Improving willpower self confidence and self esteem 1

Improving willpower, self confidence, and self esteem 1

• My deepest belief is that there is greatness inside all of us. • And to access it, we must align ourselves with a greater purpose, commit to excellence, and seek to improve every day. Just Do It: 10 Proven Ways to Increase Your Willpower and Self-Discipline • The choice is yours and only yours… What will it be? • Take the easy way out too often and you’ll live a life of mediocrity, constantly disappointing yourself… Until one day, you look back in regret, wondering… “What if? ” 2

1. Meditate like a Zen Buddhist Monk – “Practicing mindfulness meditation for a few minutes each day can actually boost willpower by building up gray matter in areas of the brain that regulate emotions and govern decision making. ” – 2. Take the Magic Pill of Exercise – “Significant decreases in perceived stress, emotional distress, smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption, and an increase in healthy eating, emotional control, maintenance of household chores, attendance to commitments, monitoring of spending and an improvement in study habits”. 3

– Even 5 minutes a day will make a difference but I recommend shooting for at least 30 minutes, 3 times a week. – Find something you love (ie, if you hate running on a treadmill, DON’T do that), have fun doing it, and work on making it a regular part of your life. – If you don’t like exercising, it’s not because you’re “not made for it”. It’s because you haven’t found the type of exercise that’s right for you. 3. Harness the Power of Accountability – Admittedly, accountability isn’t the sexiest word in the English language. But the concept it represents is extremely powerful. – The idea behind it is that when we’re left to our own devices, it’s easy to come up with excuses not to do something. – “I’m tired, I don’t feel like it, it’s too much work, it’s too hard. ” 4. Set SMART Goals 4

5. Unleash Your Inner Conquistador and Burn the Ships – In 1519, a Spanish conquistador named Hernan Cortez made a bold-as-hell, history-changing decision we can all learn from. 6. Remove Temptations and Distractions – All humans are subject to temptation—it’s just in our nature. – And in today’s world we’re surrounded by more temptations than ever. How? – First, identify what are your common distractions are. – Second, build a structure to mitigate them. – Putting my phone on Airplane mode while working. 7. Eat the Big Ugly Frog First 5

8. Create Powerful Habits, Rituals and Routines – Building on the last point, creating rituals is a great way to remove needless decision-making from your day. – Once something has been turned into a habit, you don’t even have to think about it. You do it without using any of your willpower. – Every morning, I start my day with the same 60 -minute power routine to get me in an optimal physical, emotional and intellectual state. – Each step of the ritual is carefully choreographed for optimal results, yet it requires no willpower on my part because it’s engrained in my ritual. – Look for all the ways you can “routinize” your life, and you’ll gain the double benefit of having better habits while conserving more of your willpower. 9. Hack Your Mind with the 5 -Minute Rule – Our mind can be our greatest ally… and our greatest foe. – The trick is to be aware of its inner workings, both its strengths and its weaknesses, and optimize around them. – One of our mind’s greatest flaws is that it often struggles to get things started. But once we’re in flow, 6 it’s easy to keep going.

10. Go for 100% Commitment – If you really want to do something, commit to it 100%. – But the moment have you that 100% commitment, the game becomes easy. You don’t have to think about it… you just do it! The Science of Self-Control: 6 Ways to Improve Your Willpower Today • Kelly Mc. Gonigal, Ph. D and author of The Willpower Instinct says willpower is a response that comes from both the brain and the body. • The willpower response is a reaction to an internal conflict. You want to do one thing, such as smoke a cigarette or supersize your lunch, but know you shouldn’t. Or you know you should do something, like file your taxes or go to the gym, but you’d rather do nothing. 7

• To be effective at controlling our urges and making sound decisions, the prefontal cortex needs to be looked after. That means feeding it with good-quality food so it has enough energy to do its job and getting enough sleep. How willpower gets depleted throughout the day • Mc. Gonigal points out that one of the most replicated findings about willpower is that it seems to be finite—that is, we only have so much and it runs out as we use it. • Trying to control your temper, ignore distractions or refuse seconds all tap the same source of strength. • We can look at willpower like a muscle—it can get exhausted by overuse, but just like our physical muscles, there are some researchers who believe we might be able to strengthen our willpower by training it. How to increase your willpower • Okay, we know that we only have so much willpower and as we go about our day, stress and normal self-control depletes our resource. Let’s see what options we have for increasing the pool of willpower we have to draw from. 8

