This is How You Build Willpower & Discipline - Dandapani | Jim Kwik

welcome back quick brain your question of today is how do you improve and enhance your willpower and discipline and I know this is a subject a lot of people talk about in our Facebook community they want to get themselves to do something they want to be consistent they can't get themselves to read or to go to the gym to exercise their willpower and I'm excited about this conversation because here I have my friend Don - Pawnee thanks for being here thanks for having to show Jim yeah I'm really excited about this now some people for the few people haven't seen your videos online you you grew up in Australia you and this is interesting you went to college for electrical engineering and then from there you went right into the UK that all if I went to into monastery lived as a celibate Hindu monk for 10 years in a cloistered monastery in Hawaii and then after that I left and moved to New York to be able to test your concentration and all that discipline you know it's interesting you're the first person to actually say that because people always ask me why in New York City and I said it's a perfect place to put the tools into practice right to go from like a monastery in Hawaii to come to one of the busiest most learned a lot of people think the most fast-paced hectic environments exactly what a great place to test if the tools work right they do work no matter where in New York City and that's what we're going to talk about so you were in the monastery for 10 years yeah and you're practicing you're doing your mental training your meditation you're honing your concentration yeah so what is how would you define let's go we're talking about willpower and discipline some people use those interchangeably how would you define those words yeah I define them very simply i define willpower as a mental muscle so you could draw biceps around your brain in a very simplified way that's how I would define willpower right and and discipline this you know I I look well if you list three elements I would say this this willpower discipline and love and a lot of people want to create discipline in their life but they start and then they struggle and they stop and I feel like the driving factor behind discipline is love when you love something and you're passionate about it then you want to discipline your life more so that you can have more of that love so I have a daughter for example it's ten and a half months old and I love her very much and I want to spend a lot of time with her and in order to defend more time with her I need to discipline my life right so I used my willpower to create that discipline right that that's straight to rigidness of my day that allows me to have more time to spend with my daughter but it's the love that drives the act of being disciplined and I use my willpower to discipline myself by saying no other things no to opportunities no to people and structuring my life and being clear on what my priorities are so I say discipline is the byproduct whereas the willpower is what's needed to create that structure but the base of it is love at the source of its love if you don't have something you're passionate about it's something that you love passionately then you're not driven to discipline your life you may stop it but then you can't sustain it so let's let's take an example for somebody watching maybe they want to they want to work out and then so how would you how would you apply that towards would it be exercising more more willpower or they maybe they want to be disciplined and make sure they do that three times a week I would say them going even deeper right I mean like why are you exercising so that you can have a great body for the summer always there a greater impetus because a lot of people want to exercise gonna feel like I'm a little bit out of shape and you know I need to go exercise and it's the summers coming I need to look good that's not enough of an impetus right but if there's a greater impetus to go and exercise because you believe that your body houses your mind it houses his soul and I need a good strong body and for expert per second live a more passionate life I can do things better I can experience life better with a nice healthy body then that's a drive to go but if you just want to go exercise because you want to have a great body for the summer oh no no that's enough to just sustain and that's the thing about motivation it's not sustainable exactly and a lot of people come up to me and go I and ask are you a motivational speaker and I say absolutely not I actually do not believe in motivation and I do not believe in inspiration because I feel it's it's an injection of energy into someone an emotion to get them high for a moment and then once it goes away you default back to who you are and when I was growing up Jim you know I as a young kid I could listen to monks speak and because they're so fascinated with the monastic life every time a monk came to town asked my parents to go taking you see the must be a lot of them would tell inspirational things motivational things I listen to them go home tell myself I'm gonna practice everything they told me to do and I did for about a week or two weeks right then all the inspiration went away because you see the guy sitting on stage with the rogue and the beard and the beat and you go like I wanna be him that's quite shocking you know there's the kungfu master you know I want to be him and then the inspiration goes and you default back to who you are because there was never a deeper passion right and they realized that motivation and inspiration doesn't really work what you want to figure out is you know you're this is getting a little bit deeper what is your purpose in life and what's your passion in life right and once you figure out that passion that love that's the driving factor of your life and it's so much easier to discipline your life if you work with athletes who work with professional actors what drives then they love what they do right they love the tennis players that you work with they love Tennant's story and that that love drives them to the discipline in that in that purpose yes determined it's their priorities exactly but if you didn't have that you couldn't cultivate the willpower than to discipline your life so I think a lot of people will struggle and I don't want to deceive people by telling them like hey you know do this and you'll have the willpower you need to discipline your life right before that comes really finding out what your purpose in life is what is it you're truly passionate about because then you'll do whatever it takes to discipline your life and you'll cultivate your will and use your world and to create that structure that structure is that discipline now do you believe people have it's interesting because I think a large part of people who watching this right now they believe that they haven't found their purpose or they think that there's just one purpose to their life one way what you're feeling about purpose yeah I feel like a lot of people don't know their purpose because they've never spent any time trying to find their purpose and there's no structured approach to it and then when you're growing up nobody tells you in school that you need a purpose in life but if