How To Stay Motivated And Master Your Willpower

Have you ever had something in your life that you wanted more than anything, but for the life of you, you've not been able to get yourself to stick with the actions that you know you need to take to actually make it happen? Now, for some people, this is sticking to the diet, going to the gym. For others, it's starting a business and sticking with it through all of the inevitable difficult times. No matter what it is for you, everyone in their life has something that they're working on that they've not been able to achieve. And the common reason that we give ourselves for these repeatedly failed goals is that we just didn't have enough work. Willpower. And this is actually a really, really terrible misconception that keeps us from achieving what we want because we don't understand oftentimes how willpower works. And that's what I want to clarify in this video. Appropriately, it comes inspired from a book that is called Willpower. And there's a couple of main takeaways that are really worth knowing. The first is this. Your willpower. My willpower. Everybody's willpower is a finite resource. And you can conceive of it kind of like a video game where you have a health bar above your head that says how much you have now throughout your day, it's being drained by all kinds of things. It's not just when you force yourself to get in the morning or force yourself to go to the gym, it's when you exert emotional control. Say you watch a movie and you try not to cry, that drains your willpower. Life bar. Or say that you're out with a group of friends and you're trying to be happy, when you kind of feel glum, that drains it even more. And one of the biggest things that we do not realize is draining our willpower on a day to day basis is decision making. Every single time you deliberate, go back and forth, the more time you spend in that decision making process, the more and more that willpower goes down. Now, the good news is there's ways to replenish it. Eating and sleeping are chief among them. And you can also strengthen your willpower so it's bigger and you have more reserves of it. And this is done basically just by exerting willpower. The more that you get up in the morning, force yourself to go to the gym when you don't want to, you're strengthening that willpower. This brings me to my second point, which is you might be thinking right now, okay, if I want to achieve all these goals that I've been putting off. What I need is more willpower. I have to strengthen my willpower. And that's actually exactly wrong. The people that seemingly have mastery over themselves and their willpower are not the ones with the deepest reserves. The they're the ones that have set up their lives in a way such that they drain their willpower the least throughout their day. Now, this is really important if you want to get the things you want in your life. It's not about fighting inner struggles and conquering them day after day after day. It's about setting up an environment, a system, and a lifestyle that makes it so you don't have to fight all these battles. You can conserve your willpower for where it really matters. And I want to touch on six things that you can do now to stop draining that willpower so that you have more of it from for when it counts. Number one, make decisions more quickly. Because to your brain, it doesn't matter whether or not you're trying to figure out whether or not to eat Chinese or Italian tonight, or whether or not you're trying to figure out what to do with some giant business decision. Just the process of being stuck in a decision is costing you willpower. So a general rule of thumb is to stop saying I don't care and certainly do not get involved in those back and forth. I don't care what you want to do that go forever and ever. That just drains your willpower. You want to identify when decisions either don't matter or when you're not going to get enough information to make a good decision and just pick a path that that is going to save you in the long run. Number two, set up hard and fast rules in your life. Rules that cannot be violated. Because from a willpower perspective, it is very draining again to go back and forth in your head. So it's much easier to say, okay, I will not drink soda and I'll only eat foods off of this list than it is for you to go, okay, I ate really good yesterday and I worked out extra hard. Now I'm at dinner and they just gave me a free dessert. Is it okay for me to have a small portion? Because that takes a lot of mental energy to process when you set up hard and fast rules. As draconian as this might feel, feel and sound at first, it actually creates a tremendous amount of freedom in your own life to spend your brain power on the things that matter the most. So set up rules. You must work between these hours. You need to go to the gym five days a Week for me, I set up a rule. I have to release one YouTube video every single Monday. And that's why I am here right now. So set up rules. Number three. Change your environment so that it supports you. Now, you've probably heard this before, but the easiest way to not eat junk food is to not have junk food in the house. If you're like me. I wanted to stop checking email so much. I tried it for weeks and I was like, okay, I'm only going to do it once a day. And I was constantly on it. I finally just deleted the Gmail app from my phone and that made it so I couldn't go even when I was tempted to. So think how can you transform your environment so that it actually supports you in what you're trying to do? And a big thing to think about here is your friend group and particularly the people that you live with. If your lease is coming up and you have an opportunity, try to pick people who have the same goals as you, who are not going to have the junk food, who are not going to be smoking or drinking, people who are going to going to the gym, starting a business, doing the kinds of things that you want to do, because that is the kind of environment that is going to be supportive of your aims. Which brings us to number five. Prep for the hard situations beforehand. Again, this goes back to one of the classic tenants of Willpower, which is that the more time you spend deciding, deliberating, the more you're draining that willpower. Now, I set up a video several weeks back that was what to do when you don't want to drink and people are pressuring you. That is very helpful because you have a game plan beforehand. So whatever it is in your life, think through the common things that are likely to happen that are going to blow you off course and what you will do to respond. That could be as simple as, okay, I know I'm trying to lose weight. I know that they give free dessert at this restaurant. When that is offered to me, as soon as the waiter comes, I will say, no, thank you, I'm on a diet, or whatever. Or I know that I'm trying to start a business. I know that my buddies are going to call me up Thursday night so that we can go out to the bar. I am going to tell them, hey, guys, I cannot come out until 11 o' clock after I've worked on my business for two hours. Think through the things that have taken you off course in the past. Set up a plan to follow through in the future. And that is going to eliminate the amount of time that you spend deliberating and really help to preserve your willpower. Which brings me to number six, perhaps the hardest to implement, but also the strongest thing to stop draining your willpower, which is identity. If your identity says, I'm the type of person who goes to the gym, I'm the type of person who works on their business every single day, it will not take you any willpower to do it because that is who you are now. Changing your identity can be difficult. The one tip I would give you here, because it is a much bigger topic, is to get a really strong why that resonates in you today. So if you feel like you're the type of person who never settles, maybe you're the type of person who is dedicated to growth, connect that to the activity that you want to be doing. So maybe you see yourself as a person who never settles in business. You're getting ahead, but your body is just not the way it needs to be. If you can connect that preexisting identity to the action that you want to take, you'll find oftentimes, one, you're disgusted with your past actions. But two, complacency, apathy, not following through doesn't become an option anymore. I'll do more on this topic because it's a big one, but identities number six is a really, really strong way to stop draining your own willpower. So that's willpower. And if you're interested in reading the book yourself, even though I've just gone over what I think are the most important points, you can go ahead and click the link in the description to check it out. If there's other books that you would like to see me do, and in fact there's plenty that I already have in mind. So if you like this, let me know. Go ahead and write them in the comments or just write that you'd like to see me see more of this book series. If you've enjoyed this and you're not already subscribe to the channel. We do lots of different things. Charisma, breakdowns, how to be more confident is really what we focus on. But there's also this edge that I'm interested in, which is personal development. So I'll be doing a lot more of this. In any event, I hope that you've enjoyed this, hope you've gotten a lot out of it, and I will see you in the next video.