Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Killer At Large — Offi­cial Trailer

I love learn­ing.  And it’s a good thing because I still have so much to learn.

Sure I wrote a book on well­ness, but that doesn’t mean I know it all.

In the five months since I’ve left the health­care sys­tem to join the well­ness move­ment, I’ve learned a ton — on many top­ics: nutri­tion, mas­sage, fit­ness, chi­ro­prac­tic, and sup­ple­ments, just to name a few.  And I’ve learned just how much I don’t know.  That doesn’t bother me.  After all, who can know every­thing?  The goal is to keep learn­ing.

But let’s talk about how we learn.  Per­son­ally, I like books.  I enjoy read­ing and can really get into it. I will often read a book in detail to study the author’s mes­sage and then later skim it or speed read it as a way of deeply embed­ding the knowl­edge.

Occa­sion­ally the mes­sage is extra­or­di­nary, even life-changing. In those cases I make sure to keep the book and reread it at least once or twice a year.

This week I was reminded that books aren’t the only way, or nec­es­sar­ily the best way, to learn.  Based on the rec­om­men­da­tion of a friend in Vir­ginia, I watched the movie “Food­mat­ters,” which cov­ers the fac­tors behind our Amer­i­can nutri­tional cri­sis.

Wow!  A very pow­er­ful film indeed.  I went on to watch three addi­tional related films, “King Corn,” “Food Inc.,” and “Killer at Large.”

These movies really woke me up — like a slap to the fore­head!

They had such an emo­tional impact that I became ready to eat dif­fer­ently imme­di­ately.  I’ve already imple­mented some sig­nif­i­cant changes.  I loaned a cou­ple of them to a friend who has been into well­ness for many years.  He also found them to be “pow­er­ful and mov­ing.”

So what’s with that?  Why the dif­fer­ent impact?  Why was I more ready to act on the video mes­sage than I was after learn­ing much the same infor­ma­tion from books?

It was the emo­tions!  When it comes to chang­ing habits, feel­ings mat­ter more than facts.  Facts just aren’t that com­pelling some­times.  In my case it seems that some of the mate­r­ial in the books had become just “head knowl­edge.”

I knew the facts but this hadn’t resulted in much of a change in my behav­ior.  The movies con­nected with me in a dif­fer­ent way — more emo­tion­ally.  You could say they gave me “heart knowl­edge” or per­haps “gut knowl­edge” (pun intended!) and inspired me to make some pos­i­tive changes now.

I think I’m like a lot of peo­ple.  Maybe you’re like me.  Maybe you’ve got some head knowl­edge that isn’t in your heart or gut yet.  You know what you would be good for you, but you just don’t feel like doing it.  How do you get the feel­ing?  Try learn­ing “the facts” in a dif­fer­ent way.  If it’s about nutri­tion and eat­ing dif­fer­ently, I highly rec­om­mend the four movies men­tioned above.

We’ll cover some more ideas for learn­ing with impact next time.