Often people are too optimistic about their abilities and skills. In almost everything except one thing - self-control. We believe that we are capable of many things and at the same time admit that we do not know how to control ourselves.
Willpower is one of the most important skills. Anyone who can resist daily temptations, whatever they may be, will achieve incredible success. How to develop it? Here are 7 ways to develop and train willpower.
Develop Fundamental Habits
Everyone is eager to find a magic pill that will solve all their problems. There is no such thing in the area of willpower, but there is something to start with. These are fundamental habits.
First - . It would seem, what’s special about running or lifting weights? But everything develops not only discipline in the gym. It also makes you more conscious about your diet. Helps you better manage your earned money. Makes you more productive at work. Allows you to be more patient with loved ones. Exercise leads to the development of other, often unrelated, habits. When you constantly study, it affects discipline in other areas of your life.
Don't want to exercise or can't exercise? Develop another habit: eat healthy, eat vegetables and fruits. Keep a diary, reflect and plan your life with its help. In short, find any good habit and systematically work on its development. This will also strengthen your willpower.
Complete important tasks as early as possible
This is the basis and, in fact, the principle for any reasonable person.
Modern research shows that willpower is a finite resource. You're more likely to snap at the end of the day than in the morning. It's about all the bad habits. What is also important is that by accumulating fatigue, you reduce willpower globally. This is why a person needs a reboot in the form of rest, meditation, change of activity, etc.
All this leads to very simple advice: Do the most important things first. As your day goes on, it will become much more difficult to get things done effectively.
Improve willpower without using willpower
Productivity guru Timothy Ferris says willpower is overrated. As we already know, we have a limited supply of it, so relying entirely on it is not a good idea.
However, this does not mean that you cannot train and improve it. In which case willpower is consumed very slowly? When we form habits. This is not an easy task, but with the help of some tricks, anything can be achieved. Shape your environment in such a way that you don’t have to force yourself to do anything: don’t buy cookies, or at least put them out of sight so you don’t eat too many.
You have a limited amount of energy, so you need to reduce your energy expenditure through habits. Give your best only in the most difficult and important matters.
Use willpower to improve your willpower
Willpower is like a muscle: when it is depleted, you become tired and give up. But with training, this muscle becomes stronger. You just need to know what actions allow you to develop it. Start with self-control rather than immediately testing your willpower by developing difficult habits.
Surprisingly, one study found that changing your posture can improve your willpower. Once the subjects sat up straight and stopped slouching, they began to exercise more self-control and began to cope with tasks that had nothing to do with body position.
The Basics: Food and Sleep
Although this point is in fifth place, it is the main one. Do you want to increase your willpower? and get enough sleep. Don't overeat or sacrifice sleep for other things. This will be a great start.
Procrastination can improve willpower
You don't have to say no to every temptation. You can simply put them aside. Indeed, stop putting off just things, start putting off pleasures too. Research shows that the thought “Not now, later” is much more powerful than “No, you can’t do that.” Accordingly, by giving up the fun, you will save a fair amount of willpower.
Anything other than giving up can improve your willpower muscle. Take a break not from important matters, but from possible entertainment.
If you feel like nothing is working out, that's normal.
So you are about to give in to temptation. This is not defeatism, this is reality. All that matters is how you feel afterwards. Do you feel like biting yourself because you gave up? This should not be done under any circumstances.
Self-blame reduces self-control. Self-compassion and comparing your present self with your past self, on the contrary, increases it. Until recently, you didn’t even try, but now you are having some success. Well, isn't it wonderful?
Self-criticism is associated with decreased motivation and self-control. It is also a precursor to depression. As a result, the situation becomes worse than it was before.
Comfort yourself, say a few kind words to yourself. But that's not all: immediately start trying again. No “I’m so tired and deserve a rest.” Self-compassion in this case is applicable only in order to pull yourself together and continue development.
We wish you good luck!
