How to Reprogram your Mind

Hello Fabulous Traveler,

Today, I would like to revisit one of Fabulous’ core habits. One that you’re fairly familiar with already: Exercising.

We designed the Exercise Journey to help you build a reservoir of energy, but in this Journey we will employ the same habit to strengthen a different muscle, your self-discipline.

How to train the Muscle of your Self-Discipline

A study done at Macquarie University analyzing the effects of exercise on other activities that require self-control found an important relationship. The researchers split the volunteers into two groups, one that would follow a regular exercise regimen for two months, and another group which wouldn’t exercise. Each week, they gave the volunteers a test to measure their self-discipline.

With the conclusion of the experiment, the exercise group demonstrate improved self-control in lab tests. Additionally the group reported smoking less, drinking less, eating healthier, spending less money, and improved study habits.

The addition of this one habit positively influenced every other area in their lives.

We now understand that exercise helps to improve self-control, but how does it do this?

A review of numerous studies on self-control by Baumeister, a leading researcher in the field, provides a useful insight: self-discipline behaves like a muscle.

Just as a muscle becomes fatigued as you use it, so too does your self-discipline. If you use willpower to resist a free cookie, you’ll be less likely to resist a different temptation in the future. Luckily, just as the regular exercise of a muscle can cause it to grow, so too will regular exercise of Self-Discipline cause it to become stronger.

That’s why the group who exercised regularly in the study we mentioned earlier managed to stop drinking, smoking, and eating unhealthy foods. By forcing themselves to exercise, an activity which requires willpower, they were training their self-discipline and getting stronger.

This is you One Year from Today

Using your willpower can be tiring, and after a long day of hard work, exercise, and healthy eating you might feel so drained that you won’t want to do anything but watch TV and eat junk food.

But don’t give in to this temptation! Clench your fist and read a book while you eat something healthy. By pushing the limits of your Self-Discipline, you’ll be making it stronger for tomorrow.

Imagine pushing your willpower to its limits every day: in a year you’ll have developed that muscle so much, that you’ll be able to follow through with every decision you make. Everything that you could want to do will be possible.

Once you develop this new strength and become confident with your self-discipline, knowing that you can do anything you set your mind to, you’ll discover a whole new sense of freedom.

Instead of letting your emotions drive you, you’ll be aware of them. It’ll be easy to follow through with your decisions.

As a disciplined person, you will find it easy to avoid temptations which others would succumb to, in the same way that a bodybuilder finds it easy to lift weights that others can’t imagine lifting.

Train Like an Athlete

In keeping with the muscle analogy, let’s approach training our self-discipline the same way that an athlete would approach their training.

If you wanted to learn to play golf for the first time, going to the driving range and swinging away for 12 hours might help, but it wouldn’t be an efficient use of your time. You’d be better off finding a coach who could teach you all of the tips and tricks.

Similarly, while resisting every temptation you encounter would strengthen your willpower, it would be smarter to collect a set of tools that could assist you in resisting temptations.

But you’ve already accumulated a few tools, haven’t you? Now it’s time to put them to the test, which is what this week is all about. You’re already familiar with regular exercise so it’s the perfect habit to use for practice.

Let me remind you of some of the devices available in your armory by referencing a study that tested all of them.

A study by British researchers found that people who practiced self-talk and visualization before performing a task that measured willpower did much better and also enjoyed the task much more. We use Self-Talk in our Emergency Fist Clenching Ritual and visualization in our Performance Statements.

With these tools plus the fist clenching method from last week, exercising every day will become easy.

This Week’s Plan

One Time Action

Design your Get Inspired and Clench Your Fist habits around the Exercise habit.

Remember that both the Get Inspired and Clench Your Fist habits we perform in the mornings are to prime ourselves for later. These practice habits train us to use the techniques in our daily lives.

The Get Inspired habit is for practicing your Performance Statement which you use when everything's going great. You’ll visualize yourself about to exercise and saying a Performance Statement such as “Take long strides, breath steadily, and hit the ground with the ball of my foot.” Then, you’ll continue to visualize yourself actually running and adhering to your promise.

Meanwhile, the Clench Your Fist habit is for emergencies only. It’s what you’d use if you saw the alarm from Fabulous and decided you’d rather buy a donut instead. In the mornings you’ll practice this by visualizing yourself about to skip exercising, but instead, you’ll clench your fist and say something like “Get your running shoes on and start exercising!” Then you’ll continue to visualize yourself feeling a surge of motivational energy and starting to run.

Now that we remember what the two habits are for; write down the following in either a nice notebook or on a sticky note:

Get Inspired

1. My Performance Statement is… (customize this to your own form of exercise)

2. Visualize myself about to exercise, using my Performance Statement, and succeeding!

Clench Your Fist

1. When I’m clenching my fist, my self-talk will be… (customize this to your own form of exercise)

2. Visualize myself about to skip exercising, clenching my fist and using self-talk, and succeeding!

Also, if you’re still doing the Exercise Ritual before exercising, (where you put your shoes on and listen to power music) craft your Performance Statement and Self-Talk to compel you start the Exercise Ritual instead.

Once you’ve customized both habits around exercising and written them down, place the notebook or piece of paper somewhere where you will notice it in the morning.

Your Goal

For the next 5 days, perform both the Get Inspired and Clench Your Fists habits that you’ve designed around exercising in the morning. When the time comes to actually exercise, use either the Performance Statement or Fist Clenching technique to ensure you succeed.

Don’t hesitate to say the Performance Statements and Self-Talk out loud. In fact, saying them out loud is better than saying them in your head.

When you’re ready, tap Accept below to commit to this goal.

What are we doing?

We’re making great progress Fabulous Traveler. We’ve learned new tools to help us become disciplined, why and how they work, gotten used to practicing them, and now we’re going to use them.

This week we’re combining a plethora of techniques that we’ve already learned in order to practice them in real life situations. We are doing this to demonstrate just how effective they are and to encourage you to try them in all aspects of your life.

I’d wish you the best of luck this week Fabulous Traveler, but with all the preparation you’ve done I don’t think you need it.