Recently on a webinar, I had with my online clients one of them asked me how I made sure to stay on the right track with my goals and habits.
We went deep into the discussion and I decided to write an article about it, so here's my take on making decisions that ignore the instant gratification and look at the long term.
First off, it's hard I'll tell you that.
It takes a decent amount of hustling to develop the level of self-discipline where you can ignore the amygdala, the primal portion of your brain which desires quick fixes, magic bullets, get fit fast programs, cup cakes, pancakes as well as other immediate gratification shit in the remaining areas of your life. So how do you ignore the lizard brain effectively?
The portion of the brain you want to be activating to fight off these cravings for instant gratification is the prefrontal cortex.
This is the last section of the brain to mature, the latest development of human evolution and the center that among other things are involved in making long-term decisions, planning, visions for the future, social control and suppressing emotions that cloud your rational judgment.
Developing the prefrontal cortex and making it more involved in making decisions is the key, but how do you do it? Let's look a bit further into this.
How Willpower Works And What Can You Do About It?
The simple way to put it would be when you're faced with a decision instead of acting on instinct you take a moment and think of the long-term implications your decision will have.
This split moment of presence alone instantly engages the prefrontal cortex and often leads to making the right choice.
Some people have naturally mastered this process more than others, and we can identify them as having stronger willpower than others.
The ability to analyze the situation can be further enhanced by meditation and practices that bring attention to what's going on at the moment.
Good thing is even if you haven't full mastered this yet just by identifying how the decision making process work in your brain you're getting closer and closer to making the right decisions more often. It takes time, this stuff doesn't happen over night.
Start Playing With Your Own Mind
As weird as it sounds you basically need to analyze your own thought process to realize how your mind makes the decisions. There's no other way to take control, those who ignore this are left to randomness of emotions and are getting blown around like a leaf in the wind with no control of their desires.
Think of someone with ADHD, they just can't focus properly and it's very hard to make the right choices in the moment that will reflect into good results in the long run.
Eh… The Good Old Excuses
One interesting thing I've noticed for myself is how good my brain is getting at rationalizing the bad decisions.
Standing in front of a candy story or a fast food restaurant a mere thought about eating some junk food in my brain almost instantly generates convenient rationalizations like “Yea, you haven't done in a while, you can fit it into your daily calorie intake, it's only this time, you deserve it for all the hard work, it's not as bad as they say it is, tomorrow you'll eat clean, you did a hard workout today, so it's fine”… And hundreds of other realizations, as you can see
I'm very fascinated by this process, and it's kinda funny to think about it.
Most people have no idea that you can even influence this, they just think it's the way it has to be… which is simply not true.
I say this over and over, the single most important thing that separates successful people from unsuccessful people in any area of life is self-discipline, which comes down to the ability to delay instant gratification (having enough willpower to do that).
If you wanna learn more in-depth about how willpower works check out the video below by Kelly McGonigal, PhD, Stanford health psychologist where she talks about strategies from her new book “The WillPower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It“.
I also highly recommend you to read the full book, you can get it at The Willpower Instinct – Amazon (Yes, it's an affiliate link)
Why You Need to Develop Self-discipline? (Small Rant :D)
Think of it like this…
If you don't have the self-discipline to get your health and fitness handled now what do you think will happen in 10-20 years? You think it's gonna get easier? Fu** no!!!
When you get older, when you have 10 times as many responsibilities as you do now, kids yelling at you, most of your will have a shitty job you hate, your testosterone levels will be low, the motivation to do anything in life is almost nonexistent, and judging from the statistics most of you reading this article will be depressed lazy old fat men watching TV all day and scratching your beer belly.
Will you have the discipline to handle your health then? Maybe you will, but the odds are against you. The longer you delay the decisions to get your health handled the harder it gets. Over time you become a genius at making excuses, you could write a long book just by filling each page with your excuses.
A healthy sense of urgency is the key if you don't have this area of life developed right now the best time to start was five years ago, the next best time is right now!
Wouldn't you want your family and people you care about around you to have a good example? Or do you just care about yourself?
Most can't handle the pressure and challenges of standing out.
I hope you're an achiever, a person who likes to conquer challenges, it's not easy, but it's a great path to be on!
As Arnold Schwarzenegger said “For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.”
I'll leave you with that, think about it.
On top of that here are five ways you can build more willpower starting right now!
5 Practical Ways To Build More Willpower!
- Teach yourself to think more long term rather than indulging into quick pleasure. Adopt a skeptical mindset about anything that gives instant pleasure, if it's the easy way it usually doesn't lead to anything good.
- Pay attention to the decision-making process by becoming more present. As little as 8 minutes per day of meditation has been proven to boost willpower!
- Set more realistic goals and accept that there's always and element of randomness involved in getting results. In case of diets if you accept that you might gain some weight sometimes but in the big picture you're still losing weight this will prevent disappointment and binge eating.
- Get enough sleep. When we're sleep deprived we tend to be much more susceptible to giving in to cravings. Sleeping 8 hours every day alone will boost your willpower tremendously.
- Do a 66 days Willpower challenge! Recent study has shown that on average it takes 66 days to form a new habit, and don't worry missing a single day did not reduce the chance of forming a habit in the subjects during the study. Full link to study: How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world– http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.674/abstract;jsessionid=67A19538A22C4C1FFA432FF1598CCAD4.f04t03
Hope you enjoyed reading the article and value out of it! From my experience with coaching dozens and dozens of clients willpower and habits were the single thing to separate those who got results faster. The better you master your willpower the faster you can build habits and the quicker you get the desired result.
Till next time, Mario!
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