Life opens up many different opportunities for us, and we ourselves set quite a few new goals for ourselves every day. It's easy to plan in the evening for the next day: tomorrow we will wake up on time, start exercising, help someone, quit smoking, and so on. Unfortunately, we will never be able to implement many of these plans. Why? Yes, because in the morning we won’t want any of this.
Often what we lack to achieve what we set out to do is how to develop willpower in ourselves? This question is complex. In general, there are plenty of ways to develop it. Everyone can choose the one that suits them. Why wonder about will? In order to become someone who can achieve what they want in life. Remember that happiness can only be achieved by working hard.
How to develop willpower
The right attitude is important here, as well as a clear understanding of the goal. What matters is the mental state in which you begin to try to change yourself. The best results come when a person tries to start working on himself while on edge. Agree, when we fail, we are depressed, angry, curse the whole world, but then we begin to look for the cause of the problem in ourselves. Correct analysis helps you adjust your personality.
It's easy to act when there is a clear goal. Forcing yourself to do something that you don’t like or seems futile is difficult. Even people with excellent willpower can experience significant difficulties. What to do? Either choose what you really like, or learn to perceive differently what you are doing now. Think not about the work itself, but about what it gives. Sometimes it can be helpful to imagine what will happen if you don't do what you need to do.
In general, everything is simple: you need to try for the sake of the result. Think about your cherished goal, dream about it - this will kill laziness and strengthen your willpower.
Be sure to scold yourself for not being able to do something because you lack willpower. Also praise yourself for every correct action. Some even come up with all sorts of little rewards for themselves. The main thing is not to get too carried away with them.
How to develop willpower? Try to move towards a goal over a long period of time. In this case, any difficulties will only benefit you. On the way to this goal you will have to win many small victories. Each of them will bring you something good and change you for the better.
How to strengthen willpower? Take up meditation. Meditation is something really difficult. A superficial acquaintance with it will be practically useless. It is important to learn to control your thoughts, cut off those that make you lazy and prevent you from doing the right thing.
Instill in yourself that your willpower will help you move mountains, help you get what you want, and will prevent you from wasting your life. Find that person you can look up to. This does not have to be a living person - it can be someone else (a literary character, a historical figure, and so on). As often as possible, think about what he has achieved through his willpower, what heights he has reached. Let him be an example for you.
How to develop willpower? It is worth doing all the difficult things in the morning. The point is that our willpower is strongest in the first half of the day. By evening we become weak and passive. It is also worth mentioning here that it is best to do things in the morning. Anyone thinking about how to develop willpower should take this advice seriously.
In the end, I would like to advise you to constantly do something. Place special emphasis on what doesn't work. Let difficulties and failures strengthen you.
Similar to muscle strength: it decreases with intensive use. Psychologist Robert Baumeister led volunteers into a room filled with the aromas of fresh baked goods and offered them two cups: one containing radishes, the other chocolate chip cookies. One group was asked to eat only vegetables, while the other was allowed to try cookies.
After that, all the volunteers solved complex puzzles. People who ate only radishes gave up in an average of 8 minutes, while those who ate sweets spent 20 minutes trying.
Baumeister suggested that we have some kind of reserve of internal strength. Volunteers from the first group spent part of it giving up cookies, and they no longer had enough persistence to solve the puzzles. But in this case, is it possible to somehow increase this reserve? Psychologists say it is possible. To develop willpower, you need to improve your ability to exercise self-control.
1. Do things differently.
We perform habitual actions automatically, so we save time and effort. But now we need something completely different. The need to concentrate on what you are doing can be a good workout for willpower. The simplest example- Try brushing your teeth with your left hand. You will have to strain your attention and control your hand movements.
There are many examples of things that you can do differently: put on your left pant leg first and then your right one, rearrange the furniture, tie your shoelaces in a different knot, change your walking routes... All these actions, even the most meaningless ones, form new neural connections in the brain, and this stimulates.
