Imagine I stick a yummy biscuit in front of you.
Or maybe a cake.
Or beer, wine, etc.
Ask you to leave it for 10 minutes.
Then I give you a tricky maths problem and ask you to give it a good go.
How long do you reckon you’ll stick with it?
Research shows it’s a lot less time than if I’d just given you the maths problem straight away.
Having used an amount of your ‘will power’ up in the first task, there is less available for the second.
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There’s two great points we can take from this.
Firstly, as we mentioned regularly, will power is a finite resource.
It runs out.
So the key to making the most of your limited supply…….
Is not to waste it unnecessarily.
There will be occasions where you can’t avoid there being temptation.
Where you will have to use your willpower.
Out with friends and they have a sugar laden desserts.
Cake or biscuits get passed round at work.
And so on.
But there are plenty of times we can avoid the need for willpower.
And if we don’t, and use it up, those unavoidable situations will be even more challenging.
If we do our food shop online……..
Or if we go in store with a list and avoid whole aisles full of crap………
If we don’t have rubbish in the fridge or cupboards at home…………
Then we’re not using up that reservoir of will power when we don’t have to.
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For the second way of seeing this, imagine it was a bowl of sprouts I left in front of you for 10 minutes.
You will be no more or less genuinely hungry than with the other biscuits, cake, etc.
But, if like most people, you don’t like sprouts, leaving them won’t deplete your willpower.
You’ll probably spend just as long on the maths problem as you would if I’d given it straight to you.
It’s how we view the things in front of us that determines whether they affect our willpower.
Something that uses up our willpower, depletes that resource.
When something is seen as neutral it doesn’t affect willpower.
When something is seen as energising it increases it.
If we see our workouts as energising……….
Rather than a necessary evil we have to slog through……….
Then we have even more willpower for when we actually need it.
If we see healthy foods as nourishing and good for us rather than boring and restrictive……..
Then that increases our willpower instead of using it up.
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You get the idea.
Don’t waste you willpower when you don’t have to.
And challenge what you see as willpower depleting.
Much love,
Jon ‘Will.i.am.not’ Hall and Matt ‘Skillpower’ Nicholson
P.S. Still a few weeks away of course, but if you’re interested in finally changing the way you see things and getting some awesome results, you may as well book in for the find-out-more meeting now 🙂 myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting
