How to train the brain to improve self-control?

This is a song suitable for the night.

Yesterday, a girl left a message on the phone, saying that she was also making a WeChat official account, but it was too big, updated every day, and her self-control was poor. Later, I added a WeChat chat and chatted about "how to maintain a highly disciplined life".

In the eyes of the Lord, there are more people in the previous generation than this generation, and there are more middle-aged and elderly people than young people. At least when I mention the benchmark of high self-discipline, I will think of this old man:

Ok, no kidding ... Seriously, God absolutely believes in heaven to reward hard work and can insist on getting up at four o'clock every morning to start work/exercise/study. Those are successful people, or at least potential successful people.

Many of my relatives' elders have lived a highly disciplined life since childhood. For example, the daily schedule can be accurate to the minute, the tasks to be completed every day are never delayed, and there is no excuse to complete the daily goals set by yourself. Although I am not as self-disciplined as they are, I have become more self-disciplined in recent years.

However, I want to explain one thing first. In my personal experience, it is completely different for everyone to achieve a high degree of self-discipline.

What does this mean? Maybe you obviously have that kind of highly disciplined object around you, but you just can't do it yourself. This is because self-discipline is closely related to everyone's own growth environment, living habits, natural self-control and even the degree of hobbies. This is the same as the initial attribute of RPG game. Everyone's natural attributes and acquired environment are different, and the difficulty of achieving a highly self-disciplined life is naturally different.

Personally, I have gone through several stages from an irregular and seriously disordered life in the past to a life with regular work and rest and strict control of daily tasks. For me, who has a wide range of hobbies and is particularly vulnerable to various temptations, I have also summed up a lot of life experiences while achieving this goal. ...

The first stage: adjustment

This stage is mainly to adjust the previous habits, change the schedule, and make relatively complete plans and goals. Personally, I have several ways to achieve this stage:

One, put your mobile phone five meters away from you when you sleep.

Besides, there are only books beside the bed, and there are no electronic products. The purpose of this is obvious, that is, to overcome the habit of not sleeping well in bed and brushing your teeth before going to bed. For example ... brushing Zhihu, friends circle, or watching live video ... We all know that brushing Zhihu is addictive, and besides addiction, it is particularly easy to form brain excitement, and we may see the answers to several sexual topics.

As for asking the Lord to indulge in mobile games for a while, I can't sleep well. He always wants to play a game before going to bed. Then, as a result, I lost the game and thought, no, I must get it back ... When I won, I thought, damn it, let's have another game ... and I played for an hour or two. ...

This is unlikely to happen when reading a book. The normal process is: I will fall asleep after reading it.

There is another advantage of putting the mobile phone five meters away from the bed. The next day, when the alarm clock rings, you must get up and turn off the alarm clock to give yourself a sense of compulsion to get up on time.

Second, take a nap when you are sleepy, never for more than an hour.

When adjusting work and rest, because of the biological clock, there will definitely be a phenomenon that you can't sleep when you should sleep, and you always doze off when you shouldn't sleep. I don't recommend reading when my mind is not clear enough. It's totally half the effort. Therefore, a short sleep helps to relieve fatigue and improve work and rest.

However, this kind of sleep must not exceed one hour, because more than one hour often means entering a deep sleep. At this time, if there is no external compulsion, it will suddenly become more difficult to force yourself to rely on the alarm clock, and it will also experience discomfort for a long time after being forced to wake up ... (Don't ask me how I know)

Third, quit those hobbies that are easy to indulge in.

Personally, as long as it is a game that can be played repeatedly and has the concept of winning or losing, including but not limited to: the glory of the king, Watch Pioneer, League of Legends, Hearthstone Legend, werewolf killing ... everyone must quit. Because this type of game can easily make you out of control. And it is easy to make your emotions fluctuate violently.

Believe me, if I win this time, I will study hard, which is mostly nonsense.

My personal abstinence method is rough, that is, deleting numbers. If you are afraid that you are not determined enough, there are self-destructive props and so on. Another way is to change your password to a meaningless string. You can remember to repeat the new password when you enter it, but then you will forget it completely.

Fourth, make a more relaxed timetable and target plan.

In the first stage, many people tend to push too hard and set unrealistic plans and goals for themselves, which are often impossible to achieve in the end. Therefore, the plan made at the beginning can be relaxed, and after gradually adjusting the state, it will enter an increasingly strict plan. However, the purpose of making a relaxation plan is to ensure that you must complete it. If you can't do it, it's no use trying to persist.

The so-called loose plan is not to set too tight a time for each of your projects, but to leave enough margin in the middle. For example, I have made such a timetable before: running for an hour at six, eating breakfast for half an hour at seven, reading books for three hours at seven-thirty, and reading three chapters ... As a result, I either ran for an hour and didn't want to eat at all, or something else suddenly disturbed me in the middle of reading.

