MMAWLS Blog

Many people have a difficult time convincing themselves to do something. That something could be just becoming active, or cutting back on the food they eat, or anything. Until something becomes a habit, you need a different tool to get yourself to do that. That tool is psychological manipulation. Today, I'll talk about how to use psychological manipulation to help you create effective habits.

Salesmen, politicians, and the media use psychological manipulation on us all the time, and it is very effective, so I propose we should use the same tactics on ourselves for positive results. Robert Cialdini wrote a book called "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion." This book talks about 6 principles, these are: Reciprocity, Commitment, Social Proof, Liking, Authority, and Scarcity. You can use these principles to influence yourself. Also, you have a very successful person by the name of Charlie Munger who has described what he calls “The 24 Causes of Human Misjudgement. Since there are 24 of them, I don’t feel like listing them all here, but a few of the important ones are these: ”Reward and Punishment Super Response”, “Disliking/Hating Tendency”, “Inconsistency Avoidance”, and “The Lolla Palooza Effect.”

As I said, these are used on you every day. Robert Cialdini is hired by politicians to help direct their campaigns. Charlie Munger used these to create a net worth of over a billion dollars. Salesmen, advertisers, and your boss, and NGO’s all use these techniques. If other people are using them successfully on you, for their own gain, why can’t you use them to influence yourself for your own gain? Well you can, and I’m going to give you a few ideas on how to do it.

The first one we’ll use is the Lollapalooza Effect. This isn’t really an effect all by itself, instead it is the result of using several at the same time. Think of the frenzy at a TupperWare party, or a Jewelry Party. Why does this happen? You get scarcity, liking, social proof, and reciprocity all coming together at the same time. Four of Cialdini’s 6 principles all at once. It’s a tsunami of influence. That is the Lollapalooza Effect, and we’re going to use it on ourselves.

The next one to use is the Reward/Punishment Super Response. We want to create an environment where we reward ourselves for doing something that gets us closer to our goal, and punish ourselves for doing something that moves us away from our goal. For example, work a treat into your meal plan. But only eat it if you achieve a certain level of physical activity for the day. You don’t get to eat the treat if you didn’t do the activity. Reward and punishment.

You can use Commitment to your advantage. You know how salesman get you to write down your offer? That is commitment in action. Write down your goals and your strategies to achieve those goals. Use big bold writing in bright bold colours. Make them stand out. Then sign and date each goal and strategy. Read them back to your self out loud several times. Every day, look at what you wrote and look at your signature. This is commitment.

One option is to pick your favorite some a group of influencers. Consider the Liking and Social Proof influencers along with the Disliking/Hating Super Response. Choose one and use it to your advantage. If you choose Liking, then you need to find examples of a body you like, post it somewhere where you can see it frequently. Every day visualize that body and how you would like to have it, and think positive thoughts. Or, you could find an image of someone surrounded by happy cheerful people who has a body you would like. Visualize that every day. Or, you can find an example of a body you do not want. Do not use an image of yourself. You do not want to hate yourself. Every day, visualize doing the things that need to be done to not look like that. Think of the good life that person would have once they slimmed down.

I provided examples of three influencers that you can use at the same time to provide powerful incentives and drivers to do those things you need to do every day to create the habits you need to lose weight. There are many more you can use, it just takes some thinking. Once things become habits, you don’t even need to think about them.

Do you want help with your nutrition and weight goals so you can be the best possible you? Imagine the feeling you get when your goals are met. We can help you achieve that. As nutrition and weight cut coaches, we have done that already for many people. Go here for a free nutritional analysis to get started.

All of talk about habits, and even instinctively know how they influence us on a day to day basis, but we don't really understand how much, let alone understand how we can change existing habits or add new ones. Habits are key to lasting weight loss and also short term weight cuts. So why would I discuss some psychological tendencies before much of anything else?  I already told you the secret to MMA weight loss.  Weight loss is like learning to swim.  You have to start small before you can go big.  You don't swim the English channel the first time you drop into the water, and you don't cut weight like George St. Pierre the first time you try losing weight.  Besides, that's not the way to permanently keep weight off.

If you are looking to lose weight, then you are already overweight.  You are overweight because you have inadvertently learned some new habits.  You need to learn new habits.  Learning new habits is a matter of instilling new behavior patterns over a long enough time that the subconscious takes over.  That period of time is about 28 days (some people say it is a bit more).  How do you make yourself do that new thing for 28 days?  Psychological manipulation.

Now we use the psychological manipulation methods discussed in prior posts along with one more.  Charlie Munger calls this the "Lollapalooza Effect."  I wrote previously about three psychological tendencies.  If you were to bring all three of those together, and use them on yourself, you could, hopefully, create a Lollapalooza Effect on yourself, and help motivate yourself to power through those 28 days needed to create the habit.

I have just glossed over habits so far, but what are they?  habits are evolution's way of helping you multitask.  Imagine what would happen if you had to think about how to run, while also observing your environment, while communicating, and at the same time trying to tackle an opponent, or catch a ball, or hunt an animal.  You would not be very successful at any of them.  Habits allow the subconscious part of the brain to take over the simple actions while your conscious brain concentrates on the tactical procedures that require thought and reason.

For people that are overweight, eating is a habit.  Eating too much, eating without keeping track, eating the wrong things, and eating without knowing are all actions which are habitual and lead to overeating.  In addition, the lack of exercise is a habit.  Watching TV while knowing you need to be doing something else is a habit.  That means, in order to lose weight, we have two difficult tasks.  The first is changing existing habits, and the second is adding in new habits.

So, how do psychological manipulation and habits tie together?  Until the 28 days is finished, and your new routine becomes a habit, you need to use psychological manipulation to make yourself do the tasks you need to lose that weight.

If you search the web for habits, the title for this post, or something similar, will show up.  "28 Days Makes a Habit" means, you can expect that after doing an action for 28 days, that action will become a habit.

Examples:

• Going for walks at coffee break and lunch break, after 28 days, it becomes a habit
• Tracking your calories consumed and burned, after 28 days becomes a habit
• Being aware of what you eat, after 28 days becomes a habit

Habits are the cornerstone to weight loss. There are some tricky parts about forming good habits that make them difficult.  This is where you use the psychological influence tool set I promised I would describe in a future post.  To help understand that better, I suggest you look for a speech by Charlie Munger called "The Psychology of Human Misjudgement", or alternatively called "The 24 Standard Causes of Human Misjudgement."  In addition, you can read the book “Influence” by Robert Cialdini.  One other tactic is to use gamification as a tool to help induce habits.

Do you want help with your nutrition and weight goals so you can be the best possible you? Imagine the feeling you get when your goals are met. We can help you achieve that. As nutrition and weight cut coaches, we have done that already for many people. Go here for a free nutritional analysis to get started.