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Episode 125: Committing to goals, displaying confidence, soulmates
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well we got a couple of questions here on committing the goals displaying confidence soul mates and a very interesting question about why some guys like to push for sex immediately so we'll start from the top to here dr. Gail I'm 42 overweight female and I would like to be married and I would still like to have kids although I'm running out of time I know exactly what I need to do to lose weight so I can feel better about myself and attract a mate but I just can't commit to doing it why are these things actually not important to me even though I think that they are yeah this is a this is sort of a tough email tough question I would say that the things are important to this lady and but they're they're difficult this is the this is what dr. Goldhamer and I call the pleasure trap and that is it it's you have to you have to realize that you're going against your instincts it's not a simple matter of that you're going to learn how to crochet and then deciding whether or not you're going to do crochet where you're going to have a nice garden and you're going to decide whether or not you go outside and work on your garden and make it nice this is about going against your instincts and literally directly against your instincts and so this is what makes this difficult now the there's an additional problem here there's more than one but particularly this person is also procrastinating on the problem there's a there's a sense that when you are going to make a diet lifestyle change try to lose weight you that there's going to be that essentially that you're going into a shoot you're kind of going into jail and you're just going to have to grit your teeth and go through this thing to get out the other side and then get some goal and then that goal is going to be probably temporary and then you're going to give it all back so you can kind of see this process and this person's probably been through this process several times and the the also if she has dieted like most people have dieted she is dieted in a way that she says she knows exactly what to do she may or may not know exactly what to do so a lot of people believe that they need to eat less and exercise more and those are incorrect exercise has a limitation on how much good it can do you so you don't need to do hardly any exercise at all to optimize your weight-loss prospects if you're doing 20 minutes a day of moderate exercise that's about all it is this you would need to do about that the what you must do though is you do not need to eat less than you want to you have to eat things that you are that are consistent with the natural history of the organism and very low calorie density relative to the other foods that are out there problem is your instincts are designed by nature to direct you to foods that are of the highest possible core density in the environment so that's going to be things like bread cheese you know ham bacon sausage pancakes with syrup donuts coca-cola Snickers bars popcorn with butter on it and everything else under the Sun like us and instead we have to eat things like rice beans potatoes oatmeal bananas you know fruit vegetable salad with nice little bits of avocado in there is fine etc this is what we need to eat we need to eat low calorie density whole natural foods she may know this if she's procrastinating on doing this it's one of the reasons is is that that she's kind of has a sense but she might not have to do it this is whoa another thing that goes on with people is that there's something that you want to do what we can do is fiddle if we fiddle around long enough we might not have to do it so she's played the strategy of I'm going to assume that she has known what to do as opposed to not known what to do if you have do not know what to do and what you're which you are contemplating is eating less than you want pushing yourself away from the table going to bed hungry gritting your teeth and exercising a great deal well of course you don't want to do that and those programs kept crash and burn pretty quickly for people because that's a sort of self torture we're not asking for self torture and it's not required in order to become fit what's required is just that you morph your diet away from the drug like a lure of the high calorie foods high rich foods and move towards whole natural foods you do not have to suffer particularly all you have to do is is more pure your diet away from this and you'll get used to it pretty soon and then the the the trek is not that hard now the however the person is procrastinating and they don't want to do it and one of the reasons is is that all these years she just might have landed somebody to spike her weight and that she wouldn't have had to do it at all and so I would look at this I would try for this person to shift your perspective a little bit because at forty two you're almost out of time in terms of being a mom your your the door is not completely closed but it is almost shut and so you know I can probably get email from people saying oh no I had my friend had a kid at 48 yeah there's outliers out there but I'm telling you at this at this age 42 meet somebody by 43 get pregnant at 43 and a half advocate at 44 you are an outlier that's not that typical to be able to have children that late and so essentially you're you're on the last lap of this Derby and so what I would tell you is that you should look at it this way that you're going to just do this and you're going to get it over with so spend the next 18 months of your life getting in the best shape that you've ever been in so it's going to take you about probably four to six months to be in much better physical condition than you are now to where it's really noticeable and affects your your marketing of yourself then spend a year trying to find mr. right and then you can decide to mail it in so have this attitude that look the doors almost shut so you're either going