Quote:
Originally Posted by Brown
That's what most people need, whether it's about fitness, weight loss, money, their careers, or their relationships. We tend to need to get angry enough with what we have to want to change it.
I think this is actually one of the most dangerous myths of weight loss. I think it's what we have been taught to believe, that "anger" is the required fuel for change - at least certain kinds of change. I don't think we expect anger to be the only source of motivation - except with dieting.
By that logic, people who don't get angry or can't sustain anger are SOL, and in my experience working with people through my employment in social service and law-enforcement, anger often is more often and more severely counterproductive to change than it is motivating.
Sure, abused women left their husband in the heat of anger, but they returned when the anger discipated - and anger almost always discipates. It's very hard to sustain anger long enough for lasting change. We had to teach the women to have motivations besides anger. A "back up" motivation, if you will.
You don't have to hate where you are, to go somewhere else.
And even though I knew this, I never applied it to weight loss, because in our culture it's just a given that anger and self-hatred is the appropriate catalyst for weight loss. I never questioned it, because it wasn't even in the forefront of my mind, it was just how weight loss was done. Until I realized that I was expecting anger to fuel my entire weight loss, I couldn't realize I needed a different motivation. I failed in the past not because I wasn't angry enough, but because I thought anger was the only appropriate fuel for weight loss change, and I am not an angry person. I don't hold grudges (even against myself) and anger is always temporary for me. I need a fuel for change that is a more easily renewable resouce. I need to use the not-anger fuels I used for other changes in my life.
Anger didn't fuel my relationship changes. Respect for myself did. I didn't have to be angry at a guy I was dating to stop dating him.
I didn't have to be angry at anyone or anything to pusue my education or change my career.
I didn't have to hate my career to change it any of the times I did - even when I retrained to enter a completely new field (My health problems forced me out of a career I loved, because I couldn't deal with the physicla demands of all the on-the-road travel)
The only changes in my life for which I expected "anger motivation" was dieting, and because I am a very optimistic, forgiving, easy-going person I couldn't ever sustain anger motivation long enough to fuel the entire weight loss journey.
You don't have to be motivated by anger, you just have to be motivated by a fuel you can sustain. And if one fuel doesn't work, try others.
I've found that love for myself works infinitely better as a motivation than anger. Using diet and exercise to pamper my wonderful self is endlessly more energizing than punishing the "bad" me.