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3 Simple Ways to Strengthen Willpower and Achieve Goals

willpowerFrom personal experience, even you might have noticed that most resolutions to join the gym, eat a healthy diet or get proper sleep often go unfulfilled after the first month of the year. While we are often excited to start off a diet routine or make exercise a habit, it never works out for long. The enthusiasm wanes and by this time around, there’s barely enough willpower to pull through.

Understanding Willpower

It isn’t completely uncommon to eat healthy for a few days and then go back to indulging in cakes and cookies. Temptations are something that a human mind can seldom control. Temptations of any kind are a good way to test ourselves especially when trying to follow a strict diet regime. I often wonder what could come between an individual and his goal that could make it or break it.

When I decided to take up some diet or an exercise routine, I knew the benefits of it. I knew how to do it and what to do as well. Despite all this awareness, something wasn’t right. That triggered a thought in me… I came to realize that my willpower was less!

To achieve a difficult task, one needs tremendous willpower and having the willpower to overcome difficulties in health is paramount!

Most importantly, do not confuse willpower with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is something which can lead us to start a process but when the initial excited dies out, you’re back to square one! “Will” is the desire to make sure you are up to your goal and go through the process wholeheartedly to achieve that goal!

Studies have proven that taking small steps towards a large goal, structured in a sequence, strengthens practical approach. Once you know how to approach your goal practically, it becomes more easy. This in turn strengthens willpower. Procrastinating can hamper the will. If you know you have got to do something to achieve your goal, just go ahead, work on it and complete the task.

Here are some tips to strengthen your will:

1. Note Down Your Goal 

Write down your thoughts or goals. Making a list helps as a reminder to keep you on track towards your goal. Make sure you write it down where it is easily visible to you. Say for instance, a sticky note on your fridge reminding you of your goal or a note on your office soft board or your study which you frequent. Motivational quotes also help. There are many apps for motivational quotes that you can download on your tab or phone.

2. Meditate For 5 Minutes a Day

Sit up straight and focus your attention on your breath. When your mind wanders and you bring your attention back to breathing, you’ll be building willpower. When you are aware of what you are doing, you’re actually engaging the part of your brain you need for willpower. Rather than letting your impulses take over, you focus on your breathing. Meditation helps you practice self-awareness. As a bonus, deep slow breathing also helps strengthen self-control.

3. Get Enough Sleep

As you know, it is 7-8 hours of sleep daily for an adult, at least 9 for teens, and 10-12 for elementary and middle school kids. Sleep deprivation makes us susceptible to temptations and pulls us away from our goals. Self-control requires loads of brain power, and when we are tired, our bodies don’t tend to deliver enough glucose to our brain for it to get the willpower engine going.

In conclusion, remind yourself of what you really want rather than what you think you should want. Ask yourself frequently – “How do I want to feel?” Then visualize what you will lose if you give in to temptation.

We hope this article helps you build willpower and stick to your health and life goals! If you find any difficulty or need motivation to push through, our GOQii Coaches would be more than happy to help you out! You can get in touch with a GOQii Coach for guidance by subscribing for Personalised Health Coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

You can also browse through some impressive success stories of individuals who improved their health by making some simple lifestyle changes by clicking here.

What are your health or life goals? Let us know in the comments below!

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5 Hacks To Help You Achieve Your Goals

Hacks to achieve your goals

Despite knowing the importance of persistence, most people have trouble focusing singlemindedly and putting in efforts consistently in the area that they want to succeed in. Our good intentions or brilliant ideas don’t see the light of day, because of some of the habits we possess that seem insignificant and mundane.

More often than not, we find ourselves doing not what we wish to do but what we are accustomed to doing. For example, I had been thinking for months that I must wake up earlier by an hour each morning. Easy enough, right? But each night, I would find myself spending time on trivial things that I had not planned to do, like reading random articles, or surfing through emails or reflecting about some things that may have happened during the day.

These unplanned non-events led to late nights and consequently each morning I woke up no earlier than usual. Some of you may relate to this situation. Just replace ‘want to wake up early’ with ‘want to go for a walk’, ‘want to read every night’, ‘want to eat healthy’, ‘want to meditate’, ‘want to spend more time with my team’, ‘want to get to the office before time’, ‘want to learn a new skill’… by now you get the drift.