to go for it or not we can continue to play the procrastination strategy and fiddle around and just let the sands run out on the hourglass but that that isn't necessarily sort of going for the gusto here my attitude would be to pin your ears back for once on this problem and really push because then what we're we're not necessarily expecting to win but what we can do is that for the rest of your life we can have a degree of peace of mind that comes with knowing that you you know you gave this you didn't just let this slip through your fingers out of your own sort of laziness and and procrastination and fiddling but instead what we did is we actually made a serious effort and it either comes through or doesn't come through so one more short determined push could Bend the path of this person's life quite substantially so my attitude would be to go fight for it and if you're anywhere in the western United States and you're a plane flight away that's not even too troubling you may want to go to dr. Nathan Gersh feldspathic escape for a kickstart if you can this is uh this is just an idea but I have you know seen many people go through this process where they need a kickstart they need a place to go to get out of their environment and they need a place to that sort of supports this turn or tell MacDougal program engine to there's many options but Nathan's is the newest beautiful place in Southern California that gives people a chance to really get a get a big push in the right direction so this doesn't matter how you do it I don't care what I do care about is the watching and opportunity fiddle be fiddled away this is a time to to say okay listen you don't have to do this forever we can go back and live the way you're living now and be fine but we got one opportunity here and if you had you know one opportunity to I don't know swing a baseball bat for $100,000 if you could get a hit off a major leaguer and they would put you behind it things so and swear that you wouldn't get hit you know do you think that you could hit it probably not but wouldn't you want to go out there and take a swing I would and that's what I would encourage this person to do well fantastic all right I'm actually I'm really thrilled dr. Lada we've got a baseball example out of you rather than a basketball example I like them both I'll just let you know the basketball example occurred to me first but I thought you know there's something about just taking one swing that that bit fits here so that's what my mind leaped over there unfortunately maybe one day we'll get a hockey example out of here yeah maybe know you were gonna be you're logged uh yeah all right so all right next question is a little bit along the same vein which is about setting resolutions and this particular one was about setting new year's resolutions which shows you just how backed up we are with questions so we love the question alone so here dr. Lyle setting New Year's resolutions seems to be a universal phenomenon evolutionary basis for this for example periodically reflecting on your recent history and then determining what to improve and I think that they're on to something here and so the not not a New Year's resolution obviously that that would be a part of evolution but what and I don't think they're actually suggesting that they're talking about something wider now the concept periodically stepping back and doing a wide-ranging analysis of the cost-benefit relationships in a person's life which of course you have a cost-benefit relationship to you know in a thousand different ways to the to your environment but you have a few cost-benefit rule particularly with respect to other people relationships and these are major so there's half a dozen people in your life to take up most of your time most of your energy etc and so and there's there's a limited number of things that you do in this life that are your priorities that are essentially taking up the large share of your available time and energy so it makes sense that from time to time we would analyze these things from a broader perspective and try to figure out whether or not some major ships might optimize our life better so let's just look at a few of what those things would be changing mates changing the village that you're in changing some costly behavior pattern but you seem to do so you seem to argue with people get into fights and then have things blow up from time to time you might actually consider now wait a second maybe I ought to rethink that maybe that's not the best strategy so maybe I ought to quit you know trying to run this paint store that I bought from my uncle 14 years ago and while I still have a chance strike out and do something different on my own rather than continuing to run this paint store and so this is this is the notion of the new year's resolution is to look at I mean New Year's resolution these days everybody's resolution is to do what lose weight because we're 42 years old and we haven't done anything about it and we're about out of time we'd like some kids okay so this is the most classic New Year's resolution is in America today is to lose weight that would have been true 50 years ago so what are we seeing we're seeing people identifying a major problem with respect to them getting optimal optimization of other relationships other things that they would like in their life and they see some things that are in the way so that that concept of thinking through what is getting in my way of optimizing my life do I need to do I need to possibly alter the way I'm looking at the value propositions of certain things is it worth it for me to continue the rich food be overweight not having may not have kids okay maybe I had to rethink that is it worth continuing to smoke when I'm hacking up little car pieces of my lung and my two brothers just got lung cancer this year in other words this is this is how it is you know New Year's resolutions you know I'm going to quit being such a doormat and keep saying yes to everything and then not having any time for myself I need to figure out a way to