Der Oberländer Aufstand 1705 Und Die Sendlinger Schlacht 1018033108, 1018033106, 9781018033105

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Level-Up Your Self-Discipline Understand the Neuroscience of Self-Discipline, Control Your Emotions, Overcome Procrastination, and Achieve Your Difficult Goals Som Bathla www.sombathla.com

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Table of Contents Introduction My Personal Experience Lack of Willpower- Barrier to any Change Chapter 1: Self-Discipline: The Engine of Success Willpower and Self-Discipline Defined The Marshmallow Test Get One Dollar Now or Two Dollars Next Week A New Zealand Study Strengthen Willpower to Redesign your Life Chapter 2: Why Do People Lose Self-Control? Delay Discounting Principle Hot and Cool System (of the Brain) False Hope Syndrome What-the-Hell Effect Stress Depletes Willpower Restraint Bias Parkinson’s Principle Chapter 3: Key Factors to Activate Self-Discipline Prefrontal Cortex of Your Brain and Self-Discipline Your Strong ‘Why’ to Trigger Self Discipline What Really Motivates You? (Money or something else?) Growth Mindset Activates Discipline Use Commitment Devices Chapter 4: Willpower Is Limited – Learn to Optimize to Maximise Results Willpower Depletion Decision Fatigue

Energy Budget Model Change Your Surrounding Environment to Build Self-Discipline Find Ways to Control (or Avoid) Temptations Chapter 5: Neuroscience-backed Habits to Strengthen Willpower Mindfulness Rewires Your Self-Control Mechanism Quality Sleep to Boost Willpower Move Your Body to Generate Willpower at Will Use Cold Showers to Toughen-up Don’t Break the Chain Start Your Day by Eating the Frog Chapter 6: Learn Mental Toughness Strategies of Navy SEALs Four Pillars of Mental Toughness 40% Rule 4x4 Breathing Technique Chapter 7: How to Control Your Emotions & Foster Self-Control Surfing Your Urges Exercise How to Quit Bad Habits: 4-Step Process Make Choices before They Become Emotional Use Implementation Intention (If-Then Approach) Chapter 8: Make Your Future-Self a Friend & Beat Instant Gratification Do You Really Care About Your Future? How to Make Your Future-Self Your Friend? Conclusion May I ask you for a small favor? Full Book Summary Preview of the book “Trigger High Performance” Introduction My Books in Personal Mastery Series

Introduction ********* "The one quality which sets one man apart from another— the key which lifts one to every aspiration while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity—is not talent, formal education, nor intellectual brightness—it is self-discipline.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt My Personal Experience “Hey, it’s already 7:45, and you’re still at home. You’ll find the school door closed for sure today, and we’ll have to apologize the school principal to let you in,” my wife screamed at my daughter again in the morning. “Why don’t you get up bit early, despite me trying to wake you up ten times?” she continued with frustration. Quite frankly, this wasn’t the first time for us. It happens quite often, as my thirteen-year-old daughter needs to wake up early in the morning to reach her school by 8 a.m. When I dropped her off for school, my daughter was sad about the morning’s scolding. “Hey Dad, why does mamma get angry with me only in the morning? It spoils my day. And it’s really difficult for me to wake up in the morning despite trying hard,” she complained. As any father would, I tried to explain her, “Don’t think negative about your mamma’s words, rather try to understand that it’s not a good idea to be late for school, and then request school authorities to let you in the building. The best thing to do is to go to bed earlier, get enough sleep, and then wake up in the morning refreshed. It is all a matter of maintaining some discipline in your sleeping schedule. That’s it.” She retorted, “Come on, Daddy. None of you at home sleep early, and I am told to sleep early. How can I do it alone?”

Her answer hit me like a ton of bricks. I suddenly realized that I was expecting my thirteen-year-old daughter to wake up earlier, while there was a lack of discipline on my and my spouse’s part as parents. I was not creating an environment where lights would switch off by 10 p.m. every night, so my kids could get enough sleep and start the next day better. This is nothing but a lack of self-discipline. And I assume this might be an experience common among most parents. In case you don’t have children at home, or live alone or with your friend or better-half, you might have a different situation that requires exercising some kind of self-discipline. Maybe you prefer sitting in front of the TV watching late-night shows until 2 a.m., despite having to wake up at 6.30 a.m. and get ready for work. Even if you know that you have to prepare for a Monday morning presentation for a crucial meeting with one of your firm’s important clients, and you are stressed too, still you stay up late Sunday nights binging on TV shows. Perhaps you are overweight but unable to resist your temptation to chow down on giant-sized burgers, pizzas, or sweetened highly-carbonated beverages, despite being aware that lack of control is only adding to your woes. Or in case, you smoke, you already know (in fact, every smoker knows it) that cigarette smoking is injurious to health. Even cigarette companies are mandated in most of the countries to put a big warning sign on each pack, stating “cigarette smoking is injurious to your health”, with images of dreadful consequences, people suffer. Or maybe your doctor has told you to avoid smoking or drinking for the sake of your health, but despite your good intentions, you generally give in—merely at the sight of cigarette or alcohol. One can go on and on and cite many such instances, where people lack selfcontrol. They don’t have the willpower to resist the temptations of eating, drinking, and entertaining, which may put all their future at a stake. Lack of Willpower- Barrier to any Change American Psychological Association conducts an annual nationwide survey to examine the state of stress across the country and understand its impact on its people. In 2011, this survey reported[1] that 27% of the respondents

complained that a lack of willpower was the most significant barrier to the change. So the big question is, why aren’t we able to resist temptations, despite being rational and grown-up people? What You Will Discover in This Book This book is all about explaining the human psychology and neuroscience behind our irrational behaviors and actions, triggered by our emotions, and how can we use different strategies to mould our behavior with a few simple tweaks and improve the quality of our days and lives. You will understand the power of self-discipline in accelerating your growth to shape your future for better, as has been proven by scientific studies conducted by researchers. You will explore deeper into human psychology to understand why you do what you do. The book will explain you why people get tripped off and succumb to temptations despite being aware of consequences of their selfdefeating behaviors. You will then learn how certain extraneous factors are responsible for draining your willpower and the ways to overcome them. If you are sincere about mastering self-discipline you will learn the four key tenets followed by Navy SEALs to build mental toughness. You will also learn how by only instilling only a handful of mini habits, you can start working without any need of willpower—and be on autopilot mode. This book is not merely a general advice book; rather it is filled with psychological research conducted by renowned researchers, who spent decades in researching the concept of willpower. Also, the scientific studies in this book will help you to understand the root behind your particular behaviors, and how you can build self-discipline with proven principles and by implementing effective habits. And now without further ado, let’s get started.

Chapter 1: Self-Discipline: The Engine of Success ********* “Your ability to discipline yourself to set clear goals, and then to work toward them every day, will do more to guarantee your success than any other single factor.” ~ Brian Tracy Willpower and Self-Discipline Defined Let’s start by understanding the concept and meaning of willpower and selfdiscipline. While willpower is the ability of your mind to keep itself under control, selfdiscipline or self-control is the action of consistently doing or avoiding something despite distracting temptations. According to most psychological scientists, as reported by the APA[2], willpower can be defined as: The ability to delay gratification, resisting short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. The capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling, or impulse. The ability to employ a “cool” cognitive system of behavior rather than a “hot” emotional system. Conscious, effortful regulation of the self by the self. A limited resource capable of being depleted. Collins Dictionary defines self-discipline as the ability to control yourself and to make yourself work hard or behave in a particular way without needing anyone else to tell you what to do. To put it in simpler terms, self-discipline helps you take control your thoughts, emotions and behavior, and empowers you take action in a particular way (that directs you in a positive direction or stops you from

going in a negative direction). Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University and a researcher on willpower, describes three necessary components for achieving your goals: 1) First, you need to establish motivation for change and set a clear goal. 2) Second, you need to monitor your behavior towards that goal. 3) The third component is willpower. Whether your goal is to lose weight, kick a smoking habit, study more, or spend less time on social media, willpower is a critical step to achieving that outcome. How Willpower can Change the Trajectory of Life As we all know, a solid building requires a rock solid foundation. That applies to planning and structuring our lives, too. The robust foundation of our childhood ensures that we become smarter and stronger adults. Selfdiscipline is one of the most important skills, which, if developed sooner in life, will help in almost all areas of life, be it health, finance, relationship, or career. One study conducted decades back has already shown how selfdiscipline mastered in early childhood helps to achieve growth in all areas of one’s adult life. The Marshmallow Test If you are not brand new in your exploration of the concept of self-discipline, you might have already heard about the famous marshmallow test case study. In almost any discussion on the willpower and self-control, you will invariably find this research and discussion, as this research showed some powerful effects of self-discipline on the overall well-being of humans. This test was conducted in 1960s by psychologist and researcher Walter Mischel, who did a study on school kids to test their self-control. Here is how the test was conducted: A group of pre-schoolers were made to sit in the room. The researcher offered each of them a marshmallow. But before they could gulp that sweet candy, the researchers offered them with two simple choices: 1. They could eat one marshmallow immediately; or 2. Those who could wait for the researcher to come back after twenty minutes, would get two marshmallows instead of one.

It seems like a rational choice to wait just twenty minutes and then get two marshmallows instead of one. Looks like a simple maths, isn’t it? But here is what actually happened. After giving this choice, the researcher went out of this room, leaving children with their marshmallows, but he started watching the kids from a one-way glass window to see how the children would react in this situation. As you might have guessed already, kids are kids. Some of them couldn’t wait and instantly swallowed their marshmallow and were very happy. But there were few others, who behaved more rationally. These children calculated: two marshmallows merely by a wait of twenty minutes. They resorted to focusing on other things to divert their attention from the one marshmallow lying in front of them in order to resist their temptations. These children exercised their willpower to delay the instant gratification in order to get a bigger reward. But this research did not end here. Researchers continued to follow these pre-schoolers not for years, but for decades. In a 2011 study[3], they tracked the 59 subjects, then in their forties, who participated in the marshmallow test as children. It was noted that the children who were able to resist their temptations and had delayed the need of instant gratification were able to score higher SAT scores, get better grades, were more focused, and were way more successful as compared to those who failed in the marshmallow test. You can see how inculcating self-discipline from an early age helps to create a better future in adults in almost all areas of their lives. Additionally, the researchers tested the brain activity in the subjects by use of function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique. When presented with tempting stimuli, individuals with low self-control showed brain patterns that differed from those with high self-control. The researchers found that the prefrontal cortex, a region that controls executive functions, such as making choices, was more active in subjects with higher self-control. And the ventral striatum, a region that processes desires and rewards, showed boosted activity in those with lower self-control. Let’s also look at a few more studies conducted that also showed how

delaying instant gratification proved to be a real game changer for people. Get One Dollar Now or Two Dollars Next Week This study[4] was conducted at the University of Pennsylvania by psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman on a few eighth grade students. During the test, the students were given the option of receiving one dollar immediately or waiting a week to get two dollars the next week. This was again a test of how the students can delay their instant gratification and control their temptation for a larger reward in future. The researchers noted that the students who demonstrated more self-discipline had performed much better in their studies, got good grades, got admission to highly ranked universities, as compared to their counterparts who had lesser self-control. In this study, the researchers also concluded that selfcontrol was more important than the IQ of the students in getting into good schools or getting better jobs. A New Zealand Study Another study[5] conducted in Dunedin, New Zealand that also demonstrated that the benefits of willpower extended well beyond the college years. In this study, researchers took a control group of 1,000 people for a long-term health study, who were tracked from birth until thirty-two years old. The researchers noted that by ten years old, many children had mastered selfcontrol, but others were failing to achieve this skill. Then, researchers followed them over a period of thirty years and traced the consequences of their childhood levels of self-control on their health, wealth, and possible criminal offenses. The research concluded that individuals who had a higher self-control during childhood, as reported by their teachers, parents, and the children themselves, became adults who had much better physical and mental health. They were also better off financially. They also concluded, based on court convictions and police records from New Zealand and Australia that children with poor self-control were more likely to be convicted of a criminal offence. All of these studies are clear evidence that resisting short-term temptations, and overpowering the desires for instant gratification for a better future by

exercising willpower proved to be highly advantageous in the lives of people. Strengthen Willpower to Redesign your Life Let’s list down some of the key benefits that you can get by strengthening your willpower muscles: You can prioritize your work. Self-discipline gives you a confidence that you can commit yourself and continue to take actions towards your long-term goals. You know that with self-discipline, you are not a slave to your temptations, you know that you can stay committed to your goals longer, and therefore, significantly increase the chances of achieving your goals. You feel a sense of accomplishment. Through the power of selfdiscipline, you don’t drift from your path. You stay focused and therefore start getting results sooner, which gives you a sense of fulfilment and further boosts your morale and confidence. You feel in command of your life. You know that whatever actions you decide, you will stick to those plans and work longer and progress faster. You feel like you’re in the driver seat of your life and not merely a victim of your circumstances. Self-discipline brings freedom. It seems to be counterintuitive, but if you can manage your time well by exercising self-control, you increase your focus on your work. You can finish your work faster, more effectively, and this gives you the freedom to spend your saved time with your family or friends or on activities that you enjoy most. And this was rightly said by a wise philosopher, Aristotle: “Through discipline comes freedom.” You improve your relationships. Through enhanced willpower, you improve your relationship with yourself and the people around you. You see yourself in control of your life as a whole, and this empowers you with quality time to think and act. Since you are not stressed or

anxious, you look at the situations and people more compassionately and listen with empathy, and therefore you develop and improve your relationships with others. You get out of your own way. More often, it is our own negative and distracted thinking that deters our progress. Enhanced willpower helps us to stick to our guns in the difficult times, and gradually, we are able to conquer our inner critic, which is one of the most dangerous obstacles on our way to success. You can control your behavior. Willpower strengthens you to take a tougher stand during tempting situations that can otherwise derail you from your path and can adversely affect your progress. You can better sail through this situation with self-discipline and can even get rid of your addictions. In this section, you learned about why self-discipline is such a powerful weapon in your armoury that can help you win any situation of your life. It is an engine for your success. But despite knowing that we can improve our lives through self-discipline, why do we often get tripped up and lose discipline? Let’s find the answer in the next section of the book. CHAPTER 1 KEY TAKEAWAYS The three necessary components for achieving any goal, as stated by psychologist Roy Baumeister are: Establishing motivation for change and set a clear goal; Monitoring behavior towards that goal; and Strengthening your willpower. Many longitudinal studies clearly show that those who developed willpower muscles in their childhood made significant progress in all areas of their lives even decades later, as compared to people who succumb to instant gratification.

They scored higher SAT scores, got better grades, were more focused, and were way more successful. The prefrontal cortex, a region that controls executive functions, such as making choices, was more active in subjects with higher selfcontrol The researchers also concluded that self-control was more important than the IQ of the students in getting into good schools or getting better jobs. Based on court convictions and police records from New Zealand and Australia, researchers concluded that children with poor self-control were more likely to be convicted of a criminal offence. Key Benefits of levelling up your willpower: You prioritize your work. You feel a sense of accomplishment and it boosts your morale and confidence. You feel in command of your life and not act as a victim of your circumstances. Self-discipline brings freedom, as you can finish your important projects in time, and free up your time for activities that you love to do. You improve your relationships, as you can give quality time to them. You get out of your own way, as you don’t listen to ever-chattering inner critic and train your mind to put consistent efforts.

