Self-control: How to take control of your time and life?

Chapter 27 Training Your Willpower

a memory test
In this lesson, we will learn what "willpower of steel" is.Someone described this: "I always maintain a very vivid and vivid impression of the things I have seen. When observing, whether the interest is strong or not is proportional to the clarity of the impression. With the help of memory, I can live in any A scene or situation."

Will and memory are closely related.There is only one "golden rule" for improving memory.The rule is to persevere in doing beneficial exercises to improve your memory.

What do we remember?Impressions in mind.What synthesized the impression in the mind?Attention first, but also understanding, imagination, discernment, and strong willpower.Of all these elements of memory, the most critical is the last, namely willpower.

Professor James came up with the following rule: "When we consciously think about something, the memory has already extracted the relevant content in the brain, and the result of thinking is directly related to the memory search."

Joy, pain, and other similar emotions are easy to recall because they leave a deep impression on the mind.In order to gain attention, one should strive to "memory" strong impressions in one's mind.In this way we can say that attention is willpower and willpower is attention.

Choose a short, clear, concise English essay that you can find.Read one of the paragraphs carefully and make sure what each word in the paragraph means.Whenever in doubt, look it up in a dictionary.When you fully understand the meaning of each word in the first sentence, you also know the meaning of the entire sentence.Don't be like a parrot, think about it, and consciously memorize the words and their meanings, and then keep going until you can recite this part.Then read and memorize the following parts in the same way, keeping them firmly in your mind.Now think back to the content memorized so far, repeat the memory, and be sure to concentrate and concentrate on the whole process.

Don't memorize too many words at a time, you can judge for yourself how many words you memorize each time is the most suitable for you.Never forget the content of thought expressed in language.Words can often have different meanings in different contexts, so be sure to pay attention to what it means here.

If you repeat this sentence many times throughout the day, it will soon become firmly established in your mind.If you were to repeat this exercise the next day, recalling this sentence and memorizing the next one, the first sentence would be more deeply impressed in memory and the second sentence would be as fully formed as the first sentence. understand.

Repeated values ​​are not a new idea.But the point of this exercise is not in the repetition of words, but in concentrating on thinking and understanding.Therefore, when you repeat, you must study and master the meaning expressed by the word.

First, understand what the book is about.Now read a paragraph of it very carefully, and be sure to understand the meaning of each word and the entire sentence.Comprehend the complete fact or theory described in the sentence, and express the central idea aloud in your own words.Read it again, speaking its contents in different words, whether in the author's words or your own.Imagine you are talking to someone and recite this passage to him as if you were teaching it to him.Always look for opportunities to do the same with real people, be a talking teacher, but don't put on airs.Don't be annoyingly lecturing, but be an entertaining conversationalist that everyone who knows you will love talking to.In addition to the aspects mentioned above, you should repeat this sentence to yourself several times a day: "This book is about such and such things that happened in such and such places."-clear time and content of things, appropriately Repeat many times.When exercising memory, expand forward and backward from a certain part of the book at the same time.At the end of the day, take a look back at what you've learned so far, and look at the book to check if you made any mistakes.

Continue the above exercises until you have mastered the entire chapter.Now, try to come up with the thought structure of the entire chapter in your head without reading the book, and write down this backbone.The content of this chapter may be summarized in a sentence or two, or it may take several sentences to express it clearly.Sum it up in your own way.

Such disaggregated memory helps to synthesize and grasp the whole thought.Then, at regular intervals, recall and review this general thought structure in the same way, and refine and define it in detail.

Now continue reading and memorizing Chapter 2 in the same way, translating the thoughts on paper into your own words.Before reading the next day, review the general idea of ​​what you read the previous day. After reading Chapter 2, recall the outline of its thoughts from memory.At the same time, when doing memory exercises in this chapter, review the general content and specific meaning of the previous chapter, and be careful not to reverse their order. After writing down Chapter 2, from time to time, think about how the two chapters are related.Reassemble the thoughts you read to build an outline that will become part of your permanent memory.

Continue in the same way until you have mastered the entire book.The above suggestions are based on the laws of brain thinking.If you think they seem pointless and boring, it's a sign that you're weak and easily swayed.This is a rule.Dr. James Sully said: "The ability to foresee the results that will come will expand the scope of willpower. Therefore, as long as our daily actions are orderly and follow a fixed plan of doing things, they become our own conscious resolutions. Putting actions on Under one's own conscious control is a habitual determination to be ready to do certain things in certain circumstances and in certain ways."

