[From Bill Powers (2011.05.29.1624)]
Ross Bell (2011.05.29) --
Ross, start your posts with a header like mine above. Just type it in, year, month, day, time. Makes it easy to reference the posts being replied to.
RB: The problem of course is not wanting to change what I'm eating, or how I'm living. For example, I'm getting very little physical exercise and i'm not very motivated as of right now to do anything about it.
I realize it's not just a matter of making 'plans' and following them...i've tried that and failed numerous times.
So, please give me some ideas on how i can change the perceptions i want to experience so that I can work toward experiencing those perceptions.
BP: It's tempting to play omniscient guru, but the best I can do is give you some guidelines. I can't change you. Only you can. That's the first guideline.
We all have a built-in mechanism for changes in organization, which we call (rather unoriginally) the reorganization system. Reorganization turns on when you experience serious errors -- differences between what you experience and what you want to experience, cognitively or at any level down to the physiological.
The best sign of reorganization that I know if is that you feel bad in some way, bad enough to mobilize your body in the ways we call emotional. Unfortunately we don't like to feel bad and tend to avoid getting into situations or paying attention where that might happen, so we cleverly turn off the ability to reorganize just when we need it the most.
Your post doesn't reveal any particular distress, though words on a screen don't convey such things directly. You say you've tried and failed numerous times to lose weight and exercise, but I didn't get the impression that the failure bothered you much. Did it? Does it actually matter to you whether you die sooner or die later? No, of course not. :=)
Another generalization that may be true significantly more often than it's false is that when you're tried to do X for some time and keep failing every time, it's a pretty good bet that you have some important reasons for not doing X, and you're in a conflict, which is why nothing is happening. So when you say you want to change the perceptions you want to experience, but don't want to change the food you eat or your way of living, I think I detect something of a contradiction there. Perhaps you would be happier if you changed your desire to eat better and exercise more. Maybe you should just eat what tastes good and relax. Then you wouldn't be in conflict, would you? So why not do that?
Is it really true that every atom of your soul wants to eat better, exercise more, lose weight, and lower your blood pressure? It seems to me that if that were true, you'd just go ahead and do it. What would hold you back? For that matter, isn't the question "What IS holding me back?" It's probably not anything outside you, is it? Or is it?
I don't think there's any one-size-fits-all formula for resolving conflicts. About all you can do is try to define what the real conflict is and see what the reasons are on both sides, and then just keep looking, finding as much as you can about what you really want and feel about things. A therapist can probably help you do that, if it's not the kind that gives a lot of advice or analyzes you from outside where nothing important can be seen. It's really easier to do these things with someone else reminding you of what you're trying to do when you get off the subject.
Fortunately, reorganization is automatic as I see it. It starts up whenever there is serious error, and that can depend on what you're being aware of. If you avoid fear or despair or anger and other signs of something wrong, you can go on indefinitely without reorganizing. But if you explore the issues directly enough to start getting scared or sad or whatever it is, it's likely that reorganization will be going on and things will be changing. Just keep exploring and seeing if the changes are making things better or worse. If they've made things worse, change some more. If they're getting better, go on looking at the same things until the error stops. That's how the theory of reorganization works. Very complex.
I would guess that your writing to CSGnet is something of a desperation move -- some rather important reorganization must have just happened. My crystal Guru Ball, and my common sense, tell me that. So you must have decided you're going to take a chance on changing something. Maybe you've already given permission to yourself to change, in which case that could be all that's needed. That's how I stopped smoking: I gave a book permission to change me if it could. Of course that was the critical thing, not what the book said.
So let us know if anything in this rang a bell.
Best,
Bill P.