Real Life Management: Five Steps to ALTERing Your Attitude About Health, Money, and Relationships

INTRODUCTION A Crisis in America

Iwant you to let your mind indulge in a little bit of fantasy for a moment. Imagine yourself in a very successful career. You're making quite a bit of money -- well into six figures. You've got a gorgeous 6,000-square-foot home with a fancy pool and a waterfall in the backyard. Parked in your three-car garage is an imposing Mercedes-Benz sedan. On your wrist is an enormous Rolex watch, the one with all the diamonds on it that dazzles everyone who sees it. Sound like a life you'd care to have?

It did to me. It's the American Dream, after all. And in 1984, I had that dream and more. I was the kid from the poor side of the tracks who had raised himself up by his bootstraps, got a good education, went to the big city, worked hard, and eventually met with success.

And you know what? There's not a thing wrong with that. If that picture is similar to a dream you've always had, or a dream you've actually attained, I say, "Great! Don't give up on that dream. Keep that dream alive."

But know this: if you had seen me living that dream in 1984, you'd have said, "Wayne Nance has the perfect life." But you'd have been dead wrong! Because the truth is, my life was out of control. Meaning that I was making bad decisions that created serious long-term consequences for my happiness, health, wealth, and family.

Do you ever feel as if your world is spinning out of control? A lot of us do in the post-9/11 world, with the economic downturn that followed, the disaster of the stock market and the loss of many people's retirement funds, the ever-present threat of terrorist attacks, the downsizing of companies and the offshoring of Ameri can jobs, the erosion of value as corporate scandals have come to light, and so many other things that make us worry about the future.

Those are serious matters, for sure. But did you know that there's a crisis in America that actually affects more people on a practical, daily basis than any of those "world-class" headline-grabbers? It's a crisis that shows up all over the place but can be seen most graphically in three areas that all of us deal with every day: the lifestyle issues of food, money, and relationships. To put it bluntly, way too many Americans are fat, broke, and unhappy at home and at work. Consider:

• 67 percent of Americans are estimated to be overweight or obese by Centers for Disease Control (CDC) standards.
• 85 percent of Americans will retire with Social Security benefits as their only means of support. In other words, they're broke.
• 51 percent of Americans are divorced. Many others remain in marriages that might be called "psychological divorce."

Clearly, something's wrong in America! Especially if you overlay those numbers on top of each other. Just imagine three pie charts showing the 67 percent of Americans who are overweight, the 85 percent who will retire virtually broke, and the 51 percent who are divorced. Stack them on top of one another, and what do you see? That a lot of Americans are all three -- fat, broke, and unhappy in their relationships. But that's not the worst of it. The saddest thing is that many people struggling with one, two, or even all three of these problems don't even think they have a problem! Take obesity, for example. A 2004 Associated Press poll found that six people out of ten who qualified as overweight by government standards said their weight was just fine -- healthy, even.

Or consider this observation from the national sales manager of a company that helps small businesses and individuals facing bankruptcy work out settlements with their creditors: "From personal experience, I see that as people get further into debt . . . they start making short-term decisions and don't prioritize their debt correctly. Eventually, they start feeling overwhelmed, give up and go into denial."

What happens when someone goes into denial about their debt? They go deeper in debt. They may also start eating. Indeed, The Toque, a satirical Canadian website, imagines a VISA card issued by McDonald's called (you guessed it) the McVISA. The idea is that people will be more likely to eat at McDonald's if they can charge their Big Macs.

With that premise, the site invents twenty-two-year-old Josie Amblin, a student who uses her McVISA card at least ten times a week! "I can't stop," she confesses to a fictitious reporter. "It's just so easy to purchase a burger and fries with credit. I know I can't afford to eat at McDonald's this often, but I can't help myself!"

Amblin racks up $2,100 on her McVISA card, even though it only has a $1,500 credit limit.

The whole story is a spoof, of course. But it hits the nail on the head. "I can't stop! I can't help myself!" That's the cry of someone whose lifestyle is out of control. Someone who is making bad choices that will create serious long-term consequences for their happiness, health, wealth, and family.

In 1978, I was a poster child for being out of control in all three of the lifestyle areas I've mentioned. I weighed 315 pounds (that's fat, by the way, even if you're six feet, one inch tall). I was a financial advisor, but I had five credit cards maxed out. And at home, my wife, Shannon, wasn't exactly happy with me because she and my daughter never saw me because I was too busy making money for the family. At least that's what I always told them (and myself): "I have to work this hard to provide for our family." Yeah, right!

I was in total denial. I was caught up in a crisis that I didn't even see. I was succeeding and making lots of money, and by society's standards I was doing just fine. Only I wasn't doing fine. You're not doing fine when you can't bend over and tie your shoes without being out of breath. You're not doing fine if you're giving great financial advice to other people, but your own financial condition is a house of cards just waiting to collapse. You're not doing fine if you never spend time with your family because you've got to keep one step ahead of the hounds that are chasing you.

Because I didn't have any boundaries, I let other people's opinions determine my opinion of myself. I looked fine to them, so I thought everything about me was fine, too. But it wasn't. My life was out of control.

Some people hit bottom and then finally wake up. I had to hit bottom three times before I woke up! (I've always known I was a slow learner.) The first wake-up call came in 1978, when I was twenty-eight years old, with a beautiful wife, a one-year-old daughter, and another baby on the way. I was just at the point when a young man should be enjoying life to the full. Instead, my doctor was warning me that if I didn't stop eating, I'd never see my fortieth birthday. Was that what caused me to change my ways? No! Guess what I did when I left his office? I headed straight across the street to a pancake house. I'm not kidding! And I charged the meal on a credit card. (You see, I do understand someone like Amblin!)

So what was my first wake-up call? It happened during my annual visit to the "Big Men's" store. I was packing on so much weight that every year I needed new clothes -- in the next larger size. You can imagine how embarrassing it was to make that trip. So it became my style to shift attention (and blame) away from myself by complaining about the clothing manufacturers in Asia and how they were cutting their styles too small, or to joke that my wife was shrinking my clothes in the washer.

