Blog

So many of our behaviors are the standard of an incorrect environment setting. An alarm, a pre-made sports bag and a drawer full of healthy snacks can do a lot. Assume your environment is spot on and your plan is flawless. You still have to show up and run.

People throw away all of their processed food and fill the house with fruits, vegetables, and fish, just to go to the Dairy Queen four days a week after dinner. People stow their work clothes in a locker in the gym and then start the ridiculous habit of going to the gym every morning to change without doing any training beforehand.

Even if everything in your life leads you to the right movements, you still have to do it. This is where willpower comes into play.

It doesn't matter who you are, you don't always want to exercise and eat well. Most of the time, even the most experienced and consistent fitness professionals with a sense of fear are at their pre-planned training block. It is human nature.

When we have the choice between the comfort that gobbles up our lives today and the effort, every fiber of our being pulls us to remain in sedentary comfort. We are programmed to use and save energy.

Our body never expected a world with plenty of energy (food) and we were able to survive while we were barely moving. There are more and more snacks, another Netflix show and a new YouTube video "next".

Therefore, it takes a stupid amount of willpower to break the standard patterns of our comfortable life and add the necessary inconveniences. And that's exactly what fitness goals usually boil down to – interrupting the pattern of seated comfort.

Once you start everything will be easier. You may even find that we are energized and want to do more. Starting is the hard part. Finding the current determination to ignore every impulse or instinct and to feel uncomfortable – this is now the basis for every healthy lifestyle.

You may be thinking, but what about those days when I'm full of energy and excitement to move? Can't I just restore these conditions with good pre-workout and good music? Nope. You are the aberration. No matter how good your planning is, you will often find that you don't want to stick it out.

Jocko Willink, former Navy Seal, says in his book “Discipline equals freedom”: “Motivation is moody. It comes and goes. It is unreliable and if you count on the motivation to achieve your goals, you will likely miss out. So … don't count on motivation. Rely on discipline. “And that means willpower.

You set your goal or set this personal rule when you think about what's best for you. In this emotionless, distant state, it is easy to see which course will be the most fulfilling in the long run. The moment you have to step up and act, however, it is much more difficult.

You won't always want to follow through. If you have the willpower to assert yourself, you will feel better all day, If you make concessions and break your own rules, you have created a dangerous precedent that will make it more likely for you to find the easy way out in the future.

You can justify at any time that skipping a day or spoiling yourself once does no harm. A decision doesn't have a bad impact, but to be healthy you have to consider every event as a general pattern. Overcoming temptations and sticking to the plan is a constant thing.

Whether your goal is to eat better or do more exercise, willpower is critical to your success. Where's the plan for that?

Willpower 101

Willpower is real and it's a superpower. Study by study and book by book have shown that people with greater willpower are healthier, happier, more successful and in better relationships. Above all, willpower determines the quality of your life – and it can be trained.

Scientists tracked down 59 of the subjects from the famous Stanford Marshmallow Test and used functional resonance imaging to monitor their brain activity when tempted.

They found that the brain patterns of subjects with little self-control and subjects with high self-control were different. The inexperienced mind has far greater difficulties in overcoming impulses, You need to train willpower. Without them, your health goals are unlikely to be successful.

Willpower is like a muscle in every way. It grows when it's trained. It tires when in use. Your chest and triceps could be trained to improve from a maximum bench press of 245 pounds to a maximum weight of 400 pounds over time. You could work from three reps at 225 pounds to 15 reps.

The same principles apply to training willpower. Through consistent training, you can build the ability to absorb much more willpower that requires tasks, and build up to a point where previously challenging tasks require almost no willpower.

Even if your willpower grows, you can't take in too much volume every day and expect good results, Just like a two-hour struggle of sprints, snatches, and heavy squats would fry the central nervous system even with the best conditioned athletes, you can't expect extreme willpower every day.

In addition, every willpower consumes the same reserve. It doesn't matter whether you use it to resist hunger attacks, censor yourself when speaking, keep eye contact, not checking your phone, studying, or exercising.

Self-control habits allow you to automate behaviors that cost a lot of willpower to most people. This means that expensive willpower tasks can become free or far cheaper. If you usually speak well, you don't have to censor how you speak to people. If you usually make eye contact, the focus will no longer increase when you speak to your boss.

If you have a habit of studying every day after class, this is part of the routine. You don't have to find out when and how you will learn. They follow the pattern and no willpower is used to make decisions.

The more good habits you have, the easier it is to do positive tasks without using a lot of willpower. In this way, some people have put themselves in a position where they seem to always be able to do everything at a high level.

Decisions can also put a lot of strain on your willpower. When you decide what to wear, what to eat, or what to do, your willpower reserves are exhausted, so environmental design and planning can go a long way. If all the steps to get you to the gym or to the right foods are in place for you, your willpower will not be put into the effort to get there.

If you are serious about a goal at all, first shape your life so that the least possible willpower is required to bring us to your desired goal. Avoid fluff when dressing and eating so that you save willpower every day and, if possible, do your most will-dependent tasks early in the day to ensure sufficient enthusiasm.

But here, too, the reality remains that at a certain point in time you only have to do the difficult thing if your emotions rebel against it. How do you train the ability to overcome this impulse? Slow and steady.

