Beyond Reason: Questioning Assumptions of Everyday Life

By Ken Lizotte

Question prevailing wisdom, author Ken Lizotte says, whenever your own experiences and instincts suggest otherwise.

In Beyond Reason, he shows how such counter-wisdom can not only turn out for the best but will often be fully supported by scientific evidence. Citing studies, surveys and other investigations, he plows through sacred cows and popular notions, concluding again and again that going beyond reason may offer the surest path to wished-for results, common sense and peace of mind.

Your assumptions about life will never be the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 26, 2004
• ISBN: 9781469109190

Ken Lizotte

Ken Lizotte CMC is Chief Imaginative Officer (CIO) of emerson consulting group inc., which transforms business experts into “thought leaders.” Author of three other books and nationally-recognized business columnist, Ken is a popular keynoter at conferences, speaking on such topics as getting articles and books published, unlocking creativity, life balance, and career transition. President of the New England chapter of the Institute for Management Consultants, an advisor to Harvard University and co-founder of the National Writers Union, he lives in Concord, Massachusetts with his wife Barbara and daughter Chloe.

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Copyright © 2004 by Ken Lizotte.

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Contents

When Wisdom Doesn’t Add Up

On the Job

Purely Personal

Women!

Balancing Work & Family

Life Itself

Last But Not Least

About the Author

Other Books by Ken

About Ken’s Company

One’s first step in wisdom is to question everything . . .

One’s last is to come to terms with everything.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

TO MY GIRLS

Gratitude

It takes a community to create a book, and this volume is no exception. The author did not achieve this all on his own. So with gratitude and admiration, he wishes to acknowledge and thank the following kind and competent helpers:

My business and life partner Barbara A. Litwak for proposing the idea of this book in the first place, as well as the cover concept and title ideas, and for helping me brainstorm the book’s flow.

Editor extraordinaire Florence Stone who invited me originally to write about many of the topics presented here for the American Management Association, thus giving the book its core.

My associate and coach Ethel Cook for her expert editorial comments, proofreading and counsel.

The professional production staff at Xlibris for flawlessly executing the indispensable printing and distribution phases.

My sweet spirited daughter Chloe for cheering the whole effort on.

When Wisdom Doesn’t Add Up

For a long time, I had been driving myself batty trying to lose only a few (5-10) pounds. Now, I’m not heavy, mind you, and didn’t need to drop 20 or 30 or 100, just five or maybe ten. Yet for months upon months upon year upon two, three and four years, I simply couldn’t do it.

And it’s not that I lacked discipline, disliked exercising, or spent too much attention on bad foods. In fact, I’m just the opposite: I remain one of the original staunch advocates of so-called health food, and I had cut way back some time ago on my traditional, growing-boy, no-holds-barred caloric intake. Long gone were the days of automatic double-helpings at dinner, pizza delivered weekly (maybe twice-weekly!), Ben and Jerry making an expected appearance most any day or night, periodic take-out calls for General Gao’s chicken.

In terms of exercise, I have always worked out HARD at my local Gold’s Gym, 3-5 times each week, loving every second of it. I sometimes ran 4 to 5 miles outdoors as a mere warm-up, hitting the gym treadmill for another 40 minutes, then lifting weights. Taking a walk or stroll for 30 minutes or so was not true exercise for me. If I didn’t work out vigorously for three or four days, something in me would feel missing.

Despite following all these dictums of orthodox health and nutritional experts, however, any weight-loss gains I occasionally reaped (Wow! 2 pounds down! Nothing can stop me now!) would never stick. Two days later, the vanquished two pounds frequently came roaring back, sometimes with 2 NEW pounds in tow. I just couldn’t lose even a few.

So what was amiss here? What was I failing to understand? I’m a college graduate, for Pete’s sakes! I could read and memorize the FDA’s food pyramid guidelines with the best of them.

It took a while for me to realize that maybe it wasn’t me. Could it be that society’s prevailing health experts, to whom I had been dutifully listening for so long, were the ones who didn’t understand? Did anyone out there, in fact, truly know how our bodies worked? Something was wrong with this picture, something not in synch.

One day, in the midst of all my inner consternation, I recalled a scene from Woody Allen’s Sleeper in which Woody, as a sort of Rip Van Winkle, finds himself awakened 200 years later, in the 22nd Century. Naturally, the world had changed, so Woody Van Winkle had to be acclimated to this new world. The scientists of the future who were studying him asked him if he had any food requests. Yes, I’d like some wheat germ, he said, along with other well-known health foods. This astonished the observing scientists.

What? gasped one. You mean, no deep fat, no steak, no cream pies, no hot fudge?