The second stage: persistence

From the experience of calling the Lord, it is not difficult for everyone to reach the first stage, but this stage can last for several days. For example, a friend once said that he wanted to run together. He was in high spirits for the first three days, but he didn't run because of something on the fourth day, so he didn't want to continue on the fifth day. ...

That's what I want to say. In the second stage, several important factors are the key to complete this stage:

First, external interference.

Personally, I think that external factors are more likely to interrupt a self-disciplined life than internal factors. This is because even if you can control your daily schedule, you can't guarantee that other external factors will interfere with your execution. Unless you live an isolated and carefree life like Thoreau in Walden, you must accept this kind of interference.

What is most needed to deal with interference is the ability to adjust the plan.

Unfortunately, however, most people do not have this ability.

Why do you say that? I personally experienced an example: in college, a classmate planned to read a book in the dormitory every day, and then one day in the middle of reading, suddenly the monitor came and asked the whole class to go to the school hospital for vaccination. Then this classmate had a physiological reaction after playing, and he was sleepy. At this time, in order to complete his goal, he forced himself to finish reading. But it is conceivable that the second half of the book is just a cursory look, which has no effect on reading at all.

But this does not prevent him from claiming that no matter what happens, I must finish reading a book every day. However, students, there is no good relationship between reading a book and learning some knowledge.

In this case, the most appropriate way to deal with it should be to do what you can. If you are in a bad state of mind, don't force yourself to do it, but rest and recharge your batteries, and then make up the progress the next day and the third day. But unfortunately, many people can't make such adjustments. For them, the reason why they have to force themselves to finish the plan inefficiently every day is because once they don't finish it, they will lose some motivation to persist.

And this involves the second factor I want to talk about, willpower.

Second, willpower.

In the second stage, a big reason for persistence is personal willpower.

This willpower mainly lies in the restraint of temptation and desire. Moreover, willpower itself varies from person to person, so it is meaningless to go to great lengths to start this topic. I just use my personal experience to analyze how to continue to ensure a high degree of self-discipline in the case of weak willpower, or how to create conditions to exercise willpower.

First of all, we must eliminate the interference that may affect us.

For example, when working and studying, turn off your cell phone. When I used to go to the library or study room to read books, I forced myself not to bring my mobile phone. Later, after the willpower was slowly exercised, the mobile phone stopped itching when it was put around.

Secondly, you should arrange your own channels to release your desires.

For example, when I was preparing for the GRE TOEFL test, I arranged that as long as I finished my daily study tasks, I would have a big meal in the evening, but then I would go back to reading and playing games until about ten o'clock. Of course, this is just a way for me to release my desire, and everyone can find their own way (such as pedicure).

Finally, it is to arrange enough life changes.

Never treat a life of high self-discipline as a boring life that is unchanging and repetitive. Because it will greatly increase your motivation to stick to it. The so-called changes, such as diet, can be changed every day, such as study, which can be interspersed with different contents. Because the second stage is relatively long, in my personal experience, such a life will be depressed for a while because it is too boring and tired, so I need to create all kinds of freshness to motivate myself to stick to it.

The third stage, habit

At this stage, many things have become a habit, such as a stable biological clock will automatically help you work and rest on time. For example, because of the foundation laid before, a lot of study work will become easier. At this stage, it can basically be said that you have jumped out of the comfort zone, experienced a struggle and returned to the relative comfort zone. And this comfort zone is the comfort zone that helps you grow.

By the third stage, many people will keep these habits, just like many previous generations. However, it is still possible to break this habit.

Like great frustration. Especially after you have experienced such self-discipline, you still don't have a pre-set goal (believe me, it is often the case, after all, people's fate depends not only on self-struggle ...)

Another example is the great changes in life. For example, from home to abroad, from the United States to Canada, these changes will bring about a complete interruption of many previous habits. For example, when I was in America, I could run in the town park every day all year round. After I arrived in Canada, I couldn't exercise outdoors for half a year. ...

However, at this stage, even if many habits cannot be maintained, it is not so difficult to maintain self-discipline. Unless, of course, you fall into the state mentioned at the end of this article. Therefore, from my own point of view, the long-term experience of high self-discipline is two parts: one is the habit accumulated over time, and the other is the growth incentive that can be felt every day.

As long as we keep these two elements, we can achieve a seemingly impossible life of high self-discipline.

However, I deliberately left the most important point at the end, saying that if you want to maintain a highly self-disciplined life, you'd better not fall in love ... (Well, this is a reward for single dog ...).

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