But on one trip, when I started mouthing off, the old tailor spoke up. For ten years he had listened to my bull and said nothing. This time around he had had enough. He was getting ready to retire, so what did he care? Right there in front of my wife, he turned to me and said, "It's not your wife or the Taiwanese, pal. If you weren't such a fat slob, you wouldn't have a problem!"

I was stunned. I'd never been so insulted in my life. How dare he! Boy, was I ever mad! So I showed him. Why, I walked right out of that store without buying so much as a dime of new clothing!

But in truth, that guy did me a favor. Because what he said was true. And it hit home. I was fat. Overweight. Obese. Whatever you want to call it, it doesn't matter. What matters is that I finally faced up to a cold, hard reality: my weight was out of control.

At some level I'd known that for years. But I had been in denial about it for years, too, really since I was a boy. You see, I come from a dysfunctional family on the outskirts of Houston, Texas ("dysfunctional" means you can get away with anything if you'll just deny reality). Our family was the kind where Momma cooked everything in bacon grease. And if somebody didn't have a third helping of pie for dessert, she'd feel totally offended. But guess what? In spite of Momma's cooking there wasn't a single "fat" person in the family. No, sir! We weren't fat, we were just "big-boned." That extra 50 or 60 or 90 or 100 pounds everyone was carrying was just the result of a "slow metabolism." Just a "large thyroid." And so Momma always told me that being fat just runs in our family. We had that "fat gene" going, don't you know? (You see how denial starts early?)

With a background like that, it's no surprise that early on I became the fat kid. Eventually, the fat kid grew up to be the fat man. Only I wouldn't admit that I was a fat man. I had all kinds of excuses to say I wasn't. I was in total denial. "Justifiable denialism" is what I call it. I lied to myself to justify my poor decisions. But the scales don't lie, and your waist doesn't lie, and your health doesn't lie. And by the time I was twenty-eight I was getting sick and feeling tired. And to be honest, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired.

So I did what almost everyone does when they finally accept the truth that they're carrying too much weight: I went on a diet. In fact, I went on lots of diets. The grapefruit diet. The water diet. The low-carb diet. The six-meals-a-day diet. You name it, I tried it.

Sure enough, I lost weight. And gained it back. So I'd go on another diet, and lose weight. And then after I'd lost the weight, I'd quit the diet and I'd gain the weight back. Plus a little bit more. So I'd go on another diet, and lose the weight again. And then . . . well, you get the picture.

One diet I followed was Dr. Atkins's first diet. He had two of them over the years. I tried the first one. He said if you ate about as much cheese and eggs and red meat as there are in the state of Texas, you'll lose weight. I tried that and I did lose weight. I lost about forty or fifty pounds, and pretty quickly. But then I was diagnosed with a fissure tear in my colon, because I wasn't eating any fiber or carbohydrates.

Surgery laid me up for a month. And while I lay in that bed, I said to myself, "If I ever stop bleeding and get out of this bed, I'm going to learn something about nutrition," because I had never learned anything about it in school. I had been an athlete, but in my day the people in charge just said, "Eat chicken-fried steak, Wayne. You need something that'll stick to your ribs. Don't worry about the gravy. You'll run it off." I knew nothing about nutrition, food supplements, or how to balance my diet.

So when I got well, a friend told me about a book by Covert Bailey titled, Fit or Fat? Boy, was that a lucky break! Bailey had a great concept: fat makes you fat. That was in 1979. Amazing, isn't it? Fat makes you fat. When I read that, I realized that about 98 percent of what I was eating contained fat. I also discovered that when I wasn't eating fatty foods, I was eating Oreos and chocolate milk and stuff that was loaded with sugar.

Bailey opened my eyes to a lot, and I was shocked to learn how much I didn't know about nutrition. After that, I couldn't learn enough about it. I got really serious about what I ate, and I lost more than a hundred pounds over a two-and-a-half-year period. All of a sudden I was the new thin guy. The 205-pound guy instead of the 315-pound guy.

So I'd gotten my life under control, right? Not exactly. I was only focusing on my weight. My spending was still out of control. Which means my work habits were out of control. At 205 pounds I wasn't spending any more time with my family than when I'd weighed 315. I'd gone from being a big, fat, broke man with a lot of stress and an unhappy family to a thinner broke man with a lot of stress and an unhappy family.

Fast forward to 1984. By then, as I've said, I was making quite a bit of money. I had the house, the car, the watch, the American Dream. I sincerely thought I had it made. And I was thinner, too.

And yet . . . what difference does it make if you live to be one hundred if you're miserable? I was miserable. I went through tremendous mood swings and depression. I thought, "How can I be depressed when I've got it all?"

About that time I went on a trip to Philadelphia. I was now in insurance, and a very large insurance company wanted to honor me as one of its top ten salespeople in the country. Quite an honor! As I was riding on the bus from the airport to the hotel, we stopped at a red light downtown. I looked over and saw a big Catholic church. Suddenly tears started coming down my cheeks. I felt terribly sad. "I really don't want to go to that hotel," I was thinking. "I just don't want to go. I don't want to be honored. I don't want anybody giving me an award for being a guy that's a workaholic who never sees his family, who just focuses on his money, his Mercedes, and himself. I feel very fake. I don't feel good about this at all."

But soon I was dropped off at the hotel. Sure enough, I had my big private suite, all decked out with a complimentary fruit basket and a bottle of champagne. That was kind of cruel in a way, because I didn't have Shannon there to enjoy it with me. The fact is, she had declined to come to the convention. She didn't like being with me at that point in my life, because I was pretty much a jerk.

So there I was, the big shot in his big fancy room -- all by his lonesome for a whole week. And boy, was I lonesome! So one day, right in the middle of the convention, I walked out of that hotel and went and found that Catholic church. I'm not Catholic, but I went inside and ducked into a pew and got down on my knees, and I cried out to God: "Help me understand why I'm so miserable!"

