Lose Weight For Good!with Doc Russ
External Operating System

The Social Operating System Update

Assembling Your Crew

In the Environmental Operating System Update we walked your home, your car, your workplace, and your favourite restaurants — and deliberately left something out. The people in your environment have such a tremendous impact on your ability to Lose Weight For Good that they get their own operating system entirely. Welcome to it.

Start with the scienceGo straight to the auditAbout 110 minutes of reading, plus the worksheets

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

~ Jim Rohn

“Your world is perfectly engineered to give you the results you are getting. If you want different results, you need to go back and change the engineering.”

Before we cast off

Denise came to me having lost forty-one pounds. She had updated her Betterness OS, rebuilt her lighthouse, cleaned out her kitchen, moved the cookies to the basement, started walking every morning before the sun came up. She was, by every measure I had, sailing.

Then her sister's birthday happened.

Denise walked into that party carrying a fruit tray and left carrying about four hundred extra calories and something much heavier. Her sister had said, in front of eleven relatives, “Oh, look at Denise, too good for cake now.” Everybody laughed. Denise laughed. And then Denise ate two pieces of cake to prove she was still Denise.

Within four months she had regained twenty-six pounds.

When we sat down to figure out what happened, she said something I have now heard hundreds of times: “I did everything right. I don't know why I couldn't hold on.”

She did not have a willpower problem. She had an unpatched operating system.

Denise had updated five of her operating systems. She had left one running the original factory software. And that one system, the one made of people, was quietly overriding every other update she had installed.

Are you ready to patch it?

What this operating system actually is

The Social Operating System is the set of programs that governs how the humans around you shape what you eat, how you move, what you believe about yourself, and whether the changes you make survive contact with real life.

And I want to be very clear about something, because this is where most people get it wrong: this operating system is not about finding better people. It is about seeing the people you already have with clear eyes, deliberately adding a few, and consciously deciding how much influence each of them gets.

You are not going to divorce your spouse over pizza. You are not going to un-invite your mother from Thanksgiving. You are not going to fire your best friend of twenty-two years. You are going to become conscious. That is it. That is the whole update.

Why we are framing this as a crew

Almost nobody crosses an ocean alone, and the ones who do it alone spend years preparing and still radio home every day. A boat needs a crew — not because the captain is weak, but because a boat is a system, and systems need more than one set of hands. So this module divides into three segments, mapped onto the three kinds of people you need.

  1. The NavigatorMentors

    Someone who has sailed these waters and can tell you what is under the surface.

  2. The CrewFriends

    The people on the boat with you every single day, whose habits become your habits whether you like it or not.

  3. The Lighthouse KeeperMentorship

    What happens when you turn around and become the light for somebody else, and why this turns out to be the single most powerful thing you will ever do for your own results.

Everything in this module

  1. Part OneWhy Other People Are Not Background NoiseThe study that started the argument, the critics who took it apart, and the four mechanisms that survived.14 min
  2. Segment OneThe Navigator: Choosing Your MentorsFive roles, nine filters, and how to ask for thirty minutes instead of a marriage proposal.12 min
  3. Segment TwoThe Crew: Friends, Family, and the Gremlins Among ThemThree species of Gremlin, the audit of who is actually on your boat, and why addition beats subtraction.18 min
  4. Segment ThreeThe Lighthouse Keeper: Helping Others Locks Everything Else InThe helper therapy principle, the protégé effect, and the ladder of ways to give.13 min
  5. Part FiveThe Social Operating System AssessmentFour social spaces, the four questions, and your top three Rules and Rearrangements.25 min
  6. Part SixThe Thirty Day Crew BuildSee it, add, ask, give, then maintain. Small downloads.6 min
  7. Part SevenObjections, Honestly AnsweredIncluding the one about whether this science is weaker than it sounds.8 min
  8. Part EightSailing OnWhat happened to Denise, what you actually just learned, and the win to celebrate.7 min
  9. Parts Nine and TenResources and the Research Behind This ModuleTalks, books, and every study cited, in plain language so you can check the work.5 min