Improvement Pill here, welcome to lesson #8 of the Tamed Course.
In the previous lessons you learned about how habits worked, then you picked out a habit
to build over the course of the next couple of months, and then we started talking about
willpower.
How it works and how we can become more efficient with the way we spend our willpower.
If you have not watched any of those videos just, I highly suggest you pause this video
right now and click on the link in the description below which will bring you to the playlist
with all the Tamed Lessons in chronological order.
Because If you really want to change your life and get rid of your bad habits you need
to take this course seriously.
Watch all the videos and make sure you watch them to the very end.
We now know that our levels of willpower are drained throughout the day due to a variety
of things.
This can cause us to enter a state of ego depletion where it becomes super easy to become
impulsive and slack off on our good habits.
So it's crucial to avoid staying in this state for too long.
And that brings up the question how in the world do we recharge our willpower so that
if we ever enter a state of ego depletion, we can get out of it.
I think the best way to start off this lesson is by looking at a study that was conducted
at Columbia University by a Professor Jonathan Levav.
His team looked at over a thousand cases of judges who worked on the parole board.
These judges had to decide whether or not a prisoner should be released to the public,
so it's pretty serious work.
The researchers noticed something very interesting.
The biggest indicator for whether or not a prisoner was granted parole was not the type
of crimes they committed, the amount of years they already served, or even how good-mannered
they were in prison.
It was actually the time of day they showed up in court.
The study found that prisoners who appeared early in the morning had the highest chance
of approval.
A 65% chance.
However, as the day went on these rates of approval would decline.
This decline was so significant that prisoners who appeared later in the morning right before
lunch time only had a 20% chance of getting approved.
Why is this?
Well it's because each time the judge makes a decision he uses up some of his willpower.
This is called Decision Fatigue, which we discussed in depth in our previous lesson.
As the judges level of willpower drops it becomes harder and harder for him or her to
make these decisions.
So the judges would simply deny the request for parole as it was the safer option.
Right because if you're a judge and you're not sure what the right decision is, it's
safer to just keep the prisoner in jail than to let him out.
Around noon the judges would go on a lunch break.
When he returned all of a sudden the rate of approval would spike back up to around
60%.
This study shows us just how much of a difference we can make if we recharge our levels of willpower.
And the way we do it all comes down to 2 things that the judges did during their short lunch
break.
The first is by eating food.
We all know that our body needs food in order to function.
So it's no surprise that it has a direct effect on our levels of willpower.
But we can't just stuff ourselves with junk food or sweets and expect to feel great right
after.
A study was conducted on a large group of high school students in 2007.
The researchers split the students into 3 groups.
The first group was given a low-glycemic breakfast (which included foods like eggs and grapefruit).
For those of you that don't know what the glycemic index is, it's basically the effect
a food has on your blood glucose levels.
The lower a foods glycemic index is, the slower it raises your blood glucose level.
Ok so - The second group was given a high-glycemic breakfast (so foods like muffins and pop-tarts).
The third and final group was the control group and they were told to completely skip
breakfast altogether.
Then the researchers asked the teachers (who did not know what their students had for breakfast)
to rate each of their students during their morning classes which lasted from 8:00 AM
to 10:30 AM.
The students were rated on their academic performance, which included things like how
focused they were during class and how well behaved they were.
The students who had the low-glycemic breakfast did very well.
Almost all of them scored high on their academic performance for the entire morning.
The students who had a high-glycemic breakfast did well during the first hour of class.
But after around 9:00 AM they started to lose their focus and their academic performance
dropped.
The students who skipped breakfast did the worst.
They had an extremely hard time paying attention and were very disruptive.
They had the lowest academic performance score.
So what does this study show us?
Well it shows us that there's a connection between our blood glucose level and our levels
of willpower.
See our brains actually need glucose in order to operate.
But high-glycemic foods like muffins are digested very fast.
This means the amount of glucose in your blood goes up very fast and then returns to it's
baseline soon after.
So for a short period of time you'll have fuel for your brain but soon after this fuel
runs out.
And this is why the student's who ate high-glycemic foods for breakfast stopped performing well
after 9:00AM.
