November 19, 2009

I have a nursing friend who’s overweight and she really wants to lose the extra pounds. I’ve watched her and listened to her stories as she has tried just about everything. She’s done the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, and the Atkins, South Park, South Beach, Long Beach and Muscle Beach diets. Each one lasted less than a week. Her lack of success at controlling her weight motivates me to stick with my plan of eating healthy, clean, no sugar and to exercise at least five times a week – no matter what; no excuses! She’s now considering lap band surgery and yet another weight management support group.

We all did psych rotations in nursing school. So here’s a question. Why doesn’t group therapy work? Is it because we put a psych patient who has a particular problem in with a group of other psych patients with like problems and then we wonder why they don’t act normal. How can they even know what normal looks like?

I wonder if the ultimate peer pressure is not to rise above a group, but to remain at the same level as everyone else in the group? I’m going to take a position here that’s going to be controversial. I don’t believe that the best way to achieve something is to hang out with other people who haven’t achieved their own goals – whether shared or different from yours.

Let me state it another way; if you want to lose weight, hang with people who have successfully managed to lose weight and keep it off instead of hanging with people who have the same food or behavioral addictions and are not managing their weight. If you want to learn to play golf, you don’t hang with someone who is a bad player. Instead you take lessons from a professional or at least someone with high-level skills.

To learn legal nurse consulting you don’t learn from someone who is unable to make it as a legal nurse consultant and whose teaching materials are derived solely from the works of another. Instead you learn from someone with a proven track record in consulting, teaching and creating successful nurse entrepreneurs. Look at anyone who has succeeded in life. If you want to learn any game, sport or profession, you do so from a winner or master, not someone who has only failed again and again.

My friend has fallen into what I call the culture of losers. Rather than do the hard work of getting on an exercise program, regulating her diet, cooking healthy foods at home and exercising self-control and self-discipline, she’s found a support group of other people with similar issues who can sit around together and feel good about failing, week after week. As much as American society loves winners, individually we seem to be more comfortable embracing a culture of losers.

Think about your hospital or workplace. Generally there are two groups of people: the ones who are successful, movers and shakers on a fast track and the other who have risen, to what I like to think of, as the level of their own incompetence. You know which ones are which. First there are the ones out there working hard, getting promoted; the ones with “snap.” Then there is the coffee clache culture of people who spend their time complaining and whining about their situations.

Let’s face the facts. People who are successful tend to hang with other people who are successful, not with people who are complaining about someone else’s success. Which way do you gravitate? I go to a number of professional conferences each year. At one of my favorites, there are three clearly defined groups: (1) worked hard to be successful and are, (2) working hard to be successful and probably will be and (3) working hard at complaining and will probably never be successful.

Group three always gives me pause. You can easily spot them together by their glum, dour looks. You’ll hear them exchanging failed strategies and remonstrating about what are often good strategies. Why aren’t they hanging with any successful people from group 1? They didn’t learn a thing other than they still weren’t successful and didn’t even have the insight to learn why.

Is it time to change the group you hang with? Think about it like this: Are you comfortable with the fact that the longer you sit in a puddle, the wetter you’re going to get? I’m hoping your answer is an unqualified “no” and you’ll realize that you have to get up and get moving on your own.

My friend has every skill she needs to lose her additional weight. I know her family and she’s certainly the exception to her family’s rule. Her issue isn’t genetic, it’s motivational. It’s time for her to change her support group from a lack of support for change to an active support to change. Instead of going to a meeting where everyone understands and commiserates over how they needed that extra half-gallon of Haagen-Daas dulce de leche after a performance review and how they’ll do better next week, she needs someone who will support her in taking responsibility for her weight. If we’re not accountable for our own results, we won’t ever take full responsibility for our choices.

I’ve mentored Certified Legal Nurse Consultants since 1982 and one thing I know for certain is that there is no success gene. There are people who become successful entrepreneurs and people who don’t.  But it’s not genetics, it’s work. Occasionally someone will be in the right place at the right time, but you may as well start buying lottery tickets if you think that’s going to be you. Camp Buck-Up isn’t open yet so you’ll have to take responsibility for your own life and success. No one else is responsible.

It’s time to start working towards success, whether it’s in weight loss, your CLNC^® business, your family life or current job. Be one of those that people model after, not one that they use as a bad example. The view from the top is meant to be shared. Find someone who’s there to share it with, not someone who’s never seen it.

Here’s looking at you kid.