I didn't really know what to expect. Nothing happened right away. I finished the convention, collected my award, and went home. About a week later, Shannon told me that our girls' elementary school was having an open house, and she wanted me to go and meet their teachers. I was still feeling kind of depressed, so I said I didn't want to meet any teachers. But for some reason I relented and went anyway.

My older daughter's fourth-grade teacher had asked the students to make posters in answer to the question, "If you could have three things in your life, what would you want?" I looked carefully at the artwork arrayed on the bulletin board. Of the thirty-two kids in that class, twenty-six of them had drawn as the top three things they wanted out of life: more money, a sports car, and a big house.

Suddenly a light went off in my head. It was my second wake-up call. I thought about those posters all the way home -- driving in our Mercedes-Benz to our six-thousand-square-foot home, driving past the other six-thousand-square-foot homes in our subdivision, each with a Mercedes-Benz or sports car in its three-car garage. By the time we arrived I had clarified my thinking. "You know what?" I told Shannon. "I'm miserable. I'm miserable because I'm trying to keep up with the Joneses, and I never wanted to be a Jones to start with. The worst of it is that we're sending that message to our kids, and it's the wrong message."

Within a year of that night, we sold the house, got a smaller house in a different neighborhood, I traded in the Mercedes for a pickup, started wearing cutoffs, and got a Mickey Mouse watch made of plastic. I said to myself, "I don't know where I'm going from here, but I'm going to refocus." And in that way I came to grips with the fact that my financial lifestyle was out of control, and I needed to start dealing with the money issue, just as I'd worked on the weight issue.

But I wasn't out of the woods yet. Far from it. In 1992 Shannon and I hit rock bottom in our marriage. Remember, I'd been in denial for years thinking that if I just provided a nice lifestyle for my family, they'd think I was great. Sure, we'd downscaled to a more modest home and all, but I was still providing well for my family.

But one day Shannon finally decided to cut to the truth. "Wayne, you're basically a jerk," she said. You can see that people sometimes have to shoot pretty straight in order for me to "get" what they're saying.

At first I felt terribly defensive. "Look at all I've done for you!" I thought to myself. "Look at all I've provided for us! Just look at all I've managed to accomplish in my life! Why, don't you realize you're talking to Wayne Nance here?"

But she was firm and clear: "I hate to tell you, Wayne, but you're just a jerk. I don't like you. And I hate to tell you the truth, but your kids don't like you very much, either."

That was yet a third wake-up call. Somehow the thought that the four people I cared about most in this world didn't like me very much got my attention. "This isn't working well," I thought. "I started out fat, and I fixed some of that. Then I started chasing money, and I fixed some of that. Yet now my family doesn't like me very much. I think I better take a long, hard look at myself."

So I did. I went for counseling and had a lot of discussions over a long period of time. I came to grips with the fact that life is complicated. You can fix one thing about yourself, but that may only lead to problems with other things. The real question is, what's driving your behavior? What's the underlying thing that's creating all the surface problems you're trying to fix? That core thing is what you've got to go after.

It was at that point that I encountered a powerful truth: there is more to managing one's lifestyle than merely making "right" choices. You see, almost all the diets, budgets, relationship books, and other lifestyle advice I had gotten said that if I just made the "right" choices, everything would work out. Just eat less fat. Just stay within a budget. Just tell your wife you love her more. Just show up at your kid's soccer game. Just count to five when the annoying person at the office pushes your buttons. Those were all the "right" choices. Do those and you'll get your life under control.

Problem is, I'd made a lot of those "right" choices. But my life still was not working. Worse yet, I was having to put enormous energy into making "right" choices. So much energy, in fact, that if I let my guard down for an instant, or if I felt tired or down or angry or whatever, I'd just blow off my resolve and do it the old way -- order that extra meat patty and the double fries, buy that tie that cost twice what I intended to pay, take on that extra speaking engagement even though I'd promised Shannon I'd be home that weekend. Clearly, something else was contributing to my behavior besides making "right" choices, important as those were.

That's when I encountered this breakthrough truth, the truth that allowed me to start getting my life under control: most of what causes us to make the lifestyle decisions we make is not our choices, but our attitude and our beliefs. By attitude I mean the inborn "wiring" that we brought with us into the world. Our attitude has to do with our basic outlook or orientation toward life, what we focus on, what matters to us, what we put our energy into. Attitude makes the biggest difference in our behavior. Later in the book I'll take you through a simple 3-Minute Survey that will show you your attitude, and I'll tell you where you can get more information about your "hardwiring."

When I learned that the core of my lifestyle problems was my attitude, I started on a journey that continues to this day. I wondered, "Am I the only person in America who is struggling with food, money, and relationships?" What I discovered shocked me.

I began going to health spas and fitness centers, where I traded speaking and training for the opportunity to interview spa participants. That gave me lots of firsthand data about the issues people really struggle with.

I found that millions of Americans are in crisis in those three areas. In addition, I discovered that there is a link among those three issues -- obesity, debt, and divorce. The link is people's underlying attitudes. I discovered that certain attitudes are especially at-risk for obesity, debt, and divorce. In other words, many of the same people who struggle with their weight and other health issues struggle with their money and related financial issues, and also struggle with their relationships, both at home and at work. They struggle because of their attitudes. And sadly, they don't even realize that their attitudes are leading to self-defeating and self-destructive behaviors!

Would you like to know whether you (or someone you care about) are one of those people? Better yet, would you like to know how you can regain control over your lifestyle, no matter what your wiring may be? This book will help you do that.

First it will help you understand your attitude and how it affects everything you do and every decision you make. Then it will take you through the same five-step plan that helped me lose more than a hundred pounds and keep the weight off for more than fifteen years. The same plan that helped me pay off my five credit cards, so that today Shannon and I live debt-free. The same plan that has allowed Shannon and me to stay married -- and increasingly happy -- for thirty-one years.

