The blogs are running rampant with self improvement lists. They often begin their titles with a number and sound like: 12 Keys to Building Trust, 7 Actions to Make Your Self Happier, 8 Principles of Success, and 11 Must Follow Rules for Building Wealth. They are often short reads with punch that hold your attention. But the question to ask is, Do they have much value? When you become aware of how people learn and how real life changes are made there is a strong case that these lists amount to fluff.

Certainly these articles have value for social book marking sites that help promote the material and can generate money for the writer. Bloggers and writers on the internet are encouraged write and market their articles in this fashion because they grab people’s attention. These list formats also seem effective in getting their material propelled to the top of social book marking sites. It turns out to be good marketing promotion and possibly a revenue generator for the writer, but also a disservice to their readers.

How Do You Learn?

We don’t learn much from lists. If you have read one or more of these articles, then how many items from that important principles of life list do you remember? What struck you so deeply about that paragraph that you integrated that idea into your life?

A list, even with a short paragraph of explanation, is a data point of information. One of thousands we generate or consider each day. The mind has difficulty remembering those data points unless they are meaningful. Without a context that relates to something meaningful in your life that list item floats away. Of the tens of thousands of thoughts we consider in a day a list has little or no impact. That data point of information becomes lost in the noise.

Now consider this. If the reader devotes ten minutes of time to read the article that’s 10 minutes of value. If the list has 10 items that are important then the reader has to divide his attention between 10 different ideas.  The writer has just reduced the value of each one of his ideas by one tenth. When the reader divides their attention between 10 different important points, the impact of any one of those points has lost 90% of its impact. If the writer has really done their research and compiled a list of 20 Important…_____ for Success, then each one of those items can only get 5% of a person’s attention.

When an item only gets 5 or 10 percent of a person’s attention, it’s not likely that it will be very impactful to them. They will soon forget all of what is on that list. We remember things that are meaningful. Things are meaningful when they apply to our life, or fit into the context of other things we know or find important. Reading lists, no matter how well written, don’t do that for us.

Metaphors can give context

Imagine that you are sitting at your desk and a good friend hands you a few nuts and bolts. She doesn’t tell you why. She just walks away. You know this is strange because this friend doesn’t normally do things like that. You don’t know what these nuts and bolts have to do with you so you get rid of them. You’ll spend more time wondering about your friend’s odd behavior than the bolts.

Now imagine that when she hands you the nuts and bolts she tells you, “I found these on the ground in the garage where you park your car.”

With those words she is telling you the story of how the nuts and bolts relate to you in a meaningful way. The nuts and bolts that you were going to throw away now have context. They are no longer loose bits of unrelated matter. They connect to your physical safety and well being.

Those articles about 8 life principles, 11 ways to make your self happy or 33 ways to be healthier are usually written in an informational or academic way. They aren’t presented with a real connection to a person’s life. Without that context a person isn’t likely to remember the data points through the weekend. If you can’t remember an item from the list 4 days from now did it really do you any good?

In effect the writer has provided temporary information but hasn’t added any value to the reader. The writer has held the reader’s attention with their clever writing but not delivered much in the way of value to the reader.

A writer delivers real value when their readers become connected to the information in a way that they become motivated to take action. Contextual meaning to a person’s life is one way mechanism that can lead to action. It is only through action that we make meaningful changes in our life.

Stories give context and relevance

The sentence, “I found these underneath your car” is the story that paints a picture. In that picture you can see how the different elements fit together and you are part of the picture. This story, even though it is one sentence, connects those nuts and bolts to your physical safety. The value of stories is that they give context and relationship to those individual data points.

To help understand the importance of stories in our conscious and unconscious decision making process I suggest reading Sources of Power and The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein. He has done an amazing amount of research in how we use stories in our mind to formulate decisions.

We Remember Stories

Cultures pass down history through stories. We remember stories but we don’t remember lists. We can remember stories for years. Great spiritual teachings have passed down through generations with stories.

Moses had to write the Ten Commandments down in stone so that they could be referred back to. He couldn’t trust his people to remember them. However people still tell the stories of his day because those are remembered.

Your “Top Ten Reasons to…” article might make the front page of Digg, but that doesn’t mean that it will have any lasting value to the reader. It might be good that it is written down so that people can continue to refer to it. However if they have to continually refer to it, then they haven’t integrated the principle into their life very effectively. This is to say that they haven’t incorporated it into their actions and behavior.

Emotions Drive Change

People’s behaviors are driven more out of emotions than intellectual data points. If we want to change our behavior or actions it is much more effective to do it through the power of emotions? There are a few exceptions to this, but these are the exceptions. What you are likely to find about the exceptions is that they apply to situations where people have already moved through their emotional attachment and resistance issues. Lists rarely touch people’s emotions or their emotional attachments.

A story as an example

Have you ever tried to persuade a smoker to give up their cigarettes? Have you ever talked an alcoholic out of drinking? You can talk to them about their health, cite statistics on lung cancer and liver disease with no change. If 10 good health reasons don’t get them to change a behavior then telling them 100 good reasons will just make them angry.

