No matter what you want to accomplish in life, it's going to involve discomfort.
A great career or business requires hard work. A healthy body needs exercise and foods you
don't necessarily like. Meaningful relationships need vulnerability
and compromises. In fact, anything worthwhile often requires
that you do what you don't want to do. And that can be hard.
But it doesn't have to be. I used to take my thoughts very seriously.
Whenever one of them popped into my head, I'd immediately identify with it and perceive
it as the “truth.” If a thought told me I was tired and bored,
I'd immediately look for a way out. But I've since learned that I am not my thoughts
and that my mind is nothing more than a suggestion box.
Because of that, I don't take my thoughts as seriously as I used to.
And that, in turn, has made a huge difference in my subsequent behavior and the results
I get. These days, when my mind tells me I'm restless
and should do something else, I simply thank it for the suggestion and then get back to
the task at hand. It's never the discomfort that stops you;
it's how you perceive the discomfort. Your beliefs determine your response, and
what you choose to believe is within your control.
You can assign whatever meaning you want to discomfort.
I used to believe it was a signal that I should stop.
These days, I believe it's a signal that I should keep going.
I've decided that anytime I feel discomfort, that just means I've stepped into my mental
gym, and that it's time for my mental resistance training.
Willpower is a lot like muscle power. The more you exercise it, the stronger it will
get. If you practice it for an extended period
of time, you can change your behavior around completely.
You'll be able to do what others dread doing and to stay away from things that others can't
resist doing. That level of self-control is exactly what's
needed to become a remarkable person and create extraordinary results.
So, how do you get started? The best way to practice mental resistance
training is through voluntary hardship. Here are a few examples: Underdress for cold
weather. Turn off the air conditioning in your house
or car. Take cold showers. Occasional fasting.
Drink only water. Sleep without a pillow. High-intensity exercise. These are just a
few ideas to help you come up with your personal mental resistance training.
The important thing is that you choose one and commit to it.
And just like in a physical gym, you don't want to use the heaviest weights right away.
There's no point getting overwhelmed or injured. So, start small and then get a little bit
every day. If your willpower muscle is weak right now,
it's perfectly fine to start by making your bed each morning.
Or reading one page in a book. Or flossing one tooth.
If you're thinking to yourself right now: “I'm not the kind of person who practices
voluntary discomfort,” be very mindful of the fact that this is the same voice you want
to take control over. Don't take it as literal truth. Remember — it's
just a suggestion. And it's entirely within your power what you
do with that suggestion. If you choose to take action despite what
your mind is telling you, it holds no power over you.
You can decide to perceive discomfort as mental resistance training from this moment forward.
And each time you push through the resistance, you'll notice that you'll get a little bit
stronger. If you stick to the practice consistently,
with time, it'll become second nature to do what you don't want to do.
You'll become a relentless action-taker. And that's when you can turn your most desired
goals into reality.
Mastering any physical skill, be it performing a pirouette, playing an instrument, or throwing
a baseball, takes practice. Practice is the repetition of an action with
the goal of improvement, and it helps us perform with more ease, speed, and confidence.
So what does practice do in our brains to make us better at things?
Our brains have two kinds of neural tissue: grey matter and white matter.
The grey matter processes information in the brain, directing signals and sensory stimuli
to nerve cells, while white matter is mostly made up of fatty tissue and nerve fibers.
In order for our bodies to move, information needs to travel from the brain's grey matter,
down the spinal cord, through a chain of nerve fibers called axons to our muscles.
So how does practice or repetition affect the inner workings of our brains?
The axons that exist in the white matter are wrapped with a fatty substance called myelin.
And it's this myelin covering, or sheath, that seems to change with practice.
Myelin is similar to insulation on electrical cables.
It prevents energy loss from electrical signals that the brain uses, moving them more efficiently
along neural pathways. Some recent studies in mice suggest that the
repetition of a physical motion increases the layers of myelin sheath that insulates
the axons. And the more layers, the greater the insulation
around the axon chains, forming a sort of superhighway for information connecting your
brain to your muscles. So while many athletes and performers attribute
their successes to muscle memory, muscles themselves don't really have memory.
Rather, it may be the myelination of neural pathways that gives these athletes and performers
their edge with faster and more efficient neural pathways.
There are many theories that attempt to quantify the number of hours, days, and even years
of practice that it takes to master a skill. While we don't yet have a magic number, we
do know that mastery isn't simply about the amount of hours of practice.
It's also the quality and effectiveness of that practice.
Effective practice is consistent, intensely focused, and targets content or weaknesses
that lie at the edge of one's current abilities. So if effective practice is the key, how can
we get the most out of our practice time? Try these tips.
Focus on the task at hand. Minimize potential distractions by turning
off the computer or TV and putting your cell phone on airplane mode.
In one study, researchers observed 260 students studying.
On average, those students were able to stay on task for only six minutes at a time.
Laptops, smartphones, and particularly Facebook were the root of most distractions.
Start out slowly or in slow-motion. Coordination is built with repetitions, whether
correct or incorrect. If you gradually increase the speed of the
quality repetitons, you have a better chance of doing them correctly.
Next, frequent repetitions with allotted breaks are common practice habits of elite performers.
Studies have shown that many top athletes, musicians, and dancers spend 50-60 hours per
week on activities related to their craft. Many divide their time used for effective
practice into multiple daily practice sessions of limited duration.
And finally, practice in your brain in vivid detail.
It's a bit surprising, but a number of studies suggest that once a physical motion has been
established, it can be reinforced just by imagining it.
In one study, 144 basketball players were divided into two groups.
Group A physically practiced one-handed free throws while Group B only mentally practiced
them. When they were tested at the end of the two
week experiment, the intermediate and experienced players in both groups had improved by nearly
the same amount. As scientists get closer to unraveling the
secrets of our brains, our understanding of effective practice will only improve.
In the meantime, effective practice is the best way we have of pushing our individual
limits, achieving new heights, and maximizing our potential.
Hello, guys, my name is 朱威誠 and my student ID number is 107AB0728.
Let's get started today I want to share two videos to you one of the videos is named "This
is How to Do Things You Don't Want to Do" and the second one called "How to practice
effectively...for just about anything "these two videos are two of my favorite in all 8
videos which I chose.
Let's talk about the first video. After I watched it I feel like I need to train my
willpower more constantly so I don't need to fight with my mind every time when I need
to do a thing which I hate to do or I try to be lazy if I can use my willpower to do
everything on time I know I will be a better person in every way.
The second video I want to introduce named "How to practice effectively...for just about
anything " and After I watched this video I feel like I should start trying to turn
off my phone when I studying or when I learning new thing it should make me learn more easily
and quickly if I can learn faster and efficient then I can have more time to use that will
make my life more easy at the same time.
Let's my opinion about these two videos hope you like it and thanks for watching.