Now let me point out that I have not written this book on my own. This is a joint venture between me and my co-authors, Bill Hendricks and Keet Lewis. We decided that we would write the book from my perspective, using the first-person singular ("I," "me," "my"). But rest assured that this book expresses a common understanding among three partners. Indeed, Bill and Keet will tell you that they, too, have felt out of control at various times in their lives. They use this program daily to better manage their lives and businesses.

Bill understands the challenge of keeping life in balance, having lost his wife to breast cancer several years ago, and single-parenting his three daughters in their adolescent and teen years. Meanwhile he has headed a consulting practice that uses the phenomenon of giftedness to work with businesses, nonprofits, and churches to manage their strategic "people issues," and with individuals seeking career guidance.

Keet has an extensive background in managing companies spanning several industries. Today he is a busy entrepreneur with a variety of business and charitable activities. He teaches the concepts in this book in his consulting work with companies, schools, and religious organizations. Like me, he has struggled at times with his weight and finances, and he has personally witnessed the success of our program.

Others have also contributed to the ideas presented in this book. I've mentioned Covert Bailey's influence on me. Keet first learned about attitudes from his friend, Zig Ziglar, who taught him that attitude is everything. As Zig so aptly puts it in his foundational work, See You At the Top "Your attitude determines your altitude," and that "we can Alter our lives by Altering our Attitudes."

Keet began his personal dedication to understanding behavioral science when, as the CEO of a manufacturing company, he studied and applied the principles relating to temperament as explained by bestselling author Dr. Tim LaHaye in his classic work, Why You Act the Way You Do. Dr. LaHaye wrote many other books on temperament, and they are a must read for any serious student of the subject. Additionally, Dr. James Dobson, Dr. John C. Maxwell, Dr. Steve Farrar, Dr. Howard Hendricks, Dr. Bill Bright, Josh McDowell, Dennis and Barbara Rainey, Dr. Tony Evans, Rich DeVos, and Dr. Ron Jenson have all contributed much to our understanding of lifestyle issues like parenting, personal responsibility, and leadership through their very insightful writings. All of them have helped to lay a foundation for our work at Real Life Management.

Keet, Bill, and I hope that this book will be a helpful complement to the work of people like Bailey, Ziglar, LaHaye, Dobson, Maxwell, Rainey Jenson, and others who have pioneered in the field of attitude and lifestyle management. Above all, we want this book to offer hope.

If I was able to regain some control of my life, you can do the same, no matter how desperate you feel your life has become. I've helped countless people just like you over the years through my training workshops and seminars at corporations, health spas, financial planning firms, universities, churches, and many other settings. Almost all of the folks I've met have tried way too many of the quick-fix diet, budget, and relationship gimmicks on the market. Most of them were discouraged. A lot of them were desperate. Some had even given up. "I'll never change!" they said. If that's how you feel, I implore you to keep reading. Because I'm not going to ask you to change.

You read that right. I'm not going to ask you to change. The word "change" implies that you need to make a 180-degree turnaround and basically become someone other than who you are. I'll never ask you to do that. God wired you the way you are, and I'm fine with that. I want you to be fine with that, too. You are just fine the way you are! But I know you're not happy with the way you live. So come on inside this book with me, because I've got a proven strategy to help you turn your life around.

Copyright © 2007 by Real Life Management, Inc.

CHAPTER 1

Why Quick-Fix Schemes NeverWork

I was speaking to a group of women at a wellness spa near Nashville, Tennessee. The spa had asked me to present a seminar on "foodaholism," the idea that food has become one of the worst addictions in the United States today.

"Any of ya'll struggle with that?" I asked.

A wave of nervous snickers rippled across the room and finally broke into open laughter as the women turned to each other with looks that seemed to say things like, "Oh, yeah!" and, "I can't believe he asked that!"

It was a rather pointed question, since not one of those women weighed less than two hundred pounds, and a few weighed considerably more. That wouldn't have been a problem necessarily, except that a number of them couldn't have been more than 5'2" or 5'4" tall.

Aware that their laughter was really a sign of embarrassment, I eased the tension the way I often do, by poking some fun at myself and letting them know I could personally relate to their situation.

"When I was growing up I was always known as the fat kid. You know how that works. Somebody would ask who Wayne Nance was, and people would say, 'Oh, he's the fat kid,' and the person would immediately nod, because then he'd know exactly whom they were talking about.

"I was the fat kid, but I didn't think anything of it because Momma kept telling me I wasn't fat, I was just 'big-boned.' Years later, I learned a lot about the physiology of the human body, especially as it relates to weight control. And you know what I discovered? Bones don't weigh 315 pounds. If you stacked all the bones in my body on a scale -- just the bones, without the rest of me -- they'd probably add up to about 30 pounds. That's it! Which means if I weighed 315 pounds (which I did at one point in my life), 285 pounds of that must be something besides bones."

A number of the women laughed and rolled their eyes at that point. Clearly they had heard similar excuses from their mothers.

Next, I tackled my Momma's argument that my thyroid was underactive. Maybe that's why I carried so much weight. I could tell that the women listening had heard that line before, too. "The truth," I explained, "is that folks who have hypothyroidism -- a genetic malfunction that causes the thyroid gland to not produce enough hormones, thereby slowing down one's metabolism -- make up less than 1 percent of the population."

"Less than 1 percent," I emphasized, "and yet 67 percent of adults in America are overweight. As a recovering fat man, I can assure you that I didn't have a slow metabolism. I mean, I could eat two double cheeseburgers with the super fries and milk shake, and I'd be hungry again in just a couple of hours. My body would burn right through those calories! Yes, sir, there were a lot of things slow about me in those days, but my metabolism wasn't one of them."

The point of my self-directed humor was not to be cruel, but to be honest. I wanted to help those women take a candid look at a problem they had struggled with their whole lives -- the problem of their weight. Specifically, the problem of too much weight.

