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  • Improvement Pill here. Welcome to lesson 10 of the Tamea Course.

  • In our previous lessons, we learned about how habits and willpower works.

  • So, if you have not watched any of those videos yet, pause this video right now and click on the link in the description box below.

  • It will bring you to a playlist with all of the lessons of the Tamea Course in chronological order.

  • We now know that we have a lot more willpower than we think we do.

  • But when our levels of willpower drop below a certain threshold, we entered a state of ego depletion where it becomes much harder to stick to our habits.

  • So how can we increase the amount of willpower we can use before we enter this state?

  • How can we increase our self-discipline?

  • Well, numerous studies were conducted between 1999 and 2006 by professor Roy Baumeister who's one of the pioneers of willpower research.

  • He took large groups of people and tested how much willpower they had initially by forcing them to do certain willpower exercises,

  • such as seeing how long they could work on an unsolvable puzzle before giving up.

  • He then split these groups into two.

  • The first group was the control group, and they were simply told to go home and come back in two weeks.

  • The second group was told to participate in a variety of different tasks.

  • Some were told to try to fix their posture, some we're told to try to use their non-dominant hand for tasks like brushing your teeth and opening doors.

  • And others were even told to actively change the words they used in their sentences, like removing the use of filler words, like "um" and "like."

  • These groups were told to actively try and stick to these changes for the next two weeks and then come back.

  • To Baumeister's surprised, all of the groups that elicited some sort of control over their lives had a significant increase in their levels of willpower after a two-week period,

  • as compared to the control group who saw no change.

  • So, what does this mean?

  • Well, this means that willpower is just like a muscle.

  • When you workout constantly for long periods of time, your muscles get stronger, they get bigger, and you're able to lift more weight.

  • Willpower is the exact same.

  • If you actively try to change something in your life, you're using willpower to make these changes.

  • Then over time, you'll be able to use more willpower without entering a state of ego depletion.

  • Your willpower muscle will get stronger, and this explains why keystone habits are so powerful.

  • If you recall, in a previous video, which I will link to in the description below,

  • we spoke about how some people change one habit in their life and all of a sudden, they change their entire life - they change a bunch of different habits.

  • The keystone habit is so effective because by sticking to a single habit, you're training your willpower.

  • It's getting stronger, and as your willpower gets stronger you have more strength to change the other habits in your life.

  • So what can we do with this knowledge?

  • Well, for one, it shows us just how important it is to stick to our keystone habit.

  • If we can successfully stick to this habit and get it to that line of automaticity, it will mean that the amount of self-discipline we have will also increase dramatically.

  • And this is the reason I structured the course this way.

  • We put the focus on building a keystone habit instead of focusing on getting rid of our bad habit.

  • That's because by building the keystone habit, you will eventually become strong enough to get rid of the bad one.

  • And that's why you'll notice that the large majority of people who are extremely successful have an obsession with self-improvement.

  • They're always looking for ways to use their willpower to improve their lives.

  • And they may not know it, but this obsession with improvement makes them strong enough to accomplish the tasks that make them so successful.

  • So drill this into your mind by actively trying to change your life by being interested in self-improvement by sticking to that keystone habit you will become stronger.

  • So keep strong and carry on because you're getting stronger every single day as long as you stick to this.

  • And that sums up everything we need to know about willpower.

  • At this point in the course, you should already be building up your keystone habit.

  • If you find yourself slacking, remember, all you need to do is stand back up and stick to this habit.

  • If you follow this one simple task, you will get much stronger.

  • In our next lesson, we're gonna speak about the effects of our social environment on our habits.

  • How you socialize actually has a huge effect on how likely you are to overcome your bad habits.

  • The Tamea Course was brought to you with the help of the patrons of this channel.

  • If you found value in this course and would like to give back, it means a lot to me if you could become a Patron too.

  • All of my Patrons receive perks and benefits, which you can find out by clicking on the link right here.

  • Besides that, guys, stay tuned.

Improvement Pill here. Welcome to lesson 10 of the Tamea Course.

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