bad habits, behavior, behavior change, developing willpower, good habits, habit, identity, Mantra, The Fat Loss Habit, Uncategorized, willpower, willpower depletion, Willpower is like a muscle

Discover a Surprising Willpower Mantra that Actually Works!

Ego Depletion (Illustrations by Ted Slampyak)

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USE THE POWER OF LANGUAGE TO REINFORCE YOUR IDENTITY

“A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words … the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.” Mark Twain

Have you ever told someone you can’t have a piece of cake because you were on a diet or that you can’t go to lunch because you need to go to the gym? If you have, you are probably feeling pretty good about yourself right now. What if I told you that the language used in these two examples is weak? Confused? Don’t be. I will explain how the right words will improve your willpower, bolster your self-esteem, and make overcoming temptations easier. Continue reading “Discover a Surprising Willpower Mantra that Actually Works!”

Jeff EmblenJune 8, 2021June 8, 20212 Comments

BDNF, developing willpower, fat loss, habit, habit change, how to break a bad habit, willpower, willpower depletion

ENVIRONMENT TRUMPS WILLPOWER

Change doesn’t have to be difficult. The belief that “change is hard” is one of the biggest myths about human behavior. When we design a positive environment, change happens naturally. Making the right behavior the easier or only option is the key. The more committed you are to shape your environment, the less willpower you’ll need. Anyone serious about losing weight should throw away all the junk food in their home. This would make eating junk food impossible. Continue reading ENVIRONMENT TRUMPS WILLPOWER

Jeff EmblenMay 16, 2021May 16, 2021Leave a comment

BDNF, decision fatigue, developing willpower, mini habits, SELF-ESTEEM, willpower

MINI HABITS HAVE A LOW WILLPOWER COST

Mini habits recognize that any new habit is going to take time to develop. We must get our reps in. After we have established a solid foundation, we can build on it. We are often told that we should never try to develop more than one habit at a time. This is great advice. The biggest mistake we can make about our willpower is placing too many simultaneous demands on it. The mental reserve we draw from to exert willpower is severely limited. Fortunately, with mini habits, this singular focus is unnecessary.

Most of us want to develop multiple new habits. It takes a lot of self-control to focus on just one and ignore the others. The low willpower cost of mini habits means you can build multiple habits at once. They are so small we can create three or four at a time. As we follow through on our mini self-commitments, it will build our willpower and self-esteem.

Habits not only build our willpower, but they also conserve it. Habits flow, unfettered by conscious thought. We aren’t struggling with a decision. We are reacting to a cue. Habits and environmental design are long-term strategies for conserving willpower. They allow us to avoid making a decision that would erode our willpower through decision fatigue. Instead of making a decision, we encounter a cue and execute a routine. Continue reading MINI HABITS HAVE A LOW WILLPOWER COST

Jeff EmblenJune 24, 2020Leave a comment

atomic habits, bad habits, BDNF, developing willpower, habit, habit change, The Fat Loss Habit, The Power of Habit, willpower

Different Thinking – Different Results

When people fail to change, they blame their willpower. Willpower is the scapegoat of people that needlessly subject themselves to temptation. No one has enough willpower to subject themselves unnecessarily to temptation. If you examine the environment of disciplined people, you will discover they engineered it to eliminate the need to exert willpower. They don’t have more willpower. They avoid the need to use it. Willpower is an ineffective change strategy. Shaping the Path, on the other hand, is very effective. Commitment eliminates the need for willpower. When we shape our environment correctly, we discourage bad habits. We remove temptations and make good habits the default by making them easier to do, and bad habits more difficult. The more committed we are to shaping our environment, the less willpower we’ll need. The best way to change your life is by changing something you do each day. Change your habits, change your life! Nothing is stronger than habit. Continue reading Different Thinking – Different Results

Jeff EmblenMay 11, 2020Leave a comment

bad habits, basal ganglia, behavior change, cerebral cortex, change, compound effect, decision fatigue, developing willpower, Discipline, Fitness, fitness motivation, good habits, habit, habit of success, habit Substitution, impulse control, Interrupt a bad habit, Ironic Theory, Personal development, The Power of Habit, Uncategorized, willpower, willpower depletion

CHANGE IS DIFFICULT, BUT WITH THE RIGHT STRATEGIES AND A LITTLE MOTIVATION, WE ARE ALL CAPABLE OF GREAT CHANGE

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What you are going to learn:

Why Habits are so Powerful and Potentially Dangerous
The Three Elements of a Habit
How a Better Understanding of Habits can Help Us Replace Bad Habits with Good Ones
A Simple Approach to Overcoming our Natural Resistance to Change
Why We Often Blame our Lack of Willpower when it is usually our Lack of Commitment that is to Blame

People often say that change is difficult, and they are correct. Change is difficult, but we are all capable of change. Our lives are continually changing, learning to drive, marriage, having children, new job responsibilities, and new technological tools. Initiation is the most challenging phase of any change because when we are learning to perform new tasks, it is mentally exhausting. Learning to perform a new activity requires our cerebral cortex (“Conscious Brain”) to do the heavy lifting.

As the new task becomes routine, the more resilient basal ganglia, (“subconscious brain’), takes over. The action becomes easier and easier to perform. Our conscious brain essentially goes on autopilot, and the actions flow almost effortlessly. You undoubtedly experienced this when you were learning to drive. In the beginning, it required all of your mental focus, but now you can drive, adjust the cabin temperature, tune the radio, carry on a conversation, and heaven forbid, use your smartphone while driving.

Change is possible, but it starts with awareness. The hardest part of creating a change in behavior is just not repeating the behaviors of the past. Approximately 40 to 45% of the decisions we make are out of habit.[i] Unfortunately, these aren’t conscious decisions. These are decisions our conscious brain has delegated to the subconscious brain. Our subconscious mind controls the performance of repetitive daily activities which frees our conscious mind from making countless decisions each day, which would lead to decision fatigue and mental exhaustion. For this reason, we aren’t mindful of actions we have repeated enough times to make them habits.
Continue reading “CHANGE IS DIFFICULT, BUT WITH THE RIGHT STRATEGIES AND A LITTLE MOTIVATION, WE ARE ALL CAPABLE OF GREAT CHANGE”