stop doing this so whether it's New Year's or not periodically what will happen is people will take a step back and look at their life from a variety of perspectives and to see whether or not there might be a major shift an alternative way to analyze the cost-benefit value propositions as to the way their life is integrated with multiple goals and think maybe maybe this isn't the right way to do it may give you a kind of a wild example have a good friend that has has lived and worked in the United States for much of his career and he decided recently to move to his home foreign country and he had been agonizing over this for a while and then when he decided to do it he was excited about it but worried that he might miss the United States etc etc then when he did all he can talk about is how how wonderful it is in the new place what a you know how much further his money goes and how much better you know things are for him so it's a he but he had to agonize over such a change for a while but he contemplated it major change requires contemplation it requires sticking your toe in the water it requires analyzing parameters before people are going to do these things so but this is part of the process of quote New Year's resolutions or any kind of resolution is about contemplating a major shift that may have a variety of consequences that we may not see and and that may require you know a lot of adjustments I'm trying to get something said here I'm not spitting it out here's the deal that the deal is is that when we make a major change on anything there are many unseen related costs and benefits that that are difficult to imagine and so this is what makes major change or major efforts on anything uncertain as to whether or not they're going to be worth it so a lot of people may sit on their hands like the person in in question number one there could be more to her sitting on her hands than just general laziness not wanting to face the pleasure trap etc there could also be the ego trap that if we were never married and haven't had kids and we're sort of this this person who has been looked over by life if we ever got in shape and then we were still looked over and couldn't find mr. right then now we don't have that excuse to hold up to the world as the reason that stalked us so there I have no idea whether or not that has been an aspect of this particular person situation and very likely it has not been but it could have been and so this is an example of of why it is that the mind absolutely will step back and try to think through major cost-benefit shifts and sometimes I have to mull them over and and try to you know and use imagination and some time to stick our toe in the water in order to try to grasp whether or not a major change may be worth it major changes have major possible benefits and major possible costs and those will stop a lot of people from making major changes because because of the inherent instability whole value matrix in their lives that's why I'm trying to in the case of the first question trying to pitch this in a way that it is not in fact a major change that we're not expecting to do it forever we're not sure it's going to work in terms of finding anything finding a beneficial relationship all I'm trying to go for is the peace of mind as we look back over our history later we did not let this opportunity slip through our fingers so I'm trying to have a sense of urgency and time limited commitment so that so to hopefully motivate the person to seize this opportunity while it's still in place ok I think that's enough Platt okay and hopefully we will wait till the New Year's next New Year's to answer a question sorry but everybody sorry about that July yeah what can we say all right what are we saying all right dear dr. Lyle know this listener is quite shy trip over my tongue in social situations and blushes easily and my eyes often automatically dart away when they meet the eyes of others all of these feel really self-defeating in the modern world all of these have the same source and can I improve with practice or any other way and they essentially do have the same source this is submissive you know kind of personality agreeable shy probably all these sorts of things and there are there are parameters that that contribute to this that can absolutely change the basic core personality is not going to change but we could we could move from I'm not sure where this person would be on on sort of the shyness dimension sounds like they they might be you know anchoring down a far end of the bell curve at you know 98th percentile for shy and 98th percentile for shy can be a pretty hard way to go in other words it could be hard to find mates friends get jobs etc the it isn't at all impossible dependent upon other characteristics of the person how smart how accomplished beautiful all these things you know certainly have an impact on this whole situation but let's suppose that the person is actually suffering a fair amount it with respect to these issues the the question is can we can we change where they are on the scale and would it make a difference the answer is for some people a modest change in where you are in terms of your ability to perform in these sorts of challenging situations could make a fairly big difference in your life so we're not going to move your bedrock personality from that 98th percentile but we can effectively probably move you down to the 90th percentile with practice in other words you can get ready for situations and rehearse and be be more competent and this can this can aid and abet your ability to perform and therefore increase the likelihood that you can establish you know relationships that you might want to so the how can we do this well there's a few parameters that are going to be involved here age is one of them a basically life experience in these situations is another and also success in almost any area of life can also matter so any sort of expertise or accomplishment in anything I don't really care what it is could be basket weaving dominoes perfume you know