2. Take on the challenge
A great way to develop willpower is to commit to doing something important and necessary, but not very pleasant, for some time. You can start with something simple: for 30 days, carefully make your bed every morning, or wash your face cold water, or write in a diary. More difficult tasks: morning exercises, regular running, healthy eating.
You may have already tried some of these things and it didn't work out. But now you only need to hold out for 30 days (you can choose a shorter period). You will probably have enough time for this. The main thing is no excuses or justifications, you are not only doing exercises, but also training your willpower!
3. Pay attention to self-talk
Control, especially in stressful situations, difficult. Not everyone can master this art. Start by paying attention to what you say to yourself when you encounter negative emotions. Say “Stop!”, take a break, acknowledge your negative feelings, name them and try to turn your internal dialogue in a positive direction.
4. Focus on one thing at a time
I am sure that you have many goals and desires, but you need to choose. The well-known proverb about two birds with one stone also applies to willpower: your persistence may simply not be enough in several directions. In addition, numerous studies have shown that it harms productivity. Try to concentrate on only one task and not move on to others until you solve it. It is equally important to eliminate all distractions: telephone, empty conversations, non-urgent emails, and so on.
You are stronger than you think and capable of more than you expect from yourself.
Christopher McDougall, Born to Run
5. Be consistent
Willpower training is a lot of small victories that ultimately lead to the desired result. This does not happen immediately, but the effect accumulates, like snow in the mountains.
Australian scientists Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng asked volunteers to carefully monitor some areas of their lives. In one case it was finances, in another it was training, in the third it was physical activity. Those who completed the task improved their performance not only in the controlled area: they became less distracted while completing difficult tasks, eat more and consume less alcohol. That is, the acquired self-control skills helped them change their lives in general.
These five ways to develop willpower are available to everyone. What techniques have you used or are you still using?
Intention and willpower are what made the world the way we see it! Find out how to develop willpower and become a successful person!
Will is the key to developing psychic potential!
Will is a powerful force that moves the world! It is willpower that allows people, no matter what, to overcome the path to success and achieve their goals. Without the participation of the will, even the most insignificant action is impossible. This feeling motivates each of us to get up in the morning and take action.
Willpower and intention¹ are what made the great discoveries that built our civilization.
In self-development and external actions, a person constantly needs to overcome his laziness. It is associated with the instincts of the body, which encourage not to waste extra energy, not to waste forces that may be useful for obtaining food and overcoming dangers.
It becomes clear that laziness is a concept associated with animal reflexes. To develop, a person needs to overcome it with the help of strong will and intention.
Intention and will are especially important in magical and psychic practices, when human psychic strength is needed. Only with the help of these qualities can one develop superpowers and activate the brain.
Willpower is a person’s most important tool on the path to success in mastering psychic potential. With the help of developed intention, he can influence the world, transform it at will.
The path to success cannot be overcome without will and internal discipline. Will is a force that allows you to materialize what you want into reality:
- move objects with your gaze;
- change the weather;
- inspire others with your thoughts and intentions;
- much more.
How to develop willpower?
To perform extrasensory influences, it is necessary to develop willpower. It is because of the lack of will that any attempts at action fail.
How to develop willpower and strong intention? This article describes a simple and amazing effective exercise. By doing it daily, you will gain unshakable strength!
Any of your undertakings will end in grandiose success, and all your desires will be fulfilled: great strength of intention will be the key!
In order to practice this technique regularly, you need to be patient. Despite the apparent simplicity of this exercise, it can be difficult to perform at the beginning.
Amazing technique!
The following requirements must be met before the exercise.
- Performed in the morning on an empty stomach. Before it you can drink some water, milk, coffee or tea.
- During the exercise, your back, neck and head must be kept straight, at the same level, without leaning on anything.
- The practitioner's face faces north, eyes closed.
- The muscles are maximally relaxed.
In this exercise, only the muscles of the arms and shoulders work, but they need to be relaxed by force of will.
Performance technique
1. The practitioner sits cross-legged in a Turkish style on a folded blanket or mat. The surface must be hard: the floor or a chair.
