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How to Improve Willpower: 10 Ways to Regain Your Strength
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Get More Sleep
Sleep deprivation makes you weak and tired. It has a direct impact on your focus and decision-making, whilst slowly exhausting your source of energy.
Sleep between 7.5 and 8.5 hours a night. A good rest makes it much easier to deal with daily activities and challenges.
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Develop Good Habits
When we are stressed, we tend to unconsciously fall back on ingrained habits, whether they are helpful or harmful.
Creating good habits helps you get through stressful situations without affecting your willpower.
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Exercise and Eat Better
It’s easy to give in to temptation, feeling guilty about yourself afterward.
A good meal and regular exercise can decrease the desire for smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption, and increase healthy eating and emotional control. Look for activities you enjoy, such as jogging, cycling, swimming, martial arts, etc.
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Change Your Environment
Our environment has a great influence on our behavior. For example, if you mute and put away your phone while working or studying, you will be less tempted to look at it.
Associate your environment with a specific task. Re-arrange everything you want to focus on, and keep away the things that take away your concentration.
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Eliminate Unnecessary Decisions
We make many decisions on any day, from the most simple, like what to eat for lunch, to important ones.
Create the habit of performing some activities without having to rely on your willpower. For example, previously packing your clothes in order to avoid excuses for not exercising.
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One Step at a Time
Sometimes the complexity or importance of the task is overwhelming.
Break down the task into as many manageable parts as possible, organizing them in a logical sequence. This guarantees that you will never put yourself in a state of willpower depletion.
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Self-Compassion
Self-compassion works much better than self-criticism when we have to deal with failures, or not reaching a certain goal.
People who exercise self-compassion tend to develop a willingness to learn from their mistakes. They find it easier to recover from setbacks and pursue positive change.
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The 2-Minute Rule
The 2-Minute rule is a great way to break the first and most difficult barrier of procrastination: getting started.
Make the following deal with yourself: you’ll do it for just 2 minutes. Most of the time you will continue with whatever you are doing.
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Dark Chocolate
In the event of an emergency, giving in to a piece of chocolate is not a bad thing.
The small energy boost from dark chocolate will help you to focus on the decision.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
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Key Ideas
What willpower is
The willpower response is a reaction to an internal conflict. You want to do one thing, but know you shouldn’t. Or you know you should do something, but you’d rather do nothing.
How willpower works in the brain
The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps us with things like decision-making and regulating our behavior, needs to be looked after.
Feed your brain with good-quality food so it has enough energy to do its job and get enough sleep.
Willpower is finite
Willpower is like a muscle—it can get exhausted by overuse, but we might be able to strengthen our willpower by training it.
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Key Ideas
“Keystone” Habits
The primary keystone habit is regular exercise. People who exercise habitually start changing other unrelated patterns in their lives, even unknowingly. They eat better, use their credit car...
Do the most important things first
Willpower is limited. It is highest early in the day but decreases as we make more decisions. Most self-control failures happen at night.
Do the most important things first. As the day goes on it will only get harder to face big challenges.
Don't Use Willpower
Research shows we don’t use much willpower when something is a habit.
Build new habits by manipulating your environment so as to make what you should do easy and what you shouldn’t do hard. Remove the cookies from eyesight and put your running shoes next to the bed.
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A Low Success Rate
New Year Resolutions typically show a low success rate, as 10% of them actually succeed.
The reason for this low rate might be our basic instincts and temptations: people give into te...
Willpower
Willpower, while important, isn't the only thing required for success.
Emotions
Our emotions motivate us more than willpower.
If we are generous, fair and co-operative, we have an invaluable tool to motivate us to complete our goals. If we cultivate good character, compassion, and honesty, it leads to a better chance of success in our endeavors.