6 Days: Survivor Mentality
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"At some point, everything's gonna go south on you and you're going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work."
- Matt Damon, The Martian
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7 Days: You Get What You Give - But You'd Better Be Genuine!
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5am… time to get started on the new day and start my new plan of reaching out to others!
But this time, my focus was on helping them, not helping myself. Here is how each point in the plan went:
Read More8 Days: My Embarrassing Wakeup Call
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The day was moving along like usual.
Wake up at 5...healthy breakfast...meditation...and - as planned - eat my frog and reach out to others.
But no matter how many times I do it, or how successful it is, it always feels wrong.
In the back of my mind throughout the day, I was questioning why reaching out always felt "icky".
Read MoreMy Willpowered Plan to Finish Kickstarter Strong (and Put My Money Where My Mouth is)
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I feel like my whole life has built up to this moment. It is truly make or break time.
I have spent the last 5 years researching the science behind how normal people used their willpower to achieve extraordinary success. Then writing about the simple, proven ways you can follow their lead.
I claim to have the answers to the equation of what it takes to will yourself through the hard times and come out the other side victorious.
So it is time for me to put my money where my mouth is and prove it.
For those of you who don't know, Kickstarter is "all or nothing". If we don't reach the goal in time, we don't receive any funding to publish the book.
Read MoreHow Jure Robic Proved That Willpower Has No Limits
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It has been called the hardest competition on the planet.
The Insight Race Across America, also known as RAAM, is a 3,000-mile non-stop bike race from one end of the United States to the other – more than 36% longer than the Tour de France.
But as the cyclists did their final preparations for the 2004 race, their fear was not the pain they would face over the full week of biking. Their fear was of the seemingly inhuman winner of last year’s race, Jure Robic.
Read More4 Powerful Lessons in Willpower After 15 Days of Working My Heart Out
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“I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.” – Vince Lombardi.
Read MoreHow Arnold Schwarzenegger's Relentless Willpower Made His Vision a Reality
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Growing up in rural Austria, Arnold Schwarzenegger had little chance of achieving fame or fortune.
He lived in a tiny village called Thal where children were groomed to follow in their parents’ footsteps. Arnold’s parents were set on him joining the military and becoming a police officer like his father.
But Arnold knew he was meant for something bigger.
Read MoreHow Joe DeSena's Perspective Made His Will Unbreakable
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In 2001, Joe DeSena, the founder of The Spartan Race, was in a car accident that ripped his hip out of his socket.
After his injury, the first 4 doctors he met with said that he would never be able to run again. This news devastated Joe. He was an athlete all of his life and could not imagine never running again.
So Joe refused to accept that fate. He decided that he was going to do everything he could to be able to run again. This made him hyperfocused. He was going to prove doctors wrong, and to prove that his will was unbreakable.
Read MoreHow Temple Grandin Overcame Challenges With Autism to Achieve Greatness
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Her mother prayed for good news as she sent 3-year old Temple Grandin to a speech therapist.
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Diagnosed with autism, Temple was thought to be incapable of learning language. In the 1950s, that meant she would be institutionalized all of her life unless she could show she was capable of entering school.
Her parents tried everything they could, and this speech therapist was their last resort.
Thankfully, against all odds, young Temple made progress. It was slow, but Temple was able to speak well enough to be enrolled in a normal school.
Read MoreHow David Blaine Developed His Insane Willpower
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David Blaine didn’t know how much longer he could last. He had been encased in a block of ice in the middle of Time Square for a full 55 hours and was literally going crazy.
“I started to think I was in purgatory. I genuinely believed I was being judged, and that this was a place I was waiting to go to heaven or hell.”
He was in the final hours of his Frozen in Time stunt where he was to stand in that block of ice for 63 hours. But from the first moment that he stepped inside of the block of ice, he immediately started shivering.
Read MoreJK Rowling's Unbelievable Rags to Riches Story
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It was a simple a train ride from Manchester to London to most of the passengers on the train, but for one passenger, it would be the spark that would change the world of literature forever.
Joanne Rowling – better known as J.K. Rowling – was overcome with excitement as she saw a vision of a young, scrawny boy who the world would come to fall in love with.
“I saw Harry! I could see him very clearly – this scrawny little boy. And it was the most physical rush of excitement. It was the same feeling that you get when you meet someone new and feel as if you have found the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with.”
