3 effective willpower strengthening ideas by Kelly McGonigal

Effective willpower strengthening ideas

How many times have you decided to wake up the next day and go for a long run in  the early fresh morning?

How many times have you convinced yourself that you're going to finish your project or do your home work just right after you wake up the next day?

I am pretty sure there have been many things that you've planned to do but end up doing none of them. Do you know why? besides being lazy you also have a lack of willpower. I am not trying to offend you as we are lazy sometimes, that's the human nature.

It's time for you to stop lying to yourself and actually start doing something about it. This article contains some steps that would be very useful for you to strengthen your willpower, which will eventually makes you a person with a high level of power of will, a person who is ready to do anything he wants without feeling lazy about it. Ready? That's the spirit!  Check the steps below.

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What would you see in this article?

•      The importance of sleep and its connection with willpower
  
  
•      Meditation effect on improving your decision making and increasing willpower
  
  
•      How to set your priorities and start your day correctly

Idea #1 : Make sure you're getting enough sleep

Do you become drunk when you don't sleep?

Getting very little sleep is very unhealthy, that's a fact and everybody knows it. The other thing that most people don't know is that when you don't get enough sleep, it affects you in a way that makes you struggle to make the right decisions.

The guy on the video below says that he used to get 4 hours of sleep, which is absolutely not enough for a human being to wake up fully refreshed and healthy. He also says that when he was presented with something healthy to eat and an unhealthy choice, he always picked the unhealthy one.

Let's say you had a long night with friends celebrating your birthday all nigh long and you didn't sleep until 5 AM, but the problem is that you still have to go to work the next day at 7 o'clock AM, so you only have 2 hours. Do you think that you would still be able to make good decisions? perhaps yea... but what if you continued that routine for one week, do you you think you would still be making good decisions? I guess not.

In fact, researches has shown that being sleep deprived is like being drunk, which is not a good time to make decisions. Most of the decisions drunk people make are wrong because of Alcohol effect on the human's mind. You can read more about that Here.

Remember, the first idea for strong will power is getting a good amount of sleep, therefor you may consider fixing your sleep habits, which includes everything from sleep time to sleep quality.

Idea #2 : Meditate to build your prefrontal cortex just like you work out to build muscles

 

It's impact is really fascinating, see how down below.

I know meditation seems like a crazy boring idea, but just like you go to gym and bulk you muscles up, you may consider dedicating a little bit of your valuable time to meditate at least 5 minutes per day, even the busiest people in the world are able to have more than 5 minutes of  free time per day so what's your excuse? I know it's hard to get some free time as even " doing absolutely nothing but chatting " is considered something important nowadays, but common... it's only 5 minutes so be realistic, you won't regret it.

Meditation is the activity that makes your brain grow denser packing in more grey matter in your prefrontal cortex, which is the area associated with decision making and willpower, it's the part of the brain that gets you say no to something unhealthy and the the part of the brain that makes you get up and start working on your important projects.

•      Also Read : Scientifically proven tips to increase willpower

There is no need to meditate for hours, only start with 3 to 5 minutes a day as even a short period of meditation is effective too, then start moving on to 10 or 15 minutes or even 30 minutes per day.

Remember, it's better to be consistent with only 3 or 5 minutes than meditating for 30 minutes or more without being consistent, this means it's better to meditate 5 minutes a day for 8 weeks than to meditate 1 hour everyday for only 1 week.

So the second idea for strengthening willpower is meditating, even researches has shown that only after a few weeks of being consistent with meditating, we can already observe the brain structure physically changing.

Idea #3 : Set your priorities and start with them first

 

Willpower is like a muscle and it get's tired too!

The guy on the video below also mentioned that he gets tired even before he starts working on his important projects, because he starts with unimportant stuff such as checking his e-mails, responding to them and doing all kind of other unnecessary stuff.

It's not just him, most of people are doing the same thing and some are even worst cause they start by checking their social media profiles, if the person is popular and have much notifications, messages and friend/follow request then it's a total mess as it's like entering in an endless tunnel and being unaware of time at all.

•      Also Read : Boost your willpower realistically

Willpower is like a muscle as it gets tired too, and starting applying it in doing unnecessary stuff first will get your willpower depleted. Instead you can start your day by doing the most important stuff first and then move on to the less important ones.

Remember, the third idea for strengthening willpower is to avoid starting your day by doing unimportant stuff and focus on doing the necessary ones such as your projects instead.

This was some of the most effective willpower strengthening ideas by Kelly McGonigal. I recommend reading her wonderful book " The Willpower Instinct By Kelly McGonigal " ( That's an affiliate link ).

If you don't want that then Fightmediocrity made some great efforts in summarizing the whole book and managed to come up with 3 great ideas of increasing willpower. Here is the video :

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I highly recommend adopting those ideas and applying them in your real life, as it would be a great addition to get more closer to your self improvement goal.

Now i wonder if you used to do the same mistake mentioned in step number three? :)