Now I realize that for some readers, weight may not be your issue. But if not, there's a good chance that debt and/or problems in your relationships are. So as you read this chapter, don't think that it doesn't apply to you just because it's an illustration about obesity. I could just as easily have told a story about people struggling with their finances or their relationships. All three areas -- weight, money, relationships -- are profoundly affected by a person's underlying attitudes.

For instance, just as too much weight was killing those women at the health spa, too much debt could be killing you. Are you aware of that? According to Dr. Edward Charlesworth, an expert on stress, money is the leading cause of stress in America. No surprise there. Recall that in the Introduction I pointed out that 85 percent of Americans will retire broke. How much stress do you suppose that creates, and will create? In turn, stress is a leading factor for cancer, heart disease, and many other illnesses. Indeed, many experts believe that stress is the number one cause of death in the United States today. Money issues (especially debt) are the leading cause of that stress. Bottom line: debt is every bit as deadly as obesity.

Let's go back to the ladies at the health spa. As I got into the main content of what I had to tell them, they were listening carefully and asking great questions. I was so encouraged! They seemed grateful that someone was finally shooting straight with them. And they were really starting to "get" what I was saying about how quick-fix diets and rapid-loss weight programs are not the way to lose weight and stay healthy because...

Suddenly, right in the middle of my talk, one lady whose name tag read "Ginny" shot up her hand and blurted out, "Mr. Nance, look, I've tried everything you're talking about and then some. I've tried every single diet you've mentioned, and even a few you haven't. I've bought no end of fitness equipment off the TV. I've joined a different health club every January for the past seven years. None of it has worked for me!" Ginny had a surly look on her face, and I could tell she wasn't buying a word of what I was saying.

Actually, that had been apparent from the get-go. During the entire first thirty minutes of my presentation, Ginny had sat stonefaced, slumped in her chair, arms folded tight. She looked as if she were daring me to make her smile. Believe me, I tried! But it was like blasting granite. Her whole body language -- all 5'3" and 230 pounds of it -- sort of taunted me to prove something to her. But nothing I said seemed to reach her. So I wasn't surprised when she challenged me. Clearly, Ginny wasn't enjoying the afternoon. Clearly, she was not a very happy person.

In fact, Ginny struck me as a defeated person -- like so many overweight people I've met (as well as broke and divorced people, and unhappily married people). They've heard it all. The pitch for the nutritional supplement that will cut their weight by two-thirds, give them the energy of a triathlete, and make them irresistibly attractive again to their spouse. The fancy belly bumper that will shrink the blubber on their abs to a sixpack of steel-tight muscle -- in just ten days! The juice extractor that will suck those magic nutrients out of carrots and broccoli and serve them up in a liquid brew that tastes better than any milk shake they've ever had -- only $149.95, shipping and handling free, if you order right away!

Yes, they've heard it all. But none of it has worked. They're still fat. Worse, they're utterly defeated.

Ginny had the look that says, "Wayne, save your concern. Maybe you genuinely want to help me get my life together. That's great. But you just don't understand. This time, you've met your match. It's never going to happen for me. I just don't have what it takes. I'll never change."

To be honest, when Ginny interrupted my talk to vent her frustration, I felt frustrated with Ginny. But I also felt a lot of compassion. Because Ginny reminded me of me. There was a time in my life when I was just as certain that my life would never be altered. I, too, had tried the quick fixes she'd mentioned. I, too, had made those endless New Year's resolutions. I, too had attended all those self-help seminars and read all those books and pursued all those other schemes for lifestyle management. But they hadn't worked for me, just like they hadn't worked for Ginny, nor will they work for you. And here's why: almost all of those approaches are based on a number of terribly flawed assumptions, specifically:

1. "People are all pretty much the same." Have you ever noticed how books on lifestyle management make sweeping generalizations about human beings as they dispense advice? For example, most of them assume that all of us are motivated by goals, plans, rewards, success, money, prestige, self-interest, saving time, having more/bigger/better things, having people think well of us, making our lives easier, and on and on. But for every statement that begins, "Everyone needs," or "Everyone believes," or "People always," or "It's just human nature," there's almost a 100 percent certainty that someone somewhere is an exception to whatever follows. Actually, lots of "someones somewhere."

Take goals. Almost every prescription for self-improvement that I've ever come across says something like, "If you want to succeed at this, you've got to have a goal." Now I believe strongly in goals. In fact, later in this book I'll talk about setting some goals. But what if you're one of the millions of people in this world who doesn't do life by goals? It's not that you can't set a goal, it's that goal-setting is not how you're wired. It's not part of your makeup. God didn't design you that way. You use other means for moving ahead -- perhaps a picture or vision in your mind, perhaps a blueprint or model or set of instructions that you follow, perhaps a leader or coach or friend whom you trust.

Goals work great for people who are naturally motivated to set goals. They don't work so well for people who are wired in other ways. The point is that every human being is unique. Each of us has a unique "hardwiring" that doesn't fundamentally change throughout our life. Any scheme for lifestyle improvement that fails to take into account how you are naturally wired is ultimately doomed to failure. That's why in the next chapter I'm going to take you through an exercise that reveals a lot of how you are motivated to function.

2. "The same prescriptions will work for everyone." This assumption goes hand-in-hand with the previous one. In fact, it is based on the previous idea that everyone is the same. If everyone is the same, then universal, one-size-fits-all solutions will work for everyone.

For example, how many times have you heard "experts" say, "Americans should be saving 10 percent of their gross income." Is that true? Well, 10 percent may be an average of what all Americans, taken together, should be saving. But some of us need to be saving quite a bit more than that because of where we are in life and what our income level is and other factors. For others, such as retirees who have a handsome nest egg stashed away, 10 percent may be too aggressive. So how much should an individual household be saving? The most accurate answer is, "It all depends."

