Stop Having This Limiting Belief About Yourself And Unleash Your Potential In 2024
Don’t believe these lies that you tell yourself.
The other day, I was on an airplane listening to a recent podcast with David Goggins and Andrew Huberman.
David Goggins is known as being the “toughest man alive” as a former Navy Seal and best-selling author of the book Can’t Hurt Me and Never Finished.
Andrew Huberman is a neurologist and ophthalmologist at Stanford whose podcast is tailored towards health and science.
David Goggins, known for running his 200+ mile ultra marathons, was talking about how he hates running but he does it anyway because he hates it. He doubles down on doing the things that he doesn’t like to do.
Huberman replied that there is new research that indicates when you do something that you don’t want to do, you increase the size of your anterior mid-cingulate cortex.
The anterior mid-cingulate cortex is the part of the brain that influences motivation, impulse control, and decision-making. It’s no wonder that Goggins seems to have this God-level of discipline. He has been doing this for the last 20 years of his life. His anterior mid-cingulate cortex is probably larger than anyone alive.
This had me thinking about parts of my life where I have struggled with decision-making and impulsive control. Where are those moments of friction where I can easily practice discipline? I came to realize, they exist everywhere around us without us realizing it.
Don’t Believe This Myth About Willpower
We’ve all read the old research that willpower is a diminishing resource. This is why Silicone Valley CEOs where black t-shirts and jeans every day, eat the same thing for every meal, and schedule their entire day down to the minute.
This study shows that engaging in self-control improves it and it is dependent on your belief about self-control and how often you practice it.
Doesn’t it feel like when you get into a rut it’s hard to break out of?
Interestingly enough, you don’t have to feel like you need to exert all your willpower across all areas of your life. As it turns out, having self-control in one area of your life can have an effect that will cause you to have more self-control in other areas of your life.
It makes sense that when you work out consistently you eat better as well.
There was a study on willpower that showed that how you view willpower may determine how much willpower you show.
The study showed that people who had beliefs that they had limited willpower showed increased willpower upon glucose consumption.
The other group of people who believed willpower was not a limited resource, showed no increase in glucose consumption and showed high levels of self-control with or without glucose.
Even if you know that you can practice improving your willpower, it’s still difficult to improve it. Your mind will play mental tricks with you to convince you to eat that junk food or skip that workout. The mind can be cunning to get you to do what it wants. The place to start is to identify these moments with your conscious mind and bring the subconscious to the conscious.
Don’t Concede To These Lies About Your Priorities
It’s important to know what your true priorities are. However, priorities can easily get clouded and disguise themselves as an exit door for the task at hand.
When I was flying back home from a trip, I told myself before going to the airport that I was going to run 10 miles when I got home. As I boarded the airplane, other thoughts started to creep into my mind.
I need to meal prep.
I need to grocery shop.
I need to hang out with the dog.
I need to relax and rest tomorrow. I didn’t get a good night's sleep last night.
I need to write, I’m a little behind on that.
I need to focus on writing my book.
I need to clean the apartment.
My mind was trying to rationalize to myself that it was okay to skip that run because I had other important things to do. All of those things were productive and valid. However, it wasn’t going on a 1 run.
Doing this wasn’t prioritizing. This is procrastinating disguised as prioritizing. When you’re prioritizing on the fly, most of the time you’re probably avoiding tasks that you don’t want to do.
You know what you should be doing but you’re deciding not to do it.
I ended up putting my clothes on to run at 6 and went on that run. It’s something that I’m proud to say that I did.
Clearing out the clutter from your mind is essential. There will always be an infinite amount of things for you to do. Instead of allowing your mind to do what it wants at the moment, do what you’re supposed to do and accept it.
Have An Acceptance Mindset
Having an acceptance mindset is accepting the moment and doing your best in that moment.
It’s accepting that you’re at work and need to work on that project.
It’s accepting that you’re choosing to write instead of going to the gym.
It’s accepting that you’re going to the gym instead of going to write.
It’s accepting that you’re hanging out with your family and not going to be able to do something else for a few hours.
This mindset doesn’t mean that you’re “giving in” or “quitting.” It means the opposite. It means that you’re accepting the moment for what it is and you’re going to do your best in that moment.
In the past, I have struggled with this mindset. I would be at work and I would wish that I could be at the gym causing me to not be fully engaged with my work.
Once I got to the gym, I wished that I was writing, causing me to not fully engage with my workout.
No matter what I did or where I was, I wished I was somewhere else, doing something else.
It was a sort of whack-a-mole game in my mind. This caused me to feel like a log drifted in whatever direction the current was flowing.
Once I realized that I wasn’t being present, I started to work on it and it has improved over time. I still have work to do but I am a lot better than I was even 6 months ago.
Your Mindset Is Perishable
Goggins talks about how he acts the way he does every day because he doesn’t want to slip back into the 300 lb man that he once was.
This goes against the grain of modern society saying, “You work so hard, you deserve a break.”
Breaks can be important sometimes if there’s intentionality behind it. There are other times when people take breaks and never come off of the break.
I’ve known people who went from having 6-pack abs to being 30 lbs overweight four months after a vacation. They didn’t see that the vacation broke their mindset but from an observer’s point of view, it’s obvious.
If you do not keep sharpening your skills, they will rust. This isn’t a mountain that you climb once and have a trophy that you can put on your shelf forever.
What To Do Moving Forward
Your mindset can change. It may not be as drastic as you would like but it is possible. People do change but it is often hard work.
There is no magic hack for shifting your mindset to be disciplined. If there was, everyone would know about it.
Find the moments in your life where you struggle to be disciplined. Identify what happens in those moments. What is going through your mind?
The chances are that if deep down you want to do option A but your mind is going through a hundred reasons to do option B, then you probably should do option A.
Write down a shortlist of reasons that are legitimate excuses for why you shouldn’t do anything. If the reasons do not align with the reasons your mind is coming up with, the answer becomes clear what you should do.
You will feel better about yourself for doing option A. Even if it feels like the last thing you want to do.
Life can occasionally feel like it’s getting away from you. That is why I started Setup Sunday. Sunday is often the perfect day of the week to prepare yourself for what is going to come for the week ahead. If you want tips each week to look at how to set yourself up for a better future, start here and grow each week.