When you do something you love to do, you feel as if you could do it all day long. It’s as if doing it takes almost no will power on your part. Unfortunately, the reality is that you’re not going to love doing everything you have to do in life.
For example, I don’t love doing my taxes, eating healthy, or exercising daily. But I know these are things that I have to do. And to do them requires will power on my part. So here are a few things I do to increase my will power for the tasks that seemingly take every last ounce of it:
Use Your Will Power: Think of will power as a muscle. When you first start lifting weights, lifting 15 pound dumbbells may be exhausting for you. But over time as your muscles grow stronger (and you start lifting heavier weights), you’ll be able to lift those 15 pound dumbbells without even breaking a sweat.
Don’t Overindulge: Have you ever noticed that when you eat too much, drink too much, sleep too much, and have sex too much you end up feeling lazy? This happens because when your brain gets too much dopamine (the motivating neurotransmitter), it releases a chemical called prolactin to balance things out. In this process, our dopamine levels lower to the point where we become dopamine deficient. Symptoms of dopamine deficiency include depression, procrastination and a lack of ambition. In other words: you’ll have less will power when you overindulge.
Proper Diet & Exercise: Studies have shown that proper diet and exercise can help reduce stress and depression and even lifts your mood. Like they say, a healthy body leads to a healthy mind. And a healthy mind is what you need in order to increase your will power.
Break Things Down: Have you ever looked at hill from far away? It always looks big from a distance. But as you go up the hill step by step, you realize that it wasn’t so bad.
The same thing goes for the goals or tasks you want to accomplish. Looking at what you want to accomplish without breaking it down into smaller steps can be somewhat intimidating. So much so that it can lower your confidence to the point where you decide (before you even try to do it) that you will ultimately fail and it’d be a wasted effort (aka will power).
Realize That You Want It: Like I said earlier, there will always be things in life that we have to do that we may not want to do. But if you look at what you have to do at a deeper level, you’ll realize that you actually want to do it. For example, I feel as if I have to do my taxes. Obviously, I can choose not to do them and suffer the consequences. But I want to avoid those consequences.
Figure out why you want to do whatever you feel like you have to do, and focus on that instead of thinking about why you don’t want to do a thing. When you tell yourself why want to do a thing, you start feeling more motivated to actually do it.
Like I said in the beginning of this post, when you do what you love to do you feel as if you could do it all day long using little to no will power. So while you may not love physically doing certain things in life (like taxes and eating salads), realize that you love the result it will ultimately bring you.
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Great article on ways to increase our willpower. I have read some of your articles. But this one attracted me more. Good going and keep posting nice articles like this.
Good article. Keep posting articles like this one.
Good article
I ever felt coz when there is will there’s a way.
We have to do what should we had to do not only that in which we are intrested or love to do