I could apply the same logic to almost every other area of lifestyle management: diets, working out, nutrition, vitamin supplements, budgets, insurance, 401(k) deductions, family schedules, times away with your spouse, vacations, Christmas shopping, you name it. There is no single prescription that fits every person, every family, every circumstance. We always must remember: one size does not fit all!

"That's depressing," I hear someone saying. "How can I know what to do?" The answer is: discover how you are wired (I'll help you do that in the next chapter) and customize the advice you get to your wiring -- to who you are and how you do life. This is another way of saying, take responsibility for how you live. Don't just let someone else tell you how to run your life. They can tell you what has worked for them. But don't assume that their approach will work for you, since they are wired differently than you.

That's the approach I've taken with almost 100,000 individuals over the past seventeen years. First I've helped them discover their inborn, underlying attitudes, using the simple 3-Minute Survey. Then I've helped them customize a plan for working on their lifestyle issues according to their unique approach to life. My model has worked for people in corporations, health spas, colleges and universities, churches, and many other venues. It works because it takes into account individual differences.

3. "Change is basically a matter of making the right choices." Pick up any book on diet and nutrition, money management, or relationships, and you'll inevitably find that success depends on a set of choices you need to be making. "Eat this much of this." "Don't eat any of that." "Spend only this much." "Buy that kind of insurance." "Say these things." "Avoid that situation." It's as if life is a paint-by-numbers picture that you fill in with the right choices. Get those choices right, and everything will work out great.

The problem is, life doesn't work that way. The half-truth is that managing your lifestyle does involve making good choices. But where does the decision to make these choices come from? Most traditional approaches ignore the extent to which that inborn hardwiring that I will talk more about drives your decisions and behaviors.

Take Charlie as a case in point. Goodtime Charlie, his friends call him. It's an appropriate name, because Charlie is nothing if not friendly. He never met a person he didn't instantly like. For that matter, he never met a person who didn't instantly like him. Charlie's just got appeal oozing out of him. Not surprisingly, he spends all of his time in the company of others.

Now Charlie has always been that way, from the time he was a little baby. He's always gravitated to people. Indeed, everything he's ever achieved in his life he's done together with other people. And for good reason: the satisfaction that Charlie takes from being with other people is a function of his attitude, his hardwiring. In other words, Charlie doesn't have to try to like people, he just likes them. He cannot not like them. That's how he's wired.

Did I mention that Charlie is eighty-five pounds overweight and maxed out on two of his three credit cards? Charlie's wife got him to go to a seminar that their church sponsored on financial planning. The speaker had very good material. She talked about setting up a budget and paying off credit card purchases every month. Charlie listened carefully and even took notes. Why, he even went up to the speaker afterwards and told her she was the best seminar presenter he'd ever heard. She seemed flattered.

So guess what happened on the way home from the seminar. Charlie was so excited about what he'd heard that he invited another couple to join him and his wife for a snack at a nearby restaurant, so they could talk about it. When the waitress came, Charlie blared out, "Hey, I know! Let's get that fried onion they serve here for an appetizer. It's great!"

So the deep fried onion with the creamy dip soon arrived. Charlie was so animated that he ended up eating most of it while he chatted away with his friends.

Later, the waitress brought their meals -- light sandwiches for the other three, but a huge double pastrami with cheese and chips for Charlie.

When the waitress brought the check, the husband of the other couple began to pull out his wallet. But Charlie waved him off and grabbed the bill. "This is ours," he said emphatically. When his friend began to protest, Charlie became adamant. "I won't hear of it. We invited you, and I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to your perspectives on the seminar. You've made this the perfect ending to a wonderful day." And with that, Charlie handed the waitress his credit card.

Now Charlie has broken almost every piece of advice that he's ever read or heard about sticking to a diet and keeping his spending under control. Why? Does he not want to make the right choices? In truth, he does. He's talked about that many times with his wife. So why does he keep making bad choices? Because Charlie is unaware that his inborn attitude predisposes him to order more food, to pay for the meal, and to pay for it on a credit card when he's already got two credit cards that are maxed out. For that matter, his attitude predisposes him to ask his friends out for a snack in the first place.

Charlie doesn't know anything about his attitude. He's just being Charlie. That's how it is with most people. They pay no attention to their particular wiring because they don't even know what it is. Their wiring is so natural to them that they don't even recognize how much it affects their decisions and behavior. They just do the things they do because, well, that's how they do life. They wouldn't think of doing it any other way.

So telling people to just make the right choices is a bit misguided. Better to show them how their attitudes affect their decisions, so that they can understand why they keep making bad decisions, and how they can start making good decisions -- informed, intelligent decisions based on who they actually are.

4. "People can change and 'become' whatever they want to be if they'll just put their mind to it." This may be the most flawed assumption of all. But it is very common in our society. "Whatever the mind can conceive, the will can achieve." Have you ever heard something like that? Sure you have. In fact, you may have said something similar to your kids in an effort to inspire them to set their sights high: "Honey, you can become anything you want to be. You just need to decide what you want and then work hard to achieve it."

Now I would never want to discourage anyone from aiming high. In fact, I think one of the main problems folks have in managing their lifestyle is that they are settling for too little. They have no vision for their lives, nothing to shoot for, nothing to aspire to. As a result, they don't care about themselves nearly enough, and so they allow their habits to defeat them. Having a lofty dream to pursue is vital to self-enhancement.

But having said that, I must be clear: it is simply not true that you can become anything you want to be. For instance, I now weigh 228 pounds (a trim 228 pounds, I might point out). At one time in my life, I may have wanted to become an astronaut. But I weigh more than is acceptable to be an astronaut (not to mention that I'm scared of heights). So that option is off the table for me. I can't become an astronaut. Nor can I become a jockey. Given my size, I'd slow the horse down (or break his back).

The same principle applies to you, not just physically, but in terms of your hardwiring. Certain things fit you because of how you're wired, and other things don't. One person is great with math and numbers, but not so good with his hands. Another person can plan and organize a dinner party like nobody's business, but don't ask her to bake the cake. Every one of us has a particular way in which we're made, and that design fits us perfectly for some task or role in this world (by the way, it's important that we find what that task or role is, and go do it).

