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What to expect?

In today’s article, 5 surprising habits that drain your mental well-being over time. I will discuss what habits you need to get rid of in your life. If draining habits are left to grow it will slowly drain your mental well-being. Over time you will notice a lack of focus, alienation and poor execution of tasks. This mentality will hold you back. So if you are doing any of the habits below I have left a quick solution to your problems. I hope it helps!

5 Surprising Habits That drain Your Mental Well-Being Over Time

1. Habit Of Being Messy

If not ourselves we all know someone who’s messy. There are even successful people who are messy as well.

But for ultimate productivity, and overall mental well-being. Research has shown that a cluttered workspace drags the mind away from focussing on what it needs to do.

A MIR scan showed that within the prefrontal cortex. It showed that too many distractions can affect the mind’s focus. It showed that the brain is not good at blocking out clutter, leading to the mind overworking and becoming drained because of too much clutter.

Solution – Take a tip from all the minimalist out there and apply their strategy to your life. It will allow for clean workspaces, home and you will see your focus and mental wellbeing skyrocket.

2. Habit Of Making Excuses

No one wants to admit when their wrong or didn’t achieve their intended goal. But getting into the habit of making excuses can lead to bad implications for your future wellbeing. The lack of vulnerability to give growth to the inflated ego will eventually lead you down a path where you will become stuck in life and won’t able to move forward.

Solution – Open your mind to a growth mindset where you can openly admit to your mistakes and failures. It might be immediately painful but in the long term important for future growth. Making excuses doesn’t help you in any way. Just remember it’s just your ego your protecting.

3. Habit Of Perfectionism

We all want to be the best but at what cost when attaining perfection. Perfection can lead us down a path where we have to get everything perfect before we start anything. Which becomes a form of procrastination without any action. Perfectionism can also be damaging for your mental wellbeing by setting your goal too high to attain because you want it to be perfect. This can lead to worthlessness, stress and a sense of failure.

Solution – Understand that nothing is perfect and being unperfect is ok. Changing your habit of perfectionism to giving your best effort and focussing on moving forward with intention will lead to happiness and mental wellbeing. Of course, there is a positive to striving for perfectionism but at what cost if you go too far with it. Definitely, a balancing act and self-awareness are key for it not ruling your life.

4. Habit Of Multi-Tasking

Some people take pride in their ability to multi-task. In some cases, it can have its benefits. For productive work, it doesn’t. Your brain is limited just like any power unit. If your multitasking on 5 things at once then you’re outputting at 20% efficiency for each task. You are therefore not giving your main priority it’s full attention.

You can see this in relationships when someone is talking and the other person on the phone whilst listening or a baby wants your attention but you’re focussed on watching TV. The attachment with that person gets slightly damaged as they don’t feel your full attention. This matters and is a reason for marriage breakups and attachment problems from children which lead them to find it with someone else.

Solution – There’s only so much we can focus on. Making it our priority to focus solely on one task or person at a time. Can help us overcome multitasking fatigue and relationship difficulties.

5. Habit Of Doing It Alone

Humans are built to work together for future growth. We are social animals and live to make connections with others. When we try and do everything ourselves. We just make our life 10 times harder. It can be hard to reach out for help. But it’s all ego and negative thinking going on in your mind. Outsourcing and automating our life helps to move forward quicker. The most successful people understand that having a team around you helps elevate your success.

Solution – Ask for help and build a team or support network around you that can make your life easier and enjoyable. This will help your mental well-being not feel overwhelmed and alone.

Over To You

I hope you enjoyed today article, 5 surprising habits that drain your mental well-being over time.

It’s not always easy to notice the habits that affect us in negative ways. But being self-aware and learning about our own habits. Can go a long way to ensuring your success and future mental wellbeing.

Build that mental strength with the right habits!!!

IF YOU LOVED THE ARTICLE PLEASE SHARE BELOW!

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, 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!

IF YOU LOVED THE ARTICLE PLEASE SHARE BELOW!

Hi, I’m Adam