2. A person joins his hands in the chest area, at the level of the fourth Anahata chakra² so that the palms touch each other.
3. Raises his folded hands up over his head so that the tips of his index fingers touch the point between the eyebrows: where the third eye is located.
4. Then the practitioner raises his folded hands above his head and holds them there for a long time.
The time for performing the exercise should begin with one minute of holding, gradually increasing by a minute per day. In a month of training you can reach 30 minutes a day, and in two – one hour.
5. During this pose, the practitioner (see picture) concentrates attention in the area of the third eye - this is the main center of the will of the brain.
Over time, you will have enormous willpower! This will affect the power of thought: every thought will be saturated with energy, and every thought will begin to come true in life much faster!
This method is simple and practical. It gives amazing results! By practicing it daily, you will feel incredibly strong.
You will feel great strength and power over everything that surrounds you. This will give rise to a feeling of complete confidence and inner dignity.
Other people will respect you, and your opinion will become an immutable truth for them. This influence occurs unconsciously: people will feel you as a carrier of great power and will automatically be drawn to you.
Attention!
At the same time, as you begin to feel that the power of intention has become stronger and has a greater influence on the world around you, you need to increase your awareness and control over emotions!
You will need strict self-discipline. Any uncontrollable outburst of feelings, anger, malice or hatred of yours can cause great harm to those around you.
Higher powers closely monitor such people and how they use their will. The law of karma³ always works!
Notes and feature articles for deeper understanding of the material
¹ Intention - the orientation of consciousness, thinking towards any object; This orientation is based on desire, intention (
How to develop willpower and why it is so important to do this - you will find answers to all these questions in this article. There are many definitions for willpower. My definition is the following. Willpower is a measure of an individual’s ability to translate his intentions into reality, dictated by considerations of reasonable planning, despite momentary impulses (desires, habits, weaknesses, emotions, fears, etc.).
For the task developing willpower ideally suited are those methods that, in their main purpose, serve completely different purposes, but indirectly contribute to the development of the above-mentioned quality.
This may seem like a complicated, cumbersome definition, but in fact, if you look at specific examples, it becomes clear what I'm talking about.
Theory
Why is willpower needed?
But before, I ate meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and could not imagine a different order of things.
I'm not a passionate animal rights activist or a fanatical preacher. healthy image life. I don’t eat meat because it’s easy for me to do; it’s not difficult for me to deny myself this pleasure, for the sake of healthy eating principles and just for the sake of experimentation. Because I trained myself to say no to my body and say yes to my mind.
The pleasure of eating meat is not a significant criterion for me to eat it if I am pursuing some long-term goals. It’s easy for me to refuse the pleasure that alcohol brings, I can get up early and do exercises, no matter how much I like it. This is not a big difficulty for me, my body listens to me.
Are our body's desires really that important?
Some of you who are now reading this article may think that denying yourself some pleasure every day is incredibly difficult. This is wrong. In order to refute this belief, I described my experience.
Now, to many of you, the small pleasures of the body may seem significant and great. You may think that you can't live without your habits. I assure you, this is an illusion.
As a child, I thought that driving a car and, at the same time, navigating the city was very difficult. Now I can easily drive a car and know where to go and where to turn.
Once you educate your body, all its desires will no longer be so significant and important. Do not think that I am preaching some kind of monastic lifestyle, calling for getting rid of attachment to the body and becoming a pure spirit. This is impossible. I just want you to become masters of your body, not slaves to it.
This is great happiness and freedom, I assure you.
Practice
Willpower is like a muscle; to develop it, you need to exercise it regularly. Every time you act contrary to your momentary desires, this muscle grows and strengthens. Once you stop doing this, the muscle becomes flabby and weak.
Start small
This is the motto of my site - “start small.” If this is your first time going to Gym, then you will not lift a heavy barbell, because in this case you will strain yourself and abandon this sport.
