Improvement Pill here I wanna welcome you to lesson six of the team course in
the last couple of videos we focused on habits how habits works what are some of
the best habits and also how to properly build them if you have not watched any
of those videos yet pause this video right now and click on the link in the
description below it will bring you to a playlist with all of the lessons of the
tain course in chronological order in today's lesson I'm gonna introduce you
to a very important concept that will change the way you look at your life and
especially your habits a concept called willpower we're gonna cover whether or
not willpower is even real if so how does it work and finally what happens
when your levels of willpower drop below a certain threshold a study was
conducted in 1998 by a famous psychologist Roy Baumeister he took
three groups of people and had them fast so that they were hungry he had the
first two groups sit down at a table with two bowls in front of them a bowl
of warm cookies and a bowl of radishes the first group was instructed to help
themselves to whatever they wanted the second group was not allowed to eat any
cookies and the third group was the control group they sat in an empty room
with no food in front of them after a while the three groups were taken to
another room where they were asked to work on some puzzles they were told that
this was a test of reasoning but these puzzles were actually unsolvable what
the researchers were looking at was how long these groups of people which tried
to solve these puzzles before giving up the room that was allowed to eat cookies
lasted about 20 minutes the control group who sat in an empty room and had
no food also lasted about 20 minutes now here's the interesting part the group
that had to resist eating the cookies only lasted eight minutes now what does
this study show us first of all it shows us that willpower is very real the group
that had to resist eating the cookies had lower levels of something something
was used to resist eating those cookies and that something is willpower and
because they used a lot of it while resisting those cookies they had a
harder time working on the puzzles so the metaphor of willpower being like a
muscle is actually true the more you use this mental muscle the less mental
strength you have today the metaphor of willpower being
like a battery is also very true it turns out that we start off with a
certain amount of willpower every single day and by doing mentally strangest
tasks the amount we have decreases and just like a battery there are ways to
recharge your levels of willpower but if the amount of willpower you have drops
below a certain threshold if your battery levels get low interesting
things start to happen the official term for this state is called ego depletion
scientists have conducted active brain scans on subjects who had their levels
of willpower purposely lowered they found that when you're in a state of ego
depletion your brain literally fires slower on top of that the alarm system
in your brain for errors becomes weaker this means that you will have a harder
time spotting errors in your work so you're more likely to do worse on tests
and more likely to say the wrong things during important conversations like
business meetings or even dates they also found that people in the state of
Eagle depletion have a harder time controlling their reactions this means
that you're more likely to become emotional to get angry or to cry over
something small not only that but your ability to withstand pain is also
drastically decreased studies found that people in a state of Eagle depletion
literally felt more pain when they stuck their hand in a bucket of water and most
importantly when you're in a state of ego depletion it becomes extremely hard
for you to make the right decisions this is because of two reasons number one
when you're in a state of ego depletion you become more impulsive and
temptations feel a lot stronger a study found that when Eagle depleted subjects
were presented with a gift-wrapped box they felt a huge increase on average in
desire to open it number two bad habits that have been ingrained in your mind
like your smoking habit or your drinking problem become extremely hard to resist
this is because these habits are so ingrained in your brain that they don't
use up any willpower but actively trying to resist them does so if you've ever
found yourself cheating on your diet or coming up with excuses not to go to the
gym or even having extremely strong cravings for a drink after quitting for
months it's most likely because you're in a state of ego depletion this is
extremely important information because it shows us just how much of our
habits are affected by our levels of willpower for example a study found that
during exam times students would smoke more exercise less eat more and healthy
and even have worse hygiene because all of their willpower is focused on
studying for their exams this means they have less willpower for all the other
stuff here's another example if you've ever been sick before you've probably
noticed that you have a harder time sticking to good habits this is because
when you're sick your body focuses most of its energy on fighting the disease
it's actually been proven by scientists that your levels of willpower are
significantly lower when you're sick and because of this your ability to make the
right decisions go out the window and that's why we feel so unmotivated to
stick to our good habits when we're feeling ill so now that we know
willpower is real and we know what happens when we enter the state of Eagle
depletion this brings up a couple of good questions number one what lowers
our willpower throughout the day is there a way to conserve our willpower
number two how can we recharge our willpower so that we can avoid staying
in a state of ego depletion and number three is there a way to permanently
increase the size of our battery to increase the amount of willpower we have
every day we'll answer these three questions over the course of the next
three videos the same course was made possible by the patrons of this channel
if you'd like to support the channel and also gain some of the benefits that
certain patrons have such as being able to speak with me on a private server and
access to a book club where we read books together and discuss things that
we've learned check out my patreon page right here besides that guys stay tuned