Willpower training made easy

As your willpower grows, it's about strengthening your muscle strength to make yourself an experience you'd rather avoid. You know that training will make you happier in the long run, but the moment your emotions shout "No!" Like a toddler is told it is time to leave the birthday party.

You want to build the ability to do the difficult consistently, even if you don't want to. In training, Constance always surpasses the occasional outbreak of great efforts. You will see the best results of daily willpower training, So take a cold shower every day.

The cold shower is the perfect willpower training technique because you will never want it and always have time. You always have three minutes to shower. At the moment, you are probably waiting three minutes a day for your shower to warm up. It is not known where or when. Business and convenience are not available excuses.

After a three-minute cold shower, you will feel much better. In addition to the cascade of physiological effects, you have self-confidence and a sense of achievement that only arises from challenges. You only have to commit to it for a very short amount of time so you can feel better all day – just like when you exercise.

But training is of course about progress. Biting too much, biting too early is a recipe to stop, Start with 30 seconds. You can take a minute next week. Keep crawling in 30-second increments until you take a three-minute cold shower every day. You train the ability to do the difficult.

This is the root of every health goal. If you can take a cold shower, you can start exercising. If you can take a cold shower, you can bypass the smell of free donuts that blow from the staff lounge.

You may be tempted to stop taking a cold shower every day because you just don't want to, This temptation is the point. You have to face the reality that you have to take control of your health repeatedly to take control of your health. Your mind will rationalize all sorts of reasons for not doing what you planned. Emotions take control of your conscious thinking. Act anyway. This is your mantra. You cannot rely on motivation. Follow the plan. Action. This is the willpower exercise.

Commit is more important than trying

"Do it or not. There's no attempt."

– Yoda

Everyone can take a cold shower every day. You just have to make the decision to commit properly. You can't say, "I'll try." Why would you frame it as an "attempt"? No skills or opportunities are required. Don't try.

You either commit to it or you don't. I thought about providing other willpower training protocols, but this complexity only promotes inconsistencies. There is nothing to think about.

Taking a cold shower is difficult, I am only a few minutes away from mine and even after doing this for over a year the prospect makes me flinch. Acting keeps my willpower muscles in shape so I can better control my actions when it's difficult. I know that growing willpower increases the ability to act the way I want to act and who I want to be, so I will continue this practice.

There are some helpful mechanisms you can use to make this or another willpower attempt more successful:

1. The first and most important thing is to start with a "no matter what" clause

I borrowed the terminology of the "no matter what" clause from music star Mike Posner, who recently migrated from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I've always used a similar version of it, telling myself that 99% is a sissy.

In any case, the point remains: there is no scope. Once you have decided to do this, this must be the end of the conversation. For this reason, I recommend that people who start changing their lifestyle always start small. You have to create a habit, an identity, to persevere.

When approaching life in this way, you need to think carefully before committing yourself, as you are doing everything you are committed to. Promise conservatively. You can always add later. If you find that you have taken over too much, you must keep your word (even if it is just a promise to yourself) until you reach your next planning period. I suggest a weekly planning session where you think about the week and allow yourself to adjust the plan by adding or subtracting it as needed.

2. Be prepared for curve balls

But let's say the unthinkable happens. You wake up late, rush to work, miss dinner, spend the evening in the freezing cold season and watch your daughter's soccer game, come home and decide that I just don't take a cold shower … or exercise … or resist the urge To eat biscuits until you are sick. You broke your promise. We are all human, after all. What now? The next day you are on the right track again.

So often people get stuck on arbitrary goals and when they fall off, they just give up. They describe themselves as failure and return to life without the goals. We have to commit ourselves, but a lack is not the reason to throw everything down the drain.

Sure, you have committed yourself with heart and soul and it is a shame to fail, but what is past is past. If the impossible happens and you break your promise to yourself, you must immediately commit again. There is water under the bridge. Back to ace kicker mode.

3. Make your commitment bigger than yourself

We are social beings. If you take a 10-year exercise break, I'm willing to bet that your behavior in your social group was normal. You would have behaved differently if you had just left the Marine Boot Camp. If you find social levers that will lead you to your goals, you will be more successful.

Social pressure often works against our goals. In most places you go, people could put pressure on you not to take a cold shower every day. They say things like, "Why would you do that? It's just stupid." As if training the willpower, the main determinant of success, was nonsensical. So you have to intentionally create positive social pressure. You can find like-minded friends and engage each other, or even try more creative tactics.

My partner Justin Lind and I created the Pillar Experience Calendar – a structure to consistently take into account the most transformative experiences of self-development. Every month we have a topic with a lesson and accompanying challenges that are discussed and supported by an online group.

Last month our group committed to an extended fast. Many of them only consumed water with Justin and me for 48 hours. Others reduced themselves to 24 hours or treated themselves to coffee. We all found immense strength in mastering the challenges together and discussing them over time,

Separate your life from making the right decisions

Organize your life so that you make the right decisions and distance yourself from those you want to avoid. Take on the difficult tasks early in the day. Commit yourself to cold showers daily and take the time to build an accountability system.

You could make willpower far more complicated, but that would only offer opportunities for failure. Too much thinking just distracts you from what you have to do.

It is best to make your plan simple and the measures clear, Then just act, because this will increase the willpower muscle. And this muscle is far more important than anyone else when it comes to long-term fitness and health.