Exercising Your Success Muscle

16 Dec

Your self-control “muscle” is just like the other muscles in your body – when it doesn’t get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

Imagine this scenario: You make plans to meet a friend at a restaurant. You wait for an hour and he doesn’t show. You call his cell phone and there is no answer. Eventually, you give up and leave. A week later, you make dinner plans again. He apologizes for the last incident and promises he’ll be there. You arrive, wait for an hour and he doesn’t show… again. Let me ask you a question; how much faith do you have in your friend’s word the next time he promises something? Probably not much.

muscle-damage PAINT

What do you think happens when you promise yourself to do something and you don’t follow through? Think about it. When you promise yourself something it’s just like promising it to someone else. The answer is that you lose faith in your own ability to follow through. You weaken the power of your own word. The trick is that this happens even with small stuff. If you make plans to do the laundry when you get home and you don’t do it, then the next time you make that plan, you subconsciously suspect that you won’t follow through (since you didn’t last time). It gives you an easy out in the short term, but completely saps your willpower muscles of their strength. The cycle then easily repeats itself again and again and eventually you have almost no power over your own life.

The good news is that this works in the opposite direction as well. When you promise yourself something and you follow through, even on small things, you are exercising those same muscles. Those muscles will grow and grow, as long as you exercise them, and eventually when you promise yourself something, you have complete confidence it’s going to happen. So, if you want to succeed in any area of your life, then you need to build up those success muscles.

At some point along your path things are going to get difficult and if you don’t already have the willpower and confidence to see things through then you’re easily going to be thrown off your game. Starting today I suggest that you do two things. First, be more selective in what you commit to doing. NEVER “commit” to something that you aren’t prepared to achieve. Saying the words will not make it so. False commitments achieve nothing and only make it more difficult to build your muscles. Second, when you commit to something, even if it’s something really small, YOU DO IT. Do not accept your own excuses. Do not listen to your own stories. With strong success muscles, when you commit to something it gets done. With strong success muscles like that, you’ll be unstoppable.

Antecedents and Managing Your Temptations

16 Dec

The following is a true story. In 2006 a 18-year old Harvard freshman (let’s call him “Charlie”) was brought into a large room and sat on one side of an old oak table. On the other side of the table are the stern faces of his history professor, his academic advisor, the Dean for Academic Affairs, and the Chair of the Ethics Board. Charlie was accused of plagiarizing significant portions of his final paper on the Napoleonic Wars and, much like his essay’s antagonist, faced the threat of undignified exile.

The+Temptations

This was a particularly troubling case because Charlie was well-known across campus for raising money for local charities. The question is, why would this guy, who in most ways would be a model student, be sitting in a room answering questions about his moral fiber?

Understanding the answer to that question is important if you don’t want to sabotage your own success.

It turns out that Charlie plagiarized his essay because he was worried about getting it done on time. He found himself staying up all night the day before it was due struggling to formulate a single coherent sentence and in that weakened state turned to the internet for a quick solution. Charlie’s case is so common in fact that college’s actually use “start your papers early” campaigns as part of their ethics training. In this sense, procrastination itself is necessarily a bad thing, but it can dress bad things up in a nice red bikini so that it becomes a lot more attractive. Procrastination is what we call an “antecedent” to plagiarism. And the more you think about antecedents the more you’ll realize that like Charlie, your success has a lot to do with how well you manage your temptations.

You already do this to some degree. If you’ve ever set your alarm clock on the other side of the room because you know it will force you to wake up, then you know how effective this can be. So, if you’re prone to avoid performance reviews with your employees, then you better schedule it. If you’re tempted by the fattening foods at the company’s restaurant, then move your business lunch to the salad bar down the street. Setting yourself up to win is an important part of you overall achievement strategy. Your willpower is a limited resource (see: “Training Your Success Muscle”) so if you don’t already have a safety net in place when that time comes, then you are choosing to fail. Everyone knows not to lie, cheat or steal, so why do people they do it? In many cases it’s because they simply failed to manage their temptations. You may be feeling great right now about your progress, but when the going gets tough (and it will) what will you do then? And most importantly, what can you do NOW to ensure that you won’t become another Charlie?

Tags: , , , ,

I have to do everything 3 times…

16 Dec

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but I’ve learned that I’m not very efficient at getting things done. This blog is a perfect example. This is my first post and yet I’ve been playing with blogs for years. It seems that I’m destined to take an iterative, evolutionary approach. There is a lot of wasted paper. A lot of mutations that don’t pan out. I just keep plugging away with the hopes that at some point, something will stick. So….*raises glass….here’s to the hope that this post will be the first of many.

Newer Entries →