Chapter 2: Why Do People Lose Self-Control? *********

“With self-discipline, all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream." ~ Theodore Roosevelt Would you ever visit a doctor who writes prescriptions without a thorough diagnosis of your ailment? Obviously, no one would ever. Because the best way to handle any particular problem is to first look at root cause of the problem, as it helps you to understand and then eradicate it from its root. It’s important to dig deeper into the problem and find the real reasons behind it before we can find out an appropriate solution for it. Lack of willpower, as you noted earlier is one of major reasons that people fail to bring any significant positive changes into their lives. Therefore, in this section, we will talk about key factors responsible for draining your willpower and giving way to your temptations. Trust me, I’ll not simply state some empty rhetoric like lack of positive thinking or just some motivational or woo-woo stuff. You’ll understand how all these factor have a strong underlying psychological reasons (proven by enough studies and research), that will further prompt you to get into an introspection mode. Once you are aware about these factors, you’ll be able to identify your particular life situations, where your behavior and actions were influenced by these factors, and therefore you couldn’t get the desired results. Let’s jump directly into these psychological factors. Delay Discounting Principle

Human beings have travelled a really long journey to reach at the level of intellect where we can say without any doubt that humans are the most intellectually evolved species on the planet. Therefore, it seems a fair assumption that humans can make logical decisions based on proper rationale, as compared to other species. But one study conducted at Harvard University[6] will surprise you about the lack of self-discipline in humans, despite being rationally aware about the disadvantage of taking a different decision. In this study, there were two groups formed: one of chimpanzees and another one of adult humans. Both groups were give a simple choice—either to accept two treats immediately or wait for a period of two minutes and then get six treats. Anyone would assume that it should be logical and quite a no-brainer for adult human beings to wait for two more minutes, and get thrice the amount of treats. But the results of the research were astonishing because it showed that chimpanzees were more patient to the delay of instant gratification compared to humans. Chimpanzees waited 72% of the time, while humans could only wait for 19% of the time, when presented with the choices above. Isn’t it surprising that, despite human beings being considered intelligent and evolved species, they couldn’t make their decision based on a rational approach of getting more reward with a minor delay of just two minutes? Why did this happen? Researchers suggested that most of our decisions are based on emotions, howsoever we consider ourselves as rational beings. How come a wait time of 120 seconds made the human beings behavior completely irrational as compared to chimpanzees? Economists call this concept delay discounting. Delay discounting means that the longer you have to wait for a reward, the less it is worth to you. Even small delays can dramatically lower the perceived value. With a delay of just two minutes, six treats became worth less than two immediate treats. The value of each treat shrank as wait time increased, and therefore, two treats immediately seemed more valuable than six treats in two minutes. How can we curtail the need for instant gratification, and act more like the chimpanzees (at least from the perspective of conquering our desire of instant

gratification)? Here is a formula known as the 10-Minute Rule. Let’s see how you can use it to your advantage. Next time you get some urge to grab something to quench your instant gratification need, give yourself a wait time of ten minutes before you take any action. In ten minutes, your rational brain will justify the reasons to your emotional brain to delay something for a larger and better future benefit. Moreover, giving ten minutes of waiting time is also an exercise for your willpower muscle (we will talk more about this in a later section). Now assuming that even after waiting for ten minutes, you still want to have that thing, then you may have it. But here is a condition, don’t stand directly in the front of that temptation for those ten minutes. You have to maintain a distance from your temptation to let your logical and rational brain get a space to think, assess the alternatives and then offer you with some rational choice. You can use this principle for avoiding junk food. Give yourself ten minutes of waiting time and think rationally about the disadvantages of the junk food and the advantages of healthy food. Same applies to doing exercise. You have to convince your mind to do the exercise or jog or run for ten minutes and then decide whether you want to relax or continue exercising. Subjecting yourself to this ten minute window of waiting before you give into your temptations will help you to make a distance from your strong impulses and gradually strengthen your willpower muscle (as there is no other way to build any muscle except putting them to exercise). Hot and Cool System (of the Brain) Walter Mischel, the researcher behind the marshmallow test attributed the reason for willpower’s failure or success to our brain’s “hot and cool system” He explained that the cool system of our brain is our cognitive portion (i.e., it is the thinking system that stores the knowledge and information that you have gained by experience). This system is responsible for making rational decisions and suggests the right actions to be taken in the direction of your

goals. This portion reminds you to wait in order to get more marshmallows after waiting for some time. But there is another portion of our brain that he calls a hot system, which reacts on impulse, and emotions in the real time. This system is responsible for quick and reflexive responses when it is presented with some instant temptations. When this system operates, you choose to pop in one candy immediately, without even thinking of the long term implication of losing 50% just by not waiting for some time. The behavior of most people is governed by this ‘hot’ system, which overpowers their cool system, thus resulting int0 impulsive actions. When you act under the influence of this hot system, you don’t pay attention to the long-term ramifications of this action. Take a real-life example: When a rapist or murderer is under grip of the hot system, he is under strong influence of the emotion of sex or anger. In control of such emotions, he completely disregards any logical thoughts about the long-term ramifications of conducting a heinous crime (i.e., spending precious years of his life in prison). That’s what happens when willpower fails. The exposure to “hot” stimuli overpowers the cool system, and that leads to an impulsive action of committing a crime. You can personally experience this hot and system of your brain by recalling any of your past memories and the action you had taken in those moments. False Hope Syndrome False hope syndrome is all about setting an unrealistic expectation about the speed, amount, ease, and consequence of changes you want to make in your life. Psychologist Peter Herman from University of Toronto studied why people fail so often despite being fully charged with motivation and good intentions. It is because generally people set themselves up for too highly ambitious goals, and that too within a short period of time that is very difficult to achieve with their current resources- like setting a goals to earn a million dollars by next year, when starting business from scratch, and lacking necessary skillset and experience.

Some people might argue why they shouldn’t set big goals. After all, much of personal development literature teaches us this, like Big Hairy Audacious Goals by Jim Collins, The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone, and quotations from Les Brown like, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among stars.” But here is the problem. After listening to all these highly inspirational thoughts, most people generally choose goals that are highly unrealistic. When starting out, most people think that those who could not achieve their goals might not have followed the right strategies to progress faster. Such people think very highly about their goals. They think, so what if others have taken years to earn their first million. I will become a multimillionaire in one year.” There is nothing bad in thinking big, but there has to be a holistic approach to that big thinking. The holistic approach requires being mindful of the challenges, uncertainties, and obstacles in your path, and would require either reducing the size of goal or to increase the resources and time to achieve that goal. Being unmindful of the resources it takes (like manpower and money) or time it would take to achieve your goal is a sure way to burn out and quit sooner. It applies to every aspect in life in which you want to make a change. Be it making money, losing weight, or quitting a bad habit, you always think that things will be easier. You think that you can lose fifty pounds in three months, or you think that you will be able to quit smoking entirely in one week, even though you consume two full packs of cigarettes a day. But when rubber meets the road, it turns out to be way harder. You come across those challenges that you even never imagined. Your projection of money or time starts appearing faulty, when rubber meets the road. The resources you relied upon most didn’t seem to work or worked just half as effectively as you thought. People you trusted upon left you in mid-way of your journey. When you aim for drastic changes in your life in too short time, you often hit failure. In your overambitious race for achieving more and faster, you simply

misjudge the difficulties coming your way. When you give yourself too much false hope (without taking into account the ground realities), you tend to fail more. And this can have a backfire effect instead of motivating you, because more you fail (due to false hope syndrome), the more you solidify the same old behavior that you wanted to alter in the first place. And you might even start doubting your abilities. It then becomes a vicious cycle—people who fall victim to this syndrome make frequent attempts to change themselves, yet fail each time because they set unrealistic impossible goals. The better approach to address this is to give yourself realistic goals. It’s not about thinking small—of course, you have to challenge yourself. But whatever you think, put some work into assessing the practical situation, resources and timelines. From the outside, it may seem that things might be easier; you might be allured by the quick hacks to get things done; you might have wrong assumptions or beliefs about your capabilities to stick to your goals longer and not throwing in the towel in the face of adversities. You need to readjust your hopes about the timelines, easiness of making any changes, and the resources to handle this false hope syndrome. One has to have the big goals in life, but while setting that goal, one should not be blinded to uncontrollable situations or unforeseen events that could arise and derail your progress. Losing five pounds in one month is a comparatively realistic goal to achieve, as compared to twenty pounds, and you will not feel burnt out. Similarly, you have a way better chance of reducing your cigarette consumption to one packet in the first week, as compared to making it zero cigarettes in the first week itself. Therefore, to avoid the risk of continuously failing, merely because of setting false hope, you need to readjust your thinking and take into account the realities before you set goals and expectations. What-the-Hell Effect There was a study conducted by dieting researchers Janet Polivy and Peter Herman on 144 adults with ages between eighteen to fifty years. The study

was to test how one felt if there were some lapse or break in routine of these people, who were trying to exercise self-control. This category included dieters, people engaged in disciplining themselves from smoking or consuming alcohol, and the like. Assume a situation that you are trying to quit drinking or minimise your drinking habit to one drink per occasion, and at times you fail to control your impulses- i.e., you indulged in booze (instead of some non-alcoholic beverage) or you gulped two drinks instead of one. In this study, the researchers found that once you encounter a minor lapse in your self-discipline in your routines, you are immediately filled with guilt. Guilt is not that big a concern, what follows is more problematic. Here is what happens next. Instead of controlling yourself and motivating yourself to get back to controlling your behavior, you tend to get swayed and indulged more into the very same bad habit that was the cause of your guilt. For example, if you couldn’t control your impulse and swallow way more pegs of booze than the limit you put yourself too, you would suffer from nausea, headache, and won’t feel well the next morning. But the bigger problem is that next day, you might again drink more. Why does it happen this way? Polivy and Herman call this circle of indulgence and regret leading to greater indulgence as the what-the-hell effect. In situations, where you can’t exercise self-control and therefore indulge in something that you wanted to avoid, you regret and feel guilty about it. As a natural progression, now you want to get rid of such emotions of guilt and want to feel better. But, unfortunately, the way human psychology works is that you tend to experience the good feeling through more indulgence in the same bad habit (that you wanted to get rid of). Ever recall having taken one slice of pizza, or a bite of cake, or one smoke of cigarette, you start to think that your whole plan of controlling your impulses or developing a better habit has gone out of window. Now you think, since you have already jeopardized the whole plan, so your inner critic tells that you can’t make this changes, so what’s the use of trying self-control any more, and then you indulge more in the bad habits..

The what-the-hell effect is responsible for people not being able to stay longer on their plans to improve in some area of their life, as any minor lapse in their progress backfires. Stress Depletes Willpower Whenever you are going through some stress, you easily get yourself indulged in something not good for you in the long-run. Some people eat more junk food during stress, others resort to smoking or drinking or any other kind of indulgences just to feel good. It is very difficult to control your impulses to avoid doing something that doesn’t serve you well, in those moments of stress. Why does it happen? It’s because stress eats up your willpower. Researcher Megan Oaten[7], conducted a study in Australia on students to see the effects of examinationrelated stress on their normal day-to-day activities. The study group was given some questionnaire to test the level of stress and its impact on their life routines. The research showed that exam stress significantly impaired their emotional control—these people reported an increase in smoking and caffeine consumption and decrease in consumption of healthy food. Moreover, they performed badly in their routine household chores and selfcare habits (i.e., lack of physical activities). The study showed the effect of stress on the self-control mechanism of human beings. The later sections of the book cover a variety of habits and mental tactics to reduce the stress that will eventually build up your willpower muscle. For now, let’s move on and understand few more psychological factors adversely affecting your willpower. Restraint Bias Restraint bias, as coined by some researchers in one study[8] refers to a phenomenon of human psychology, whereby a person believes he or she has more ability to control instinct in situations like craving for food, drug, sex arousal, etc., but in reality, it turns out to be an inflated belief about one’s abilities. When they face practical situations, such people find themselves overexposed to those very cravings and temptations.

This tendency to overestimate their capacity for impulse control, is known as restraint bias, and it leads to even higher rate of indulgence. One study showed that the recovering smokers with inflated beliefs about impulsecontrol exposed themselves more to the temptations, thus leading to higher rates of relapse even four months later. Therefore, restraint bias offers unique insights into how erroneous belief about self-restraint aggravates impulsive behavior. Most people make erroneous judgement, about their future behavior in particular situations. You might think highly about you, as if you can easily control your temptation (while others fail), but when the real situations arise, chances are you might fail to adhere to your perceived standards, thanks to restraint bias. Parkinson’s Principle Parkinson’s principle was coined after the name of a British historian and author named C. Northcote Parkinson, who wrote the book named Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress. This principle states that work expands itself so as to fill the time available for its completion. If you think a particular task would take a certain hours or days or weeks, you’ll be inclined to finish the around those timelines and not before. As human, it’s our natural tendency to allocate more time to any particular work rather than needed, because we want to have some safety margin to account for any exigencies. There is a major disadvantage to this approach, because we erroneously end up finishing work in longer allocated time that could be finished earlier. Due to miscalculation of the estimated time, we end up succumbing to our temptations -like more coffee breaks, smoking outside, or general chitchat with others. In fact, this Parkinson Principle falls on the extreme different tangent vis-àvis false hope syndrome. In false hope syndrome, you allocate too less time that it becomes too difficult to achieve; whereas in Parkinson’s Principle, if you allocate too much time, you too long a time in finishing up that activity

than needed. Here is how Parkinson’s principle works in reality. Imagine yourself working in an office job and you’re told that you can leave the office whenever you want, if the work assigned to you is completed sooner. Guess what will happen now. Suddenly, some people will prioritize and become more disciplined – they will finish their work early, and leave the office sooner. Take one more example, and probably you might have encountered this in your personal life as well many times. Imagine you have an exam or an interview or a customer meeting, which is scheduled to be held in three weeks. Suddenly, you get an email or message that said the event is preponed to next week. Now, what would be your instant reaction? It could be a scary feeling or frustration, anxiety, etc. in that moment, because of this sudden change. You might feel overwhelmed with the volume of work, you still need to do to get ready for that important event. But, there are strong chances that you’ll work hard to finish that work in the new shorter time period. You’d realize that the work that was supposed to be done in three weeks, you are able to do it in a week’s time. This is nothing but Parkinson’s Law in practice- means work expands to fill the time you allocate to it. Therefore, take advantage of this law to your advantage - allocate lesser time for any particular activity to avoid getting drifting to any time-wasting activities or procrastination, and thereby you can finish the task sooner.