It's better to start with light exercises. The muscles should slowly get used to the load if you haven’t stressed them much before. You don’t need to strive to achieve everything at once. Start with something easy.
The following tips will help you move in the right direction.
Do not try to immediately implement all the recommendations that you will see below!
It is very difficult for an unprepared person to do this. Therefore, adequately assess your own capabilities.Implement these principles in your life gradually, starting with one thing. For example, introduce morning exercises into your daily routine, for starters. Try to meditate every day, at least for 10 minutes. Then move on to try the other tips when you're ready.
Organize your daily routine
Start getting up early
You don't need to sleep until you stop. Try to get up at the same time every day. Your day begins with waking up, if you follow the lead of your body and continue to sleep, then the will muscle is not set in motion and does not warm up.
If you start to be lazy when you wake up, then throughout the day it is much more difficult to force yourself to do something.
But if you make an effort and force yourself to get up, even if your body desperately resists, you are using your will, stretching this “muscle” at the very beginning of the day. This will make any activity you do on this day easier and more productive. Physical activity it goes much easier if you have stretched all your muscles in the morning. The same thing happens with willpower. We need to tone this muscle.
The sleep-wake schedule is not only an element of discipline, it is very beneficial for health.
Plan your affairs and follow the plan
Train yourself to follow the plan. Set yourself daily, weekly, monthly or open-ended goals and meet them. For example: write a 3,000 word article on self-development today, finish reading this book to the end, read one book a month, wash the dishes after every meal, clean out your hard drive monthly, etc.
So that you are not tempted to come up with a reason not to do something, then make it a rule that the thing must be done anyway and the plan must not be violated.
For example, if you plan to jog three times a week, you can distribute the activities throughout the days as convenient for you, the only requirement is that the plan must be completed by the end of the week.
If you have never run today, and today is already Sunday, you will have to run three times that day.
Don't put it off until later
If you don’t have any objective reasons for not doing what you promised yourself to do, do it. Even if you are lazy and don’t want to, still keep your promise, learn to step over your “I don’t want to.” Develop your will muscle.
It's better to do something while you can now. Who knows what will happen next? We don't know how to look into the future. What if there will be a lot of things to do, and then we won’t have time to do anything at all? If you do everything on time, life becomes much more comfortable and the burden of unfinished business does not put pressure on the psyche. I know this from myself.
Play sports
Sport perfectly disciplines and develops willpower, because physical exercise This is a constant overcoming of laziness and body resistance. During each lesson you have to step over yourself, through muscle fatigue and discomfort.
Many people don't exercise: because they lack willpower. But this is a self-contained process. It takes physical strength to lift a barbell 100 times in a row, but if you lift that barbell every day, your strength will increase and sooner or later you will do 100 lifts.
If you are not yet involved in sports, then start doing simple exercises in the morning. These exercises should follow a routine, for example, doing exercises 5 times a week.
Exercises in the morning can tone the “will muscle”. If you do exercises, then throughout the day it will be easier for you to fight temptations and do what you planned.
Do less nonsense
Limit the time you spend doing mindless, mind-numbing activities like watching TV shows or working on. Read more fiction and educational literature, spend time outdoors. Develop yourself, improve your skills, learn new things from books and other sources.
Make promises to yourself and keep them
Turn “must” into “I give you my word.” For example, you think, “I need to clean the house.” Has it often happened to you that things didn’t go further than this thought? You have been suffering from nonsense all day, and you still haven’t put the house in order, despite the fact that you thought it would be nice to do this. Therefore, turn “must” into “I give my word” or “I promise.” “I promise to clean up the apartment by the end of the day!” Let keeping your promise become a matter of honor for you. Promises help maintain self-discipline.
Turn any intention you have into a promise. Have you decided that you spend a lot of time in front of the computer? Stop berating yourself for this! Better promise yourself not to surf the Internet in the evening at home after work!