anything these are essentially islands of security in social discourse that are useful to have it's useful to know a lot about something and so when the conversation drifts towards those things you can be more knowledgeable than anybody else or at least you know one of the most knowledgeable people in in that situation and you can feel confident even if you don't say anything and then we're going to find that if this if this is this can ten use what's going to happen is sooner or later you're going to find yourself taking a chance your brain will run a cost-benefit analysis there'll be a moment where there's some discussion up and there will be a time when you don't have to contradict anybody but you can add some anecdote that is interesting in this in the sense that other people are unlikely to know it and as soon as you do that the eyes turn to you and they recognize oh there's more going on there than we thought and you're not bluffing because it's that isn't the only little tidbit you know you know quite a bit about whatever it is so I think I remember a case somewhere along the way where I can't I can't remember exactly why I'm coming up with this but but I've had a number of shy people and and we we worked on on things two ways to get better at certain social situations um one thing that let's suppose you're the person is a well you know a woman of if in looking for dating and mating that sort of thing let's suppose suppose she's 35 years old or 28 years old 42 years old 53 years old and very shy the you can become an expert in sports this is not difficult to do you can become an expert in baseball of all things why anyone would want to be an expert in baseball is hard for me to imagine basketball my point is is that the if you became knowledgeable in baseball then that is a conversation that no longer is intimidating you and you can actually speak up and it doesn't take that much to be pretty knowledgeable and so now suddenly you could be a far more attractive and interesting to some guy who can talk to you about something you know he can actually talk to you in a way that he's he's comfortable talking because you're interested in baseball you could be interested in cars way you could learn all about I don't know muscle cars the anything under the Sun or maybe you just want to be knowledgeable about perfumes or basket weaving or whatever it is that you're interested in that's fine but this is a way for you to sort of reverse become knowledgeable etc and to develop these little islands of expertise that will on topics that may come up in conversation that's one thing to do the the also obviously you can you can reverse general conversation and general questions and answers to the point where when people ask you something about yourself you actually know what you're going to say you don't have to think it through on the spot so think I spoke at a previous podcast about this about a young lady that was very afraid of dating and what we did was we actually came up with the 20 most common questions that would go back and forth in a date and then what we did was we wrote answers to those questions and then she memorized the answers to those questions and had interesting little anecdotes to say in several of them so it's not like every question had something interesting every question she had an answer and then a few of the questions she had marvelous entertaining little things to say and then she also understood that once you say your thing then you turn right around and ask that person that same question of themselves so you get the spotlight off of you so the the this worked fabulously well by the way and this is the strategy of scripting what you're going to say when you are shy nervous not sure what it is this is exactly how you improve performance the I have a friend who is a top-notch national sales rep for the pharmaceutical industry and she told me that the this their sales pitches and the queries a bet that they would have to answer for medical doctors were extremely carefully scripted they had to practice over and over and over and over again the doctor asks you this this is what you say okay the doctor says this is this is what you say back so this is part of the job part of the job is to not just be socially comfortable and be smart and be attractive and just say intelligent things when the doctor talks to you not a chance when when of when they're trying to have that rep make that company a million dollars a year from that reps work they are going to put that rep in a room and they were going to do repetition after repetition after repetition to make sure that's why they call them reps the this is so if they can do it if big-time salespeople can do it I first learned about this as a teenager being exposed to the master salesperson Tom Hopkins of Champions unlimited I think you he may be so around these securities an old man now the become Hopkins was was the master at designing scripts first for the real-estate industry and then general sales essentially telling sales people exactly what to say and so that you are not thinking off the cuff this same the question is can you improve the answer is you bet you can improve we're not going to it's not going to leak out into your general personality in any big way but in in performances where you work could be costing you where you would dearly like to be better you would you would like to be more confident speak up have something to say and have it be valued by the group so that you could so who it is that you are could be like a little flower opening up so that somebody can see you take notice of you and then you could attract individuals for various relationships can you get better you bet you can take take some effort take some work not as much as you might think I would say the lady that I that we did this for her dating we probably took four sessions and she did some homework in but Queen so probably in less than 10 hours of effort this individual was very comfortable and competent meeting people for one hour date and that was a that was a change