Have you ever started a diet on a Monday?
You plan all your meals for a week. Fill the fridge with enough unpronounceable veggies to feed a grown cow. You even prep for Tuesday lunch at work.
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Then, come Friday afternoon, you're so fed up with celery sticks and tofu dips that the thought of washing, peeling, cutting and actually cooking the dinner becomes too much. It's just not worth it, you think.
Instead of going home, you pull over for some hamburger and fries. Add a Coke too, while you're at it.
There you are. Enjoying the hot, juicy food. Trying to ignore feeling guilty. But still - you know you're gonna buy that jar of Nutella on the way home.
Sound familiar?
Ok, maybe you're one of those people who never go on a diet (are you even human?!). But even so, you get the point, don't you?
Surely, you know what it's like to make a decision to improve something in your life. To set a goal. Start all pumped up, excited and ready to crush it!
Then, at some point, all that motivation disappears.
You have a bad week at work, or your kid gets sick and needs more attention, or unexpected bills show up... whatever the reason(s) you feel completely drained and powerless. So, you skip a day.
Next week you skip two more days. Before you know it, that big goal of yours ends up just like New Year's resolutions no one even remembers by May.
Why do we give up on important stuff?
Failing to persevere at things that are important to us sucks. Big time.
And you might tell yourself you failed because you just weren't motivated enough. But that's not the reason.
I remember a surgeon telling me I need a total knee replacement on both legs. He then said there is a 2% chance I might bleed out and die during the operations.
You think I needed any more convincing to change after that???
Of course not!
I went on to do EVERY SINGLE THING POSSIBLE to get healthier and improve mobility. It took a ton of time, money, and above all effort. But still, after 6 months I was seriously depleted.
There was no lack of motivation on my part.
But I had no more willpower to continue my Spartan lifestyle.
Your willpower is a limited resource
Check this out.
Psychologist Roy F. Baumeister conducted an experiment where he divided students into two groups. They were all instructed to come hungry.
First, students (individually) had to wait in a room while the experimenters baked chocolate chip cookies, making sure the scent of freshly baked cookies was in the air and students can smell it.
Then he offered the students from the first group those same hot, yummy cookies as soon as they were baked and told them to eat 5 or 6 cookies.
But, the students in the second group were offered a bowl of radishes along with the freshly baked cookies. They were told to only eat 2-3 radishes and ignore the cookies. Torture, right?
After a while, both groups of students were given some puzzles to solve. What students didn't know was, those puzzles were unsolvable. Their sole purpose was to make students frustrated and to measure how long it would take for students to give up.
Results showed that students who were in a position to practice willpower - those made to eat radishes while looking at cookies - gave up solving the puzzle much sooner, plus reported feeling more tired!
Experiments like this one proved that our willpower is limited.
The more you force yourself to use self-control, or to make decisions and choices, the weaker your willpower will be.
It’s sort of like muscles in your body. If they are too weak, more pressure will shift to bones. But, after a while, joints won’t be able to handle it and it will lead to a domino effect of all kinds of consequences.
Low willpower makes it very hard for you to solve even the simplest daily tasks. Following what used to be a simple routine, now becomes a burden you never feel like doing.
So what’s the solution?
Trick your brain for instant productivity
Mel Robbins says the fastest was to getting everything you ever wanted is to only do the things you never feel like doing.
Great. Thanks a lot, Mel!
I can’t make myself do the things I don’t want to do. It’s muh willpower’s fault.
by You. And me.
Oh, man! Saying that to Mel is like waving a red flag in front of a wounded raging bull. I swear she’s just waiting to hear someone say that, so she could school us all on her stupidly simple way to get things done.
I Tried it
And all I have to say is:
• I felt like an idiot doing it
• I got the job done in record time
Now you know what to do when you run out of willpower. This is a tool. Use it.
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