst critic. In realizing that there was a real uprising also of compassion and a wish to really learn how to be kinder. What I’ve really noticed over the years is that intention has been there but there have been repeated cycles of contracting back into the trance where I am just acting out of the sense of something’s wrong with me, I’m not OK. And then I’ll hit a critical threshold of, “Oh, I’m miserable. Oh, I’ve been down on myself again.” And then re-resolve to be kinder and around and around. … This process of befriending and becoming intimate really has a gradualness to it. There is a very habitual body of fear that has us pull back whether we are trying to befriend our inner life or become intimate with another person.

I needed to be reminded of the gradualness of the process - of the continuous interplay of expansion and contraction. I am just coming off another weekend of CTI training and one of my friends in the training summed it up like this:

If you settle for perfection or nothing, you will get nothing. If you settle for progress, you will get that.

It's kind of like driving through the Canadian prairies - sometimes the landscape seems so similar and repetitive that you wonder if you are even getting anywhere, time seems to slow down and ennui sets in and you put yourself on cruise control. But if you learn to pay attention you can notice the subtle shifts in the colour of the dirt or the quality of the sky, and you can become so absorbed in the wind playing in the canola fields that you are suddenly surprised to find yourself at your destination.

Progress may be gradual, almost imperceptible, but trust it is happening.

praiseworthy?

Kimberly linked to an excellent article in her comment on an earlier entry about rewards. (I'm so excited to have actual comments!!!) It's worth reading the article in full, but the gist of it is that kids become intrinsically motivated when they are praised for efforts rather than abilities. It looks at the work of Stanford researcher Carol Dweck, which has been floating around the education community for awhile. This excerpt highlights her work:

Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the children would do fairly well. Once the child finished the test, the researchers told each student his score, then gave him a single line of praise. Randomly divided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. They were told, “You must be smart at this.” Other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”

Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round. One choice was a test that would be more difficult than the first, but the researchers told the kids that they’d learn a lot from attempting the puzzles. The other choice, Dweck’s team explained, was an easy test, just like the first. Of those praised for their effort, 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised for their intelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The “smart” kids took the cop-out.

Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

Intrinisic motivation seems to be closely linked to what Dweck calls a "growth mind-set", as opposed to a "fixed mind-set". Which makes sense - if we believe this is just how we are and we can't change, then why bother to try. I love the bit of this article from Stanford Magazine where Dweck takes her research out of the classroom and talks about how our mind-set affects every aspect of our lives:

At the Association for Psychological Science convention in May, Dweck will give the keynote address. The topic: “Can Personality Be Changed?” Her short answer, of course, is yes. Moreover, holding a growth mind-set bodes well for one’s relationships. In a recent study, Dweck found that people who believe personality can change were more likely than others to bring up concerns and deal with problems in a constructive way. Dweck thinks a fixed mind-set fosters a categorical, all-or-nothing view of people’s qualities; this view tends to make you ignore festering problems or, at the other extreme, give up on a relationship at the first sign of trouble. (The growth mind-set, though, can be taken too far if someone stays in an abusive relationship hoping her partner will change; as always, the person has to want to change.)

A growth mindset is about stretching and is not worried about making mistakes.  Dweck is confident people can change from a fixed mind-set to a growth mind-set, and she herself says she changed her fixed mind-set to a growth mind-set through her work. The first step is just being aware of those areas of your life where you might be holding a fixed mind-set. If you want to explore this more, this is a good 30 minute audio interview with Dweck that discusses mind-set. Dweck also has a whole book on the topic, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, which I've requested from my library. When I get it I'll let you know if it offers anything beyond the articles.

In addition to watching myself for self-talk borne out of a fixed mind-set, I am going to change how I respond when I meet up with someone who has lost weight. Right now I usually say something like, "You look great!" I think from now on I am going to comment instead on how impressed I am with the work they must have done to get healthier.

the front row of your life

One of the books I read while working on my MEd was Ben and Rosamund Zander's  The Art of Possibility.