Read MoreThe Great Lessons You Can Learn From Bad People
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“I was just a quiet girlfriend who was told to sit down and shut up.” – Michel’le Toussaint
In 2014, Andre Young (AKA Dr. Dre) had the biggest payday of any musician in history when he sold his company Beats to Apple for a reported $3 billion.
He is now the richest musician, ever.
Growing up in Compton, California, that future could not have been farther away. He grew up in a single parent household and became a parent himself at the young age of 17.
However, Dr. Dre had a vision and the willingness to pursue it relentlessly.
Read MoreHow Kobe Bryant Willed Himself to Greatness
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When he was 12 years old, Kobe Bryant was about to give up basketball forever.
He just completed his summer basketball camp and was going home a disgrace. He thought it would be the beginning of a flawless journey to becoming the star NBA player that we all know today – especially because his father, Joe Bryant, played in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for 8 years before playing his final 6 years in Italy.
During those 6 years in Italy, the Bryant family fully embraced the culture. This included Kobe playing soccer for most of his youth and showing a lot of promise in the sport.
Read More10 Huge Successes and Failures from Year One of Willpowered
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I’ll never forget that feeling.
It was a strange mixture of both fear and excitement as I was officially setting up a site that would be known as “Willpowered” on September 22nd, 2014.
I had no idea what I was getting into. I had no idea if anyone would care what I had to say or if I would just be writing as a means of putting my research into practical terms.
Either way, it was day one, and I had a blank canvas in front of me. A blank canvas that I would have to fill with something that I hoped people would actually like.
Read MoreHow to Think Like Bill Gates by Taking Time for Self-reflection
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In April 1994, Bill Gates completely cut himself off from his work, his friends, and even his family for an entire week.
This was part of an annual ritual that he called his “Think Week” where he takes the time to step back from everything and look at it from a high-level. He found that this separation gave him clarity and the ability to think outside the box.
This particular Think Week ensured Microsoft’s dominance for the next decade. [1]
He was struggling with the question of whether the Internet was a fad or here to stay. Until that point, Microsoft was completely focused on the personal computer and ignored many other opportunities like personal digital assistants.
This focus was part of what made them great.
Read More8 Willpower Tips You Must Know Before Your Next Social Event
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Have you ever felt like an outsider?
Perhaps you were sitting alone at the cafeteria in high school looking over at the “cool kids’ table". Maybe your friends were laughing at an inside joke that you weren’t a part of and you sat there wondering what was so funny...
It can feel gut-wrenching, but we’ve all felt that way at some point.
What does this have to do with willpower?
A lot, actually.
Read MoreThe Extraordinary Value of Identity on Your Willpower
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They were shocked to hear the news.
The hotel maids – all who claimed to be the furthest thing from habitual exercisers – were given the statistics about how many calories they were burning compared to actual habitual exercisers.
Compared to a desk job, hotel maids actually get a lot of exercise. They are constantly moving. The scrubbing, vacuuming, and walking from room-to-room isn’t exactly "intense". But over the course of an 8-hour day, the calories add up.
In fact, they add up to about 900 calories burned every single day!
Read MoreHow to Use Your Willpower to Drastically Improve Your English
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As an adult, learning a new language is one of the hardest things to do.
Your brain will always tempt you to do what is easiest and stick to the language you know and understand fluently.
However, improving your English speaking is also incredibly valuable!
It can help you advance in your career.
Allow you to understand more books, music, movies and TV shows.
Help you travel to more places and communicate effectively.
And many more!
That is why you must summon the willpower to immerse yourself in the language and truly master it.
Read MoreWhy Making Decisions is a Waste of Your Willpower
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All the two Israeli men could do was hope.
Hope that the judge would hear their cases thoughtfully and free them to return to society as reformed convicts.
Each case was the same:
They both committed fraud.
They both were serving 30-month sentences.
They both were well-behaved during their 18-months in prison.
The only difference – at least on paper – was the time of their parole hearing. One was at 8:50am and the other was at 4:30pm.
Read MoreWhy You Need to Stop Visualizing and Start Taking Action
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“All men have the will to win. But it’s the man who has the will to prepare who’s going to win.” – Bob Knight
In 1975, the legendary college basketball coach, Bob Knight, led his Indiana Hoosiers to an undefeated season and a national championship victory – something that hasn’t been done again in over 40 years now.
Upon his retirement from the game, he wrote a book where he told the world his approach to psychology in the game of basketball – The Power of Negative Thinking.
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