The purpose of this section was to make your aware about why you do what you do, to help you get ready to take necessary actions for activating selfdiscipline that we will cover in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 2 KEY TAKEAWAYS There are many psychological factors due to which people lack self-control, few of them are listed below: Delay Discounting: Researchers found that the longer you have to wait for a reward, the less it is worth to you. Even small delays can dramatically lower the perceived value of the offer and therefore one is prompted for instant gratification. Hot and Cool System of Brain: Cool System is responsible for making rational decisions, whereas Hot System instantly reacts on impulses and emotions. The behavior of most people is governed by this ‘hot’ system, which overpowers their cool system, thus resulting int0 impulsive behavior. False Hope Syndrome: Humans have a general tendency of setting unrealistic expectations about the speed, amount, ease, and consequence of changes they want to make in your life. When you aim for drastic changes in your life in a too short time, you are almost destined to see failure often (unless you get very lucky). Such frequent failures due to aggressive goal setting have a backfire effect, as you might start doubting your abilities. What-the-Hell Effect: In situations, where you can’t exercise selfcontrol and therefore indulge in something that you wanted to avoid, you regret and feel guilty about it. As a natural progression, now you want to get rid of such emotions of guilt and want to feel better. But, unfortunately, the way human psychology works is that you tend to experience the good feeling through more indulgence in the same bad habit (that you wanted to get rid of). This circle of indulgence and regret leading to greater indulgence is termed as ‘what-the-hell effect’.

Stress depletes your willpower. The studies showed that stress caused an increase in smoking and caffeine consumption and decrease in consumption of healthy food. Moreover, people affected by stress performed badly in their routine household chores and self-care habits (i.e., lack of physical activities). Restraint Bias: refers to a phenomenon of human psychology, whereby a person believes he or she has more ability to control instinct in situations like craving for food, drug, sex arousal, etc., but in reality, it turns out to be an inflated belief about one’s abilities.

Parkinson’s Law: This principle states that work expands itself so as to fill the time available for its completion. If you allow more time to complete some work, you’ll lose your self-control and get easily distracted, as you think there is enough time to achieve your goal. You lose self-control and rather waste time in unproductive activities.

Chapter 3: Key Factors to Activate SelfDiscipline *********

“I could only achieve success in my life through selfdiscipline, and I applied it until my wish and my will became one.” ~Nikola Tesla In the chapters so far, you must have realized the significance of selfdiscipline as one of the most important factors to make any sustainable change in life. You must have also understood the hard truth that you don’t have an infinite supply of willpower, so you need to judicially use it and prioritize it for your most important actions. Now in this chapter, you will learn practical and effective ways to identify your key motivation for your most important goals, and therefore empower you to take consistent actions towards achieving them. Let’s start by examining the role of our brain in trigging your real motivation. Prefrontal Cortex of Your Brain and Self-Discipline First and foremost, let’s understand the role of one of the most important parts of our brain known as prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal cortex is the cerebral cortex that covers the front part of the frontal lobe of our brain – the physical part of our skull that surgeons can literally see and touch. Prefrontal Cortex is responsible for carrying out the executive function that includes the ability to differentiate among conflicting thoughts, determine good and bad, same and different, future consequences of current activities, working toward a defined goal, prediction of outcomes, expectation based on actions, and social "control" (the ability to suppress urges that, if not

suppressed, could lead to socially unacceptable outcomes). The three most important functions that are important, when one talks about self- discipline are (1) working memory, (2) impulse control, and (3) cognitive flexibility and adaptability. These functions are the core of the executive function, as they only help you to consistently prioritize the activities and pursue your goals. Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist at Stanford University further explains[9] that the job of today’s world prefrontal cortex is to keep nudging our brain to stay on track. He argues that our prefrontal cortex has three main regions and they have specific functions as below: a. The upper left side of prefrontal cortex. The region of the brain specializes in “I will” power helps you to keep engaged in your important work despite feeling boring or stuck. For example, writing is not always the most interesting activity, but this region tells the writers that they have a goal to publish a book in a given timelines, so we, as writers keep our nose to the grindstone, thanks to this “I will” power. b. The upper right side of prefrontal cortex This region of our brain is responsible for “I won’t” power. It holds you back from following every impulse or craving. You control your craving to go out for a smoke or restrain yourself from engaging in a coffee chit-chat, while in the middle of an important task, thanks to this portion of the prefrontal cortex. c. The lower middle portion of the pre frontal cortex This is the region is responsible for “I Want” power, which keeps track of our goals and desires. This region decides what you want. The more rapid the cells of this region fire, more you will be motivated to take actions despite temptation coming in the way. This portion remembers about what you truly want in the midst of screaming temptation and cravings. The above explanations show that our brains are equipped with the necessary infrastructure to resist temptation, and keep ourselves focused on our tasks. You only need to find the real motivation behind what you do, and brain will help you to stay committed to the work.

Let’s now explore what are the few ways to trigger your motivation towards any particular work further in this section. Your Strong ‘Why’ to Trigger Self Discipline Simon Sinek, in his great book Start with Why explains that most people pay way more importance to ‘How’ and ‘What’, but they don’t give the required attention to the Why. He explains that it is not the case with highly successful companies, because the core of their business is the deeper understanding about why they do what they do. He goes on further to explain the power of ‘Why’ by terming it as a Golden Circle.

In the picture, you see that the outermost circle covers ‘What’. This shows to the outside world about what do you offer as a product or service or what is your job title or function in any organization. The next inner circle covers ‘How’. It indicates to the world the actions you take to deliver your products/services and how you set yourself apart from others. The innermost circle talks about ‘Why’. This addresses the prime question: why do you do something; what is the deepest reason inside

you to do that activity. In his TED Talk, Simon explains the power of why through an example of buying a computer. A regular marketing message for selling computers hits you like this: “We make great computers. They're beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. Want to buy one?" But now look at how Apple communicates its message about selling computer. It says: Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?" Anyone can see the stark difference in both the marketing approaches. Merely by changing the order of message, people get interested to buy Apple computer. It proves that people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. Sinek explains that above is not any new scientific invention, rather it is already ingrained in our biology. The biology of our brain is structured in a particular way. If you look at a cross-section of the human brain, from the top down, the human brain is actually broken into three major components that correlate perfectly with the golden circle. Our newest brain, the outermost portion i.e., our neocortex, corresponds with the "what" level. The neocortex is responsible for all of our rational and analytical thought and language. The middle two sections make up our limbic brains, and our limbic brains are responsible for all of our feelings, like trust and loyalty. It's also responsible for all human behavior, all decision-making, and it has no capacity for language. Therefore, if someone communicates from the ‘outside-in’ level, we understand the logical and rational information i.e., feature, pricing, specifications. But this understanding is at the outer level, and it never drives our behavior. When we communicate from ‘inside-out’ we are able to drive the other people’s behavior and trigger them to take action. Therefore, the stronger the why you have, longer and better will be your motivation to stick to what you do. In this case, since you will be operating

from your deepest inner core, you will not require any force to keep you stay longer. You will experience the pull effect, as if something is pulling you towards doing that activity, rather than you forcing yourself. That way, you will find yourself more disciplined and focused toward the work. This is a situation, where your inside and outside are operating in total sync, you will be truly happy. As Mahatma Gandhi rightly said: "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." What Really Motivates You? (Money or something else?) Psychologist Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, authors of the book The Progress Principle did one survey of more than 600 managers across corporate groups to take their view about what matters most in the workplace when it comes to motivating employees so they deliver their best performance. Surprisingly, 95% of the managers wrongly believed that money is the biggest motivator and people deliver more results primarily by getting bonuses, promotions, and recognitions. And the above fact was further corroborated by another corresponding survey of over 12,000 employee diary entries of 238 employees in more than 7 countries – it was proved that the biggest motivator for them was not the money or financial reward, recognitions or incentives. People feel most motivated when they have a feeling that they are making consistent growth towards one meaningful goal. Only 5% of the managers could rightly understand the real motivator behind the people –progress in their pursuits. The feeling of growth or progress is one of the key motivators for anyone to stay committed for longer period in their career pursuits and not solely money. One more study[10] was conducted in year 2010 at Princeton University to assess influence of income on the happiness. The results were surprising, as they showed that an annual income up to $75,000 was considered as a benchmark for happiness. The lower a person's annual income falls below that benchmark, the unhappier he or she feels. But whatever more money they make beyond that benchmark of $75,000, it doesn’t give more happiness

in the same proportion. Though above study is around a decade old (and probably the numbers might have increased), but the point is that beyond a certain level of income, money does not increase an individual’s happiness in the same proportion – it only generates happiness when having it means that you don’t have to struggle for your basic necessities. In his book If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy?, author Raj Raghunathan states certain necessary prerequisites for leading a happy life, once you have reached at a level of financial success. He lists three most important factors that make people happy, after their basic needs of survival and being able to do things that they love comfortably are met through money. These are (1) the need for mastery (i.e., growth or progress; (2) the need for autonomy (you should not be controlled by someone else); and (3) the need for connectedness with like-minded people. Therefore, in order to activate self-discipline, you should consider growth as your main objective, and not put money as your sole yardstick. The need for consistent growth and evolution is the universal need of a human beings. You can convince your mind to resist temptations and take consistent actions, if you know that your actions are contributing towards your growth and achievement of your long term goals. Growth Mindset Activates Discipline According to psychology researcher Carol Dweck, there are two types of mindsets: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Your ability to stay focused and disciplined toward your action depends the type of mindset you have. Let’s first understand what are these different mindsets? In a fixed mindset, people believe their intelligence or other mental abilities are fixed traits and therefore cannot change. These people strongly believe that their intelligence and talents are already casted in stone and they can’t develop it any further. They also believe that it is only the talent that leads to success, and if you don’t have it, then any kind of effort will not make any dent.

A fixed-mindset oriented person thinks that if something is difficult and he or she is required to put some effort on it, then it means nothing but the fact that he or she doesn’t have that talent or capability. Therefore, such people believe that there is no use of putting any efforts in working that activity. The goal for people with a fixed mindset is always to look smart, because they believe that they were born with that ability. These people have a fear of looking dumb to others as they believe that they can’t redeem themselves once other people look at them as being unintelligent. Now on the other hand, in case of a growth mindset, people have an underlying belief that their learning and intelligence can grow with time and experience. When people with such mindset believe they can get smarter, they realize that their effort has an effect on their success—so they put in extra time, leading to higher achievement. Such people strongly believe their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence. They understand that their basic abilities are simply a starting point for their potential. They don’t believe everyone is the same, but they hold onto the idea that anyone can become smarter if they try. If you are interested to learn more about mindset and how you can transform a fixed mindset into a growth mindset, please check my book Mindset Makeover. Let’s now examine how these different types of mindsets can affect selfdiscipline differently. As people with a fixed mindset are already convinced about their abilities, talents, and skills as fixed or unchangeable, they are not mentally prepared to take any action to improve their abilities or skills. Moreover, they think that any effort to change is waste of time, so they rule out any chances of triggering self-discipline. A fixed-minded person doesn’t feel any need of self-discipline. And they are right in their perspective, because self-discipline is something that one would need for making significant changes in one’s life, and not required otherwise. Therefore, the prerequisite for building self-discipline muscle is to develop a growth-oriented mindset. Only if you are convinced that you can acquire new

skills, nurture your talents, and make significant changes in your life, you will ask for any tools to activate self-discipline. Use Commitment Devices Commitment devices are used in economics and also in game theory (the study of mathematical model used for intelligent decision-making). Through commitment devices, you can lock yourself into following a certain plan of action that your mind resists despite knowing that such action plan can help you achieve your difficult goals. Let’s understand this with the help of a real-life example. One of the most notorious examples in the history about the commitment device is captain Hernán Cortés. Cortés was on his expedition from Cuba to South-eastern Mexico in search of silver and gold. He brought along with him around eight hundred people comprising of an army as well as civilians. But Cortés and his people were aware that the native people would not surrender easily. Moreover, Cortés was not carrying a huge force of people with him. Cortés realized that after traveling on their ships and reaching the destination, his people didn’t want to move from the seashore to the inside parts of the island because of their fear. Their instincts told them to stay near their ships, so they can save their lives by getting back to their ships, in case the situation so warrants. Cortés now took a very bold step. He immediately ordered his people to burn all the ships. With the ships turning into fumes and smoke now, there was no other alternative left for his people; the only option in front them was to move forward and be victorious or die. In sinking the ships, Cortés presented an important aspect of human nature. While we might feel ourselves brave when we start any journey of adventure, but our minds can derail us from the path due to fear of what all could go wrong. By burning the ships, Cortés ensured that when his people moved forward, they didn’t have any choice of going back or fighting war with fear from massive forces of the enemy. The act of burning ship worked as a commitment device for Cortés’s people and they won despite being significantly undersized than their opponents.

Economist Jodi Beggs writes,[11] "Commitment devices are a way to overcome the discrepancy between an individual's short-term and longterm preferences.” In other words, they are a way for self-aware people to modify their incentives or set of possible choices in order to overcome impatience or other irrational behavior. One of the craziest examples of using commitment devices I found in my research is blogger Maneesh Sethi. It was reported[12] that Maneesh had hired one person for $8 an hour to slap on Maneesh’s face every time he distracted himself from working (by indulging in unnecessary social media). He reported that there was increase in his productivity with this kind of punishment associated with his distractions. In this section, we covered the factors that require you to stay disciplined. You must have some objective to achieve, because only then you will feel the need of any self-control. Without any specific goal or objective, you often find yourself easily giving in to any temptation. In the next section, you will learn that no one is gifted with infinite reservoir of willpower, and therefore how should you utilize this resource in most optimal manner. CHAPTER 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS In order to activate your willpower, you need to start with a stronger why. The stronger the why, longer and better will be your motivation to stick to what you do. You need to find out what really motivates. Studies shows that managers wrongly believed that money and status were strong motivators for employees to perform their best, whereas the survey results showed that people are most motivated when they are making a consistent growth towards one meaningful goal. Money can motivate you only up to a threshold of maintaining a reasonable lifestyle, and beyond threshold, it has a marginal effect on your happiness and performance. Therefore, you need to really ask yourself what is your key inner drive that makes jump out of your bed every morning.

People who develop growth mindset believe that they can improve upon their abilities, skills and talents; they believe that making efforts will boost their probability of success. Therefore, developing a growth mindset sets up a strong foundational pillar to boosting your willpower. Use Commitment devices to lock yourself into following a certain plan of action that your mind resists despite knowing that such action plan can help you achieve your difficult goals. As per Economist Jodi Beggs, "Commitment devices are a way to overcome the discrepancy between an individual's short-term and long-term preferences.”

