I don't know if you have encountered this situation, two or three days a month are full of morale, hard work. But in addition to these two or three days, the remaining twenty days are severe lazy cancer patients.
In fact, when lazy emotions are frequent, it is also a reminder that your willpower is no longer enough.
Many people have such a wrong perception: they always think that poor willpower is a natural predestined character or a difficult to change.
We do not realize that there is a problem with the supply of willpower in the self-control system, and it is precisely because willpower is not replenished that laziness prevails.
In the book "Cultivating Self-Discipline, Never Rely on Hard Support" that I saw before, it was mentioned:
As willpower continues to be depleted, the individual's self-control will also decline, and only by finding the factors that make willpower depleted and using the right methods can we help ourselves to overcome laziness again.
So, what exactly is draining our willpower? There are three main factors:
Aim too big and put yourself under pressure
"Set a small goal first, earn him a hundred million", this sentence has swept the Internet and evolved into a self-deprecating joke of adults. But for a successful entrepreneur, this is really a small goal, but for the average person, it may be out of reach for a lifetime.
When setting goals, we tend to be overly eager and set goals too large.
When you are full of ambition and confidence, you suddenly find a huge gap between action and ideals, and the only pressure that follows is endless pressure to consume your patience and energy.
Therefore, we might as well try to set an easy goal within our ability, complete a small step, and then gradually increase the difficulty, try to control ourselves in the learning area, rather than the high-pressure panic area.
Always in a state of reduced stress, from the little bit of growth skills to become stronger.
Heavy planning "overdrafts" willpower
If you let you participate in the 5000-meter long-distance running race, sprint with all your strength in the first 1000 meters, and use up your strength early, do you still have the strength to run the remaining 4000 meters?
Similarly, the heavier the plans we list, the greater the challenge to our willpower and the greater the pressure, and when we implement these plans, we often encounter various things that disrupt us, which will seriously affect our ability to execute the plan.
Then, it will be difficult to stick to it.
For example, you've excitedly set yourself a plan to learn English for 2 hours a day after work.
However, due to the overtime situation that often occurs at work, when you get home it is very late and tired, and you do not have the energy to learn english for 2 hours, so your plan cannot be implemented.
Instead of designing your plan to be more flexible, for example, change "learn English for 2 hours a day" to "learn English for at least 6 hours per week".
In this way, not only the pressure of learning is reduced, but also the time for work and study can be reasonably arranged.
Pessimistic Murphy's Law
American psychologist Joseph Murphy believes that when using willpower to solve problems, people are accustomed to presuming that there is a situation that contradicts wishes.
This means that the more afraid of failure, the more attention is paid to it, and the easier it is to pay attention to the negative energy side.
For example, after a friend of mine registered for the Shen Shuo exam, she was always thinking about "what should I do if I can't pass the exam"? The whole period of study is carrying such a "heart disease".
And this "heart disease" is bound to bring great pressure to people, resulting in a large loss of willpower.
Therefore, in the whole process of cultivating self-discipline ability, we must maintain a good attitude.
With the attitude of trying, don't focus too much on the target outcome, but enjoy the process of improving yourself.
When my friend tried to take the focus away from the question of how the test results were, I had the mentality of how much I could learn, but I could calm down and prepare for the exam.
Romain Rolland once said: Fatalism is an excuse for the weak who lack willpower.
Especially in this fast-moving era, whether a person's willpower is online or not is particularly important.
In fact, it is not difficult to find that our willpower is like a battery, and there will also be low battery.
So, how do we "recharge" our willpower?
Using the "Pomodoro Time Work Method"
The "Pomodoro Time Work Method" refers to concentrating on work within a period of 25 minutes, resting for 5 minutes after completion, and then entering the second Pomodoro time, and so on, until the specified work is completed.
But in the meantime, we tend to encounter such distractions:
1) Self-interference
For example, when I want to go to the bathroom, eat snacks, and even suddenly think that the TV series I chased is updated today, so I want to watch it uncontrollably.
In the face of such interference, we can try to eat snacks, go to the bathroom to the 5 minutes of The Pomodoro break to complete, and try to tidy up the desk during the Pomodoro work time, without putting any snacks.
When you are suddenly attracted to something else, you can write down the thing that affects your attention immediately, maintain vigilance against your concentration, and remind yourself to return to your previous work.
2) External interference
For example, a phone call suddenly comes to mind, a superior assigns you a new task, and so on.
At this time, we have to quickly judge the priority of things, if it is not urgent, we can arrange until the end of pomodoro time to do it, but if the situation is urgent, you can use the opposite method.
At this point, we have learned to be flexible in dealing with these unexpected situations, and we can also maximize the sustainability of pomodoro working hours.
"Unbinding" a rule
Many teachers usually list 2-3 related question types for practice when talking about a knowledge point, the purpose of which is to help us better deepen and consolidate our understanding of this knowledge point.
In fact, in the same way, willpower can also become stronger through practice.
We tend to tighten our nerves in the process of this practice, and we don't even allow ourselves to make a mistake.
For example, good fitness, occasionally a day of slack, they do not forgive themselves at all, unconsciously, the goal has become a heavy shackles.
In fact, we can exercise willpower in the early stages, without doing so perfectly.
For example, you decide to eat a reasonable diet to achieve the effect of weight loss, but before you often eat irregularly, then there is no need to force yourself to achieve the purpose of a reasonable diet at the beginning, you can first do three days of normal, occasionally miss time, or eat too much, do not have any psychological burden.
"Loosening" the rules is actually reducing pressure for yourself.
"0+1+n" act of action
The "0+1+n" action method mentioned in the book is supplemented by starting from scratch and making a little change every day.
Just like after we insist on a three-day regular diet, we find that this change will no longer make us resistant, so we slowly increase the number of days.
In this way, as long as you stick to it, the number of regular eating will increase until it becomes a habit and is integrated into your life.
Use positive self-suggestion skillfully
The author mentions in the book that a positive psychological cue can give us the ability to relieve anxiety, enhance self-confidence, and even help us become strong in the face of stress.
Russian star Elena Isinbayeva failed in the first few high school jumps, and before the last jump, he sat in the middle of the field and covered herself with a large towel, and in this "small tent" she repeated her "spell" several times and then made the final jump, which turned out to be perfect this time and successfully broke the world record.
This is the embodiment of "positive psychological tactics".
When we are under negative emotions, there will be a lot of thoughts that interfere with our thinking, which will unconsciously affect our impromptu play, resulting in continuous mistakes.
But if the things you believe in are positive and positive, you'll find more positive information and evidence to support that belief.
As you embark on the path of finding information, creating evidence, and constantly self-suggesting, your willpower is already accumulating and empowering you.
Many times, some things may not be as difficult to accomplish as we think.
On the road of self-improvement and self-discipline, we learn to replenish the "electricity" of our willpower at the right time, learn to retreat into progress, recuperate, and you will find that you can keep your vitality full every day.
Free willpower is actually the greatest happiness that everyone pursues in their hearts, and I wish you and I have it.