Perseverance is a trait that people with high emotional intelligence possess. As Daniel Goleman says in his book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ – “Studies of Olympic athletes, world-class musicians and Chess grand masters find their unifying trait is the ability to motivate themselves to pursue relentless training routine”. One would think that these people are wired differently. But they are not. Perseverance is not something that you either have or you don’t, it’s something that can be developed. Following are 5 simple yet highly effective ways to build perseverance and pave your path to success:

1. Start Small & Take Breaks

‘Many drops make an ocean’ is definitely something to think about. If we straight away start thinking about all the effort and resources that would be required to achieve something, the thought could promptly dissuade our minds from giving it a try, hence begin small.

If you want to run 5 km each morning, start with one or even half a km. The initial few days of trying something new can be stressful. It takes our body and mind, time, to get used to things. If eating healthy is your goal, start with one healthy meal a day. It takes a little less effort and helps you get used to the change. If you are working on a report, work in half-hour chunks with a five-minute break between every half an hour ( check out the Pomodoro Technique)

2. Celebrate Small Wins

Even if you have run just a kilometer on two consecutive days, while your aim may be to run 5, give yourself a pat. Well begun is half done. Reward yourself with something small. It could be listening to your favourite music, reading your favourite book or spending time on a call with your friend. The choice is yours but the celebration is a must to keep you motivated.

3. Surround Yourself  With Cheerleaders

Share your goal and efforts with people who care for you. Those people who would be excited and happy to see you do well. Enrol their help, let them check on your progress and remind you how well you are doing. They will become your support system and give you the much-needed boost when you feel like giving up. All of us need cheerleaders to cheer us on.

4. Watch Your Self-Talk

What do you tell yourself when you set out to run a mile but are tired and end up walking half the distance instead? Do you cut yourself some slack or beat yourself up? Do you think that you will rest a little and try again or do you say, “There I did it again! Why am I sloppy, slow and incapable?” Watch out, the one person whose words have a significant impact on you is YOU! Pay attention to your self-talk. Reframe the negative lines with positive ones. So instead of saying “I couldn’t even run 2 km”, say “I did 1.5 km, an improvement from yesterday”

5. The Last Stretch

Many years ago, as a hotelier, I was once asked to make 100 cold calls, to inform people about the upcoming New Year event. It wasn’t a very pleasant task because often people would hang up even before I completed my first sentence. Every time I was tempted to stop and take a break, I’d tell myself,  “Just two more calls and then its break time”.

Consequently, I ended up doing those 2 calls more enthusiastically and I was done with all the 100, faster than expected. This strategy works really well. Stretch your limits, little at a time. If you have run a kilometer and want to stop, push yourself to run just another 100 meters more.

If you have written 600 words for the day, write just 50 more before you call it a day. Slowly but surely you will have a bigger appetite, higher capacity and things will get easier, not to mention that you will be getting closer to the win you have been looking forward to.

Little at a time, turn these pointers into habits and just like insignificant small habits can veer you away from your achievements, these small winning habits will steer you towards your big wins. Remember, nobody was born a winner or a loser, your thoughts and efforts make you so. Like Aristotle said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”.

We hope these tips help your form and achieve your goals for the coming year. Do let us know your thoughts in the comments below. For more articles like this, check out Healthy Reads. To get the right guidance and motivation from an expert, subscribe for GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

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3 Super Simple Ways to Overcome Anxiety Induced Procrastination

overcome anxiety induced procrastination

procrastination

/prə(ʊ)ˌkrastɪˈneɪʃ(ə)n/

(noun) the action of delaying or postponing something.

Amit wakes up with a feeling of dread. Even before his mind can tell him what is wrong, he can feel anxiety and guilt start to overpower him. Then it registers. He’s woken up late! Yet again!!

He was supposed to wake up at 6, do his yoga, meditate, get a few chores done and get started with work at 8.30 am. Instead, here he was, staring at the hands of the clock insisting that it was 8.30 am, and feeling miserable.

