A life of well-being, meaning and purpose.
Continue reading “Payoff”Difficulties arise when we don’t know, don’t recognize, or don’t acknowledge our needs and therefore don’t actively seek to get them met in a healthy way. If you don’t meet your needs in healthy ways, they will rise up and cause you to get them met in unhealthy ways.
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Continue reading “Change One Thing”“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. That means developing great habits. Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments, and that bridge must be crossed every day. Over time that daily crossing becomes a habit. And ultimately, people do not decide their future; they decide their habits and their habits decide their future.”
John C. Maxwell – The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth
Continue reading “Why Environment Trumps Willpower”Don’t waste your willpower on battles with the environment. Use your limited willpower to create better environments and better habits instead.
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Continue reading “Ben Franklin On The Excelerated Life”“Dost thou love life?” Then, be sure you are living your Excelerated Life™.
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Continue reading “How To Automate Your Best Behaviors”Research shows that up to 45% of our actions are automatic, driven by habit. A good number of these are daily activities such as eating, drinking, driving, and so on. Without the power of habit, most of your mental capacity would be taken up by these mundane but necessary activities. Another reason why habits are important is that they can be used to automate your best behaviors.
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Continue reading “Freedom From Choice”Too many choices can keep us from the Excelerated Life™. When we are focused on living a life of flourishing and well-being and a life of meaning, purpose and service, then we do not have so many choices. We don’t make the same decisions again and again. We make them once and cut off other options.
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Our default behaviors are, by definition, those things we do without thinking about them. It’s a good idea to step back from time to time and examine your defaults. You may want to change some of your “settings”.
My phone is old by cell phone standards. But I still remember when I got it, trading in my old flip phone for a smart phone. And it was smart. The technician at the store took about 15 minutes to set it up and save all my contacts. He handed me the phone and it was ready to go. Such convenience.
Continue reading “Change Your Default Settings”Willpower is like a muscle, according to some research, and gets depleted with use over time. Newer research has not replicated this finding, however. Other researchers believe willpower may get depleted because we think it will be. This is at the heart of the willpower question.
It was a cruel and heartless experiment . . . at least for the hungry college students taking part. They were told not to eat anything for several hours prior to the experiment so they were hungry when they arrived at the lab.
The students were divided into three groups. Group 1 was given a plate of warm, freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies. And a plate of radishes. They were told they could have all the radishes they wanted, but they were not to touch the cookies.
Group 2 was given a plate of cookies and a plate of radishes and told they could eat all they wanted from either (or both) plates.
Group 3 was given nothing.
Continue reading “The Willpower Question”“Yard by yard it’s hard but inch by inch it’s a cinch.” Small actions made consistently over time add up to big achievements.
As a boy, I became fascinated by ants. I read everything about them I could get my hands on. One thing I learned from my reading was how to construct an ant farm and how to capture the workers and the queen from an existing nest. I used this knowledge to build several ant farms using quart jars.
When I was about 9 or 10, I made my first farm. I flooded the nest, captured the queen and some of the workers and carefully put them in the jar full of dirt. I covered the jar with black construction paper to keep out the light. And I waited. Continue reading “The Little Things ARE The Big Things”
“When we try to change our behavior, we strategize about our motivation and self-control. But what we should be thinking about instead is how to set up new habits. Habits persist even when we’re tired and don’t have the energy to exert self-control.” ~ Wendy Wood [Life: Wellness]
A father gave his young child a thread and directed her to break it. This she did easily.
The next day, the father wound two threads together and asked the child to break the pair. Again, she easily broke them. Continue reading “Make Success A Habit”