Because they no longer had fuel for their brain.
Without fuel you can't recharge your willpower.
On the other hand low-glycemic foods like eggs take much longer to digest.
And because of this they provide a steady increase in blood glucose level but for a
long period of time.
The students who ate a low-glycemic breakfast received fuel all morning and because of this
they were able to maintain their levels of willpower and perform well.
The students who skipped breakfast had no fuel and because of this they performed the
worst.
Interestingly enough after the morning classes, all 3 groups were given the same meal for
lunch.
The teachers then reported no difference in academic performance between the 3 groups.
So if you want to recharge your levels of willpower it's best to eat low-glycemic foods
like meats, veggies, nuts, or even certain fruits.
The next way we can recharge our levels of willpower is by switching our brains mode.
What do I mean by this?
Well - when we have to deal with things like Decision Fatigue or Mental Processes our brain
is on something called Thinking Mode.
In this mode our levels of willpower are being constantly drained.
Kind of like the battery levels on your phone when you're watching videos.
Right - It goes down pretty fast.
In order for us to effectively recharge our levels of willpower we have to switch our
brain to whats call Standby Mode.
This is equivalent to turning your phone off and allowing it to charge.
And as we all know our phones charge significantly faster if we're not using it at the same time.
So what is Standby Mode?
Well - When you're in Standby Mode you're not making any tough decisions or thinking
hard about anything.
You're allowing your mind to wander naturally and you're enjoying the things around you.
For example: a great way to enter Standby Mode is to go out for a short walk.
When you go out for a walk you're suddenly surrounded by a bunch of other things.
There's trees to look at, birds to listen to, and you allow yourself to take a break
from all the work you've been doing.
Studies have actually shown that walking around the block for just 5 to 10 minutes gives our
brain enough time to recharge a significant amount of willpower.
Now There are countless other ways you can enter Standby Mode.
So it's really up to you to decide what you want to do.
Personally, when I work I tend to work for about 2-3 hours at a time.
When I feel like I've drained a decent amount of willpower - I'll switch off Thinking Mode
by watching some entertaining YouTube videos or an episode of a Netflix series or even
just chatting with some of my friends.
After about 30 minutes of this my willpower levels will naturally recharge and I'll return
to my work.
If you're someone who thinks way too much and you have a hard time switching off Thinking
Mode.
You have a hard time relaxing, I suggest you look into the habit of Meditation.
In fact there's a very high chance that meditation would be the best keystone habit for you.
This is because if you get into the habit of Meditating your ability to quiet your mind
and control your thoughts will improve dramatically.
I have a couple of videos on Meditation, it's benefits, and how to do it which I will link
to in the description below.
The 3rd and final way we can recharge our levels of willpower is also the most important.
And that's by getting proper sleep.
When we sleep a variety of things happen.
For one we allow our brain to switch off of Thinking Mode for an extended period of time
which allows our willpower to completely recharge.
Some of you are probably thinking & how is our willpower recharging? if we're not eating
anything while we're asleep how do we get that glucose that fuels our brain?
Well it's actually because when we're asleep our brain requires significantly less glucose
and our body also becomes more efficient with the glucose that's already in our blood stream.
So you don't have to eat anything at night to recharge your willpower.
What's interesting is that if you don't get enough sleep your body's ability to process
glucose gets impaired.
Which explains why most people tend to perform terribly when it comes to sticking to their
habits if they don't get enough sleep the previous night.
To sum it all up there's 3 things you can do to recharge your levels of willpower.
You should eat low-glycemic foods for your meals like meats and veggies instead of high-glycemic
foods like waffles and pancakes.
You should relax when you feel yourself entering a state of ego depletion by turning off Thinking
Mode and entering Standby Mode And most importantly you must get a good nights
rest.
I do want to clarify one thing.
What we covered today was just the biological ways our body recharges our willpower.
For quite some time now it was believed that these accounted for the majority of the willpower
we have throughout the day.
But recent studies point to the fact that the biggest influence is what goes on in our
head.
How we view willpower and our motivations.
These psychological factors may actually have more of an influence on our willpower than
these biological factors.
We will discuss these factors in our next lesson.
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