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Willpower
is an
elusive
thing.
Somedays
you feel like
you have it,
and other
days you
simply cant
resist the
urges to eat
that second
piece of
chocolatecake. Dont
worry, you
are in good
company.
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Magician and endurance stunt madman DavidBlaine is able to will himself through feats thatwould literally kill most people, like living in aglass box and not eating for 44 days straight.But between stunts, he seemingly cant get hislife together and gains more than 40 pounds
with remarkable mix of bad food and alcohol.
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Many scientists believe that
there are only two things
worth studying so that
mankind could improve our
collective well-being:
intelligenceand
willpower.
But until recently, it was
believed that there was
nothing you could do to
improve either one.
However, in this remarkablebook, this myth is exploded.
If you are able to apply the
principles you learn here,
you might literally be able to
transform the trajectory of
your life.
But only if you have enough
willpower to pay closeattention for the next 12
minutes. So buckle up, and
get ready for a tour-de-force
on what science knows
about willpower, and what
you can do to use it.
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DEEPEST, DARKEST
AFRICA
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Our search for willpower brings us to the
African jungle where Henry Morton Stanley
uttered this now famous greeting after finding
the Scottish missionary after a long and
arduous journey. This was one Stanleys first
taste of the deepest, darkest Africa and the tollit can exact on the human body, and psyche.
Malaria, bouts of fever, and nasty run-ins with
the locals are par for the course.
Dr. Livingstone, I presume?
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REAL MAN ADVENTURE
SHAVING STORY #72
GILLETTE
A little later in his journeys, he
routinely did something that most
people would shrug offas the quirk of
a remarkable man (some would argue
a dispicable empiralist): he took a
shave. Imagine yourself in the middle
of the African jungle, leading a small
group of men with no food, water or
supplies. Day by day, more of your
men die of disease or starvation. You
wake up each morning knowing that
your turn might be next. While others
around you are literally losing the will
to live, you reach for your razor and
pretend you are being cast for the
latest Gillette commercial.
This seemingly insignificant act was a
window into the psyche of a man who
had mastered willpower, and would do
whatever it took to survive under
some of the harshest conditions ever
experienced by somebody who lived
to talk about it.
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WHAT IS WILLPOWER?
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Through hundreds of studies and thousands
of research subjects, scientists havediscovered 2 remarkable things:
1. You have a finite amount of willpower that
becomes depleted as you use it.
2. You use the same stock of willpower for all
the tasks you are doing.
In fact, your willpower can be likened to amuscle. Although you have a finite amount of
strength today, you can increase your
strength over time if you do the right
exercises. Similarly, scientists have shown
that you can also increase your stock of
willpower over time. This is exactly what
Stanley was doing every morning a small
exercise in willpower that gave him the
strength to survive the more difficult
challenges of his will.
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1. Control of your thoughts. Any time you try and regulate your
thoughts, you are using up some of your precious willpower.
2. Control of your emotions.Most often well use our willpower
when we are trying to remain positive in negative situations.
However, there are also situations where we are trying to avoid
appearing happy in a negative situation like a funeral.
3. Impulse control.This is the category that most people associate
with willpower. Its resisting the temptations of alcohol,
cigarettes, or whatever your vice of choice happens to be.
4. Performance control.This is focussing your energy on the task
at hand, managing time and persevering when you feel the urge
to quit.
You use your
willpower for
4 broad
things:
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Feed your mind
When you use your willpower, scientists would say that you are depleting your ego. In fact, any kind of stress will depleteyour ego. When you are in an ego depleted state, your ability to control your emotions, make decisions and curb yourimpulses decreases dramatically. Why this happens used to be a mystery, until 2 remarkable studies gave us the answer.
In one study, researchers gave a set of tasks to three groups of people one got a milkshake before the task, the other anon-appetizing glop of dairy, and the last group nothing at all. They hypothesis was that the group who got the milkshake
would perform best because they believed that willpower was replenished through an act of self-satisfaction. However, theresults showed that the dairy glop helped the test subjects just as much as the delicious milkshake did. This was puzzling tothem, to say the least.
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65%
In the other study, they looked at the parole decisions of judges in
the Israeli prison system. On the whole, they approved parole forabout one in three prisoners. But on closer examination, something
incredible was happening. Those who appeared early in the morningwere granted parole 65% of the time, and those later in the day less
than 10% of the time. Looking even closer, they found the samepattern right before and after lunch before lunch you
were out of luck, right after lunch and your chanceswere higher than 60%. People in for the same crimes
and same behaviour record were being treated differentlybased on the time of day their cases were heard.
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What was happening here? For the judges, denying parole was the same as making no decision at all, because
they knew that these prisoners would be up for parole again soon, but that making the tough call about
whether or not to let them out had serious consequences. Their willpower had been depleted, and only a
break (along with some food) put them back into a state where they could make proper decisions.
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So, there are two things that you should take from these studies. The first is that your willpower is regulated in some way by the amount of
glucose in your system. Youve heard numerous times that you should have small, frequent meals throughout the day in order to remain
healthy and lose weight. Now, in my mind, theres an even stronger argument. In a knowledge economy where your brain is your tool,
your will to do the things you need to do in order to succeed now literally depends on your brain getting the glucose it needs.
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Second,yo
uneed
toget
yourr
est.