Her colleague replied, Well, (in his day) those were thought to be unhealthy—precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

Such a whacked-out scene could only be funny because we here two centuries earlier knew the real truth. Yet as I remembered this scene, I couldn’t help wondering: Could it be that nutritional science has a much longer way to go than I had been assuming? Maybe we really did NOT know how all this diet stuff worked, perhaps such mistaken assumptions might be what had really been messing with my head, not some flaw in my implementing the official party lines of personal health.

One night I stumbled upon an answer by the name of Atkins. Over the years I’d heard only vaguely about low-carbohydrate diets, but I’d never paid much attention. Watching a Barbara Walters interview on TV, I learned that this protein-rich approach, originated decades ago by the late New York cardiologist Robert Atkins, attacked nearly every assumption I’d been faithfully adhering to.

I got a copy of Atkins’ book and started reading. Studying Atkins’ counter-position then led me to other radical departures: Dr. Dean Ornish’s low-fat approach, a couple named Heller who wrote of carbohydrate addiction, sugar-busting methodologies, hyperinsulinism, and on and on. So overtaken had I been by everyday assumptions emanating from government and other traditional experts (the food industry, the healthcare establishment, medical orthodoxy, standard nutritionists) that everything else had flown under my radar. The louder, dominant expert voices had drowned the alternative experts out.

Their messages: Less calories in, more calories out. Keep fat calories below 33%. Six helpings of fruits and vegetables, nine helpings of grains. Exercise, just 30 minutes three times a week. Trust these party lines and you’ll achieve your weight-loss goals. There just was no other proven, sure-fire way.

Doing Atkins, however, changed all that when eight pounds vanished magically within two weeks, sans pain, deprivation, hunger, struggle, caloric cutbacks. Atkins in fact sent me the other way: fat is OK, even good for you, he writes, and consuming even higher calories is OK too, if certain widely-assumed needed foods were cut out, such as high-carb fruits (bananas, pears) and starchy, processed grains. It was a strange new world, which, even stranger, functioned precisely the way the old one was supposed to but never did.

What did I learn? Not that Atkins is for everybody or that it’s a perfect system. Rather, alternative systems exist that challenge what’s popularly accepted, and they may work for you and me if we only learn about them. It’s a lesson that never hurts to be reminded of from time to time: Question prevailing wisdom whenever your own experiences suggest it doesn’t add up. Then seek alternatives.

Always, when you do, you will find them.

On the Job

The End of the Two-Week

Notice

It used to be that we poor, run-ragged employees could routinely expect ongoing intimidation from our bosses for a long litany of reasons, quaking in our boots those bleak mornings when we had to call in sick (even when legitimate!), quivering at the knees while pleading for a much-deserved, long-overdue raise, wishing for simple praise for a job well done but winding up instead with constructive feedback. Even taking time off for a joyous trip to the dentist or (God forbid!) picking our children up at school might provoke visions of the gods raining hellfire down upon us the very moment we dared to asked for permission.

So my, my, my, how times have changed! Now it’s employers and bosses who wrestle with such delicate issues of communication. Today it’s they who carefully phrase their wishes and requests to employees, lest the best and brightest (even the so-so!) get upset, belch brimstone, storm out the door. Certainly if it’s you who are today waging this very battle yourself, I realize you would love it if I could offer you some kind of answer to help you out. And I can, but am also certain my advice will be somewhat unexpected: try a little understanding and acceptance!

Look around at the entire business community for a moment with a wider-focus lens than usual to help you look. Here’s a truth: What goes around, comes around. Karma is currently in full swing. Sweet revenge is in the air. Justice prevails, the dogs are having their day, chickens (legions of them) have come home to roost. Choose your favorite cliché but please get this: Too many decades and centuries have now passed in which employers have enjoyed bountiful opportunities to mishandle their workers. Entire firms have treated their people like expendable chattel, roughing them up verbally, occasionally even physically, chewing and spitting them out, tossing them away. Layoffs, downsizing, terminations, rightsizing—you name it! But this game has now shifted dramatically.

It’s become increasingly common, for example, for employees to, just all of a sudden, call it quits. They might bolt away to start a new venture, or a family, or adopt a new career or new employer. This of course leaves YOU, their immediate manager, swinging in the breeze. You may have just spent six months—nay six years!—grooming a staffer, perhaps for some pivotal strategic play in a top-seeded project, or maybe for a smart, upper-level executive slot. Then poof! She or he is gone.

And if you ask them to stay a week or two longer, to help ease the transition of someone new, you may be faced then with demands for bonus incentives to stay for a few more days, or with a proposalplus-invoice for a lucrative consulting fee. And should they be leaving on any