Chapter 4: Willpower Is Limited – Learn to Optimize to Maximise Results *********

“I value self-discipline, but creating systems that make it next to impossible to misbehave is more reliable than selfcontrol.” —Tim Ferriss You might have already experienced that on some days, you are so pumped up in morning, that you think that you can handle a lot more things. But only by afternoon, you start to feel like you’re lacking energy and enthusiasm to continue. Instead, you look at the clock and wait for the minutes to tick by so you can call it a day. What makes so much difference in one’s thinking and emotions in the course of just few hours during the day? Is it only physical exertion? No, it’s not. It is all the game of your willpower, which was super-high in the morning, but got drained in the afternoon by consistent usage in doing your work. Unfortunately, most people think that they have endless amount of willpower, and their batteries will always remain charged to take action toward their pursuits. But, it is a significant observation by psychologists that willpower per se is not supplied to us in infinite quantity. In fact willpower depletes by usage. Welcome to the concept that psychologists describe as willpower depletion. Willpower Depletion Psychologist Baumeister cites the reason by comparing our willpower to a muscle. The way a muscle gets exhausted is by putting it to work; the same happens with your willpower. If your legs muscles get tired by running long distances, if your hands get tired by doing manual work for a longer time, the

same happens with your willpower too. Your willpower is a muscle, and it is also subject to fatigue like our physical muscles. You can also compare your willpower to the gas used as a fuel for your vehicle. When you drive your car, you consume gas. Similarly, when you use your brain for your day to day functioning, it consumes willpower like gas. The more gas or willpower you use, the lower the level of gas or willpower left in your brain. Baumeister carried an experiment[13] that established that willpower gets depleted by usage. If you use willpower for carrying out certain activities, then you will be left with lesser willpower to be put to the other works. In this experiment, two control groups were formed and they were asked to sit in a room. On a table visible to everyone in the room, there were placed freshly baked cookies that spread tempting aroma in the room. Alongside these cookies was placed a bowl of radishes. One group was told to eat the delicious cookies. Another group, who could see the cookies directly in their sight and smell the freshness of the chocolate aroma in the room, were told to eat healthy radishes, while sitting in that room only. The experiment began after both the groups ate their respective portion of the allocated eatables. They were given a complex geometric puzzle to be solved with some timeline to finish it. The results of the studies showed that the control group who just ate radishes gave up after eight minutes of trying solving the puzzle. On the other hand, the people who got themselves pampered with cookies, continued to solve the puzzle for around nineteen minutes. It was concluded in the study that the willpower used in resisting the temptation to eat the aromatic cookies hampered the progress of the radisheating group. With a significant willpower drained in resisting the craving to eat cookies, they couldn’t perform longer at the puzzle, as compared to the other control group, which was not required to sacrifice their willpower. There was another study conducted, in which some movie-goers were shown an emotional movie, but they were told to suppress their feelings and not react in any manner. The other set of people also were made to watch that

movie, but they could react normally whatever way they wanted during the movie. The results showed that the people, who were suppressing their feelings, had depleted their willpower and were not able to perform better in subsequent tests. Decision Fatigue There is another concept that demonstrates the loss of willpower, known as decision fatigue. Decision fatigue works on the premise that every big or small decision you make eats up your willpower. The more decisions you make, the more you consume your willpower. One important point to note here is that our brain doesn’t distinguish between the most important thing and the trivial things in terms of spending its energy. It doesn’t think of safeguarding your willpower by using the less quantity of willpower when, for example, you are choosing your regular meal at restaurant or selecting the dress you should wear tomorrow morning, by labelling these activities as low-value activities. It doesn’t distinguish between the high-value activities or low-value activities, while spending its energy. This tendency has inherent drawbacks associated with it. The more willpower you consume for your trivial things, the lesser willpower you are left with for your important decisions. In other words, the more decisions you make, the more susceptible you are to decision fatigue, and that diminish the quality of your later decisions. Former President Barack Obama was once asked generally about how he makes decisions. He said, “You’ll see, I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing, because I have too many other decisions to make.” The logic is straight-forward. Because of the principle of decision fatigue, if we spend energy making too many little decisions, we'll have lesser willpower left to make more important decisions. There was a study[14] conducted in 2011 to examine the factors that influenced the decision of judges in Israel in case of granting parole to

criminals. It was noted that during the morning, judges have the tendency to deliver positive rulings that resulted in approving the parole of criminals almost 65% of the time. But as the morning hours went by, the chances of giving favourable rulings dropped to zero. Again immediately after the lunch break, the judges started to give favourable rulings almost 65 percent of the time. But this percentage moved to zero from the late afternoon again. The study established that judges’ quality of decision-making ability deteriorated by making more decisions, so they started to avoid making decisions and thus rejected this. Another important aspect to note here: when we get tired of making decisions, we either don’t make the right decisions, or we even start avoiding making decisions altogether. It happens generally in our lives, that when we are exhausted, we simply postpone making any decision until the next day or week or so. One of the simplest solutions is to reduce the number of trivial decisions in your day-to-day life. You don’t need to decide everyday about the smaller things. Some examples on how you can avoid making decisions on trivial things on daily basis could be: fixing the menu of the meals to be eaten six days a week (over weekend, you may want to go out and enjoy some good food too). Similarly, you can also pre-determine the specific clothes to be worn each day of the week. I was listening to some interview and the guest told an impressive habit he had maintained since years. He told that he earmarked the clothes to be worn on each day of the week, and that helped him to save time and more importantly the energy, that he could utilize to make bigger and better decisions. Energy Budget Model Let’s also get inside our brains to study how energy plays its roles in selfcontrol. Our brain has a limited stock of energy at any given point in time. It can store some energy in its cells, but it is mostly dependent on the steady stream of glucose circulating in the bloodstream. The special glucose-

detecting cells in the brain are always detecting the availability of energy in our brain. When our brain realizes that the supply of energy is limited or not coming anymore, it slows down or stops expanding the energy altogether. It is ready to spend the energy further only when it realizes that it has larger reservoir already available or it anticipates more coming in. Now, the important thing to note here is that exercising self-control is one of the largest energy consumers. Therefore, when you are short of energy, the first thing the brain does is to give in to any temptation, because it doesn’t want to burn the limited energy reservoir in exercising self-control. X.T. Wang and Robert Dvorak, psychology researchers from University of South Dakota conducted an experiment[15] and proposed the “energy budget model” for self-control as an outcome of their study. The experiment involved two groups of people who were given the choices of accepting $100 now or getting $200 after waiting for a period of one month. One reward was shorter but could be received immediately, while the other reward was higher, but they could receive it only after waiting for some time. Now, the experiment started. The blood sugar levels of both the groups were tested and recorded before the experiment. One group was asked to drink a regular sugary soda (to improve their blood sugar levels), and other group was given a zero-calorie diet soda (no sugar). After measuring the blood sugar levels again, the participants were asked to make their choices between the (a) smaller but quicker reward; and (b) higher but delayed reward. The research showed that the group that had boosted their level of sugar through regular soda were able to make a choice of getting a bigger reward by delaying gratification. The most important element of the study was that it showed that it was not the absolute level of glucose in the body, but the direction of change in the quantity of glucose that was contributing to the increased self-control. The brain asked the question whether the available energy is increasing or decreasing. And based on that assessment, the brain made the decision whether to spend the energy or save the energy for future purposes.

Change Your Surrounding Environment to Build Self-Discipline Your environment majorly governs your self-control capabilities. If your partner or your spouse has a habit of staying in the bed too late in the morning, you will find it difficult to wake up earlier. Imagine you want to lose weight, but your kitchen is full of processed food; also, your partner, spouse, or kids at home munch on cakes, chocolates, and pizzas in front of you. In such a scenario, it is going to be very difficult for you to maintain self-control. The principle of willpower depletion will work to your disadvantage, because you are spending a lot of your energy in resisting your temptations. Similarly, you can’t quit or reduce your smoking, drinking, or any other bad habits if your environment doesn’t support the behavior or habits you want to develop. Jim Rohn rightly said once, “You are the average of five people you surround yourself with.” Also, there was a study[16] conducted by Ross Hammond to examine the impact of social influence in controlling obesity. The findings of the study revealed there was increasing evidence that the social influence and social network structures play a significant role in the spread of obesity. That’s why there is a famous saying, “Better alone than in a bad company.” No, it doesn’t mean that you have to abandon your friends or go to forest leaving your family behind. Instead you can curtail your association with them only in relation to those activities, in which you want to improve, but they don’t feel the need to change and are happy their own way. For example, if your partner loves watching late night TV, and you want to go for an early morning gym or exercise, then you need to make a deal with him or her. Either the TV should be installed out of your bedroom, or else you should decide to sleep in a different room. That’s the way you can disassociate in a limited way even from your close relationship. And your partner should not be feeling bad about it, because here you are not forcing him or her to stop watching TV, and therefore you have a right to live according to your own priorities. To follow Jim Rohn’s advice, you should physically find the local places

where like-minded people hang out and join that group. Also, you can find like-minded people in online community by joining relevant forums or groups and interact with them. Instead of losing self-discipline by staying in an environment that cause distractions and temptations, you should create or find an environment that promotes moving toward your goals or pursuits. Willpower is such an important tool that you should put all efforts to prevent getting exhausted on petty things so you can utilize it for your superior goals and activities. Find Ways to Control (or Avoid) Temptations Do you remember the marshmallow test, we talked earlier? Did you wonder how such young kids could control their impulse for the long twenty minutes? The researchers found that they had been using various tactics to resist temptations. They were trying to get their attention away from marshmallow by different strategies e.g. looking in different direction or getting busy in something else, so they could divert their attention away from candies. There was another study amongst office workers to test how creating a different situation reduces the pressure for exercising willpower. It was noted in the experiment that if the candy is stored in the drawers of the employee’s desk, he didn’t get to see it immediately; so there was no instant temptation in the sight. Comparatively, another group of employee had to exercise lot of self-discipline, when the candy placed directly on the desk clearly visible in their sight. The principle of “out of sight, out of mind” works in such situations. For example, if you want to avoid the temptation of drinking or smoking, try to create such an environment where you don’t come across beer or cigarettes. If you don’t want to end up buying lots of junk foods, try to stay away from racks stacked with junk foods in the grocery stores or take limited cash with you only to buy the essential goods. I remember a personal example of how I was able to resist temptation by following one particular strategy. For a few years in the past, I was trying to totally quit drinking or smoking (though I used to do it very infrequently); at

the same time, I didn’t want to lose connection with my friends as well. I came out with a solution that instead of meeting my friends in the evening, I proposed catch-up with friends in the mornings over the weekend to enjoy coffee and snacks at cafes. Because people generally avoid starting their day with alcohol, this tactic of meeting friends in the morning at a cafe was helpful to avoid temptation in the first place. You may need to devise some way where you are be able to put yourself away from any temptation without being labelled as an anti-social guy. Removing or mitigating to the extent possible the temptations and distractions from your environment is a crucial first step when working towards improving your self-discipline. Similarly, if you’re really having trouble with your social media apps, then download an application called SelfControl on your computer to block such distraction websites for a set period of time. Do anything to ditch the bad influences that are affecting your progress towards our goals. Don’t assume that you have an endless reservoir of willpower, rather try to safeguard the utilization of your willpower for high-value decisions, and make systems or pre-decisions for your routine and trivial issues of life. Use a little amount of time and energy in creating the willpower supporting environment, and you will be astonished to see how these small changes help you to safeguard your limited reservoir of willpower. So far, we discussed the principles of how the human psychology of selfcontrol works and why safeguarding our willpower is always a better strategy. In the coming sections, we will talk about the habits and strategies that can do wonders to boost our willpower, so you keep enhancing your reservoir of willpower. CHAPTER 4 KEY TAKEAWAYS Willpower can be compared to any muscle of the human body. The way you can strengthen any muscle by exercise, you can strengthen willpower by exercise as well. However, just like the physical muscles get tired by usage, similar is the case with willpower.

Psychologists state that willpower per se is not supplied to us in infinite quantity. In fact willpower depletes by usage. This concept is known as willpower depletion. Also, there is a related concept of decision fatigue, which states that every big or small decision you make eats up your willpower. The more decisions you make, the more you consume your willpower. There are a few ways to optimize the use of willpower: To avoid decision fatigue, you need to reduce the number of trivial decisions in your day-to-day life. You don’t need to decide everyday about the smaller things. Some examples on how you can avoid making decisions on trivial things on daily basis could be: fixing the menu of the meals to be eaten on all working days of a week, or deciding the clothes to be worn every day. Energy Budget Model: This concept states that when our brain realizes that the supply of energy is limited or not coming anymore, it slows down or stops expanding the energy altogether. Therefore, when you are short of energy, the first thing the brain does is to give in to any temptation, because it doesn’t want to burn the limited energy reservoir in exercising self-control. Change your Environment to build self-discipline.: You can’t quit or reduce your smoking, drinking, or any other bad habits if your environment doesn’t support the behavior or habits you want to develop. Instead of losing self-discipline by staying in an environment that cause distractions and temptations, you should create or find an environment that promotes moving toward your goals or pursuits. Find ways to control your temptations. For example, you can use apps like SelfControl to avoid getting distracted by social media, while working on your important projects.

Chapter 5: Neuroscience-backed Habits to Strengthen Willpower *********

“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” ~ John C. Maxwell The quality of our lives depends on the quality of actions we take on a daily basis. The consistency of right actions taken on daily basis will eventually lead you to the desired life. It is like climbing a mountain. The summit of the mountain is what you want to achieve, but you know that it doesn’t happen by just snapping your fingers. It requires you to take steps on consistent basis. The role of habits is important as they remove the need of forcing you to take action. Habits put actions on autopilot, like brushing your teeth. Do you remember the last time you were required to summon willpower to brush your teeth? No, you don’t need willpower for your basic routines. In fact well-ingrained habits can reduce your dependence on the willpower. That’s why Jim Rohn’s above quote makes perfect sense, when he said, ‘Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” But, if you want to be the best in the world in whatever you do, you have to work on consistently strengthening your willpower. A stronger willpower combined with healthy habits is the perfect recipe to make anyone unstoppable. On the one hand, your habits will put your actions on autopilot basis without worrying about the outside circumstances or situation. You would see runners out there in the morning jogging regardless of chilly winters or rain (I have personally lived that life and remember running in heavy rains outside, and the credit goes to building habits). On the other hand, if you work on developing your willpower in all important areas of your life, you will

insulate yourself from your own emotions, feelings that often tend to drift and derail your progress towards your goal. Here is my personal opinion about developing your willpower. Developing habits require willpower first. But once you develop habits, they help you to develop your willpower also. Both are so interconnected and each supplement the other to boost your mental strength. This section is targeted to focus on developing certain important habits that will help you to strengthen your willpower. The rationale behind developing these habits is strongly backed by scientific studies and research; therefore, you should be assured about their efficacy in boosting your willpower muscles. With that let’s get started. Mindfulness Rewires Your Self-Control Mechanism If you are sincerely working on your personal growth journey and have spent time already on the subject, I assume that you’d already be aware about the huge advantages of mindfulness meditation. Nowadays, mindfulness is not something that is restricted only to spiritual journey of some Buddhist monks meditating under the trees in some part of the eastern world. The role of meditation in our lives is proven to have expanded way beyond and is now encompassing the general well-being of human beings across the world. The western countries, through enough scientific research, have proven to have immensely benefitted from mindfulness in reducing stress and anxiety, and improving the functions of the mind and quality of human life. If you are new to the concept, let’s briefly talk about it. Mindfulness, in simple terms, is a process of travelling inside your body and mind and enhancing your awareness about the ongoing thoughts and emotions within yourself. Jon Kabat-Zinn, creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and is accredited for bringing the concept of mindfulness to the western world defines it as below: “Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose,

in the present moment, non-judgementally.” The benefits of mindfulness have already been proven by the neuroscientists in various studies. Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School, used MRI technology to look at very fine and detailed brain structures to observe the inner physical changes in the brain while a person is performing a certain task, including yoga and meditation. For her study[17], she engaged people who had never meditated before and put them through a mindfulness-based stress reduction training program, where they took a weekly class and were told to perform mindfulness exercises, including body scan, mindful yoga, and sitting meditation, every day for thirty to forty minutes. Lazar wanted to test the participants for positive effects of mindfulness meditation on their psychological wellbeing and alleviating symptoms of various disorders such as anxiety, depression, eating disorder, insomnia, and chronic pain. After eight weeks, she found that the brain volume increased in many regions: i. ii.

Hippocampus: a seahorse-shaped structure responsible for learning, storage of memories, spatial orientation, and regulation of emotions. Temporoparietal Junction: the area where temporal and parietal lobes meet and that is responsible for empathy and compassion.

