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What To Expect

In today’s article, 5 ways to manage your willpower battery for success will go into more depth about where willpower comes from and how to make willpower work to benefit us rather than let it deplete where we give in into temptation we may later regret.

What Is Willpower?

According to most psychological scientists, 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.

Where Does Willpower Come From?

Kelly McGonigal, PhD and author of The Willpower Instinct says willpower is a response that comes from both the brain and the body. The willpower response is a reaction to an internal conflict. You want to do one thing, such as smoke a cigarette or supersize your lunch, but know you shouldn’t.

5 Ways To Manage Your Willpower Battery For Success

1. What Should We Automate

Automating is an amazing concept that can help with our willpower battery. We can now automate our finances to prevent us from going into debt and also building our retirement fund. By automating our bills and Index funds.

Not only that but we can automate a lot of things that drain our willpower battery so we can focus on what’s most important to us in our life. This could be using a laundry app that can clean and iron all your clothes for you or hiring an assistant for the generic tasks you don’t want to put energy into.

Look at your life and see what drains your willpower and whether you could fix it by automating it.

2 .Get Rid Of Anything Unimportant That Depletes Willpower

There are so many things around us that deplete our willpower battery. Imagine waking up feeling good, ready to win your day. Then you open your email box, put the news on, go on social media and then bit by bit your willpower and your mood slowly changes. The feeling of win your day can still be there but it’s taken a big chunk already and by noon you could be fully drained.

That’s why it’s important to manage what you read, listen to and watch because the draining of the negatives in our life will cause willpower depletion.

Why is it that some people are motivated full of energy throughout the day and others are not? It’s because some people are conserving their willpower and others are depleting it before they get out the front door.

3. Be One With Your Feelings

What can deplete your willpower battery fast is losing control of your emotions or letting them control us. When there is stress in your life what do you turn to? Is it chocolate, smoking or an ex?

When willpower depletes we are more susceptible to things in our life we don’t really want to do and will later regret. In kelly Mcdonigual book Willpower Instinct. Studies have shown that when you feel any kind of feeling be conscious of it and don’t hold it back but let it quickly flow through you. You then say to yourself this feeling will soon pass and I choose not to do it today.

When we hold off negative emotions it quickly saps all our willpower strength but letting it pass through and dealing with it. Our willpower can be sustained.

4. Be Well Rested

When you’re tired at night have you ever been susceptible to temptation? I know I have with the lure of chocolate.

The same goes for when we wake up after a lack of sleep too. You might not see at first but sooner or later you will become tired quicker and temptations will come towards you thick and fast. That’s why it’s important for your willpower battery to well-rested between 6 and 8 hours following your 90-minute rhythmic cycles.

Within the Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal also cites that “Sleep deprivation (even just getting less than six hours a night) is a kind of chronic stress that impairs how the body and brain use energy. The prefrontal cortex is especially hard hit and it loses control over the regions of the brain that create cravings and the stress response.”

So sleep is an important part of your willpower battery throughout the day.

There is a simple experiment to find out. Just focus on yourself or people around you and notice the difference between getting 4 hours of sleep compared to 8 hours. Watch out for changes in cravings and breaking of habits. You will be surprised at what you see.

5. Be prepared

Similar to automating.

Being prepared each day with your intention, to-do list and schedule.

Helps the brain order the priority of the day.

It allows your brain not to get overloaded with what to do. But allows the brain to focus on the productivity part of the day.

I do this myself. What really helps when writing for a blog post is planning everything in advance. So when I sit down to write I have my title, keywords, headings and research already prepared. So when I’m writing my mind feels a lot more focused and less drained. Whereas it would be drained if I had to do it all at the same time.

We have all heard the stories about Mark Zuckerberg who wore the same style of clothes every day. So he doesn’t have to think and drain his willpower thinking about unproductive energy depletion. Prepare your day, your week even your year to free up space for being more productive. This will keep your willpower battery full for longer.

Over To You

I hope you enjoyed today’s article, 5 ways to manage your willpower battery for success

We all have a willpower battery and when we manage it well with the strategies stated above. Our productivity levels go up as well as sticking to habits more easily too.

If you have any other strategies that work well for you please comment below!

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Hi, I’m Adam

I’ve spent over 10 years coaching and mentoring people within sport and business. I have many life skills that I have developed and I want to pass these skills on so people can find their best self. I believe it all starts in the mind and I write about valuable tools and strategies to help people grow in this area.

What To Expect

In today’s article Why you should make failure your friend when learning new skills, we are going to discuss everything failure.

How it helps you to succeed, how we can learn from it and some strategies to help deal with any failure you come across. Every human has many failures in their life. There’s no getting past it when it comes to progression.

So know yourself, when you have a failure in your life minor or major. Remember you are not alone as everyone around goes through it too.

