What makes the biggest difference in your personal success?
Outside of luck and opportunity, what determines if you achieve your goals in life?
The answer is willpower.
The more of it you have, the greater your ability to develop yourself and the quality
of your life.
There are at least three aspects to this that are important.
The first, the ability to sustain our willpower, is what we call motivation.
The second, the ability to exercise willpower in the face of temptation, is what we call
self-control.
And the third, the ability to generate willpower under trying circumstances, is what we call
grit, or mental toughness.
None of this is easy.
Whether we admit it or not, willpower is a struggle sometimes, if not all the time.
It's why we struggle with our eating habits, or waste time when we should be working.
It's why we see people derail themselves due to a lack of self-control.
Fortunately, research has found principles we can use to dramatically increase our willpower--in
all areas.
I'm going to share not just a few, but 15 tested techniques you can use to take your
willpower to the next level.
There are two approaches to understanding willpower.
One is to understand it as a biological mechanism, the domain of psychologists, neurobiologists,
and social scientists.
The second is to find mental strategies that lead to willpower, the domain of productivity
and self-help experts.
Another way of looking at it is to ask whether willpower originates from the body or the
mind.
The short answer is both, and we're going to look at both.
Let's start with the biology of willpower.
One of the earliest experiments in this area was to test something called the "Mardi Gras"
effect.
Mardi Gras is a Christian tradition of liberally feasting the day prior to Lent, a six week
period of disciplined fasting and religious observance.
This made scientists wonder: does indulging in delicious food in fact have any effect
on willpower?
To test this, researchers devised a series of tasks requiring willpower, and in between,
gave research subjects milkshakes to see if it improved their performance.
The test was that one group received a creamy, delicious milkshake, while another received
a tastless, low fat milkshake.
As it turned out, consuming the milkshakes did improve performance --but both groups
improved equally regardless of how tasty the milkshake was.
After further experiments, researchers zeroed in on sugar--that seemed to be the common
denominator with everything they tried.
The observation was that people's willpower started off strong, but fell the more time
they spent on tasks requiring self control and concentration, until they gave up.
However, their willpower was replenished for while if they consumed a sugary snack.
This led to two ideas: first, that willpower was a limited resource that was drained the
more it was used, an effect called "ego depletion".
The second was the "glucose" hypothesis, which correlated this depletion to the level of
sugar in our bloodstream.
Since sugar containing snacks reversed the effects of ego depletion, it was hypothesized
that a state of low blood sugar is the cause of willpower failures.
This was treated as a dominant theory in psychology for the next 20 years.
Until recently.
In 2016 a large international study was conducted to re-test ego depletion and the glucose hypothesis.
To everyone's surprise, however, they couldn't recreate the results.
This has thrown things in doubt while scientists try to determine what went wrong.
This is not unusual, because psychology is one of the most difficult sciences in which
to prove things.
Unlike hard sciences, experiments are not straightforward; they require finding volunteers,
tricking them so they don't know what the experiment is about, and then hoping their
behavior isn't affected by something that wasn't anticipated.
In other words, willpower is still mysterious.
However there is a lot to suggest that we have enormous reserves that can be called
upon by just changing the way we think.
We may not understand how they work, but they do.
Before I go into those, however, I don't want to dismiss the biology of willpower.
Even if we don't understand it, it's worth paying attention to what it reveals.
First, whether glucose plays a role or not, it's likely better to avoid tough decisions
or willpower challenges when hungry, like right before lunch.
If not causative, there is at least a strong correlation to suggest that our willpower
is stronger on a full stomach, preferably with healthy calories.
Second, it's worth testing your willpower early vs late in the day to see if there's
a difference.
Many successful people find that they are most productive in the early hours of the
morning, such as at 5 am.
If you have a full-time job, like I do, you might find it a productive time to work on
your side projects, such as reading, preparing meals in advance, cleaning and organizing,
or even creating YouTube videos.
Another thing you can try, that's been shown to help willpower, is to exercise.
Studies have found that even 15 minutes of exercise improves our mood and our ability
to focus.
In fact, those who exercise consistently tend to not only be stronger both physically and
mentally.
Research subjects who exercised were found to procrastinate less, have fewer bad habits,
and exert better self control in almost every area.
Next, make sure that you're getting enough sleep.
This should not be a surprise, research has been touting the benefits of sleep for many
reasons, and willpower is among them.
Sleep deprivation is closely linked to a loss of self control, so get at least 7 to 8 hours
of sleep a night.
A more interesting finding is that meditation helps to increase willpower.
Meditating for just 5 minutes has been shown to increase self-awareness and self control.
Try it by keeping your eyes closed, clearing your mind, and focusing on just your breathing.
If you are used to distractions, sitting still may cause you anxiety at first.
Start small, let distracting thoughts pass, and keep returning your focus back to your
breath.
With a little practice, you may find that your ability to get yourself to do what you
want is markedly improved.
Finally, reducing stress is important.
Stress produces cortisol, a brain chemical that activates our body to power through an
unpleasant or dangerous task.
Chronically elevated cortisol, however, has the opposite effect, prompting our mind and
body to shut down so it can recover.
Although it can't always be avoided, we should minimize stress as much as possible.
One thing that can help is a sense of order.
That means doing things on a schedule and doing them ahead of time instead of rushing
at the last minute.
It means being prepared instead of being a victim of surprises, or keeping things maintained
instead of letting them blow up due to negligence.
Many times our stress is the result of our own bad habits, and this is something we can
work on.