Mental Manipulation Training
When you go to sleep at night, go through the people and things you saw during the day and see what you can remember.

Such exercises are very valuable.Even while shopping, you can exercise your memory.When exercising memory, you must arouse your persistence and tenacity, and make up your mind: "In order to cultivate willpower, I must have a good memory."

How do you understand when a willpower challenge succeeds or fails?Will you allow yourself to do some "bad" things (for example, when you lose weight, if you run an extra 2 kilometers in the morning, will you allow yourself to eat more food in the afternoon)?

I often turn off the computer, use A4 paper to list down the things to do, and then turn on the computer after thinking about what to do.This is a kind of psychological manipulation.

Research shows that willpower is a limited resource.When you subconsciously suppress your urges, thoughts, subconsciously make decisions, resist temptation, and go all out, you will gradually wear out.After this will is exhausted, you cannot accumulate the willpower needed for the next stage.

Sleep restores your willpower as much as it restores the rest of your spirit.It is also a form of manipulation training aimed at restoring mental energy.There are also indications that exercise and meditation can also improve your willpower, which is not surprising since exercise and meditation can improve many mental activities.All in all, rest and relax.

Willpower is a mental energy

Royce said: "In a sense, willpower usually refers to our entire spiritual life, and it is this spiritual life that guides all aspects of our behavior." When people are good at using this beneficial power , there will be determination.This shows that willpower is at work.The obedience of man's psychic functions or bodily organs to determination, just illustrates the great power of willpower.Willpower is a mental force and a kind of energy.According to the size of the energy, it can also be judged whether a person's willpower is weak or strong, whether it is well developed or has obstacles.It arises from our consciousness and is an energy determined by our own consciousness.The size of the willpower is not innate, but the day after tomorrow in the exercise of overcoming difficulties and temptations, it becomes stronger time after time.

Every time people face difficulties, it is a test of willpower. People with weak willpower often choose to give up or escape in the face of strong difficulties.They can't overcome the difficulties, and they can only be doomed to failure in the end.

The leader of the Moors, Molly Moloch, was very ill and bedridden.While he was dying of an incurable disease, a fierce battle broke out between the Moorish army and the Portuguese.At the most critical moment of the war, Molly Moloch jumped up from the hospital bed, summoned his own army again, and led them to the final victory of the war.However, as soon as the war was over, he was exhausted and died.This is a classic example of the accumulation of willpower.

Willpower is transformed into a mental force when one decides to perform a certain action.If a person has a strong willpower, it means that he uses great energy to achieve his goals through willpower itself or other things.Willpower, as Emerson said, is an "impulse that acts upon the whole being."

From this point of view, the human mind can be compared to the battery of a notebook or a mobile phone, and the amount of electricity released depends on its individual size and capacity.A battery can store a lot of energy and when properly operated can deliver a powerful current, the same for a human being.Under the stimulation of some special circumstances or some special events, he may show great willpower, and this willpower can stimulate the inner supernormal energy.Therefore, willpower can be regarded as a kind of accumulated strength, an energy that can increase in quantity and improve quality.

For untrained people, in some unrelated and accidental events, willpower may show great power, but if it is facing the whole process of an event, or the relationship The grand goal of a lifetime, it may show powerless.In other words, a person's determination is usually not firm, so he cannot maintain tenacious willpower over a long period of time or a series of behaviors, and of course it is impossible to achieve long-term goals through willpower .Therefore, training and improving one's willpower is an important condition for a person's success or failure in life.

Key Factor: Stay Positive

A person who is always hesitating between two things and doesn't know which one to do first will often do neither well.Under normal circumstances, he will also make a decision, but as soon as he encounters a friend's opinion, he will change his mind immediately. He always likes to swing back and forth between various opinions, from one plan to another , like a weather vane, which keeps spinning at every sign of a storm, a capricious approach that will never get him anywhere.If you want to achieve great things, you can only have the same strategy as Caesar: First, seek the opinions of others in many ways. Once you make up your mind, you will not waver easily, and you must achieve your goals no matter how much resistance you encounter.