On the other hand, the one area whose brain volume decreased was: iii.

Amygdala: an almond-shaped structure responsible for triggering the fight-or-flight response as a reaction to a threat, whether real or only perceived.

Above research literally shows the physical changes in the brain and how this can help to improve your behaviors and emotions, and thus the overall wellbeing. Now coming more specifically to the subject of this book, meditation turns out to be a really wonderful tool for enhancing willpower, as evidenced by the scientific research again. Kelly McGonigal, psychologist, researcher, and author of the book, The Willpower Instinct, explains the benefits of meditation:

Neuroscientists have now found that when we make ourselves sit and instruct our brain to meditate, not only it gets better at meditating, but it develops a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness. Science tells that people who meditate regularly for longer periods have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as other regions of the brain that support self-awareness. She further explains that you don’t need a lifetime of meditation to see the results and explains intense meditation for few hours shows great results. She states: Some researchers have started to look for the smallest dose of meditation needed to see benefits.... One study found that just three hours of meditation practice led to improved attention and self-control. After eleven hours, researchers could see those changes in the brain. The new meditators had increased neural connections between regions of the brain important for staying focused, ignoring distractions, and controlling impulses. Another study found that eight weeks of daily meditation practice led to increased self-awareness in everyday life, as well as increased gray matter in corresponding areas of the brain. It may seem incredible that our brains can reshape themselves so quickly, but meditation increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, in much the same way that lifting weights increases blood flow to your muscles. The brain appears to adapt to exercise in the same way that muscles do, getting both bigger and faster in order to get better at what you ask of it. If someone has any myth or different beliefs about mindfulness or its benefits, there is enough evidence out there now to debunk any such false beliefs or myths about it. It only makes sense to develop a habit of mindfulness in our daily lives to reap the benefits of mindfulness for developing stronger willpower and improve the quality of our lives. One of the most common techniques to do meditation is to sit silently with your spine erect and focus on your breath only as anchor to observe regularly. This practice slowly enhances your consciousness, calms your mind and you can start doing it daily for ten minutes only.

Mindfulness meditation expert Sam Harris compares doing meditation like walking on a rope: easy to explain but difficult to master. He then goes on to describe the steps need to do your mindfulness practice, as described below[18]. Meditation Instructions: Sit comfortably, with your spine erect, either in a chair or cross-legged on a cushion. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and feel the points of contact between your body and the chair or floor. Notice the sensations associated with sitting—feelings of pressure, warmth, tingling, vibration, etc. Gradually become aware of the process of breathing. Pay attention to wherever you feel your breath most clearly—either at the nostrils or in the rising and falling of your abdomen. Allow your attention to rest in the mere sensation of breathing. (There is no need to control your breath. Just let it come and go naturally.) Every time your mind wanders, gently return it to the sensation of breathing. As you focus on your breath, you will notice that other perceptions and sensations continue to appear: sounds, feelings in the body, emotions, etc. Simply notice these phenomena as they emerge in the field of awareness, and then return to the sensation of breathing. The moment that you observe that you have been lost in thought, notice the present thought itself as an object of consciousness. Then return your attention to the breath—or to whatever sounds or sensations arise in the next moment. Continue in this way until you can merely witness all objects of consciousness—sights, sounds, sensations, emotions, and even thoughts themselves—as they arise and pass away. Those who are new to the practice generally find it useful to hear instructions of this kind spoken aloud, in the form of guided meditation. You can do it with some guided meditation available through many free smartphone apps

like Headspace, Calm, and Welzen. Quality Sleep to Boost Willpower There is enough research now to establish that if you consistently compromise and deprive yourself from the required number of sleep hours every night, you are already in the grip of stress and anxiety. You probably don’t know what full willpower looks like if you are in constant state of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation studies repeatedly show a variable (negative) impact on mood, cognitive performance, and motor function due to an increasing sleep propensity and destabilization of the wake state. Specific neurocognitive domains, including executive attention, working memory, and divergent higher cognitive functions are particularly vulnerable to sleep loss Lack of sleep saps willpower because if you are sleep deprived then your cells feel trouble in absorbing glucose from the main bloodstream. This lack of glucose makes them under-fuelled and exhausted. You may want to compensate this lack of sleep through sugar or coffee, but since your cells are already tired, they can’t absorb the glucose out of this fuel. You’d have known by now that exercising self-control in the form of resisting temptation or otherwise is one of the most energy-consuming tasks of the brain. In such tired situations, our brain wants to conserve the energy for the body’s normal operations, as there is low stock of energy, and the brain wants to retain enough for any emergency situation. Our prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive functions like focus, memory, and making decisions, suffers the most due to this lack of energy caused by sleep deprivation. Physiologically, self-control happens in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain and requires glucose as a fuel. Sleep deprivation has the similar effect as happens in mild intoxicated state of mind, and in this situation it is very difficult to exercise any self-control. The studies also suggest that sleep loss produces temporary changes in cerebral metabolism, cognition, emotion, and behavior that is something equivalent to mild prefrontal dysfunction[19] There is also some study[20] that shows that sleep-deprived people have

tendency to higher level of unethical behavior. The study showed that there was a shortfall of twenty-two minutes of sleep between those who cheated and those who didn’t. Also, in another study, researchers have found that a lack of sleep leads to deviant behavior at work, similarly because of decrements in self-control. They found that a lack of sleep matters; those who slept six hours or fewer were more likely to engage in deviant work behaviors than those who slept more than six hours. Many of the deviant work behaviors they examined, such as falsifying receipts, would also be considered unethical behavior. Thus, their research findings support the idea that sleep is crucial for ethics in the workplace. The reason is attributable to lack in willpower and self-control abilities due to lack of sleep, as already explained in the study above. If you are truly sincere about boosting your willpower, focus on ensuring that you get the right quantity and quality of sleep every night. You would ask how much sleep you would need, and how to ensure a quality sleep. Notably, National Sleep Foundation in its study[21] about sleep time duration and recommendations came out with below results about the minimum number of hours of sleep requirement for people of different age groups. The study panel agreed that, for healthy individuals with normal sleep, the appropriate sleep duration should be as follows: for newborns, between 14 and 17 hours; infants, between 12 and 15 hours; toddlers, between 11 and 14 hours; preschoolers, between 10 and 13 hours; school-aged children, between 9 and 11 hours; teenagers, between 8 to 10 hours 7 to 9 hours for young adults and adults, and 7 to 8 hours of sleep for older adults. How to get quality sleep It is not only the hours of sleep that matter, rather you should ensure that you get a quality of sleep. Sleep is not a robotic process that will immediately get you to sleep. You have to create a right atmosphere to get quality sleep. Here

is what Dr. Deepak Chopra, the author of best-selling book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, suggests some great tips[22] for getting a restful night’s sleep: Eat only a light meal in the evening, before 7:30 if possible (while the timing portion may be difficult to follow for someone, at least for me, I agree that one should have lesser portion of meal, so that your brain is not spending all its energy on digestion of the food). Go for a leisurely walk after dinner. Be in bed by 10 p.m. Take down your thoughts from the day in a journal before going to bed so that your mind doesn’t keep you awake. Also, in his book Sleep Smarter, Shawn Stevenson has explained that the time between 10 p.m. to 12 midnight is the best time to get in your bed. After that time, you’ll find it very difficult to get into sleep mode. Move Your Body to Generate Willpower at Will You have already heard that most of the wonderful things in the life come at no cost or so inexpensive that anyone can afford it. Your breath, smile, walk, being mindful are all freely available to you. One simple habit of infusing physical exercise in your day to day life has the potential to improve your self-control to a large extent. Exercise’s effects are not merely restricted to keeping your body fit, they have overarching advantages for mental strength as well. There was a study conducted by Australian scientist Megan Oaten in which she told a few men and women ranging from age eighteen to fifty to exercise regularly for a period of two months—nothing like a medical prescription or some other complex scientific experiment. The results after two months of exercise were more than stunning—these people reduced their habit of smoking, drinking, and caffeine intake significantly after the two months period. There were many other behavioral changes. They were spending less time on watching TV and studying more. They were able to control their impulse to spend money on unnecessary things.

Some research[23] on Australian adults even say that people who don’t do physical exercise have chances of dying earlier as compared to people who do exercise. Now, this even gives you a much bigger reason to exercise, and it gives you double advantage—one, you will improve your longevity and secondly, it will improve your self-control abilities. Kelly McGonigal in her book Willpower Instinct explains the wonderful benefits of exercise on the self-control: Exercise turns out to be the closest thing to a wonder drug that selfcontrol scientists have discovered. For starters, the willpower benefits of exercise are immediate. Fifteen minutes on a treadmill reduces cravings, as seen when researchers try to tempt dieters with chocolate and smokers with cigarettes. The long-term effects of exercise are even more impressive. It not only relieves ordinary everyday stress, but it acts as powerful an antidepressant as Prozac. Working out also enhances the biology of self-control by increasing baseline heart rate variability and training the brain. When neuroscientists have peered inside the brains of new exercisers, they have seen increases in both gray matter—brain cells—and white matter, the insulation on brain cells that helps them communicate quickly and efficiently with each other. Physical exercise—like meditation—makes your brain bigger and faster, and the prefrontal cortex shows the largest training effect. McGonigal recommends moving out of your normal place regularly to develop your willpower muscle. She calls this a five-minute green willpower fill-up and suggests that just five minutes of green exercise reduces stress, improves mode, enhances focus, and boosts self-control. Exercising outside in short spurts have a more powerful impact than longer workouts in indoor gyms or healthclubs. Use Cold Showers to Toughen-up Taking cold showers is in itself an exercise of the willpower muscle. Of

course, muscles get fatigued by exercise, but it is only through the exercise that they get stronger in the long run. When you are about to enter into a cold shower for the first time, each cell of your body will scream and resist you from entering into the water. But you go ahead and get under the shower. This courage of getting into the shower in itself is your first victory of the day over your mind, and this is strong exercise for your willpower muscle. Tony Robbins states that he starts his day by jumping into a cold water pool. There are scientifically backed up various benefits as well to this exercise. One study[24] shows that cold showers help to relieve symptoms of depression. Due to the high density of cold receptors in the skin, taking a cold shower sends an overwhelming amount of electrical impulses from peripheral nerve endings to the brain, which can result in an anti-depressive effect. Also, cold showers tend to improve the tolerance to the stress stimuli. Cold showers help to improve the quality of sleep and that’s the reason insomniacs are often recommended to take cold showers. You see, cold showers give immense benefits for better mental health and helps you to sleep properly—with better sleep and reduction of stress (remember stress eats willpower), you improve your self-discipline muscles. Don’t Break the Chain Jerry Seinfeld, the famous comedian was once asked the secret of his craft and how he came up with so many original jokes, as reported in one news article. The young reporter who asked Jerry wanted to know the secret of his productivity and creativity. Jerry took this person behind the stage after his performance. Then Jerry told him that in order to be a better comedian, one has to create better jokes and for that, one has to write jokes every day. Jerry told one unique way that helped him stimulate daily practice of writing jokes. He apprised the young man that he used a unique big calendar on his wall, which shows all the days of the year printed on it. Then he used a red magical marker. You will know in a second why this was a magical marker. Jerry further said that each day when he wrote his jokes for the day, he used to put a red big cross on that day on the calendar.

"After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain," This is how Jerry explained the magic of putting big red-cross on the calendar and making a chain. Above is such a small routine, but this creates a new neural pathway in your brain that triggers you to take that action every day without fail. Because the consistent red big cross marks forming a chain gives you sense of reward, and you want to continue to enjoy that reward. That’s how established writers use the principle of writing a specified number of words on regular basis. I know few writers, who maintain an excel spreadsheet with dates of every month. They write on that sheet daily the number of words typed on a particular day. This specific practice, while on one hand develops a chain, as explained above, but the additional benefit of measuring their progress in specific number of words helps them to see the previous records. This motivates them to write more and create more quality work because quantity eventually creates quality. With initial few weeks of self-control (that is needed to build any habit), you give yourself the advantage of seeing a continuity of actions in the form of chain. This chain ties not only your actions, but ties you as well to not miss marking that red big cross on your calendar. Start Your Day by Eating the Frog Brian Tracy, in his best-selling book, Eat that Frog advised that the very first thing in the morning that you should do is, to eat the ugliest frog. ugliest frog means your difficult but high-value activity, which, if done, will be a significant achievement for the day and takes you closer to your most important goals. In my journey as an author, one of the hardest parts is being creative and writing a massive number of words on paper. Therefore, I have chosen for myself to write a specified numbers of hours or a specified number of words on daily basis, first thing in the morning. After writing for a dedicated period or number of words, it generates a sense of satisfaction that now I have

handled a difficult but one of the most important tasks; and thereafter, I can work on other projects without any stress about my key activity- writing. Why is it advisable to do that and not just simply start your day by checking your emails or social media posts? It is because when you wake in the morning, after a full night of sleep, your energy levels and willpower are at its peak. But, as you know the concept of willpower depletion, you lose willpower when you go further in your day. Therefore, the “eat that frog” principle is not an empty rhetoric, rather it has biological basis behind it. You will get multiple benefits out of this habit of handling the difficult task first. You will develop your willpower muscle by doing the things that are most difficult (like cold shower example), but an important one. By some initial period of self-discipline, you will develop a habit of handling your most important tasks first. With that, you will see that the latter part of your days goes quite smoothly. You work on other projects fast, as you have set the momentum of the day, and don’t get into stressful environments. You don’t need to immediately start on all of the strategies stated in this section. Just start building one or two habits that resonate most with you, as a part of your routine. You will realize some improvements in your self-control abilities in a matter of few weeks, as you see them in your behavior and action. If you are sincere and willing to learn the self-discipline strategies followed by one of the toughest armed forces in the world, the next section will unravel how these soldiers build their mental toughness and willpower to come out victorious in extremely difficult situations.

CHAPTER 5 KEY TAKEAWAYS

To level up your self-discipline, few scientifically proven daily routines and habits go a long way. These are listed as below: Mindfulness Practice. A daily practice of 10-20 minutes can start showing you results of enhanced willpower in a matter of few weeks only. It can even literally bring structural changes in your brain. Quality Sleep: Lack of sleep saps willpower because your cells feel trouble in absorbing glucose from the main bloodstream. This lack of glucose makes them under-fuelled and exhausted. Therefore, ensure that you take quality sleep for optimal number of hours. Daily exercise: Even short fifteen minutes on a treadmill reduces cravings. The long-term effects of exercise are even more impressive, as it relieves ordinary everyday stress, but it’s as powerful an antidepressant as Prozac. Therefore, you should make exercise a part of your daily routine. Use cold showers. The act of getting under the cold shower itself is an act of exercising willpower. Science shows that it helps you in sleeping better and relieving from depressions, among other benefits. Don’t break the chain: By developing consistency in taking daily actions minimizes the need of self-control and almost automates the desired behavior. Eat that frog: You have maximum amount of energy and willpower when you wake up in the morning, therefore start your day by working on your most important projects or eat your frogs, as Brian Tracy suggests.