Maintain hygiene and keep your surroundings tidy
Hygiene is also an element of discipline that is subject to strict routines. Brush your teeth twice a day, wash, bathe and shave regularly. (I hope everyone does this, I wrote this just in case)
Keep your home and work place tidy. Clean up, wash the dishes, clean the furniture. Organize your desk drawers and your computer's hard drive. Delete unnecessary files from folders, get rid of inactive contacts in the QIP or Skype list, clean your email from spam. Create a logical directory structure on your computer.
Contain your gastronomic weaknesses
Eat at fast foods less often. Learn to cook. Eat more healthy foods. Try cooking nutritious and tasty dish for a meat-free dinner at least once a week. This experience may be new and interesting for you.
Eliminate, at least partially, sausages and other nasty things from your diet. Read articles about healthy eating and try to follow the recommendations given there.
If you eat a lot and have problems with overweight, eat less. Learn to tolerate mild hunger. In this case, organize a nutritional routine and follow it. Eat three meals a day and do not eat anything in between.
Work on breaking bad habits
Smoke less, or better yet, quit altogether. Every cigarette, every bottle of beer is a little weakness. These weaknesses lead to the degradation of the will and the triumph of lower needs over our mind.
Practice meditation
You can start developing willpower with meditation. Incorporate this practice into your daily routine. Meditation helps you relax and put your thoughts in order. With practice, you can learn to control your emotions and your body.
It was meditation that gave a significant impetus to my personal development. At the time when I first started meditating, I drank, smoked, did not exercise, and could not plan my tasks and get things done. All this came later, but it all began with meditation.
This practice is very good for discipline, since the classes imply a strict routine: you must meditate twice a day to achieve the desired effect. You should put aside all your affairs and sit in one position until the end of the session and try to keep your attention with one thing. If attention wanders to the side, you return it to the starting point. This is a great workout for willpower.
In Kelly McGonigal's book it is written that Scientific research found that meditation increases gray matter content in the prefrontal cortex. It is this area of the brain that is responsible for willpower, while impulsive decisions are controlled by the central part of it.
“Over time, their [meditators’] brain begins to work like a well-oiled machine of will,” says the author of the book. And indeed it is. It was regular meditation that helped me strengthen my willpower when I lacked it so much. For me, it all started with this practice, and then everything else followed: sports, giving up cigarettes and alcohol, and discipline. Meditation has turned me, a lazy and disorganized person, into a more collected and disciplined person.
Even one single session of meditation can charge you with a “reserve of willpower” for the rest of the day. I noticed that if I don't meditate in the morning, my “willpower muscle” will not be in good shape. Then things will be difficult and with resistance, and it will be difficult for me to overcome temptations and temptations. But when I meditate and do exercises in the morning, I bring my willpower into tone and into full readiness. Things are going easy, and plans are being fulfilled!
This is far from the most difficult exercise, but it is extremely effective. In my opinion, meditation is the best and most effective way to develop willpower. I recommend starting with it. You can find out about this from the article at the link.
Don't hesitate, start taking action tomorrow!
Start working on developing willpower tomorrow: get up half an hour early and do some exercises! After this, tell yourself that from now on you will get up half an hour earlier every morning and do the exercises. After that, go to the bookstore and buy yourself a good, educational book, and start reading it.
Let this be your first step towards developing willpower.
I read somewhere that walking on two legs is a very difficult task for the brain. When you walk, you are in a permanent state of controlled fall, your brain sends a huge number of signals to keep your body balanced.
This is why it is so difficult to teach a robot to walk on two legs, so far, as far as I know, this is an impossible task for science. Nature solved this problem long ago.
Willpower also protects you from falling into the abyss of depravity and laziness. While you are awake, thousands of small desires attack your brain, and you risk deviating from the intended course, falling halfway: “sleep more,” “do it later,” “you won’t be able to, it’s very hard,” “stop and take a break, work won’t do.” will leave”, etc.
Movement towards the goal is a constant controlled fall. The less you fall, the sooner you achieve what you want. But once you start constantly falling off your feet, your fragile balance will turn into an eternal fall to God knows where...