Why do they get angry when you share your facts figures and intelligent reasoning? They want you to stop bothering them. Getting angry at you is a way to change your behavior towards them. Couldn’t they just tell you to stop pestering them with reasons? Yes, but it’s not as effective as the emotion of anger.

First of all let’s consider that your behavior towards them has an emotional basis. Your reasoning with them is likely due to your emotional attachment to their health. Your emotional attachment is compelling you to provide them with a list of reasons to stop.

If they simply asked you to stop, you might keep giving them your reasons because you “FELT” it was important. Your emotional agenda was more powerful than their logic. To overcome your emotional agenda they use more powerful emotions. They use anger to get your behavior to change.

If they get angry enough you might become afraid. When your fear is greater than your emotional attachment to changing them you’ll shut up and back away. All your reasons to persuade them got trumped instantly with one emotion. That emotion instantly changed your behavior. Your behavior change is emotionally motivated.

More interesting is that after the emotional change happens, the mind then comes up with good reasons for the change. Very often justifications come after the fact.

Emotions are more persuasive than information

If a writer wants to affect change in people then he will have to affect their emotions. Information is not enough. The longer your list the more you engage the readers intellect in a way that disconnects them from their emotions.

And if the reader is really interested in making changes to improve themselves they might be better served by reading fewer lists. Making changes in your life will require good principles and reasoning, but those principles will have to be paid more than a passing glance of a paragraph. They will also have to be coupled with good emotional connections and motivations.

Without that emotional motivation there is no new action or behavior change and therefore no real benefit. Change doesn’t have to happen through emotions, but it often does. Big life changes usually involve a great deal of emotion. Small life changes usually involve a small amount of emotion. Why are the emotions so important? You have to break the emotional attachments that hold the resistance to change. You also have to create new emotional connections for behaviors to stick. For more understanding the importance of emotions in making behavior changes read the article in Breaking Emotional Eating Habits.

How we really learn and change

People’s behavior is driven more by emotions than by information. The information that does motivate them does so because it affects them emotionally. It connects to them in a way that is meaningful to their lives. This is more likely to be done through story than through lists and principles.

If you are writing or sharing with the intent to improve peoples lives then I suggest you include some relevant context to the points you are making. You will probably also want to impact people at an emotional level. Stories that touch upon people’s emotions are just one way to do that. Spiritual masters knew this. That’s why they often placed their teachings within stories or parables. They provide context that help connect those images to our life so we could draw upon them later. Those stories are also remembered long after items on the list are forgotten.

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Breaking Habits of Emotional Eating

Self Help Advice - Warning!!!

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Emotional Eating - Addictions to Food

David is working through the issue of his unhealthy food addiction. He often binges on sweets like ice cream, candy bars, and soda pop. This isn’t a matter of simple stupidity. He’s a smart guy, a software engineer that stays busy working. He knows they are bad habits and he is aware of a list of negative consequences to his health. In spite of this and a desire to change, his food addiction behavior has challenged him for years.

It wasn’t an issue when he was younger because he exercised a lot and burned it off. That isn’t the case anymore. Due to his age he can’t exercise the same way and so his eating behavior is overtaking his weight and this health. Over the years he’s attempted multiple approaches like NLP and therapy and only gotten temporary results. He still covets his sweets and gets defensive when he considers giving them up.

David started in on the Self Mastery course on line and began to become aware of some factors behind his behavior that he hadn’t seen before. A couple coaching phone consultations for some added clarity and David developed more understanding about what was driving his addictive eating. David was surprised to find out that his junk food addiction wasn’t really about the food. David’s eating patterns were really about emotions.

David has a mind full of fears and self judgments that nurture a steady state of anxiety. As relief from his anxiety his unconscious mind has carved out a space and time where he can experience peace and calm. In those moments he is so focused on his food that the fear, anxiety, and self judgment is suspended. That space of peace and calm happens when he devours his donuts, ice cream, Dr. Pepper and candy bars.

Some might call it comfort food. I see that as a vague description that hides other issues. For starters what is it that one needs comfort from? It is in these explorations into ones emotions and beliefs that we find the devil in the details. That answer usually involves emotions and the core beliefs they stem from. In David’s case it is the fear and anxiety stemming from self judgments. Although he doesn’t usually notice this layer because he is so busy with the compensating strategy pleasing everyone around him all the time in hopes of getting their approval and acceptance.

Following rules or programs didn’t work

David had tried to follow some simple rules and principles about eating healthy many times before. This generated an intern conflict that he tried to win but always failed. He would get cranky, and even angry, and fight himself until he gave into his food addiction. Afterwards his inner judge would tell him he was weak for giving in. He ended up feeling like a failure. Of course the emotional consequence of this type of inner dialog would drive him towards more comfort food.

Why did he always fail to follow his own healthy eating rules? Because taking away his ice cream and candy bar was also taking away his emotions of peace and calm. The love he expressed towards his ice cream and candy bar gave him a feeling of peace and calm. These were the moments of the greatest joy during his day. To David’s belief system giving up sweets was equivalent to giving up the happiest moments of his day.