Chapter 6: Learn Mental Toughness Strategies of Navy SEALs *********

“Self-discipline is about controlling your desire and impulses while staying focused on what needs to get done to achieve your goal.” ~ Adam Sicinski The United States Navy’s Sea, Air, and Land Teams, commonly known as the Navy SEALs, are one of the most-feared and respected fighting forces in the world. For those tough enough to earn their place in this elite battalion, self-discipline is cited by trainees and veterans across the board as one of the primary reasons for their success. The SEALs train soldiers to develop their self-discipline beyond what most people have. They have to be physically and mentally stronger and faster; they have to follow orders and conduct missions where self-discipline (or the lack of it) can mean the difference between life and death. If you’ve ever wondered how to get self-discipline like a Navy SEAL, here’s a little insight. The Navy SEALs are obviously coveted and their ability to hone warriors above and beyond the other branches of the military is of gigantic proportions. This is due to the training and self-discipline they impose on their recruits. They expect you not to give up the moment you’re start to falter or see an initial sign of failure. They push you to push yourself, and the way that is done is through self-discipline. In your mind, you must observe your own directive (your goal), order yourself to complete your mission, and use self-discipline to obey your command. Not everyone makes the cut to be a SEAL, but those that do could endure the rigors of SEAL training not only because they had the physical prowess but also strong self-discipline. Four Pillars of Mental Toughness The neuroscience division of the Navy developed a handbook for the SEALs called The Four Pillars of Mental Toughness, which laid out the basic tenets

of the four areas that one needs to gain control over, calling for strong selfdiscipline in order to do so. The Four Pillars were designed as a journey for each recruit, who must not only be physically capable of overcoming obstacles, but must be able to face fear, and in some cases their own mortality, in their efforts to become the best of the best. Let’s break down the Four Pillars and see how each one can help you master your self-discipline. 1. Setting Goals: Like any successful journey, it always starts with a plan. Setting goals gives you something to work toward, with progress that can be measured. Having concrete goals reinforces self-discipline because you will be bound to those goals until either completion or abandonment. Ultimately, having goals gives you drive even when you feel like quitting. This is considered to be the first step towards gaining the self-discipline required of a Navy SEAL. Goal-setting can be divided up into short- and long-term goals. For short-term goals, you’ll want to select a goal that is more likely to get accomplished in a relatively short time. These short-term goals need to be feasible so you can complete smaller goals, accumulating positive reinforcement, which will continue to push you towards your larger goals and help give you the confidence to tackle them. Ideally, your short-term goals will be in service to your long-term goals that you can gradually work towards. 2. Mental Visualization: This technique is extolled by successful luminaries from Fortune 100 CEOs to Hollywood celebrities and spiritual gurus alike. It is the practice of mentally “visualizing” your success. By visualizing where you want to be, you can positively affect your goal-setting, allowing you to better focus on those goals. If you know where you want to be, it’s easier to draw the map to get you there. One of the most prominent purveyors of mental visualization is the award-winning actor and comic Jim Carrey. As he tells it, when he was first starting out his career, he wrote himself a note stating that he would earn $10 million one day, and every day he would reference this note, visualizing that his earning millions of dollars. How he visualized

himself achieving his goal is unimportant, but what is important is that he had the mental wherewithal to continually push himself to envision his future and his success every single day. Visualization is one of the easier techniques of self-discipline, as it allows you the freedom to dream up whatever goals you wish to attempt. This is where you want to be specific in your goal-setting. Once you have the image burned into your mind, write it down. When you commit your visualized goal to paper, it becomes more real, more tangible, and more attainable. Now you’ll want to include reading your note to yourself as part of your everyday routine. While it’s recommended that you start your day off with your note, you can remind yourself of this goal any time of day. 3. Positive Self-Talk: Did you know that if you talk to plants, they grow stronger? Similarly, humans can talk positively to themselves, which has been proven to reinforce self-esteem, and in turn, success. Positive self-talk is when you act as your own cheerleader when things get tough. Navy SEALs aren’t allowed to die, so they need to be able to talk themselves back from the brink if they need to. That’s where practicing positive self-talk will save you. Whether it’s telling yourself “you can do it” or “it’s not the end of the world,” practicing positive self-talk will help you get through the worst. When you use positive self-talk in conjunction with visualization, this can be a powerful combo. By talking yourself up, you’ll be able to push yourself that much harder. If you’re your own champion, you can’t possibly fail. Sometimes though, people can struggle with using positive self-talk. Even so, this self-discipline technique can be easily learned and will be a great boon for those that need to cheer themselves on. In terms of the SEAL teams themselves, these warriors must use positive self-talk to get themselves through some of the harshest battle conditions, including scenarios of torture or worse. Navy SEALs

understand that one cannot only be physically prepared for battle, and that mental toughness must be developed over time with strict training and perseverance. Maybe a drill instructor’s tough-love approach is something you’d want incorporate for your positive self-talk, maybe not. Only you know what works for you. You have to be diligent about it, or else you risk not receiving the full benefit of positive self-talk. 4. Arousal Control One of the more difficult areas of the four pillars to master is arousal control. Everyone has impulses. What counts is whether or not you have the self-discipline to refrain from acting on those impulses. Navy SEALs are expected to have absolute control over their impulsive behavior, as it could risk them and their entire team on the battlefield. Why is this tenet one of the most difficult self-discipline techniques for people to master? It is because most people want to give in to their impulses because it feels good. When something is arousing, we typically don’t want the arousal to stop. There’s a reason it feels good and why we like being aroused. However, there is a time and place for everything, and sometimes you need to be able to have arousal control. As the final tenet of the four pillars, Navy SEALs take great pride in having arousal control, simply because of how difficult it is to achieve. Okay, so maybe you’re not training to be like a Navy SEAL, but by using their Four Pillars method you’ll have a good foundation for developing selfdiscipline. Let’s summarise these four tenets: setting your short and longterm goals; using mental visualization to see your future success as a way to drive you to meet your goals; using positive self-talk to reinforce your visualization and to keep you pushing forward; and controlling your state of arousal (both good and bad) that will keep you in check during times of distress. Remember, you can choose what works for you, so if you find something that the Navy SEALs use as helpful, feel free to utilize it in your routine. 40% Rule

Another important way Navy SEAL candidates are trained is through a rule called the 40% Rule. They are taught in their tough trainings that whenever they get to feel the first sign of fatigue, it doesn’t mean that they really got tired and they can stop now. They are told that when they get the first emotion of fatigue or tiredness, it means they have used only 40% of their power, and are still left with 60% more. It means even if your mind starts giving you the initial signals that you are tired, you still have a lot inside of you to continue regardless of that. I remember a quote from Muhammad Ali, the boxing world champion, which exemplifies this rule. Ali said, “I don’t count my sit-ups, I only count them when they start hurting.” The 40% rule is not merely a bold statement, rather it is backed up by psychological research. Timothy Noakes[25], Professor at University of Cape Town dived deeper to study how long a person could still continue in his physical adventures, despite getting a signal from its mind to stop and not go any further. He decided to explore a lesser-known theory proposed by the Nobel Prize winner physiologist Archibald Hill that exercise fatigue may not be caused by muscle failure, but by an overprotective monitor in the brain that wants us to avoid exhaustion. As per the theory, when the body was working hard, and pushing heart to demand more from it, this monitor in the brain activated the body to slow things down. But Noakes was intrigued to find a conclusion that physical exhaustion was indeed a trick played by mind on our body. The capacity of body was much more than that. Noakes began to review the evidence of the levels of physical exertion to the endurance athletes under the extreme conditions. In the study, they didn’t find any evidence for physiological failure within the muscle. It was rather their brain was telling them to stop. This is because the brain was sensing an increased heart rate, rapidly decreasing supply of the energy and therefore giving the message to the body to stop. Alongside the above, the brain started to give an overwhelming feeling of fatigue, and that it had nothing to do with the muscles capacity to keep working, as Noakes found out. He concluded that the fatigue should no longer be considered a physical event, but rather a sensation or emotions.

Therefore, all the high-performing athletes know that the first wave of fatigue is not the real physical limit of the body. They know that with enough motivation, they can transcend this limit. 4x4 Breathing Technique Navy SEALs have to always be prepared to face any kind of adverse circumstances, and a slight error in judgement and decision-making could have the impact of life or death. In such situations, mental calmness is one of the most important traits that Navy SEALs are trained to imbibe. Your mind gets blurred and clouded generally, on the first sight of life-threatening situations. The heart beat increases, palms get sweaty and the brain starts releasing stress hormones, like cortisol. Now what do Navy SEALs do in such overwhelming situations? They follow a simple breath technique called 4x4 breathing. Under this technique, they breathe in for a period of 4 seconds, and breathe out steadily for 4 seconds. They keep on repeating it until their heartbeat slows down and normalizes. Anyone can imagine how hard it is to focus and think clearly when you are in a stressed and overwhelming state of mind. Therefore this 4x4 technique helps immediately to bring calmness and enables you to think clearly and make better decisions quicker. This breathing technique is again based on the principles of mindfulness practice. Because you make your breath as an anchor to focus, that brings centeredness in your mind. This approach calms down the amygdala, which is the fear centre of your brain, and helps you to get out of the fight, flight, or freeze situation. The next time you feel overwhelmed with your work or business, try the 4×4 breathing technique. It’s important to always remain calm at work because a stressed mind cannot think clearly nor create new ideas. If you want to perform your best even during stressful periods and continue to make good decisions and innovate, try out this simple but very effective 4x4 technique. Since this technique helps Navy SEALs, this will definitely help you in your situations, which in all probabilities are way less strenuous than those of Navy SEALs.

Navy SEALs’ four tenets of mental toughness can help anyone to develop the highest level of self-control while staying away from distracting temptations. Navy SEALs example shows that everyone has much more stamina and potential, even if their mind signals them to stop. Finally, the universally acceptable mindfulness principles, as used by Navy SEALs are accessible to everyone and one should use them to develop a calm and focused mind to progress in his or her pursuits. CHAPTER 6 KEY TAKEAWAYS Navy SEALs are considered one of the most respected fighting forces in the world. Self-discipline and mental toughness is one of the main reasons for their success. They are known to build their mental toughness with these four pillars: Setting goals - Having concrete goals reinforces self-discipline because you will be bound to those goals until either completion or abandonment. Mental Visualization - By visualizing where you want to be, you can positively affect your goal-setting, allowing you to better focus on those goals Positive self-talking- By talking yourself up, you’ll be able to push yourself much harder toward your goal, as you see yourself as a person who can achieve goals. Arousal Control - Navy SEALs take great pride in controlling their impulses and refraining from taking action under the influence of such impulses.

40% Rule: Navy Seals are taught in their tough trainings that whenever they get to feel the first sign of fatigue, it doesn’t mean that they really got tired. They are trained that when they get the first emotion of fatigue or tiredness, it means they have used only

40% of their power, and are still left with 60% more. By following this 40% rule, you will push yourself hard despite the signals of fatigue or when you feel like quitting. 4X4 Box Breathing technique: Mental calmness is one of the prerequisites for taking decisions in the kind of tough situations Navy SEALs face. They use effective 4X4 box breathing technique, which is based on mindfulness practice, as they have to focus on their breathing in a specific way, until heartbeat slows down and normalizes. You can also use this breathing take to control your breath movement and eventual take charge of your emotions.

Chapter 7: How to Control Your Emotions & Foster Self-Control ********* “The person who masters himself through self-control and discipline is truly undefeatable.” ~ Buddha Surfing Your Urges Exercise Self-discipline is all about controlling your behavior and not getting swayed in the river of your emotions. Gauging your emotions is proven to be an effective method to build self-discipline. More particularly, there is one specific technique called surfing your urges, where you closely observe the urges going in your mind. Urges are nothing but our internal impulses to engage in a habitual behavior or past addiction. You observe them in the form of sensations or vibrations in your body, and not merely as a thought. As you put yourself into the role of an observer, an observer of your own internal invisible emotions, you develop the habit of disassociating yourself—you see yourself as a different being than these urges. This technique is an implementation of mindfulness methodology to observe what goes on inside you, when you are allured by your urges. An experiment was conducted regarding surfing the urges by researcher Sarah Brown from University of Washington Seattle, as cited in her book Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal, author and psychology researcher. This experiment was conducted on a group of twelve people who were chain-smokers, but interested in exploring the possibilities of quitting smoking. In the experiment, there was a conference room that had a big centre table with twelve chairs around it. The chairs were facing the walls in the room in such a way that everyone was required to look at the wall in front

of them and not at anyone else. Also, any paintings, poster, or any other distractions hanging on the wall were removed. The control group participants were called in one by one. Each one now was handed over their favourite pack of cigarettes. It is noteworthy that each participant had not smoked last twelve hours, so you can imagine that the urge to smoke was already at its height. For the purpose of the experiment, few participants were given a brief mindfulness-based training before the start of experiment, so this sub-group had some understanding that this experiment involves being mindful of their urges. Each participant was asked to hold their pack of cigarette in hands in front of them, so they could see it. They were told to open their packet and take out a cigarette. The participants were given further directions in this urge surfing exercise. In each step, they had to pause and observe their inner feelings. They were told to put the cigarette on their lips, even flick their lighter on, but they were not allowed to light the cigarette. The main idea for these participants was to be observant of what was going on in their minds and bodies (i.e. emotions or urges they were feeling). They had to be mindful of their inner sensations. At each step, the participants were forced to stop and wait for a few minutes. Bowen wanted to ensure that each of the participants should suffer through the kind of intense cravings that often lead to failure of attempts of quitting smoking. The real objective was to see where this kind of mindfulness practice can help to resist the urges. The experiment continued for half an hour. But after experiment was over, the participants were not subjected to any self-control routine nor were they required to follow this urge surfing exercise anymore in the following days. They were just required to do one thing–just to keep a count of cigarettes they smoke per day along with their daily mood and the intensity of the urge to smoke. After a week of this experiment, it was observed by the researchers that the experimental group that had some training about the use of mindfulness in the process reduced their cravings by 37%. The above technique of surfing the urge can be applied to any of your urges —be it eating an additional large slice of double cheese pizza, a big bite of chocolate cake, or binging on Netflix.