At this point, we've already crossed over from the biology to the psychology of willpower,
so let's keep going.
You've probably heard about the importance of setting goals, but how you do it makes
a difference.
First, goals work best when they are written down and we are specific about what we want
and why.
To help us follow through, we should define the behavior changes needed to reach them.
Define what you WILL do to reach your goal, or behaviors you need to adopt, as well as
what you WON'T do, or behaviors you need to stop or avoid.
For example, if your trying to improve your diet, your WILL goals may be to learn how
to cook and to prepare your meals in advance.
Your WON'T goals may be to avoid buying certain foods or eating out at restaurants.
Another powerful technique is to pre-commit around your desired behaviors.
Pre-commitment is an act of deliberately limiting your options.
To do lists are great, but you can pre-commit by blocking time on your calendar to do specific
things.
A more serious pre-commitment would be to unplug your internet to keep yourself from
web surfing.
Even more serious would be to commit to something in the future before you feel ready, like
planning to run a race even though you're not in shape.
That can give you serious energy to get in shape quickly.
Affirmations can also help, if you know the trick to it.
The key is that have a deep unconscious desire to be congruent with our sense of identity.
Affirmations are about shifting our identity to support our goals instead of working against
them.
For example, if you think of yourself as a procrastinator, you will always struggle with
procrastination.
Instead, you need to say to yourself "I get things done without delay".
That may seem weird at first, but repeating this affirmation can actually help you perform
the behavior.
This is the concept behind the old saying that "first you have to believe before you
can achieve."
Identify the negative self-talk that's holding you back and replace it with positive affirmations
like "I can solve any problem in my way", or "I'm persistent and highly focused".
Next, make sure that you are excited by the goals you are chasing, or it will be difficult
to sustain the willpower to achieve them.
They must deeply matter to you, and not simply be something that you are doing to get validation
or approval from others.
Anything less means your willpower will crack once the going gets tough.
Finding personal meaning is the key to mental toughness.
Take the example of Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the Holocaust who endured imprisonment
and severe abuse in Nazi concentration camps.
While he watched his fellow prisoners lose the will to live and die, he survived, as
he explained it, "by finding meaning amidst the suffering".
To endure his physical and mental tortures, he pictured his wife and imagined being re-united
with her.
And he kept notes on his experiences with the idea that he would survive and publish
them when he was released.
Which in fact he did.
The book is called "Man's Search for Meaning" and is an international bestseller, and one
I highly recommend.
This takes me to my next tip, which is to read to keep yourself motivated.
If you want to get fit for example, read books and magazines about getting fit.
If you want to improve in your career, read books that will improve skills that are valuable
to your career.
Read motivational books whenever you can.
Success coach Bob Proctor says he's been reading the self-help classic "Think and Grow Rich"
daily for over 50 years.
Consistent reading can help us stay consistently motivated.
Once you get going, break things down and focus on frequent small wins.
This is another secret of mental toughness.
In 1985 mountaineer Joe Simpson and his climbing partner were making a difficult descent from
a mountain in the Andes--in the middle of a snowstorm.
Disaster struck, and Simpson broke his leg partway down.
To keep him from dying on the mountain, his partner tried to lower him down with a rope.
Unfortunately, it was too difficult; the rope gave way and Simpson fell into a mountain
crevasse, presumably to his death.
Unbeknownst to his partner, he actually survived.
In terrible pain, Simpson slowly crawled down the crevasse, not knowing if there was any
hope for him or not.
He focused on small goals, like making it the next rock or glacier, and made a game
out of it, seeing if he could make it there in a certain time.
He kept playing this game of small wins and persisted.
He did this for four days straight and eventually crawled six miles, made it back to his basecamp,
and lived to tell the story.
The lesson is simple; taking things one step at a time is better than overwhelming ourselves
with the size or outcome of our effort.
At the same time, self-monitoring is critical.
Often it's difficult to objectively see how well or poorly we're doing, because we have
so many unconscious habits.
It's like thinking we're in a clean room until we shine a blacklight on it, and then seeing
all the dirt that was invisible to us.
We can be easily fooled by our perception, which is why it's better to formally track
or measure the behaviors we're trying to change.
This could be taking pictures of everything we eat, recording how much time we spend watching
TV, or keeping detailed records of how we spend our money.
Awareness is the first step to making progress.
There is also an important trap to watch out for called "moral licensing".
It's the idea that exerting willpower in one area earns us the right to indulge ourselves
in another.
The problem is when we think we've been "good", by say exercising for 30 minutes, so we now
deserve to eat a donut as a reward.
That might sound funny, but some form of this is why people struggle to make progress towards
their goals.
It's also why we see celebrities and politicans sometimes show an amazing lack of restraint
in some areas of their lives.
Because of moral licensing, they feel they deserve to cut loose because they exercised
willpower in another area.
It's a flawed principle, and a practice best avoided.
Ultimately, however, remember that nobody's perfect, including you.
When your willpower does slip, learn to forgive yourself quickly and get back on track.
Avoid feeling guilty or binging today with the promise that you'll be perfect tomorrow.
That will sap your willpower and put you in a vicious cycle.
Instead, don't try to be 100% perfect, as that not's humanly possible.
Instead aim for 80%, and if that's not working, start at 50%.
Willpower takes practice and consistency, but also some flexibility.
Keep working on getting stronger, but understand that you will need a break every once in while.
Just plan those breaks ahead of time instead of leaving it to chance.
I hope this gave you a few useful things to think about.
If you did find it valuable please remember to subscribe to this channel.
Thanks, and I'll see you next time.
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