But that means we can't "become" just anything we want to be. In fact, the truth is that we can't become anything other than what we were made to be. That hardwiring is permanent. It doesn't fundamentally change over the course of our life. Charlie, whom I mentioned a moment ago, is always going to love being with people. That's never going to change. He's never going to "become" a recluse. Even if he tried, even if for some reason he built a cabin in the woods to live by himself as a hermit, he might survive all by himself. But he'll never love being by himself, because he wasn't made that way. He was made to love being with people. The same is true for you. Who you fundamentally are will never change. Your values may change, your beliefs may change, your opinions may change, your relationships may change, your circumstances will almost certainly change. But your personhood -- who you are -- will never fundamentally change.

And that's a good thing! Because we need you to be who you are, so that you can make the contribution to this world that we need you to make. The contribution that you are uniquely designed to make.

And I hope hearing that removes a fear that may be lurking inside you as you read this book. Maybe you've read other books on lifestyle management, and you've discovered that all of them hope to produce change in your lifestyle. And that scares you to death! Because you're afraid that changing your lifestyle means you'll have to change who you are. You'll have to become someone else. You'll have to become like the person who wrote the book!

Not that that's all bad. You'd certainly like to have the physique of that fitness trainer with the snappy exercise book. You'd love to have the millions that the financial guru has who wrote How to Get Rich As a Mattress Tester. You'd be thrilled to have the marriage that the cute couple on the jacket of the relationship book has -- and don't they look like a couple of models from Madison Avenue?

Sure, it's fun to imagine yourself as someone who is thin, rich, happy, or whatever. That's great! But deep down you don't want to "become" someone else. Do you? You want to solve your problems, you want to experience happiness, you want to feel better about your life. But do you really want to "become" an entirely different human being than you are? I've never met anyone who did.

Which is why I will never ask you to change who you are. Instead, I'll ask you to come to terms with who you are -- with your inborn attitude -- and then use your awareness of your attitude to make better choices that are customized to you and are in your best interest.

* * *

Thanks to flawed ideas like the ones I've just mentioned, a majority of Americans are now mired in a raging crisis of obesity, debt, and broken relationships. Most of us long for our lives to be different. But that will never happen unless each individual's process for making things different takes into account who you are and how you are wired.

And also takes into account one other thing: nothing good happens fast. Note that I'm not saying that good things have to take forever. I'm just saying that there are no quick fixes. Sorry if that disappoints you. But then, haven't you already been disappointed by all those quick fixes you've tried already?

The fact is, we live in a quick-fix society, and it's those quick fixes that have gotten us into so much trouble. Take food, for example. We've got "fast food," which can be bought with a fast and easy method called a credit card.

But say you're a little too quick with those credit cards and rack up too much debt. There are quick-fix solutions for that, too: debt consolidation, or, if that's not fast enough, bankruptcy. Many Americans file for bankruptcy two, three, even four times!

And how about marriage? If things aren't working out, it's become easier than ever with "no fault" divorce to "streamline" a divorce. In fact, all you need to get unhitched in most states is just cause, especially if you have a prenuptial agreement in place. All the paperwork's been done. Call it a "quick unfix." It's a boon to divorce lawyers and a tragedy for the family.

Quick fixes get us into trouble. But quick fixes can't get us out of trouble. Why? Because quick-fix, easy-answer, temporary solutions are no match for what turn out to be permanent, lifelong issues. That's what weight is -- a lifelong issue. That's what money is -- a lifelong issue. That's what relationships are -- a lifelong issue. Those issues are never going to go away. And the way each of us instinctively deals with those issues is never going to go away because our inborn attitude is never going to go away, nor will it fundamentally change. Our underlying attitude, whatever it is, will drive our approach to lifestyle issues for as long as we're alive.

So quick fixes won't work. Instead, the question we need to ask of any program for getting our lives under control is: Is it a program we can do for a lifetime? If it is, that's the one we want. If not, forget it.

So which program will last a lifetime? The answer is: only the one we can customize to fit our individual needs and attitudes.

This book lays out such a plan. It's a customized plan for taking control of your life -- a plan that will last a lifetime, because it fits you. It's designed for you. We call this five-step plan the ALTER model.

The word "ALTER" is chosen on purpose. I've already said that I will never ask you to change who you are. The same is true for your lifestyle. I will never ask you to change your lifestyle. Most people think of "change" as a radical, 180-degree turnaround. "Change" implies that you are going in the wrong direction, or that you have already failed. For that reason, I avoid the word "change." It's asking too much. It's unrealistic. No matter how sincere I may be -- or you may be -- you're not going to do a 180-degree turnaround in your lifestyle. Not overnight, anyway.

But suppose I show you how to "ALTER" your lifestyle? In other words, how to make a less traumatic adjustment -- more like a 5- or 10-degree course correction. Can you do that? Sure you can! Not that I'm stopping anyone from trying a sharper turn. You can attempt whatever degree of course correction you are willing to try. But in my experience, simple alterations prove much more manageable, and much more realistic. And for that reason, they yield much better results over time. Repeat: over time.

So here's a summary of the ALTER model. ALTER is an acrostic, as follows:

A = Awareness. The first step to managing your lifestyle is to understand the natural, inborn, hardwired attitude that drives your behavior. I'll help you do that in the next two chapters.

L = Learn. Getting serious about your lifestyle requires that you learn as much information as possible about the issue you want to work on. Chapters 4 and 5 will help you figure out what information you need, where to find it, and what to do with it.

T = Tactical plan. In this book I'm addressing the three lifestyle issues that are causing the biggest problems in our society -- wellness, personal finances, and relationships, both at home and at work. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 cover these issues in detail. For each issue, I'll show you a ten-item checklist to help you create definable, realistic, and personally meaningful goals or outcomes, and then take steps toward those results.

