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Article Series: Weight Loss & Dieting
How Do I Really Lose Weight?
Lose
Weight - Psychological Factors Why You Fail
Psychologists often refer to something called
our “attributional style”, which is our basic, and quite often
unconscious assumptions we use to explain to ourselves why
we do the things we do and why we get the results we get.
Behavioral Psychology Expert Dean Anderson lists 3
common elements of an attributional style that leads to failure when
it comes to goals such as losing weight. Conveniently, he labels
them all with a word starting with the letter “P”, making these
perilous influences all the easier to recall.
When a person fail repeatedly in all their efforts to lose
weight and keep it off, it is often due to one or more of these
3 assumptions they make about the problems that they come up
against:
Anderson’s 3 P’s of Failure are:
Personal
or Personalized
A person with this attributional
style assumes that they possess a certain character flaw
(lack
of ability or will power, etc.) that is the cause of their
problems. A person with this problematic assumption also tends
to attribute anything positive that they accomplish or achieve
to be caused by something outside themselves (luck, help from
others, etc.). What this means is that these people internalize
or personalize” their failures and externalize their successes. The more successful alternative to this is to assume that
your successes are sourced from within you, and that your failures
come from sources outside you.
Permanent
The person with this attributional style then assumes that
this flaw of theirs, whatever it is, is permanent,
that it has always been there, that it will always be there,
and that there’s nothing they can do to change it (ie. “oh,
it’s genetic; everyone in my family is this way and there’s
nothing I can do about it”). The more successful alternative to this is to assume that
whatever difficulties or shortcomings you may presently be
facing are temporary and easily remedied or worked around through
growing, learning, planning, practicing, and seeking help.
Pervasive
The third and final element of this attributional
style designed for failure is that the person assumes this
problem or flaw affects not just the particular area of concern
they’re facing right now (ie. trouble with their weight), but
every aspect of their lives. With an attitude like this, every
problem in life is the same problem, sourced by the same permanent
and internal flaw. And every problem in life justifies, validates,
and reinforces this belief, this assumption in the existence
of this permanent, internal flaw.
To
identify whether you are suffering from this recipe
for failure, examine how you talk to yourself. Listen to the words
you say to yourself inside your head (or aloud when no one
else is around to hear). Do you say things to yourself that
you would never dare say to a friend? Do you gloss over any
examination of something that’s gone wrong and skip straight
to a conclusion, the same conclusion you always come to, once
more justified, validated, and reinforced? Is it easy for a
simple disappointment to set you on a slippery downward slide
to hopelessness and despair in no time? If you recognize yourself in this description, then the solution
is to break this vicious cycle whenever you see it coming up,
and as soon as you see it coming it. If something you perceive
as a problem occurs in your life, stay keen to these three
erroneous assumptions and determinedly change in that moment
what you’re saying to yourself. # # # # #
SolveYourProblem.com
: 2008
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