You can't choose to be happy, except the sole reason you're not is that you've chosen so. Only if you've chosen to feel miserable can you change your decision and be happy instead. But how often do you choose to feel miserable? That's right. And that's why you usually can't choose to feel happy. In an important sense, happiness is a chemical state based on certain ranges of neurotransmitter levels in your central nervous system. You can't directly control this system by choice. Yet, there are … [Read more...]
Scientific Guidelines for Effective Motivation
How can you motivate your employees, clients, teammates, coworkers, and friends? You need to inspire, exude passion, infect them with your own motivational force, and lead by example, right? This article is not about passive or indirect approaches. Rather, it's about taking direct action and concrete principles to guide these actions. Since behavioral anthropology was the focal point of my academic studies, I will ground my guidelines in the current state of the art of research on human … [Read more...]
Willpower: Lessons in Self-Discipline #6
The sixth principle in my willpower series states: Procrastination must end now! Don't even finish reading this post. No information on this planet is worth your procrastination. Passive consumption comes from weakness, and whatever springs from weakness is bad. As soon as you have one reason to not follow your True Will at this very instant, you might as well tear your entire plan apart; for this one reason alone has rendered it worthless. You want to start on Monday? This means not … [Read more...]
Willpower: Lessons in Self-Discipline #5
The fifth principle in my willpower series states: Love what you do! Joe Rogan frequently gets asked how he can be so disciplined and have such an outstanding work ethic to accomplish such different things as to write and perform standup comedy, commentate for the UFC, host one of the world's greatest podcasts, spend time with his family raising his two daughters, train jiu-jitsu, practice pool and bow-hunting, go on hunting trips, etc. Joe's answer is always the same: "It's easy because I … [Read more...]
Should You Use Willpower to Deal With Anxiety?
There are two types of emotion regulation: implicit regulation: automatic strategies explicit regulation: conscious, effortful strategies What neuroscientists (e.g., Etkin et al. 2015) describe as implicit emotion regulation is equivalent to defense mechanisms (Rice 2016)—manipulations and distortions of reality in order to defend against anxiety, to protect one's ego. Some common examples are: "I fear nothing whatsoever." (denial) "In my mind I'm a fearless superhero." … [Read more...]