David doesn’t create much in the way of love and happiness outside of his eating moments. The anxiety from an internal dialog of self judgment and fears create an emotional desert. His love for sweets was an oasis in the midst of that emotional emptiness.

What would you do if someone wanted to take away the happiest moments of your day? You might get defensive or even angry about it. We’ll that’s the emotional attachment that David was unconsciously dealing with. His intellect wanted to take away his treats, but his emotions wanted to be happy. The emotions won time and time again. Even if it was physically healthier for his body, his belief system had emotional attachments related to his food. His intellect would lose out to the core beliefs driving his emotions.

At the surface it looks like a logical choice for his health of his body. But as David gained self awareness he realized it was an unconscious choice for his happiness. The unconscious choice for his happiness kept winning out even when it was tied to poisoning his body with sugar. David couldn’t recall when he had made the beliefs that associated snack food filled with sugar and emotions of peace and calm, but the beliefs were there.

Steps towards changing Emotional Eating

Sometimes we hope to change certain behaviors in one step as if there were some switch to flip. Usually when there are multiple intertwined beliefs it is necessary to make changes in steps. One of the traps that David will have to change is making the expression of calm and joy solely dependent on the trigger of food. To break this pattern he will have to retrain his emotional system to express and create those emotions at other times. Starving himself emotionally until he gets a sugar snack is part of the belief system routine. If he becomes satisfied emotionally during other parts of the day, he won’t be starved for the emotional eating version of peace and calm. .

Changing Food Habits or Behaviors

For most people changing a habit or behavior is much more challenging than deciding to adopt a new routine. Not only do you have to adopt a new pattern in your actions, but you have to invest some emotions into the new habit. You also have to challenge the emotional attachments of the old habits. In David’s case this includes what he is doing with his emotions when he is away from food.

These attachments exist as thoughts and beliefs that connect certain emotions to food. There are also certain emotions to not having his snacks. In David’s case the emotion of peace and calm is associated to ice cream and donuts. Only after David builds new ways to create peace and calm will he will have a solid chance of dropping his eating addiction. One effective way to do this is to dissolve the self judgments. These create a lot of the fear and anxiety that make it difficult to have the enjoyment of peace and calm during the regular day.

David already knows what he should and shouldn’t eat and why he should do it. This is usually true of people with food and emotional eating addictions. It isn’t just a matter of deciding to do something and doing it. It is more subtle and powerful than that. It’s emotional.

Serious about Change

To make real change you will have to break the old emotional attachments and build new ones. To do this you will have to identify and break the core beliefs that drive these various emotions. This kind of self reflective work requires a bit more introspection than passively reading a book or an article. Your beliefs aren’t in a book, they are in your mind and that is where you will have to look.

Practicing awareness of your beliefs and emotions, including the unpleasant ones, isn’t always glamorous work. Nor does it fit with the positive image that we like to have of our self. Emotional awareness is often uncomfortable, particularly when it has to do with fears, guilt, shame, or anger. Because our natural instinct is toward happiness our mind tends to shy away from this self reflection that is required for change.

However there is tremendous benefit when we deal with these emotional core belief issues. Once they have been addressed we can live free of those uncomfortable emotions and behaviors every day of our life for the rest of our life. That’s a long and rewarding return on your investment for a short bit of up front work.

Emotion is much more powerful than logic. Emotion can be a powerful force that inspires us to action and to create something marvelous. Through limiting core beliefs emotion can also create attachments that cause us to feel trapped and unable to change. The key to unlocking these emotional attachments is to inventory and change the core beliefs they are built on. When you learn to master what you believe, you are able to master your emotions.

Mastering your emotions makes it easy to change any habit or behavior at will.

For lessons on identifying and changing your core beliefs you can sign up for the first Self Mastery audio sessions for free.

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Feeling Deprived: Food Beliefs

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When it comes to changing your mind it is critical to first gain awareness of what you are dealing with. Without that Situational Awareness you will likely attempt to change things that are only symptoms. Because you don’t perceive the larger picture, you end up wasting a lot of energy on processes that don’t work effectively.

What is awareness and what does it have to do with changing your behaviors, habits and emotions? A good part of awareness has to do with perception. People who are aware see things that others don’t. They also have a context to put those little bits of information into that help them form a clearer picture. Without the small details and the larger context to make sense of things you can get pretty lost and turned around in the mind. This is what usually happens when people attempt to change a negative thought, or emotional reactions.

Here’s a story from The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein that illustrates how awareness helps to understand a situation and the importance of seeing what others don’t.

The Invisible Adversary

The Marines conducted a training exercise for inexperienced corporals and sergeants at Camp Pendleton in California. John Schmidt is a former Marine who is highly skilled at making sense of tactical situations and was observing. The instructors controlling the exercise, and acting as the enemy, called in mortar attacks, sniper fire, and mine explosions to decimate the team. After this had gone on for a while, an instructor asked a Lance Corporal what kind of adversary they were up against. “I don’t know,” was the response. “The enemy is just clobbering us.” Further questions to probe more deeply pointed nowhere. To the Lance Corporal it was undifferentiated mayhem.