1. Increase your capacity for pressure: Learn how to manage stress – To start with, we need to manage our stress levels, says Mc. Gonigal. Being under high levels of stress means that our body’s energy is used up in acting instinctively and making decisions based on short-term outcomes. Our prefrontal cortex loses out in the battle for our energy when high-stress is involved. – Mc. Gonigal says that stopping to take a few deep breaths when we feel overwhelmed or tempted can be a great start in managing our stress levels and improving our willpower. 2. Encourage yourself to stick to your plan – To make it even easier, it appears that self-affirmation can even help you to have more self-control when you’re running out, according to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. A good example of this is the difference between telling yourself “I can’t” and “I don’t. ” Taking back control of the situation using the phrase “I don’t” has been shown to be more effective at helping you to stick to your plan and break bad habits: – Every time you tell yourself “I can’t”, you’re creating a feedback loop that is a reminder of your limitations. This terminology indicates that you’re forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do. – So try telling yourself that you don’t do that bad habit, rather than punishing yourself by saying “I can’t. ” 9

3. Get more sleep to help your brain manage energy – Sleep deprivation (even just getting less than six hours a night) is a kind of chronic stress that impairs how the body and brain use energy. The prefrontal cortex is especially hard hit and it loses control over the regions of the brain that create cravings and the stress response 4. Meditate (for as little as 8 weeks) – Meditation has also been linked to increasing the reserve of willpower we have available, as well as improving attention, focus, stress management and self-awareness. Mc. Gonigal suggests this can even give fast results: – And it doesn’t take a lifetime of practice - brain changes have been observed after eight weeks of brief daily meditation training. 5. Better exercise and nutrition: The most ignored route to higher willpower – Another great way to train the brain, that is often easily ignored or undervalued, yet can make you a lot more resilient to stress, and thus boost willpower, is regular physical exercise. Both relaxing, mindful exercise like yoga and intense physical training can provide these benefits, though Mc. Gonigal points out that we’re not sure why this works yet. 10

– As I mentioned earlier, what you feed your body affects how much energy the prefrontal cortex has to work with. This is why nutrition is so important: – Something as simple as eating a more plant-based, less-processed diet makes energy more available to brain and can improve every aspect of willpower. – Not only will exercise and good nutrition improve your willpower, but they’ll make you feel better as well. Exercise in particular is known for making us happy by releasing endorphins: – These endorphins tend to minimize the discomfort of exercise, block the feeling of pain and are even associated with a feeling of euphoria. 6. Postpone things for later to gain focus on what’s important now – Postponing something you really shouldn’t have can be effective if you’re trying to break a bad habit. In Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, Roy F. Baumeister explains that people who tell themselves “not now, but later, ” are generally less tormented by the temptation of something they are trying to avoid (his example is eating chocolate cake). – One last thing. You might have heard of a famous experiment using marshmallows to test kids’ willpower. What happens is a child is left alone in a room with one marshmallow for an undefined period of time. If they can resist eating the marshmallow, they’re rewarded with a second marshmallow at the end of the experiment. If they eat the marshmallow before time is up, they only get that one. 11

Killer Actions to Boost Your Self-Confidence • Taking control of your self-confidence • If you are low in self-confidence, is it possible to do things that will change that? Is your self-confidence in your control? 1. Groom yourself. 2. Dress nicely. 3. Photoshop your self-image. 4. Think positive 5. Kill negative thoughts. 6. Get to know yourself 7. Act positive. 8. Be kind and generous. 9. Get prepared. 12

10. Know your principles and live them 11. Speak slowly. 12. Stand tall. 13. Increase competence. 14. Set a small goal and achieve it. 15. Change a small habit. 16. Focus on solutions. 17. Smile. 18. Volunteer. 19. Be grateful. 20. Exercise. 21. Empower yourself with knowledge. 22. Do something you’ve been procrastinating on 23. Get active 24. Work on small things 25. Clear your desk 13

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SELFESTEEM But why is building and being able to maintain high self-esteem so important? • Life becomes simpler and lighter • You’ll have more inner stability • Less self-sabotage • You’ll be more attractive in any relationship • You’ll be happier 14

But how do you improve your self-esteem in a practical way? 1. Say stop to your inner critic. 2. Use healthier motivation habits. – Remind yourself of the benefits. – Refocus on doing what YOU really, really like to do. 3. Take a 2 minute self-appreciation break. 4. Write down 3 things in the evening that you can appreciate about yourself. 5. Do the right thing. 6. Replace the perfectionism. 1. Go for good enough. 2. Remember that buying into myths of perfection will hurt you and the people in your life. 15

7. Handle mistakes and failures in a more positive way Be your own best friend Find the upside 8. Be kinder towards other people. 9. Try something new. 10. Stop falling into the comparison trap. 11. Spend more time with supportive people (and less time with destructive people). 12. Remember the whys of high self-esteem. 16