Some Useful Habits For Success – Part Four

13. Practice Mindfulness: We tend to believe that every choice we make throughout the day goes through a process of well-informed decision-making. But 45% of our daily-decisions are made completely automatically. From what we decide to eat, what we decide to wear and what we decide to do when we first get to work, our brains are running on autopilot. You can overcome this tendency by becoming more mindful of your daily decisions. This is as simple as pausing and questioning why you are making the decision to get coffee as soon as you make it into the office. Or why you are eating cereal for breakfast rather than eggs. Simply question these daily decisions and you will strengthen your willpower to make better choices throughout the day.

14. Self-Monitoring: Something odd happens in our brains when we look at ourselves in the mirror. The part of the brain that would say "hey, that's me in the mirror" is not activated. Instead it is a part of the brain that says "I wish I was taller, skinnier, more muscular, etc." In other words, rather than seeing who we are, we see who we want to be. This is not because we are shallow it is because we all have an ideal self that we want to live up to. With this ideal self in our mind, we begin to think and act more like them.

The best way to keep your ideal self in mind is through a process called Self-Monitoring. This involves keeping track of as much information on your-self as possible. Like with the mirror, you will look at the information on yourself and compare it to what you really want. This will strengthen your willpower and help you make better decisions. To get started, check out the list of ways to begin self-monitoring at the bottom of this article.

15. Play Offense: When researchers came across a group of people in the Netherlands who seemingly had unstoppable willpower, they thought they must be saints. They ate extremely healthy, exercised regularly, hardly procrastinated and reported less stress than almost everyone around them. But they were not saints at all. Many of them reported that if they were to get behind a bar stool, they would never leave. Others reported that they were unable to resist sweets whenever they were around. It seemed that these "saints" were prone to the same temptations as the rest of us.

So what was their secret? The secret, it turned out, was that these people simply did not put themselves in those situations. Their lifestyles were well-organized to prevent having to look temptation in the face. These people played offense. They thought about what might tempt them in the future – whether it was alcohol, sweets, or distractions from work – and set themselves up to avoid them. They were seemingly willpower super heroes because they almost never had to use it. In your life, look for the things that test your willpower. How can you play offense and remove future temptations?