Six daily habits to up your willpower

It’s Monday again and you need that extra boost of motivation to rejuvenate the first working day after a chilled out weekend. Success at work or otherwise is a lot of small things done well, day after day and what seems like an overnight success is usually a mix of hard work and incredible will power. As compiled from Huffington Post, Business Insider and wollpowered.co, build these habits that have been scientifically proven to give you incredible willpower, to excel at work and otherwise.

Meditate

You don’t have to turn into a yogi to meditate. Meditation is simply the custom of bringing your thoughts to the present moment. It can be done by sitting upright in a room that is clear of noise and distractions and focusing only on your breathing. If you don’t have time for that, find an activity that captures your full focus and attention. If you are completely focused on cleaning dishes; without mentally going over your day, you can achieve a state of meditation. Research shows that 47 per cent of our lives are spent either recalling the past or thinking about the future. Meditation is the most effective way to increase willpower, since you’re training the brain to focus and resist the urge to wander. Research shows that after just two or three days of meditation for 10 minutes, your brain will be able to focus better; you’ll have more energy, and less stress.

Eat a low glycemic diet

When you eat, the body creates a chemical known as glucose that travels through the blood stream. This is what the brain uses as its source of fuel to think, create, and exert willpower. To ensure a healthy store of willpower to stick to your goals — be it at work or at the gym — you must make sure the brain has enough glucose to use as energy. Sugary foods cause a quick spike of glucose, giving you willpower fuel for the short-term, but will cause a consequent crash that depletes your willpower just as fast, leaving you impatient and jittery. Keep the glucose level in your bloodstream steady to exert willpower for the long-term. To accomplish this, researchers suggest a low-glycemic diet, which includes lean proteins, nuts, daal, fruits and veggies.

Practice mindfulness

We think that every choice we make throughout the day goes through a process of informed decision-making. Sorry to break it to you, but 45 per cent of your daily decisions are made automatically. From what we eat, what we choose to wear and what we decide to do when we first get to work, our brains are running wholly on autopilot. To be successful at work, overcome this tendency by becoming more mindful of your daily decisions. This is as simple as pausing and questioning why you are making the decision to get coffee as soon as you make it into the office. Or why are you eating chai paratha for breakfast rather than eggs. Simply question your daily choices and you will strengthen your willpower to make better decisions all through the day.

Play offense

Researchers studied a group of people in the Netherlands who seemingly had relentless willpower. They ate extremely healthy, exercised regularly, hardly procrastinated at work and were reported less stressed than almost everyone around them. These people were in fact prone to the same temptations as the rest of us. The secret to their willpower, it turned out, was that they did not put themselves in questionable situations. Make your lifestyle well-structured. For example, stay away from sweets, or distractions from work, at least on weekdays. That way you’ll be a willpower super hero because you’ll never have to use it.

Find inspiration

It could be a speech by a great leader, or your mum — when we’re inspired, we get a rush of energy that motivates us to reach heights by feeding our ambitions. It’s almost as if we get more willpower. When we witness something inspiring, the part of the pre-frontal cortex that thinks about the long-term lights up. The neurons in this part of the brain start firing and we feel a rush of energy as we begin to believe in our dreams and goals. This strengthens willpower, making it easier to work towards our long-term goals. To tap into this willpower, find something inspiring that you can turn to on a daily basis or when times get tough.

Chunking

The last and the most significant willpower habit is chunking. Chunking is the method of taking a large goal or dream and breaking it into handy ‘chunks’. If you’ve ever had a goal, you know how thrilling it can be at first. Then it’s time to actually get down to the work. And, whether it’s putting pen to paper, or putting foot to treadmill, you’re completely inundated at the thought of putting all that effort and end up not even bother trying. Chunking works because it shifts your focus from that larger goal, into smaller portions that are easier for your brain to comprehend. If your goal is to follow a 12-week exercise plan, or writing up a thesis for a presentation at work, it can be crushing when you’re tired on day three, thinking about the fact that you have so much more to accomplish. Break up your goal into chunks and you’ll be less likely to get overwhelmed.

Published in The Express Tribune, March  30^th,  2015.

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