that was something that had not happened in 15 years of her dating career so you yes you can so that's that's what we can do Wow yeah when you put it in terms of you know ten hours it doesn't seem so bad whereas if it's like all right thank you six weeks you know an hour half each or whatever that's yeah let's uh let's remember that this is how they make movies so the I think yeah I can't remember what the story was um there's there's many stories out Hollywood you know of course a million stories out of Hollywood but I believe I heard a story about Robert Shaw's soliloquy in Jaws and where he's talking about he's the old seaman - the old shark er and that of course is a little masterpiece it goes on for I think 60 to maybe 90 seconds and I believe that he practiced that for weeks he was practicing that thing so you know there's a reason jaws as jaws and butts of other things or you know or not jaws it's for parts of that performance that were so magnificent but it didn't happen by chance it happened by repetition and so through through those repetitions we can improve performances markedly and when we for most of us this isn't this isn't relative relevant in most things of our lives but whenever it is relevant in your life understand that it is valuable very valuable to to rehearse this can also be true for reasonably you know normal people in the middle of bell curve when they're looking at serious negotiations in their life look negotiations over the price of some item or you know or a tough business calls or something we're negotiating where whether we're going to have to put all the kids in the car and head over to them for Thanksgiving 800 miles in the snow and we don't want to do it okay how are you going to negotiate with your with your mother-in-law about this and how are you going to get out of it the truth is is that if you rehearse very likely you can get out of this thing with elegance whereas if you don't rehearse you're not going to get out of it with elegance and you're going to fold and then you're going to be on the road swearing in the snow okay so this is rehearsal planning rehearsal scripting these are very useful things and that so this is a wider ranging application than just the individual that's this question that in this is underappreciated by the rank-and-file human in the world it has not gone obviously without notice in Hollywood in the acting world and the singing world and it sure as heck hasn't gone gone unnoticed in the sales world at the highest levels so when when you need to sell yourself where you need to sell a concept or an idea or way you're going to get out of something very often is useful to write a script rehearse it several times you know and then and get yourself ready and so that's how that's how this person can improve their performance all right next question dear dr. Lyle yes is it common for a reasonably smart independent woman to stay in an unloving marriage of over 30 years is being provided for enough of a trade-off for lack of mutual respect fun and great physical relationship - or are soul mates just a fantasy her question is if a woman had sustained unloving relationship what are some ways to stay out of a trap or the pleasure trap there's like a little tagline at the end gee I could pitch Nathan's alright fast escape calm we got this the let's look at this the I would say that I mean I have empathy for this question my empathy you know everybody's situation is different everybody has different circumstances there's different many different considerations the the sound of this sounds to me like something that I was just speaking about huge cost benefit you know parameters being difficult to judge and then people getting essentially intimidated because there's too many parameters that they can't see when they contemplate major change this person is contemplating you're really looking at this thing do I want to stay here in this situation that is psychologically a desert yeah but I meant am I going to do it is it a worthy trade that I'm being cared for well it's a kind of an interesting comment saying quote independent woman independent how she's not financially independent or she wouldn't be talking about how it is that this is hooked to somebody else making a living providing for why are we not financially capable okay this is the big question and personal financial responsibility and capability these this is no no small task you know the the average or not the average but the median the median worker in the United States makes about $30,000 a year the average worker in the United States in other words the average is about sixty that's because it's skewed because there's many people it isn't like $30,000 is the middle of the bell curve and then we go thirty to one side thirty to the other zero to sixty now we go all the way up to people making a million dollars a year so the average is sixty thousand dollars a year but the median is 30 so that means that if you don't have a skill if you don't have specific knowledge and skill and you haven't been in a workplace where you've gone up some kind of step raises or a union or some government process where that they've stepped you up to a higher wage even though your skill level is no different than people below you if you're in private enterprise and you are unprotected by any such structure then you could be and you have no particular skill then hard for you to be worth a lot of money and life is expensive and so as a result a lot of people particularly women are in situations where they have maybe raised a couple of children they've been in this relationship it is now what does she say no love no physical affection no fun whatever it is okay and she's saying wait a second what am I doing here I'm being financially supported um I would say the first step to this is to not be financially completely dependent now if you're 72 we're having a different discussion than if you're 62 or 52 so she's been in the relationship 30-something years maybe she's 55 years old and I don't know what what the financial circumstances