Musings of a Motivational Vampire

...let me elaborate.

I'm reading a very good book by Vickie Milazzo called Wicked Success is Inside Every Woman. Full of reminders of who and what we each are as women, how far we've come, how strong we are, etc. etc.... some of it is trite feel-good stuff we like to hear, some of it is trite kick-butt stuff we need to hear... and there are some truly fresh and unique nuggets, which is why I read every book, desperately seeking fresh and unique approaches.

Vickie also uses it for self-promotion-- why not? She's in the entrepreneurial and promoting business, that's part of how she makes her living, besides her multi-million dollar company in an industry she frequently reminds you she created. But all is good, I expect these things out of successful broads and babbos, it is part of the psychological uniform.

Here is an excerpt I just read:
"If you want to lose weight, you’re more likely to succeed if you hang
with people who have successfully managed to maintain or lose weight,
instead of people who haven’t. Just like if you want to learn to play golf,
you don’t hang with a bad golfer. You take lessons from a professional, or
at least someone with high-level skills.
My overweight 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-
discipline, she’s found a support group of other “dieters” with similar
issues, who sit around together, acting empathic[sic] about failing week after
week. As much as American society loves winners, individually we seem to
be more comfortable identifying with a culture of losers."

I'm going to embrace Vickie's encouragement from the section just previous to the above one, where she stated, "To advance your career or business, listen to nonexperts as well as
the acclaimed authorities. If not for renegade visionaries who followed their own minds despite the advice of experts, a lot of wonderful things we take for granted today wouldn’t exist, because the experts said no one needed them or nobody would buy them.
What expert have you challenged lately? What nonexpert have you listened to? Embrace this renegade strategy, and no one can stop you on the fast lane to wicked success."

I'm going to challenge you, Vickie, on the former, sort of. You seemed to almost contradict your previous urging to LISTEN to nonexperts as well as the 'acclaimed authorities'. And my guess is that you have never dealt with a severe eating disorder, or obesity, or tackling an addiction you can't just put in a cabinet and walk away from, you have to engage it 3-6 times a day, the rest of your life. I'm just gonna guess at that.

I said "sort of" because, everybody who is here sharing their daily struggles and triumphs and failures, and then doing it all over again next week, or month, or year... are pretty much experts, not only at how to avoid gaining, but at how to lose, the weight--- we're just not all experts at perpetual continuation of those skills. But one thing most of us ARE experts at perpetually continuing is TRYING. We keep trying. And we keep trying with each other, we tired, we loyal, we trusty Culture of Losers.

And what of those who DO become totally successful (which is another story, we can't be sure we were ever totally successful unless we die at goal-weight, and then, it's a little late to share)-- if they didn't come back and hang out with a "culture of losers" and empathize, how could the losers have a hope of duplicating their successes? And what about all the little successes along the way to the valhalla of eternal goalweight maintenance...if the culture of losers don't keep coming back to form that Culture, how do the stepping-stones of success ever get constructed?

I'm going to keep reading your book, Vickie, in search of those handful of fresh, unique nuggets of truth and wisdom I need to fuel my passion to move forward for today, and then when I'm done, it's on to the NEXT guru to feed my insatiable thirst for motivation...and the NEXT. But the one motivation I will return to time and time again is my own, my peeps, MY Culture--- my family of losers, because that's where I belong, and where I always come home, and where, with their experience, strength and hope, they can provide me with daily answers, the way no ivory-tower authors ever could.

We showed up today...THAT's a WIN, in my book. ;)