My first reading of it was clouded by my suspicions of anyone associated with Landmark Education - which the authors are.  Since then I have met a couple of people who have had good experiences with Landmark, I've been enlightened by people who have looked into Landmark more than I had and finally, people who know nothing about Landmark had good things to say about the book.  Especially one online buddy, whose opinion I really respect - she's a Philosophy instructor and kicks ass at critical thinking.  So I went back and read it without my gray coloured glasses.  And guess what - surprise! - I found I liked it much more the second time around.  Which ironically reinforces one of the book's points - that we can change how we think about situations to allow for possibility where there was none.  Which is a big topic in this blog, too.

Ben Zander was just in Canada teaching a seminar and there was a clip of him on Canadian TV - and luckily I found it on Google Video.  If you have or haven't read the book there is good stuff in this clip (and you can ignore the 30 seconds where he talks about Landmark), for example:

Transformation happens when you shift your view of the world. When you see that what you've been doing is hiding, taking yourself away, not participating, not engaging, not taking risks by sitting in the back row of your life.

control and power

Tara has it as one of her points contributing to intrinsic motivation. Yesterday Gretchen posted about how having a sense of control contributes to happiness.

To be clear, they are both referring to having control over their own stuff - not control over others. I'm sure we are all familiar with at least one control freak who wants to control everyone and everything. Usually, they are miserable people and no fun to be around. When talking about control it is good to be in mind of The Serenity Prayer.

I shared one of the "EASY myths" from Martha Beck's book, Four Day Win, in an earlier post. I want to share a couple more that seem apropos here:

EASY Myth #2: To lose weight, I must absolutely comply with my external authority figure (diet, trainer, program) the way a child complies with a parent. It is the external authority's job to initiate activity, notice when I need more support of any kind and deliver the right support in the right way, and sustain my discipline. In other words, my job is to be the perfect child. My authority source's job is to be the perfect parent.

CALM Insight #2: When I was very young, complying with authority really was my only way of staying safe and figuring out how the world works. But now that I am capable of analyzing reality on my own, playing a child role is frustrating and makes me feel powerless. Something is telling me that I get to be the grown-up in my life and that if I totally comply with any external system, I'll end up giving away my autonomy, individuality, and self-respect. My instincts tell me when to question. If I listen to them, I won't feel or act like a trapped and angry child.

EASY MYTH #3: A perfect weight-loss authority source will eliminate the possibility of my breaking the rules.

CALM Insight #3: The only thing that creates total compliance is total dependency. Prisoners and people with total paralysis or extreme illness are the only adults who can't choose to disobey. Far from creating happiness, the loss of autonomous choice is horrible. It's the single variable most related to depression and despair. I'm grateful that I have the choice to break the rules of my fitness program, because the alternative is loss of all personal power.

I like that Beck uses the word power where she could have used the word control - in particular I like the phrase "personal power". I think that that is what Gretchen is referring to in her happiness post - the freedom and power to choose our actions in a situation. And I would extend that to the power to choose how we frame different situations. We have to step out of any learned helplessness. One of my favourite tricks used to be blaming my husband for my being overweight - he wasn't supportive enough, or he bought too much bad food, or he didn't compliment, or he looked at me funny, or he didn't clean the bathroom, or...I had a million permutations. I became an expert at finding all the insidious little ways he had of making me fat. Poor guy didn't even know how clever and conniving he was! I finally had to admit that he didn't control me. I had the power to choose my own behaviour.

Because of this, I have mixed feelings about 12 step programs that have people admit that they are powerless over fill in the blank (alcohol, drugs, food, sex). I know they have worked for a lot of people - and there could be a number of reasons for their success (a mentor relationship and group support are HUGE factors, according to the research). It may be that admitting powerlessness is not one. I question how it frames the situation. I have often heard people who are trying to stick to a diet say things like: "my eating was out of control today." Was it really? Out of your control? Or did you just choose to eat more? Which would you rather say, " I ate too much because it was out of my control." or "I made a choice to eat more than I needed to." Which statement has the most potential for change?