are but my attitude would be hey no time like the present to be till to go through the process of becoming financially independent okay financial independence these days means though you're rich you never have to work again no financially independent means that you can support yourself and that you can support yourself at a standard of living where where you're reasonably comfortable that's what that is now incidentally that that can seem hard that can seem inconvenient I want to point out but that's the job of every adult animal in nature from the time a time animal life begin Oh course if you are not in those circumstances there's going to be some fear okay there's some embarrassment there's some fear it's also inconvenient there's effort that's involved and all these things have to be weighed and if you're asking me whether or not soul mates or a possibility and that is this just a fantasy oh it is absolutely a possibility of course that it's a possibility and there are legitimately in love happy people in the world I've met a lot of them so that that is a real thing now does it is there guarantees to that now is there guarantees that you would ever find such a thing absolutely not just an opportunity I look at this as sort of this individuals life is probably I'm going to say on a one to ten scale for the amount of happiness that would be reasonably possible for a system to generate versus how miserable a person could be without not being in physical pain or in you know physical misery of some kind starvation and cold worried about whether the Tsar is going to cut your head off this person is probably at a five life's not too bad they're being financially taken care of for they aren't working some onerous job so the question is do they sit there in that relationship or do they do they take a chance did they move on okay do they look for something better that would be much more appropriate for their personality in their life situation for them in terms of fulfillment in that relationship we can see what the risk is the risk is life could wind up being a three we can wind up having to work pretty long hours we could you know we could lower our standard living in some ways they're beasts embarrassments about that we might not have find anybody etc so might just be three little heartbreaking relationships between us and then that's the end of the story and that's that okay so we could wind up looking over our shoulder saying well I should have just stayed with John okay and then I would have been had a little better house and wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to worry about this in that yep that's true on the other hand you could have an eight you could actually find someone wonderful and have your golden years be you know the most fulfilling relationship that you've ever had any guarantees no none the so what I would tell you is this that the the first thing that we would do in that situation is we could recognize the nervous system is knocking hard on the door nervous system saying hey you don't want to be in this relationship okay and so what we would want to do is say okay what's stopping us answer many money stopping us so you have the opportunity to hustle to start figuring out ways to become more valuable to the marketplace or figure out ways to make money and and throw ourselves into that problem now this is useful because if it turns out after six months on the factory floor this individual says forget this this is way too hard I don't want any part of it I'm going to stick with John and ride my way out then you've got more peace of mind you've now discovered you've now estimated the parameters this is precisely what I was talking about with New Year's resolution CB problem that what stops us from making moves is actually a finer grained analysis and feedback and estimation of parameters so what we want to do is when we see a problem like this these problems like this this is like a red flag in front of a bowl for me my attitude is let's go right into the teeth of this thing the fundamental problem here is money fundamental problem here is financially independent I can't tell you how many people when I have posed the question as they're analyzing how they feel about the relationship I say okay a long-lost aunt Milly just died and it turns out you're the only heir and she's bequeath three million dollars to you okay now what are you going to do and you know what I've had many people say I'd be gone by lunch okay that's it all right so oK we've got our answer then we now know how valuable this relationship really is to you because you wouldn't even you you wouldn't even stay for dinner that's how valuable it is that's how reasonably unhappy you are with that situation so the you're not going to make three million dollars but you could put yourself in a position with effort it might be possible for you to become financially independent and then you have to decide what what it's worth and so what we do is we discover whether or not we can become independent we go to the work we go to the trouble we go to the sweat of getting up in the morning setting our alarm clock etcetera and pack on our lunch and going to work and then we find out whether or not how we feel about it we'll learn something in the process so that's what I would tell to this lady and I don't know whether it makes any sense because for all I know she could be 75 and it may not be in any anyway reasonable to be even thinking along those lines but she said thirty years my guess is she was married in her 20s she's probably in her late 50s she's looking at this whole thing and try to figure out what am I going to do am I going to be with this guy for the next 2025 years is that how I'm going to do it and I would say you know what if you're not very happy look hard at the alternatives be willing to put some energy out to stick your toe in a new direction very safely to find out what this all might feel like and then make your decision then that's what I would say
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