“I have ruined the day before it even started!!” he moans.

Trying to salvage the rest of his day, he quickly brushes his teeth, rushes through part of the morning routine and sits down at his desk at 10 am. As he starts wondering what tasks he needs to get done during the day, his mind comes up with one really important task.

As soon as he gets ready to work on the first task his mind reminds him about the deadline for sending in suggestions for his team meeting. So he closes the file he had opened and goes on to open his email. And before he can get to the email with the attachment he is looking for, he is greeted by the deluge of new unread emails waiting to be opened. His heart beats faster, breath gets quicker and despite the cool morning, his palms get clammy with perspiration.overcome anxiety induced procrastination

As he tries to quickly skim through the unread emails, his mind keeps reminding him that he is already behind with the things he’s supposed to get done today and simultaneously points out that had he woken up on time, he would have been done with at least two of these tasks. 

Once again, he experiences a surge of hopelessness, guilt and shame wash through him. He gives into the routine of berating himself and thinking of all the times that he has done this before and hears his mind say things like:

“Who are you trying to fool? You know very well that this is who you really are – this lazy, undisciplined, good for nothing failure who is never going to amount to much! Stop telling yourself that you will somehow turn a new leaf, become disciplined overnight and transform into the epitome of efficiency, effectiveness and success. Just accept that this is never going to change. You are destined to live the life of a loser.”

Inexplicably, Amit feels exhausted and turns to his phone and thoughtlessly opens up Instagram. He scrolls down thinking that he will just check out a couple of posts. But the next time he looks at the clock it is already 12 noon. Feeling totally dejected, he decides to have some snacks and polishes off a large packet of wafers in no time. He spends the rest of the day feeling lethargic and getting very little done.

Does all this sound familiar? If it does, you are not alone. Even the most capable and intelligent people experience this every once in a while and more people than you could imagine, deal with this regularly. 

But let’s take a closer look at what’s going on here. If you are thinking that the issue is Amit’s habit of waking up late, you are wrong. That is not the primary issue. While good sleep habits are important and need to be managed, life will invariably throw you curveballs that will disrupt your plan one way or the other. In this case, waking up late led to Amit losing about an hour of personal preparation time and 90 minutes of work time, which totals up to 150 minutes. If he had gone on to use the rest of the day well, He would have lost only about 2 hours of productive time. But the issue was that anxiety, guilt and shame overpowered him and made it impossible for him to utilise the rest of his time. And he lost over 5 hours instead of 2.5. 

So you see, the biggest problem in most situations is not so much the interruption of plans, but our inability to manage our self talk and the resultant anxiety. Here are 3 simple steps you can take to overcome anxiety induced procrastination.  

3 Simple Steps To Overcome Anxiety Induced Procrastination 

  1. Three top tasks for the next day: Before you finish for the day, write down the things that you’d like to get done the next day. Now circle the three most important things on the list. Make these very specific. For example, instead of writing “Get started on the report”, you could write “Have the first draft of the report ready”. Now rank them in the order in which you’d like to get it done and write down an approximate amount of time you expect each of these tasks to take. You see, when you are ready to start in the morning, your mind is ready for action mode, but if you give it the job of deciding WHAT TO DO, it is going to take up precious energy and working memory space, leaving very little of the energy and focus to actually get the job done. However, at the end of the day when your mind is still in work mode, it is far easier to think about what you’d like to get done the next day. And the next morning, you can channel all your enthusiasm into working on the tasks.
  2. Tackle the anxiety: If things aren’t panning out the way you planned them to, take a few minutes to become aware of the self talk which tries to thrash you. Acknowledge the need behind the anxiety – The need to get things done. Focus on your breath for a few more minutes and ground yourself. Remind yourself that plans getting waylaid is a common occurrence in every one’s life and as long as you are human, it is going to happen once in a while. Ditch the “All or Nothing” thinking that your mind tries to sell you. Remember that if you were to stay calm, you can still achieve a big part of what you set out to do that day.  If you notice the anxiety reappearing, schedule 30 minutes of “worry time” towards the evening – a slot of time where you give a free reign to worry and anxiety. And each time you notice anxious thoughts returning, remind your mind that you can do the worrying during the allocated half an hour, not before or after.
  3. Time your tasks and take breaks: Look at your task list and start with task no 1, with a timer set to half an hour by your side. If your mind comes up with distractive thoughts while you are at the task, note down the thought in your physical or digital notepad so that you can look at it after you have worked on this task for a continuous half an hour. Same applies to any other external distractions you may face. Getting a phone call? Send them a text that you will call them back after half an hour; reminded of an email response you were supposed to send this morning? Jot down a reminder about it on your notepad and get back to the task you were doing. When you have put in a solid half an hour of focus, take a break and do any quick calls or messaging from your notepad list and get back to working on the task for another half an hour with a timer. Keep working with half an hour chunks of time with 5 min breaks in between. This will help your mind remain super focused.

