Q&A 44 – How are weight-loss strategies like an ice pick?

When we’re trying to change something like an overeating habit, it can feel good to take lots of action. But how many times have we failed when approaching it that way? And what if there’s another way?

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. 

Show Notes

* How the iceberg metaphor of change works

* The surprising way change actually works

* Why explorers of this understanding are like tuning forks

* Continuing our conversation about the back of the spiral

* How insight is what raises the temperature of the water around the iceberg

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

* Dr. Amy Johnson

* Ian Watson’s episode of Unbroken

Transcript of episode

Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A; episode 44 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.

Today I want to do a follow up episode to episode 41. In that episode I talked about the natural shape of change, which is like a spiraling shape. And the way that our growth or change or learning happens in that kind of a spiral motion. And we want it to be a straight line, but it isn’t. Sometimes we can get into the back of the spiral, which can be a little more challenging.

So this is a bit of a follow up to that I wanted to share a metaphor that Dr. Amy Johnson, I heard her share it years ago. It’s the iceberg metaphor. And then I might go into a little bit of a mash up of these two metaphors.

Let me share the iceberg metaphor first. This is a metaphor of change.

If you picture an iceberg sitting in the water, in the North Atlantic near Newfoundland or down in the Antarctic. They’re really big. I was actually reading online today, there’s an iceberg down in the Antarctic, now that is broken away from some place, some ice sheet or something that it was near. And it’s the size of Oahu, the island in Hawaii, if you can imagine. It dwarfs the island of Manhattan by four or five times. It’s absolutely enormous.

Icebergs are really big. And that’s what an overeating habit can feel like, right?

What we’re what I’m talking about on Unbroken, and in my work, is a model of change that’s very different from the traditional model of change. And the traditional model of change looks like if you imagine that that iceberg is your overeating habit, what we tend to do, because we don’t know any better, we’re innocently we’re trying to change something, right? If it’s this big, bulky thing, it feels like a problem, it feels like we need to get rid of it.

We get up there on the iceberg and we chip away with our ice pick, which of course is a ton of work, especially if you’ve got an iceberg that’s the size of a Oahu. So again, we do this because we don’t know any other way. It’s just the way that we’ve been taught that change works.

Imagine how much effort it would take and how long it would take to chip away at an iceberg. Even if it’s not the size of Oahu. It’s almost an impossible task.