Carrying Failure vs Stepping Over Failure

Why you should make failure your friend when learning new skills — Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

When I was younger there was a challenge I had to do to learn how to keep a positive attitude.

I was giving multiple objects to carry. At first, it was easy but bit by bit it got heavier and heavier where I could no longer carry the objects and with the extra weight they all fell to the ground.

The challenge was to show. If in life you take on too much negativity it will eventually way you down where you can no longer keep a positive attitude any longer.

This principle is the same when it comes to failure. When you carry all your failures with you. One by one it will drag you down which will lead to damaging effects on your mental health. I have seen sad occasions where peoples failure has been too much for the individual. They have decided to not carry on their life any longer.

That’s why everyone should learn when they come up against a failure to not carry with them. You have to immediately act as your mental health is at stake and you have to find it within yourself to step over failure and treat it as a positive learning curve of what not to do.

We Have To Learn To Help People Deal With Failure

In our culture today it’s frowned upon to fail or make a mistake which goes against how we progress as a human. Instead, we should help people by re-teaching them a better way forward where they can learn from their mistakes.

The biggest mistakes we can make in society, of course, will lead a person to become a prisoner.

There are serious crimes that are hard to come back from but why do people who go to prison come out to go back again soon after? One reason is that failure will stick with them forever and they will find it hard to get a job, housing or place back in the community. This is why they can not reform and learn from their mistakes as easily. Every case is unique but what if no one in their life was a good role model for them and never taught them a more positive path to take.

It’s easy to judge but giving people second chances from failure is also something we should learn to do too within society as long as the appropriate re-education is put in place.

In Order To Succeed You Must First Be Willing To Fail

When it comes to succeeding you have to prepare your self for failure. You need to treat it as a law that is a consequence of action. Now if anyone is scared of failure. It’s a normal reaction as it’s painful to fail in the moment.

Imagine your public speaking and you forget what you were going to say or you promised everyone you were going to do something but you failed. Of course, it’s painful but it will only continue to be painful if you let it.

There are two options to take when failure strikes you.

1. You can hide away from the world and your problems.

2. You face failure head-on and find a solution to overcome it.

The first one takes little effort and progression halts in your life. Whereas the second option takes a lot of effort but progression advances forward.

I know people where certain failures in their life have made them curl up into their shell to never be seen again. This is not healthy for their mind. By learning strategies to overcome failure is crucial and should be taught from an early age.

As a parent, I have a big say in how my children react to failure in adulthood. When a child is coddled from the world and their problems. When they’re faced with problems as an independent adult they can’t handle the pressure and revert back to comfortability.

By accepting failure as normal and a great learning curve. You will thank yourself later in life for your courage to act with positivity.

Strategies For Learning From Failure

1. Forgive Yourself

Forgiving yourself of your failures is the first step in overcoming failure. From my own experience, I carried too many of my failures but when I let go the weight was released instantly. My overall happiness has improved because I don’t hang on to the past.

2. It Gets You Closer To The Goal

Some failures are in your life as obstacles to get you closer to your goal. Just like doing puzzles or playing games where you keep, failing. Learning from your failures as you go along can help you get closer to your end goal. Just don’t give up along the way just adapt and move forward.

3. Learning From Failure Stories

There are many successful people from past and present who have gone through failure.

In the present day, we have Elon Musk who has gone through many failures along the way to him recently becoming the richest man on earth in 2021. His businesses Tesla and Space X are one example where at the same time each business was going to go bankrupt. Miraculously he found a way out by learning from his failures. Now everyone wants a Tesla and Space X works alongside Nasa with the goal to land on Mars becoming a real prospect.

In the past, there are many great people who were known as failures. Thomas Edison failed over Ten Thousand times when he was creating the electric light bulb.

President Lincoln stands out for me. Now in American culture is one of the most famous presidents of all time. But if you look at his story he failed many times in becoming president. But he learned from his failures and never gave up. Now he has a legacy long after his death.

4. Build A Safe Learning Environment

Whether it be at home or leading a team. Creating a learning environment where someone can feel it’s ok and normal that sometimes they will fail. This Will lead to high productivity and results in the long term.

So when a child makes a mistake with their maths. Show them it’s normal and try again. When your employee forgets what was required of them instead of sacking them, why don’t you teach them what’s meant to be done. It’s been proven that creating these safe environments for learning has boosted the productivity of the individual and organisations.

5. Analyse Failure

When we fail instead of hiding away from it or condemning the person who has failed. Instead, analyse the data and find where they went wrong and come up with solutions to fix it. This is where some of the best work is done on the other side of failure.

Over To You

I hope you understand more about failure from today’s article Why you should make failure your friend when learning new skills.

Knowing that failure is a positive consequence of progress. That everyone goes through failure and that you can overcome any failure in your life. Will go a long way to helping you progress at whatever you do with your mental health intact

IF YOU LOVED THE ARTICLE PLEASE SHARE BELOW!

Hi, I’m Adam