E = Execute the plan. Good intentions have to translate into actual action. So in chapter 9 I'll offer you encouragement, tips, and techniques for working your personalized plan and learning to "walk your talk."

R = Re-evaluate. As you take action toward getting your lifestyle under control, you need to periodically evaluate your progress, looking at what has gone right, what has gone wrong, what you can do differently, and what your next plan of action should be. I'll show you how to do that in Chapters 10, 11, and 12.

"Well, that's all well and good," I can hear someone saying, "but you don't know me. Remember me? I'm that person you described earlier. I'm the person who will just never change. Because I can't change. You can't fix me! I'm hopeless."

Okay then, let's go back to Ginny, the lady I mentioned earlier. The one who said, "I've tried everything, and none of it worked." The one who wanted to prove me wrong. What did I tell Ginny? The same thing I'll say to you if you're thinking what she was thinking: "You're right. You can leave."

You could have heard a pin drop as all the other women in the room that day turned around to stare at Ginny -- and at me. You could tell they were thinking, "Did he really just say what I think he said? Did he really tell her he can't help her, and she should just leave?"

They expected me to say the same thing everyone else had said to Ginny countless times before when she had said, in effect, "I'll never change." Maybe it's the same thing you're expecting me to say. Something sweet and kind and nice (and patronizing), like, "Oh, Ginny, trust me. You're gonna be fine. It's gonna be okay. You just hang in there and let me get through my information, and you'll be all right. This time will be different."

I didn't say that. I didn't say it to Ginny, and I won't say it to you if you're like Ginny. Because the truth is, Ginny wasn't ready to confront her issues. Remember, I said that food is an addiction (so is money). Ginny was addicted to food -- just like I was. And it's a fundamental principle of working with addicts that you can't help an addict recover from her habit until she is ready to recover. Ginny wasn't ready. She didn't want to "get" what I had to say. She didn't want to be there with those other women, and work on her life in a relaxed, accepting environment the way they did.

And so I couldn't help her. I surely wanted to see Ginny find a way to make changes, but I couldn't want that change for Ginny. She had to want it for herself. I couldn't give her reasons for seeking change. She had to determine reasons of her own. And apparently she wasn't ready to do that. So I told her the truth.

When I told Ginny that, she immediately unfolded her arms, sat up on the front of her chair, glared at me, and said, "Do you mean you can't help me?"

"No ma'am, I can't help you." Pause. "I can't fix you. It's not my job to fix you. It's not my job to make your life work the way you want it to." Pause. I wanted that to sink in. And it did. I could tell she had been stopped in her tracks. She looked as if she didn't know whether to cuss me out, get up and walk out, or break down in tears. But she wasn't leaving, so I could tell she was holding out hope that maybe, just maybe, she'd encountered someone who might have some answers.

Finally I continued. "But if you're willing to acknowledge that you've got a problem, and that it's out of control, and that you want to regain control, and that you want to learn what you need to learn in order to regain control; and if you're willing to develop a plan of action that's just right for you, so that you can go to work on that problem; and if you're willing to work on that plan over time and take small but certain steps forward, and not let mistakes and failures and disappointments defeat you and get you off the track -- then yeah, I can give you that direction. That's why I'm here today."

Perhaps you've picked up this book with thoughts similar to Ginny's. You've tried it all. None of it has worked. You've given up hope. You'll never change. And as if to prove that, you've picked up this book with the attitude, "Oh, here's another one. Let's see what this guy has. Let me go ahead and try his deal and see if I fail."

If that's what you're thinking, you're right. My colleagues and I can't help you. You can set the book aside. For the same reasons I gave Ginny.

But before you bail out, let me tell you the rest of Ginny's story. Ginny decided to stay put and finish the seminar. She paid a lot more attention after our tense exchange. I even saw her take a few notes and talk to some of the other participants at the breaks, asking questions and soliciting input.

Finally, at the end of the day she came up to me and stuck out her hand. "Wayne, I want to thank you for talking to me the way you did," she told me. I thought she was going to cry. I almost wanted to cry myself when she continued, "You know, you're the only person in my life who's ever been that honest. My mother always told me that same excuse you were talking about. She used to say, 'Ginny, it doesn't matter what you eat or don't eat, because slow metabolism just runs in our family.'"

Like so many people, Ginny had lived her whole life attributing her problems with weight to her DNA and the way her family had raised her. The result was one giant chip on her shoulder. But the reality was that she wasn't angry with me -- she was angry with herself. Until that day, she hadn't wanted to deal with the truth. The truth was that her problems were not the result of any program, product, or process that had let her down. Her problems were the result of her own poor decisions. In other words, the problems were not something else; she was the problem. She was the source of her own troubles.

Do you know where those poor decisions were coming from? Ginny didn't. Most people don't. It was a breakthrough discovery for Ginny that day when she learned that her decisions about food, money, and relationships were being driven by her attitude -- the inborn and instilled ways in which she was "wired" to do life. Ginny's hardwiring, her attitude, was dramatically affecting her behaviors. Like most people, Ginny was unaware of what her underlying attitude was all about.

So I had her do what this book is about to have you do. I had her take the Real Life Management 3-Minute Survey, which reveals the core attitudes that drive a person's choices. The 3-Minute Survey was like holding up a mirror to Ginny and saying, "Ginny, here's how you do life." She discovered that her unique approach to life actually predisposed her to some self-defeating patterns that accounted for her problems. By paying attention to those patterns, she was in a position to start making better decisions for herself and develop better habits.

The same holds true for you. You have a unique way of approaching life. A unique attitude. Unless you take that attitude into account, you'll probably never succeed long-term in gaining control of your lifestyle. Unless you pay attention to your attitude, you're liable to stay stuck in the conviction, "I'll never change!"

Would you like to break out of that mind-set, once and for all, the way Ginny did? And I did? And thousands of others I've worked with have? In the next chapter, I'll show you how.

Copyright © 2007 by Real Life Management, Inc.