the studio isn't perfect right now and it gets so hot in here during the day I tried to shoot this video two times and I got way too sweaty so now I'm filming it at night but I'm still doing [Music] it also there are like moths and flies in here cuz I accidentally left the door open and they were attracted to the light so in an earlier video I talked about how willpower is a finite resource that depletes throughout the day with every decision that you make and when you fall asleep at night that willpower
replenishes back to max level but what about increasing that maximum is it possible to upgrade the amount of willpower you have in general neurologists and behavior psychologists generally understand willpower as something that can be strengthened through practice which can help combat things like procrastination for example when we procrastinate the things that we're doing to procrastinate are obviously more exciting or more stimulating than the thing that we're avoiding unfortunately this is mostly inescapable procrastination wouldn't exist if doing super hard work was really fun thankfully though you can combat this phenomenon with willpower which might be disappointing
to you if you're looking for some type of brain hack but really plain old-fashioned willpower is super helpful problem is a lot of people these days don't seem to have much of it and don't really know how to improve it either let's talk about one of the greatest ways to strengthen overall willpower and potentially make the quality of your life better in general and that is by regularly practicing acts of self-denial self-denial is the willingness to forgo Personal Pleasures in The Pursuit Of The increased good of another doing what I just read can be easy
as not taking the last cookie from the cookie jar even if you think you really deserve it and there's no real reason not to or only watching one episode of your favorite Netflix show even when Netflix starts Auto queuing the next one diabolically like it does so there you go just do that every day and your willpower will increase you're probably not satisfied with that though one of the most popular and well-known scientific experiments or psycholog is there really a fly in my face one of the most and that is the famous marshmallow experiment this
took place in the 1960s so in the marshmallow experiment psychologist Walter Michelle sat a bunch of elemente school children down one by one and offered them the choice of one marshmallow now or if they could wait 5 minutes they would get two marshmallows so after this happened Michelle sort of followed these childrens all the way these childrens Walter Michelle sort of tracked the performance and overall life quality of these children as they became adults and he found out that the ones that were able to resist temptation earlier on in life found greater success academically career-wise
and they even had lower rates of marital Separation this study suggests that self-denial directly translates into success in other areas of life another study shows that self-denial not only translates into success in other areas of life but could also have an impact on overall happiness according to a 2013 paper published in Social psychological and personality science I had to do that this study took place at the University of British Columbia and involved 55 participants so to simplify things there were three groups in the study group one was given a bunch of chocolate and told not
to eat it group two was just told nothing and group three was given a bunch of chocolate and told to eat as much as they comfortably could over the next week one week later all three groups came back ate a piece of chocolate and then reported on their feelings of overall happiness unsurprisingly group three who binged chocolate all week long were the least happy about eating that piece of chocolate whereas group one who couldn't eat chocolate that whole time time were the most happy it may not be surprising that self-denial makes people long for the
thing they can't have yet the chocolate study shows that people who practice self-denial are actually happier in the end because they Savor more so in societies where there's abundance overall happiness and improved well-being are not a guarantee sometimes discipline saying no to the thing that's right in front of you even when there's no real reason why you can't have it leads to Greater happiness and success in your life in the end if you like this video be sure to hit that like button if you like these videos in general hit that subscribe button if you
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