Some of you might wonder why the experiment worked in reducing the cravings because, so far in the book, you noted that willpower is limited and depletes by usage. You also noted that exercising self-control consumes a huge amount of willpower from our brain. The thing that made a difference here was the use of mindfulness. It was not merely suppressing the urges in this example. It was an experiment to test the effectiveness of mindfulness to build self-discipline. Therefore, it was necessary in the experiment to observe the emotions, strong cravings, and take them to such a level, where people fail in their attempt to quit any bad habit. In the experiment above, the researcher tried to find the effectiveness of mindfulness in building willpower and concluded that mindfulness helps to reduce cravings and build self-discipline. The underlying logic for positive outcomes in the experiment was that being mindful of your urges helps you to separate you from those urges. You start to see them different from you. When the urge or craving is at its peak, it can be compared to a wave in the ocean; it would build in intensity, but ultimately dissolve in the water. So your job is not to fight with that way, not to give in, rather to ride on the wave and keep observing the ups and downs of the wave. By experiencing the urges, it helps you to separate or disengage yourself from these emotions. A typical urge stays around twenty to thirty minutes, and if you don’t fight with the urge, rather just observe it, slowly you will realize that the power of the urge starts to mellow out. Therefore, the experiment above supported the use of mindfulness to boost self-discipline, as we already learnt in one of the previous sections about boosting of willpower. How to Quit Bad Habits: 4-Step Process Continuing with the benefits of mindfulness, it’s also worthwhile stating that mindfulness can help in quitting any bad habits through a four-step mindfulness-based formula, as stated below: Judson Brewer, director of the Therapeutic Neuroscience Laboratory at the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and author of The Craving

Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love–Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits advocates the use of mindfulness for breaking any bad habit. Yes, he claims that mindfulness can be said as ‘gold standard’ for treating cigarette addiction patients. Brewer suggests that mindfulness is the tool through which you can get rid of your addiction and he terms this four-step mindfulness formula to cure bad habit as “RAIN:” Recognize, Accept, Investigate, and Note. Brewer explains that in order to get rid of any bad habits or so-called addiction, there are four stages involved and directly or indirectly involves mindfulness of the situation. Let’s elaborate this one by one by taking example of any of your addictions. 1. Recognize: Whenever you feel a craving for smoking or drinking, the first step is to recognize the feeling of craving in your body. In my case, while writing this book, I am intermittently thinking of switching my attention to something different that will give me instant gratification, like checking something on Facebook. Once you realize what you’re craving, you shouldn’t immediately run to grab that thing or get trapped by that emotional feeling, rather you need to recognize that feeling at that moment. 2. Accept: The next step is to accept that feeling arising in your body. That’s bit tricky and difficult. It often hurts. Now the good part is you don’t have to do anything yet. But the difficult stuff is that you are feeling uncomfortable and want to scratch that itch, but you can’t do that. Brewer recommended that you have to acknowledge your acceptance in a small active way, like nod your head or just say, “okay, I got you.” 3. Investigate: The next logical step in the process is the thinking work. You have to analyse the reason behind your bad habit or addiction. Why do you want to go out and smoke? Why do I want to switch the tab and get distracted while writing? You shouldn’t force your mind not to think about that, rather you have to arouse curiosity about why that craving is coming. Here is the role of mindfulness. As your craving

grows, you see how it feels in your body. The main point here is to get disengaged with that craving. Precisely for the reason that you are not that thought. You are separate from that thought. 4. Note: The fourth step is to take a mental note of the emotions arising within yourself. Just give a single word or short phrase to put a label on what you feel. There is a neuroscience behind this noting. Taking a note of emotion reduces the impact of the emotions. Alex Korb, PhD in his book The Upward Spiral explains the science behind this mental noting: “…in one fMRI study, appropriately titled “Putting Feelings into Words,” participants viewed pictures of people with emotional facial expressions. Predictably, each participant’s amygdala activated to the emotions in the picture. But when they were asked to name the emotion, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activated and reduced the emotional amygdala reactivity. In other words, consciously recognizing the emotions reduced their impact.” The effective way to master your emotions and control your urges is to create a distance between you and your urges. Since your emotions and urges are so deeply engrained in you that you feel as if ‘you’ are those urges, therefore it is important to build that distance. It is possible only through the power of mindfulness, which literally puts you in the shoes of a witness or an outside observer, that the magic starts happening. Therefore, as stated in the previous section about building important habits, I would emphasise here to imbibe mindfulness as a part of your daily routine, and you will be get rewards of enhanced willpower to stay away from temptations and keep focused on your goals. Make Choices before They Become Emotional There is another approach that demands you to make choices proactively before they get infected by emotions, because the choices based on your emotions are impulsive reactions and not rational decisions. Under this approach, you make healthy choices before they get under the control of your emotions. Here, you create such circumstances through your

pro-activeness that any possibility of making choices under the intoxication by arousal of emotions is ruled out. For example, when you leave for work in the morning, carry along home-cooked nutritious food so you would have already made a choice for your lunch. In this situation, whenever you feel hungry, you don’t need to make any selection of food outside based on your emotion at that time. You have eliminated the need for making choices based on your emotions by planning the right course of action you in advance. If you work in an office or as a part of any team, then pre-committing yourself to the meeting by sending an email with a calendar invite or accepting a meeting invite is another example of making a rational choice in advance, so you don’t alter your decision later influenced by your emotions at a future time. Since you have taken a decision rationally in advance, you won’t be swayed by your emotions to defer working on that project or not attending that meeting. This gives fewer opportunities to allow your emotions to make decisions, and make most of them well in advance while applying your logical and thinking brain. This creates a healthy environment for yourself to stay self-disciplined. Use Implementation Intention (If-Then Approach) Psychologists suggest one helpful technique to build self-control if some future course of action arises. For pre-deciding the implementation plan, you have to use “if-then” statements for different situations. For example, if you are on a dieting plan to lose weight, and you happen to go for a dinner, you have tell yourself in advance, “If anyone offers me some food with heavy fats and carbohydrates, then I will ask for some fresh green salad only.” There has been some research among adolescents that prove that implementation intentions improve self-discipline. Having a plan in place in advance prompts you to just take the pre-decided action in that moment without putting any pressure on your willpower to make a fresh decision. “Ifthen” statements for various situations of your life will not let your willpower sap when you face the tempting distractions that can easily derail you from your path. Our emotions have strong influence on our self-control abilities. Therefore, we need to closely observe our emotions, and make efforts to disassociate

ourselves from those emotions. Only if we able to see our emotions at a distance, we will be able to make choices based on rationale that supports achieving our goals. CHAPTER 7 KEY TAKEAWAYS You need to control your emotions in order to boost self-control. Here are few ways to tame your emotions Use Surfing your urges exercise: In this exercise, you careful observe and be mindful of urges arousing in your body. Being mindful of your urges helps you to separate you from those urges, and studies show that you can significantly reduce your cravings by simply surfing through them. Use RAIN formula: the 4 Step process to quit bad habits If you are struggling with some bad habits that you have been trying to quit for a long time, then use this mindfulness based RAIN formula. The four steps are: 1. Recognize: the feeling of craving in your body. 2. Accept: the feeling arising in your body. 3. Investigate: The next logical step is to analyze the reason behind your bad habit or addiction. 4. Note: Lastly take a mental note of the emotions arising within yourself. Just give a single word or short phrase to put a label on what you feel. Taking a note of emotion reduces the impact of the emotions. Make Choices before they become emotional Under this approach, you make healthy choices before they get under the control of your emotions. Here, you create such circumstances through your pro-activeness that any possibility of making choices under the intoxication by arousal of emotions is ruled out. Use commitment devices:

You can pre-decide your actions or implementation plan in the case of happening of specific future events. For pre-deciding the implementation plan, you have to use “if-then” statements for different situations. Having a plan in place in advance prompts you to just take the pre-decided action in that moment without putting any pressure on your willpower to make a fresh decision.

Chapter 8: Make Your Future-Self a Friend & Beat Instant Gratification ********* “The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create” ~ Anonymous

Do You Really Care About Your Future? If I ask you, ‘Do you care about your future?” the off-the-cuff answer from most people would be a resounding yes. But in most cases, that’s not true. There are studies conducted that prove that most people don’t care about their future. The hard reality is that for most people, their future-self is like some stranger outside in far distant future (and their present actions explicitly demonstrate this fact). Actually, most people think that their future-self would be more capable, enthusiastic and ideal, even if they are unable to do well in their current life. They tend to think that their future-self can handle a lot more pressure than our current self. For example, your present-self is sitting in the couch and binging on TV shows, but you would imagine your future-self working out at the gym or getting ready for running the next marathon. You also think that your futureself will be better organized and tougher than your present-self. Since you don’t take any action in the present to build such a future, this mere thinking of future-self as highly-capable, causes the problem. This thinking makes you believe that your future-self is capable, so you leave all the pressure on your future-self to figure out how it will handle any difficult task (without taking any action in the present).

That’s the reason people put their present-selves’ wants or needs over their future-selves’ welfare, because they think that their future-self would be stronger and can handle its affairs on its own without any support from the present-self. They think about why they would want to invest in some stranger’s future at the expense of their present comfort. You see enough examples where people max out on their credit card limits to experience adventure, fun, and enjoy in present, but burden their future-self with debt. There was an experiment[26] conducted amongst some students, and they were asked how much time they would want to donate for a good cause. They were very generous to allocate 85 minutes of their future-selves in the next semester for tutoring fellow students. But when asked to teach the student at that time itself, they said that they have only 27 minutes for such activity. It is irony that we think that howsoever we behave today, when we arrive in future, suddenly we will become a different and better person. We don’t take such actions in present that would make us behave like our futureself when the time comes. We all care about our own well-being over that of some stranger; it’s a part of our human nature. Therefore, we behave the same way when it comes to making decisions regarding our future, because the future-self is a stranger. In order to measure the degree to which you see your future-self essentially the same person, as you currently are, psychologist Hal Ersner-Hershfield[27] created the “future-self continuity” concept. Not everyone considers the future as a stranger. The figure below shows two different circle. One represents your current self and the other your future self. The circles that overlap more mean that these people have high level of future-self continuity. Ersner-Hershfield further found that people with high future-self continuity, i.e. where the circles overlap more, saved more money, used their credit card with precaution, and were able to maintain a good financial future, so that the future-self could enjoy the life too. They didn’t consider future as some stranger.

The idea is that the more you think of your future as a stranger, the more you would prefer instant gratification. However, if you think your future-self as a friend, then you connect with a future-self as a healthy and financially well off–and the natural reaction in the present would be to eat healthy food, do regular exercise, and spend wisely. Through four studies conducted, Hal Ersner-Hershfield observed that participants interacted with realistic computer renderings of their future selves using immersive virtual reality hardware and interactive decision aids. In all cases, those who interacted with virtual future selves exhibited an increased tendency to accept later monetary rewards over immediate ones. How to Make Your Future-Self Your Friend? There are few ways, in which you can feel your future more closely and get to your future-self and connect better with it. Create a future memory: Scientists have experimented and found that if you can create a memory of your future in your mind, you can delay the need for gratification. For example, if you think of procrastinating some important project (lured by some distraction), then immediately imagine about the weekend movie plan or attending your kids sports event, you have already scheduled. Once you create a future memory, your brain tells you to take action now, so that you can enjoy that future event. So creating a future memory helps you to take action in the present or avoid doing something which could jeopardize your future memory. Imagination about a better future-self: This is slightly different than the one we just mentioned above. Here you have to imagine yourself as

a different person, as compared to your present you. In one experiment, some couch potatoes were asked to imagine either a better future-self who exercised regularly and enjoyed vibrant health and energy, or a dreading future-self who was inactive and suffered health consequences. Both visualizations put these people into action immediately, and they were exercising more frequently two months later than a control group that did not imagine a future-self. Therefore, until you see your future-self as your friend, you will continue to pay more attention to your present comfort at the cost of sacrificing the betterment of your future-self. When you realize that your future-self is your friend, you will improve your self-control abilities to delay gratification; you will not surrender before your temptations, as you would start thinking the image of a better future-self. CHAPTER 8 KEY TAKEAWAYS As humans we continue to indulge in our wrong behaviors in present, despite knowing how badly they can impact our future self. The Irony is that we think that howsoever we behave today, when we arrive in future, we will eventually become a different and better person. As a natural human tendency, we don’t care more about a stranger than ourselves. Therefore, we behave in a non-resourceful manner when it comes to making decisions regarding our future, because the future-self is a stranger. But by following a few strategies, you can make your future self as your friend: Creating a future memory - If you can create a memory of your future in your mind, you can delay the need for gratification. With a future memory, your brain tells you to take action now, so that you can enjoy that future event. Imagination of a better future-self – If you can imagine yourself as a different and better person, as compared to your present self, then you’ll change your present action to match with the imagined future

identity.

Conclusion *********

“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.” ~Abraham Lincoln Congratulations! You can give yourself a few pats on your back, because it’s not only that you just finished the book about self-discipline, rather you practically demonstrated the power of self-discipline by finishing what you started. It also means that you controlled your emotions and overcame distractions to continue reading this book, because you have a sense of commitment towards self-mastery. Okay, you know it well now that self-discipline is not something that we plan as a project and do at some specific time—rather it is our moment-to-moment decisions, as we have to control thoughts, resist temptations, and put our nose to the grindstone to craft a life of our dreams. I sincerely hope that this book has equipped you with enough knowledge about human psychology and science related to the concept of self-discipline. You now know why you do what you do—and this knowledge can help you safeguard your willpower from being sapped by undesirable objects. The principles and strategies mentioned in this book will now serve as tools to create a conducive environment around you to direct your behavior and action towards your ultimate goal. Moreover, with the help of powerful daily habits you’ve learned in this book, you will enhance your willpower reservoir to take up even more challenging assignments in your pursuits Since you had spent few precious hours of your time reading this book, I sincerely wish that you get the desired benefit from this book. As you know that knowledge is only potential power, the real power lies in imbibing that knowledge within you and take action to produce results.

Therefore, I would urge you to start small. Just pick any small nugget of wisdom from this book and start practicing immediately. And I assure you that you will start seeing change in your behavior and actions soon. “All success begins with self-discipline. It starts with you.” ~Dwayne Johnson I wish you all the best in whatever you do. Have a great life.

May I ask you for a small favor? At the outset, I want to give you a big thanks for taking out time to read this book. You could have chosen any other book, but you took mine, and I totally appreciate this. I hope you got at least a few actionable insights that will have a positive impact on your day to day life. Can I ask for 30 seconds more of your time? I’d love if you could leave a review about the book. Reviews may not matter to big-name authors; but they’re a tremendous help for authors like me, who don’t have much following. They help me to grow my readership by encouraging folks to take a chance on my books. To put it straight– reviews are the life blood for any author. Please leave your review by clicking below link, it will directly lead you to book review page. REVIEW PAGE OF “LEVEL-UP YOUR SELF-DISCIPLINE” It will just take less than a minute of your time, but will tremendously help me to reach out to more people, so please leave your review. Thanks for your support to my work. And I’d love to see your review.

Full Book Summary CHAPTER 1 KEY TAKEAWAYS The three necessary components for achieving any goal, as stated by psychologist Roy Baumeister are: Establishing motivation for change and set a clear goal; Monitoring behavior towards that goal; and Strengthening your willpower. Many longitudinal studies clearly show that those who developed willpower muscles in their childhood made significant progress in all areas of their lives even decades later, as compared to people who succumb to instant gratification. They scored higher SAT scores, got better grades, were more focused, and were way more successful. The prefrontal cortex, a region that controls executive functions, such as making choices, was more active in subjects with higher selfcontrol The researchers also concluded that self-control was more important than the IQ of the students in getting into good schools or getting better jobs. Based on court convictions and police records from New Zealand and Australia, researchers concluded that children with poor self-control were more likely to be convicted of a criminal offence. Key Benefits of levelling up your willpower: You prioritize your work. You feel a sense of accomplishment and it boosts your morale and confidence.

You feel in command of your life and not act as a victim of your circumstances. Self-discipline brings freedom, as you can finish your important projects in time, and free up your time for activities that you love to do. You improve your relationships, as you can give quality time to them. You get out of your own way, as you don’t listen to ever-chattering inner critic and train your mind to put consistent efforts.