A person's will can reflect the state of his inner world, that is, his mentality.In many cases, our mentality is good, which is indispensable for the effective completion of work, such as the mentality of loving work, the mentality of development and creation, and the optimistic attitude full of hope.We should expel bad attitudes from our minds and lives so that they do not affect our healthy and happy lives.

The way to do this is by resolutely overcoming bad attitudes and establishing good attitudes that have a positive impact on the good life.If you can earnestly follow the method taught in this book, after studying this course, your bad attitude will slowly disappear from your life.If your mentality is good enough, willpower training can get twice the result with half the effort and achieve better results than others in the shortest time.

1. People's mentality can fully mobilize willpower, making willpower a stable and constant factor in life.

2. On the other hand, willpower training requires the management and adjustment of mentality.If you can manage the various states of mind, they will definitely promote willpower and make you accomplish the pre-set goals under the guidance of willpower.

self-discipline and determination
When many people carry out willpower training, they often persist for a period of time, and then become decadent for a period of time, which has become a periodic law. A “decisive mindset” has a lot to do with an energetic mindset.Decisiveness means that a person needs more or less force to realize his expectations decisively, and he does not delay a moment when he acts.

This kind of mentality also needs to be continuously cultivated to continue to have it, just like dealing with emergencies in life, it needs to constantly stimulate the power of will.

Indecisive people are always picky about circumstances and human factors, they move from place to place and end up getting nothing but messing everything up.Hesitating will only waste time. This kind of person always laments the years that have passed by in a daze every day.

To change this situation, we must seize every moment of the present.What you can do, or what you dream of doing yourself, from now on, you have to be brave and bold to do it, the talent, the power and the magic are all in it.The mind becomes enthusiastic only when it is actively engaged.You have to start right away before the work gets done.

Of course, any effort to keep the mind in a decisive state requires the direct work of willpower.It requires the courage to face all the problems that may arise in life on the basis of rational thinking, and take active actions instead of waiting for something to "happen" to improve your situation.This is the best way to temper your will.

Self-discipline can be cultivated, and it can vary greatly over a person's lifetime.If decisiveness is a product of will and self-discipline, you can achieve higher decisiveness through self-discipline training.

The more determined you are, the more dangerous it is to be undisciplined.Numerous examples confirm this.You will find some very energetic people whose life is like a flapping of wings, they achieve great things or nothing at all.It looks like manic-depressive disorder (a disorder in which you experience periodic highs and lows).

Decisiveness has another important component: ambition.If stubbornness and discipline get you where you want to go, ambition means how you choose your goals.

Also, ambition is malleable, and there are things you can do to foster it.Most people don't know how to be ambitious, especially when they're young.They don't know what is difficult, and they don't know what they can do.The problem is even more pronounced when there are only a few companions.

Ambitious people are few and far between, mixed randomly in the crowd.Ambition usually emerges when a person is young, making it difficult for them to find companions.When you take ambitious people out and put them with other ambitious people, they thrive like dying plants that get water.Regardless of age, most ambitious people crave the inspiration of their kind.

Achievements also help grow your ambition.Every achievement gives you the confidence to go further next time.

five general principles
The first principle: Reflection and judgment Within a week, reflect on which inner impulses you are affected by, and then make effective judgments.

The second principle: Record and analyze Record within a week, when willpower is strongest, when is it easy to give up, and then analyze the reasons.

Principle Three: Follow Healthy Compensation Mechanisms How I understand when willpower challenges succeed or fail.Whether you will allow yourself to do some "bad" things.When you lose weight, if you run 2 kilometers more in the morning, you can allow yourself to eat more food in the afternoon to compensate for your willpower, so as to achieve a higher goal in the next stage: run 2.5 or 3 kilometers more.

Fourth Principle: Reduce Behavioral Variability When making a decision, think of it as a decision you make every day.For example, if you set aside an hour to play games every day, you have to think about whether you are willing to bear the consequences of playing games for an hour every day.

The fifth principle: List your idols List your idols one by one, find out what you want to learn from them, and use this as a benchmark to motivate yourself.The power of idols is usually infinite, especially when you choose an idol with strong willpower, his deeds will become the object of your imitation subconsciously.This is a shortcut to increasing willpower.

(End of this chapter)