Whether you are a working professional, a student, a consultant, a home maker or an entrepreneur, these steps are applicable to each one of you. Procrastination is not caused by laziness, rather it is the mind’s way of coping with increasing anxiety. The above mentioned steps are healthier ways to overcome anxiety induced procrastination, thus making it possible to take action, and to progress towards your goals.

We hope this article on 3 simple ways to overcome anxiety induced procrastination helps you! Do let us know your thoughts in the comments below! For more articles like this, check out Healthy Reads or tune in to LIVE sessions by our Emotional Wellness Expert Divya Thampi on GOQii Play.

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Exhausted At Work? Here’s Everything You Need To Know About Burnout!

Everything You Need To Know About Burnout

Have you ever woken up on time and still felt tired? You reach work but can’t stop yawning. Random bouts of sleepiness take control as concentration slowly slips away! Ever wondered why even a short commute made you feel like you ran a 200m race? What you’re feeling might be more than just “because I slept late last night”. In fact, what you’re experiencing might be burnout. Not the tyre burnout, but a medical condition that many people face on a daily basis.

WHO recently has declared ‘Burnout’ as a medical condition.

What Is Burnout?

Burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. In simple words, burnout is a state of emotional or physical exhaustion at a workplace.

What Causes Burnout? What Can It Result In?

  • Stress due to the inability to meet demands
  • Lack of concentration due to the overwhelming amount of work
  • Performance issues due to the lack of control over tasks
  • Sleeping problems due to an imbalance of work and life
  • Mental problems due to a lack of social support at home or at the office

Even though these are just some of the causes and effects of burnout, what really matters is how we treat this occupational phenomenon.

Burnout Can Be Treated In Several Simple Ways

  • Take some time off work: You could use up your ‘sick days’ or simply ask for a ‘medical leave’. During your leave you shouldn’t have any contact with your workplace as the entire point of the leave is to relax and clear your mind.
  • Set aside time for relaxation: Certain techniques of relaxation like yoga, meditation, and deep breathing exercises are known to be de-stressing and can clear your mind of troubles.
  • Know your work-limits. Learn to say ‘no’ when you’re already burdened with work.
  • Most importantly, you must keep your cool by doing what relaxes you.
  • Remember, that burnout causes one to feel negativity, so always stay positive!

A Long-Term Solution

Alexander Den Heijer, an inspirational speaker who aims to help people flourish once said,  “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” In this case, it is not the person that must be treated, but the workplace environment.

  • A workplace with a casual dress code, fun and positive environment can be a very effective in eliminating burnout.
  • Stress-busting activities are an easy way to create a feeling of positivity. These activities could be going for walks, having flexible schedules or laughing with your colleagues.

These types of environments are known to increase workplace efficiency and decrease stress and exhaustion. If the workplace can successfully be turned into a fun environment, it can reduce, if not completely eliminate burnout.

Your Health Is More Important Than Work

Even though burnout can lead to some serious emotional and physical conditions, it can, fortunately, be treated easily. With the right care and attention, your workplace can be swiftly converted from a place where you feel burdened with work, to a place that brings you positivity.

If you feel like you might be getting burned out, try these simple relaxation techniques. More so, you can also practice yoga to improve focus, build concentration and beat stress.

If nothing works and you need help, reach out to our experts by subscribing for Personalised Health Coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

Was this article helpful? Let us know in the comments below!

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