Sleepd
eprivation
impair
syoura
bilityto
proces
sgluco
seandge
tittoy
our
brain.S
o,geta
smuch
sleepas
you
needin
ordert
ofunct
ionpro
perly.You
mightt
hinkyo
uarec
heating
thelaws
ofnatu
rebysl
eeping
lessth
anyou
need,b
utthe
onlyp
ersony
ouare
cheatin
gisyo
urself.S
LEE
P
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Lastly,b
ecausewe
dont
havea
willpow
erometer
(yet),th
eonlyw
ayyoul
l
beable
toknow
whethe
r
ornoty
ouarein
astate
ofegod
epletion
isto
lookfor
clues.Lo
okfora
change
intheo
verall
intensityofy
ourfee
lings.
Ifyourr
eactiontoeve
nts
goodo
rbad
arenot
inlinew
ithyour
usual
reaction
syou
arelike
ly
inasta
teofeg
o
depletio
nandne
eda
break.
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WILLPOWER
STRATEGY #1:PICK YOUR BATTLES
David Blaine is world famous
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David Blaine is world-famousfor his acts of willpower. Hehas suspended himself in aglass case above Londonwhere he ate absolutelynothing for 44 days. He holdsthe record for holding hisbreath under water, a feat that
requires an enormous amountof self-control. He stood ontop of a pillar that was lessthan 22 inches wide, without aharness, 85 feet above BryantPark in NYC for more than 36hours. And you think you havea trouble concentrating?
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230
Yet, incredibly, he finds it nearly impossible to keep himself togetherin between these fits of self-control. His performance weight isaround 180 pounds, and he typically balloons up to 230 poundsshortly after. His apartment is a mess. And hes missed having his
name in the Guiness Book of World Records because he wasliterally too lazy to fill out the paper work.
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Because you
only have a limited supply of
willpower, you need to be aware of
how much you commit yourself to.
So, pick your battles and dont try to
transform your life in one day. Doing
so only sets yourself up for failure.If you need to do tedious tasks
throughout your day (which
deplete the ego), make
sure to limit them to
a specifc amount
of time.
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WILLPOWERSTRATEGY #2:
MAKE A TO-DO LIST
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As weve covered in a previous
Readitfor.me episode, the king oftodo lists is David Allen, the author
of Getting Things Done. Youve
heard it all before, but now you
have some scientific proof to back
it up todo lists actually help your
performance.
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When you try to ignore a task that you
have to complete, or simply forget to
write it down in a place youll be sure
to find it, your unconscious continues
to worry about it for you. Its called the
Zeigarnik effect, and theres simply no
way around it. You cant get rid of it by
procrastinating or willing yourself toforget it.
Of course, every moment you spend
worrying about the task depletes your
willpower. So it has the double effect
of distracting you from the task at
hand, and also making you less
eff
ective at that same task.Those of you who want to go full-bore
with this suggestion should watch the
GTD summary. But just remember
strategy #1 and dont bite offmore
than you can chew at one time.
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WILLPOWER STRATEGY #3:POSITIVE PROCRASTINATION
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Procrastination is usually a bad
thing, as weve just discussed.
However, when you are trying to
avoid things you know you
shouldnt be doing like eating
that chocolate cake or smokingthat cigarette procrastination is
a good thing. Simply telling
yourself that youll have it later
is much more effective than
trying to deny yourself
completely.
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WILLPOWER STRATEGY
#4: TRACK YOURSELF
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One of the biggest tricks in
improving your willpower isto be self-aware.
Even though self-awareness
is one of the traits that
makes us uniquely human,
most of us dont leverage
This self awareness to its
In
another
amazing study
it was found that
people were much
less likely to steal
halloween candy froman empty room when
there was a mirror
in the room. Why?
Because consciously or
unconsciously, those test
subjects became aware of
themselves and the act they
were about to commit.
fullest
potential.
Self-awareness helps in self-regulation against a set of
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Self awareness helps in self regulation against a set ofstandards that we set for ourselves. So, if you wanted totake this to the extreme, you would be acutely aware ofwhere you stood in relation to everything you felt wasimportant to you on a daily basis. You would have scores
for almost everything your weight, your bank account,your happiness level, and the list goes on.
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T E M P E R A N C E
S I L E N C E
O R D E R
R E S O L U T I O N
F R U G A L I T Y
I N D U S T R Y
S I N C E R I T Y
J U S T I C E
M O D E R A T I O N
C L E A N L I N E S S
T R A N Q U I L I T Y
C H A S T I T Y
H U M I L I T Y
Benjamin Franklin was famous for many things,
and one of them were his 13 virtues the
virtues by which he decided he would live his
life. A man ahead of his time, he knew that he
simply couldnt immediately take on a
transformation on such a grand scale. So, he
would practice one of these virtues every week,
but would also give himself a grade on each of
the virtues daily. His theory was that eventually
he would master each one and his daily score
would be perfect. Although he was never able to
attain perfection, he admitted that his daily
reflection on these things brought him much of
his success in life.
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You can do this by
monitoring your
finances with a
service like Mint,
monitor how many
steps you take
during the day with
device like Fitbit,
and even monitor
the quality of
your sleep.
The key here is that
youll be constantly
monitoring yourself
to a standard that
you choose, and
you will
automatically find
yourself altering
your behaviour
along the way.
So there you have it everything you need to
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know to get your willpower in shape and
working wonders for your life. But just one more
item before we go: understand the power of
precommittment. Make a decision right now
that you will do something, and make a
condition such that youll do anything to ensure
you dont fail. David Blaine did it by ensuring that
hed plunge to his death if we fell asleep on thepedastal above Bryant Park. Your consequence
doesnt have to be so dire, but make it strong
enough to ensure you get things done.
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