Part 2 in the Willpower Workout Series. If you missed it, read part 1 here:
Scone: 1, willpower: zip. Is there a way to give your willpower a workout?
In part 1 of the Willpower Workout Series, we found out how compounded stress chips away at your willpower. No wonder we call ourselves ‘stress eaters’. High fat, high sugar food brings a cascade of biological pleasure responses that gets us out of the pain fast.
Which leaves us wondering if there is any hope. Stress happens.
The great news is YES, there are proven ways to strengthen your willpower so that you can stop sabotaging yourself on the way to realizing your health, weight loss, and fitness success.
2 proven ways to give your willpower a workout
Follow-through failure can be both disheartening and frightening. What happened to that dietary resolve, the commitment to getting your workout in, the promise to yourself to clean out that closet or finish that least-favored project at work?
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Fortunately, you don’t have to just keep your fingers crossed and hope that you’ll “do better next time”. There are specific mindset strategies that build your willpower arsenal. Strategies for reinforcing your best-interests instinct. Which is why I built several of them into the Weekly Lessons of Boot Camp Mind. It all starts with developing awareness of that instant between urge and action where we realize there is actually a choice.
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This is the exact point at which willpower workouts, or training to make your willpower muscle mightier, make all the difference.
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2 proven ways to give you willpower a workout:
- exercise
- meditation
Exercise is a workout for your willpower
So you thought Fit Quickies were all about body shaping? Guess again sistah, they’re also about brain shaping. A 5 minute Fit Quickie not only lifts your bum, it brings your brainpower into focus. Wets your willpower whistle. A quickie fix for faltering focus. Any exercise will do it.
Meditation is a workout for your willpower
With meditation, we become startingly aware of how habituated our responses are.
This gives us a peek into the possibilities of that instant between urge and action where we realize that we actually have a choice as to what action we take. Even the simplest meditation practice literally increases your awareness of this moment and bolsters your Captain of Choice. This is actually called the executive command center of the brain and you can make it stronger.
Up until now, we just hoped the higher road would prevail. Now you don’t have to just leave it to chance. In Parts 3 and 4 of the Willpower Workout Series, I’ll tell you more about how exercise and meditation serve you as simple willpower workouts and I’ll teach you a simple meditation process to get you started.
Next time in the willpower workout series:
5 minute willpower workout #1: Exercise, the closest thing to a willpower magic bullet
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