Getting to the Root of Your Problems

In the previous post I discussed how to break down your overall goals to get to specific problems and set simple measurable targets. This is not usually the end of the fight however. Most of the time you must go deeper to find the root cause of the issue. A root cause is like the thorn in your finger that got infected, caused you to have swelling, a fever, and a headache. You could take aspirin to alleviate all of your symptoms, but the thorn is still in there and as soon as you stop taking your daily dose everything will come crashing back on you immediately. If you dig the splinter out, it may hurt terribly for a short time, but soon the swelling goes down and everything heals up. You can hide the aspirin bottle back in the medicine cabinet and go on with life.

Let's return to the previous example. You now know that you dessert habits and your Sunday morning appetite are causing you to balloon. You might just say "OK I need to stop", and leave it at that. But then dinner is wrapping up on Saturday night and you convince yourself to have just one bite of your wife's cheese cake. On Sunday you get home from church and the whole family wants to head to your normal buffet breakfast. You go along, telling yourself that you will stick to the fruit bar. Soon you have decided that you need to get your money's worth and that you will start your Sunday dieting next weekend.

With some further investigation however you might find that you generally are full after your Saturday entree, but your wife (all 120 pounds of her) does not feel like a dinner is complete without dessert, and you have fallen into the habit of ordering something yourself, just to avoid sitting there twiddling your thumbs.

On Sunday you discover that you have a snack when you get up, but then starve yourself all through Sunday School and the service. Not only does this cause your metabolism to slow down, but you are so starved by the time you get to the buffet that you overrun the finish line of your meal all of the way into indigestion. Now you have two specific root causes to address.

If you order your wife's desert early, you might still have some food to get through as she downs her sweet treat, and if you pack a few snacks to sneak into the gap between Sunday School and the main service at church you might not overeat quite as much at the buffet.

By getting at these root causes you can help solve the specific problems without having to rely on sheer will power.