CHAPTER 2 KEY TAKEAWAYS There are many psychological factors due to which people lack self-control, few of them are listed below: Delay Discounting: Researchers found that the longer you have to wait for a reward, the less it is worth to you. Even small delays can dramatically lower the perceived value of the offer and therefore one is prompted for instant gratification. Hot and Cool System of Brain: Cool System is responsible for making rational decisions, whereas Hot System instantly reacts on impulses and emotions. The behavior of most people is governed by this ‘hot’ system, which overpowers their cool system, thus resulting int0 impulsive behavior. False Hope Syndrome: Humans have a general tendency of setting unrealistic expectations about the speed, amount, ease, and consequence of changes they want to make in your life. When you aim for drastic changes in your life in a too short time, you are almost destined to see failure often (unless you get very lucky). Such frequent failures due to aggressive goal setting have a backfire effect, as you might start doubting your abilities. What-the-Hell Effect: In situations, where you can’t exercise selfcontrol and therefore indulge in something that you wanted to avoid, you regret and feel guilty about it. As a natural progression, now you want to get rid of such emotions of guilt and want to feel better. But, unfortunately, the way human psychology works is that you tend to experience the good feeling through more indulgence in the same bad habit (that you wanted to get rid of). This circle of indulgence and regret leading to greater indulgence is termed as ‘what-the-hell effect’.

Stress depletes your willpower. The studies showed that stress caused an increase in smoking and caffeine consumption and decrease in consumption of healthy food. Moreover, people affected by stress performed badly in their routine household chores and self-care habits (i.e., lack of physical activities). Restraint Bias: refers to a phenomenon of human psychology, whereby a person believes he or she has more ability to control instinct in situations like craving for food, drug, sex arousal, etc., but in reality, it turns out to be an inflated belief about one’s abilities. Parkinson’s Law: This principle states that work expands itself so as to fill the time available for its completion. If you allow more time to complete some work, you’ll lose your self-control and get easily distracted, as you think there is enough time to achieve your goal. You lose self-control and rather waste time in unproductive activities. CHAPTER 3 KEY TAKEAWAYS In order to activate your willpower, you need to start with a stronger why. The stronger the why, longer and better will be your motivation to stick to what you do. You need to find out what really motivates. Studies shows that managers wrongly believed that money and status were strong motivators for employees to perform their best, whereas the survey results showed that people are most motivated when they are making a consistent growth towards one meaningful goal. Money can motivate you only up to a threshold of maintaining a reasonable lifestyle, and beyond threshold, it has a marginal effect on your happiness and performance. Therefore, you need to really ask yourself what is your key inner drive that makes jump out of your bed every morning. People who develop growth mindset believe that they can improve upon their abilities, skills and talents; they believe that making efforts

will boost their probability of success. Therefore, developing a growth mindset sets up a strong foundational pillar to boosting your willpower. Use Commitment devices to lock yourself into following a certain plan of action that your mind resists despite knowing that such action plan can help you achieve your difficult goals. As per Economist Jodi Beggs, "Commitment devices are a way to overcome the discrepancy between an individual's short-term and long-term preferences.” CHAPTER 4 KEY TAKEAWAYS Willpower can be compared to any muscle of the human body. The way you can strengthen any muscle by exercise, you can strengthen willpower by exercise as well. However, just like the physical muscles get tired by usage, similar is the case with willpower. Psychologists state that willpower per se is not supplied to us in infinite quantity. In fact willpower depletes by usage. This concept is known as willpower depletion. Also, there is a related concept of decision fatigue, which states that every big or small decision you make eats up your willpower. The more decisions you make, the more you consume your willpower. There are a few ways to optimize the use of willpower: To avoid decision fatigue, you need to reduce the number of trivial decisions in your day-to-day life. You don’t need to decide everyday about the smaller things. Some examples on how you can avoid making decisions on trivial things on daily basis could be: fixing the menu of the meals to be eaten on all working days of a week, or deciding the clothes to be worn every day. Energy Budget Model: This concept states that when our brain

realizes that the supply of energy is limited or not coming anymore, it slows down or stops expanding the energy altogether. Therefore, when you are short of energy, the first thing the brain does is to give in to any temptation, because it doesn’t want to burn the limited energy reservoir in exercising self-control. Change your Environment to build self-discipline.: You can’t quit or reduce your smoking, drinking, or any other bad habits if your environment doesn’t support the behavior or habits you want to develop. Instead of losing self-discipline by staying in an environment that cause distractions and temptations, you should create or find an environment that promotes moving toward your goals or pursuits. Find ways to control your temptations. For example, you can use apps like SelfControl to avoid getting distracted by social media, while working on your important projects. CHAPTER 5 KEY TAKEAWAYS To level up your self-discipline, few scientifically proven daily routines and habits go a long way. These are listed as below: Mindfulness Practice. A daily practice of 10-20 minutes can start showing you results of enhanced willpower in a matter of few weeks only. It can even literally bring structural changes in your brain. Quality Sleep: Lack of sleep saps willpower because your cells feel trouble in absorbing glucose from the main bloodstream. This lack of glucose makes them under-fuelled and exhausted. Therefore, ensure that you take quality sleep for optimal number of hours. Daily exercise: Even short fifteen minutes on a treadmill reduces cravings. The long-term effects of exercise are even more impressive, as it relieves ordinary everyday stress, but it’s as powerful an

antidepressant as Prozac. Therefore, you should make exercise a part of your daily routine. Use cold showers. The act of getting under the cold shower itself is an act of exercising willpower. Science shows that it helps you in sleeping better and relieving from depressions, among other benefits. Don’t break the chain: By developing consistency in taking daily actions minimizes the need of self-control and almost automates the desired behavior. Eat that frog: You have maximum amount of energy and willpower when you wake up in the morning, therefore start your day by working on your most important projects or eat your frogs, as Brian Tracy suggests. CHAPTER 6 KEY TAKEAWAYS Navy SEALs are considered one of the most respected fighting forces in the world. Self-discipline and mental toughness is one of the main reasons for their success. They are known to build their mental toughness with these four pillars: Setting goals - Having concrete goals reinforces self-discipline because you will be bound to those goals until either completion or abandonment. Mental Visualization - By visualizing where you want to be, you can positively affect your goal-setting, allowing you to better focus on those goals Positive self-talking- By talking yourself up, you’ll be able to push yourself much harder toward your goal, as you see yourself as a person who can achieve goals.

Arousal Control - Navy SEALs take great pride in controlling their impulses and refraining from taking action under the influence of such impulses.

40% Rule: Navy Seals are taught in their tough trainings that whenever they get to feel the first sign of fatigue, it doesn’t mean that they really got tired. They are trained that when they get the first emotion of fatigue or tiredness, it means they have used only 40% of their power, and are still left with 60% more. By following this 40% rule, you will push yourself hard despite the signals of fatigue or when you feel like quitting. 4X4 Box Breathing technique: Mental calmness is one of the prerequisites for taking decisions in the kind of tough situations Navy SEALs face. They use effective 4X4 box breathing technique, which is based on mindfulness practice, as they have to focus on their breathing in a specific way, until heartbeat slows down and normalizes. You can also use this breathing take to control your breath movement and eventual take charge of your emotions. CHAPTER 7 KEY TAKEAWAYS You need to control your emotions in order to boost self-control. Here are few ways to tame your emotions Use Surfing your urges exercise: In this exercise, you careful observe and be mindful of urges arousing in your body. Being mindful of your urges helps you to separate you from those urges, and studies show that you can significantly reduce your cravings by simply surfing through them. Use RAIN formula: the 4 Step process to quit bad habits If you are struggling with some bad habits that you have been trying to quit

for a long time, then use this mindfulness based RAIN formula. The four steps are: 5. Recognize: the feeling of craving in your body. 6. Accept: the feeling arising in your body. 7. Investigate: The next logical step is to analyze the reason behind your bad habit or addiction. 8. Note: Lastly take a mental note of the emotions arising within yourself. Just give a single word or short phrase to put a label on what you feel. Taking a note of emotion reduces the impact of the emotions. Make Choices before they become emotional Under this approach, you make healthy choices before they get under the control of your emotions. Here, you create such circumstances through your pro-activeness that any possibility of making choices under the intoxication by arousal of emotions is ruled out. Use commitment devices: You can pre-decide your actions or implementation plan in the case of happening of specific future events. For pre-deciding the implementation plan, you have to use “if-then” statements for different situations. Having a plan in place in advance prompts you to just take the pre-decided action in that moment without putting any pressure on your willpower to make a fresh decision. CHAPTER 8 KEY TAKEAWAYS As humans we continue to indulge in our wrong behaviors in present, despite knowing how badly they can impact our future self. The Irony is that we think that howsoever we behave today, when we arrive in future, we will eventually become a different and better person.

As a natural human tendency, we don’t care more about a stranger than ourselves. Therefore, we behave in a non-resourceful manner when it comes to making decisions regarding our future, because the future-self is a stranger. But by following a few strategies, you can make your future self as your friend: Creating a future memory - If you can create a memory of your future in your mind, you can delay the need for gratification. With a future memory, your brain tells you to take action now, so that you can enjoy that future event. Imagination of a better future-self – If you can imagine yourself as a different and better person, as compared to your present self, then you’ll change your present action to match with the imagined future identity.

Could you please leave a review on the book? One last time! I’d love if you could leave a review about the book. Reviews may not matter to big-name authors; but they’re a tremendous help for authors like me, who don’t have much following. They help me to grow my readership by encouraging folks to take a chance on my books. To put it straight– reviews are the life blood for any author. Please leave your review by clicking below will directly lead you to book review page. REVIEW PAGE OF “LEVEL-UP YOUR SELF-DISCIPLINE” It will just take less than a minute of yours, but will tremendously help me to reach out to more people, so please leave your review. Thank you for supporting my work and I’d love to see your review soon.

Preview of the book “Trigger High Performance” Introduction *******

“Peak performance begins with your taking complete responsibility for your life and everything that happens to you.” ~ Brian Tracy For Jenny, it was not just a regular day at the office. Along with her other colleagues, she would receive her long-awaited performance appraisal results. Jenny was a bit nervous, frequently glancing at her watch and then towards the cabin of her marketing head. The marketing department she worked in was buzzing more than usual. Jenny observed her colleagues as they entered and left her boss’s office — they spent fifteen to twenty minutes in there. Some co-workers looked elated (as if they had been promoted), while others seemed only content (as if they had been awarded normal salary hikes). A few of her co-workers appeared frustrated or upset (as if they had experienced something serious, such as reprimands). Suddenly, her heart started beating faster than usual, as it was her turn. Jenny would enter that corner room in only a few minutes; she was anxious, and her palms were drenched in sweat. Eventually, she was called in. Her reporting manager, a tall, handsome man in his early forties, and an HR representative from her organization were sitting on the opposite side of a big table. Jenny took her seat, and after exchanging brief greetings, they began to discuss her appraisal and feedback with her.

She began to realize that her anxiety and fears were not entirely unfounded; Jenny received feedback that her performance was not up to the mark, and the organization wanted her to gear up faster and strengthen her competencies and skill set to better address her job requirements. At length, she received a letter that offered an average three-star performance rating (five stars were given only to top performers) with only a marginal salary hike. Deeply sad and frustrated, Jenny left the room and somehow managed to reach her cubicle. Sitting dejectedly at her desk, she began to reflect on what had just occurred. She thought of all her colleagues who had cheerfully and excitedly exited her boss’s office — and, more particularly, about Zara. Zara, who was one of the smartest young women in Jenny’s marketing team, had left the boss’s office beaming victoriously. In the next few minutes, Jenny was at Zara’s workstation, inquiring about her performance appraisal. Jenny had guessed correctly: Zara was promoted to the next level and got a decent salary hike. After congratulating Zara and managing, with some difficulty, to finish her urgent work, Jenny called it a day and left the office early. At home, she recollected and reflected upon past instances of Zara’s outstanding performance; Jenny realized that in the few short years she had worked with her, Zara had always enjoyed more freedom at work because she delivered exceptional results, regardless of the tasks assigned to her. She was given much more independence while dealing with the organizations’ clients and a great deal of flexibility to schedule meetings with clients at her convenience. Also, although Zara seemed to be consistently given more work responsibilities, she never appeared to be stressed or anxious about the work — she remained calm and continued to deliver stellar results to the organization. Zara’s promotion was well-deserved. Then Jenny began to reflect on her own working life. She realized that she felt anxious, mostly about work and about what her superiors thought of her. Jenny always felt swamped with work, despite having much less work than Zara and although she was almost always the last one to leave office regularly. Obviously, she was overwhelmed and frustrated about what had happened that day, but she was also curious. Her head was reeling with questions, such

as: What made Zara deliver such amazing results despite having more work under her belt than herself? How come Zara could work tirelessly and seemingly without any stress, despite being loaded with highly demanding clients? Did Zara acquire those high-performance traits by birth, or did she up her game by learning and practicing the tricks of the trade? Was there some secret recipe for her exceptional performance — one that allowed Zara to lead a successful and happy life? In this modern, highly competitive, and demanding world, almost everyone — not only Jenny — is curious to know how high performers do what they do while the rest of the world struggles. Like Jenny, most people in business, sports, or other fields would love to have the secret recipes that high achievers use in every part of their lives to succeed consistently and wonder: What makes some people crush it in every field, while most individuals just struggle hard to escape their mediocre lives? What makes such people master their body and mind and always seem beaming with grace despite handling high-stake responsibilities? And the most important of all the questions that any high-performance enthusiast (yours truly included) should look for answer is: How can an individual attain that physical and mental state where he or she can consistently, and over a long period of time, perform at higher levels and deliver extraordinary results? As someone who is always researching and implementing ways to improve my mindset, behavior, and performance, I assure that you are in the right place to find the answer to this question. This book’s objective is to address the above question — and to do so, we will delve deeper into neuroscience, human psychology, and behavioral studies/researches to isolate the principles of high performance followed by ultra-achievers in different fields of their lives.

The real-life examples in the book will inspire and offer you explicit evidence of how these principles have been implemented by successful people in all fields of life, be it sports, arts, or business, to deliver the highest level of performance for a longer sustainable period. This book is about the long-term strategies that talk about your inner mindset, the science of how your body and mind works, and how you can start applying the principles as you read them. This book is not about some quick hacks or tactics with short-lived performance boosters; rather, it focuses on a long-term sustainable approach to change your mindset and presents a different way of performing your tasks and achieving your wildly important goals. Throughout this book, I will share simple, but highly effective, principles, along with some real-life examples of high achievers. I assure you that by the time you put the book down, your mind will have already digested many mental principles that will help trigger your next actions. Once you implement these principles in your life, you will undoubtedly enhance your performance muscles and progress faster towards your highest goals. With that assurance, I ask you to join this short journey of learning the tools of high performance to significantly improve the quality of your life. Let’s get started! --End of Preview-Get your copy of the full book here >>>

Trigger High Performance: Upgrade Your Mind, Learn Effectively to Become an Expert, Activate Flow State to Take Relentless Action, and Perform At Your Best

My Books in Personal Mastery Series 1. Mindset Makeover: Understand the Neuroscience of Mindset, Improve Self-Image, Master Routines for a Whole New Mind, & Reach your Full Human Potential

2. Level-Up Your Self-Discipline: Understand the Neuroscience of Self-Discipline, Control Your Emotions, Overcome Procrastination, and Achieve Your Difficult Goals

3. Trigger High Performance: Upgrade Your Mind, Learn Effectively to Become an Expert, Activate Flow State to Take Relentless Action, and Perform At Your Best

Copyright © 2020 by Som Bathla All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, or transmitted by email or by any other means whatsoever without permission in writing from the author.

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