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Financial debts, malnutrition, failures at work, lateness, conflicts — how many problems in our lives are caused by the inability to control ourselves. Conversely, the development of willpower can significantly improve the quality of life. A few tips from a self-control specialist.
Willpower, like a muscle, can be overworked with excessive effort, but can also be strengthened if you exercise regularly. As studies have shown, it is self-control, and not a high IQ, that allows students to achieve greater success in their studies, as it makes it possible to better plan time, do homework regularly and be less distracted.
Leaders who are well in control of themselves achieve their goals faster because they are emotionally stable and build better business relationships with colleagues and subordinates.
In a word, willpower is an important factor that helps us develop and be successful.
Social psychologist Roy Baumeister, professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Florida (USA), talks about how to keep your self-control in good shape.
1. Don’t take on multiple tasks at once.
The weakening of willpower — «ego exhaustion» — is similar to physical exhaustion. If a person controls himself for too long, his ability to regulate his thoughts, emotions and actions weakens. He becomes more irritable, and all desires intensify.
If you set multiple goals for yourself at once, overloading your willpower will deplete it, and you can make serious mistakes.
Output? Take on one thing at a time and focus on it
For example, those who want to quit smoking should not drastically change their other habits at the same time: the decision to diet and cut down on alcohol at the same time as quitting increases the likelihood that none of these endeavors will be completed.
2. Don’t starve!
Our willpower is directly dependent on the level of glucose in the blood — the main source of energy for the body. This association has been shown in studies in which participants suffered from hypoglycemia (low glucose). It turned out that it is more difficult for them to concentrate and control their negative emotions, they are more likely to be in an anxious state and, in general, feel less happy.
However, a large amount of glucose is also not good for strengthening willpower.
Firstly, it contributes to the development of diabetes, and diabetics, among other things, are less stress resistant. And secondly, fast carbohydrates (sugar, chocolate and other sweets) give a quick and short-term burst of energy, followed by a decline.
Rules
In an emergency, before an exam or an important decision, you can eat something sweet (chocolate, candy, honey). But at normal times, it’s best to eat foods that take longer to digest: vegetables, fruits, nuts, cheese, meat, fish, olive oil, and other healthy fats.
Don’t Forget to Eat Breakfast and Avoid Feeling Hungryespecially when you have a stressful day ahead of you. Do not discuss serious problems on an empty stomach.
When you are sick, save your glucose reserves for the immune system. Postpone important things until after your recovery.
If you are tired, go to bed. Self-control will be much more effective if you take care of yourself and get enough sleep.
3. Plan for the long term
The first step in self-control is to set a clear goal for yourself. However, the problem is not that we do not have goals, but that there are often too many of them and some of them contradict each other.
In such a situation, it is necessary to determine which goals are more important and prioritize with a long-term perspective — like in a fable when a far-sighted ant was better prepared for a harsh winter than a frivolous dragonfly, engaged in exclusively short-term planning.
In one experiment, participants were asked to plan their class schedule
The first group had to make a daily plan, the second — monthly, the control group did not make any plan. Subsequently, the group with monthly planning turned out to be the most successful. Even when the experiment was over, many of the participants continued to follow the planning system for the month ahead, and their results were higher than the rest.
The advantage of daily plans is that a person knows exactly what he should be doing at any given time. But life rarely goes exactly according to plan, so making changes and additions to it is demoralizing. A monthly plan gives you more agility: if something doesn’t work today, it can be done painlessly another day.
4. Don’t Delay Decisions
Making a small number of pleasant decisions is not tiring, but if this process is dragged out, it seems that the freedom of choice is no longer there. Deciding which candidates you will hire, what you will eat for dinner, where you will go on vacation, how much money you will spend in the store — endless decision-making throughout the day drains willpower.
And at some point, you involuntarily begin to look for ways to save energy, trying to delay the decision or not decide anything at all.
What to do in such a situation? One of the main rules of a successful life is not to put things off, do not delay your choice. Follow the “two-minute rule”: if a task doesn’t take you more than two minutes to complete, don’t put it on your to-do list, but do it right away.
5. Work on your posture
Train your willpower in small things and it will prepare you for the bigger challenges. The study showed that it is enough to regularly monitor your posture for two weeks to significantly increase the level of self-control.
Other techniques can be used to build willpower—going to a sports club for half a month, controlling your expenses, learning a new language, using your left hand instead of your right hand to brush your teeth, open a door or raise a cup to your mouth, and so on. Or you can work on your speech: get rid of parasitic words, jargon, swear words.
By successfully solving only one such task, you will increase your perseverance and endurance.
And eventually, positive changes will begin to occur in other areas of your life: you will be able to refuse junk food and alcohol more often, tidy up your house more willingly, concentrate more easily on your work, and better control negative emotions. Thus, by tempering willpower, we improve the quality of our life as a whole.
In many ways, self-control is helping not only yourself, but also those around you. People with a strong will are more often altruistic, they tend to participate in charity events, work as volunteers. Inner discipline breeds outward kindness.