you look at your daily life your whole life is driven by purpose people get in a car why because there's a purpose to drive to go to dinner drive to go to work right you take a shower there's a purpose you know everything you do throughout the day all the mundane things is Purpose Driven so why shouldn't life have a purpose and most people don't know their purpose because they never spend time with themselves and I know Jim people say to me oh I spend time with myself every evening I walk my dog for half an hour that's my long time like no that's walking your dog and you know me I love defining things you know people say oh I go for a jog in the park that's my alone time I can oh that's jogging in the park you can't say that's your alone time you're look when I say you want to find your purpose you need to sit down no music no podcasts no journals eyes closed going internally and having a dialogue with yourself the way I can get to know you is to spend time with you right we we met every week every Friday for lunch for two hours after a year we'd know each other really well I know what makes you happy what makes you sad what drives me what doesn't Drive you same way how would you discover your purpose by spending structured time with yourself in introspection and so we're talking about willpower we're talking about discipline but underneath that we're it's interesting because I don't think a lot of people are relate to decide to love and self-awareness but self-awareness is this is so important it's a superpower and you can develop it totally is and if you don't know what you want then you'll never be driven and that's why if you look at most people they they go from one thing to another they're driven by the trends of society now this is popular so I'll do it for a while you know maybe it's yoga then it's soul cycling and then it's this and it's that and people are just going from one thing that if you look at the most successful people on the wall they just do one thing where they play tennis or they play football you know like the people some wanted to the athletes that I work with you know once a soccer player and that's all he's done ever since he was a kid he's played soccer every day tennis I mean he might play with his cousin on the weekend or something you know but that's all he does he's just us one thing and that's why he excels in it and if you could find your purpose and you could find the love and what you do you could add five days a week you know to your to your life because most a lot of people aren't doing what they love those five days a week and I'm looking forward to to two days out of the week exactly and now is it possible to do the opposite not only love what you do and get those five days back but can you can you find the love and what you do as well and people find love and joy in what they do and what they're doing currently yeah uh I believe so you know I was I remember kids I wasn't monastic talking to my guru and I had some assignment they'd given me I just didn't like it it was just and he saw that I wasn't passionate about it but I had no love for it and he reached down in front of the pen in front of him and he picked up a pencil and held it in front of him you said I can get inspired by this pencil look at this piece of look at this pencil it's a piece of wood or a LED in it they drilled a hole they stuck a LED and that it's not fascinating how to get the LED event you know and he started to dive into that pencil in a such a concentrated way that I started to get inspired by this pencil right right so he taught me then to my ability then to be concentrated and to dive into what I'm doing where it's washing the dishes is sweeping the floor or cleaning the house of working on accounting or my business I can get passionate about what I want to if I took the time to stay focus on it and really explore it right most people can't stay concentrated on something long enough to actually see joy in it so you're going from your your your purpose what gives you joy love and that that gives you the the energy in the impetus you know to be able to be disciplined in with your life now when we're talking about how willpower you have those muscles on your on your mind you know what are some exercises that people who are watching or listening in practice to be able to build their their their willpower so one simple technique that my guru taught me in the monastery the way to develop willpower is to finish what you begin it's really easy to start something but to finish something takes tremendous amount of growth right at the start everybody's inspired they're full of enthusiasm and energy because they're motivated they're motivated right to something new it's inspiring and then halfway through the project everybody looked at each other and go whose idea was this and then people just abandon it and go start something new when you finish what you began you actually requires tremendous amount of will so the way I develop my bicep is I use my bicep to lift weight to develop more wise upright I use my bicep to develop bison the way you develop willpower to use your mental muscle to develop more muscles so every time you finish what you begin you actually develop in willpower so for me the way I develop willpower so I look at my average day and I go what are the opportunities in my day that I can use to develop one simple thing that I talk about quite often is every day I sleep right it's it's a reoccurring event I never go a day without sleeping right - right so every day I sleep so before I sleep I floss I brush my teeth on my pajamas they go to sleep how do I finish the process of sleep I make the bed in the morning so every day I make a wake up in the morning I make the bed there's not a single day that goes by that I haven't made the bed in the last 25 years all right I'd say every day I wake up I finish so when I make the bed I finish what I begin and I'm developing willpower so now most people look at mundane things throughout the day like making the bed is going like oh that's a mundane task why should I waste time or energy whereas in the monastery we were trained that all the simple tasks throughout the day from making the bed to putting away your cops are washing your breakfast dish in the morning and you come into the house and you take your shoes off instead of kicking it to the side you can put them neatly takes an extra five seconds but you're finishing the process off coming home right right and all those things are little acts to develop our imagine if you're taking a pebble and putting it in a jar every time you know two weeks later the job will be filled with pebbles so I looked at the tasks throughout the day finishing those tasks as opportunities to develop willpower and after a month I developed tremendous amount of willpower now I can use that willpower and direct it with my align it with my passion to to create discipline in my life so that I can enjoy what I love more because how you do anything is how you're training yourself to do everything exactly yeah and it's about creating rituals throughout the day and people don't realize that right so the whole monastery the life in the monster was filled with rituals everything we did the whole day by looking at a monk you could tell what time of day it was because you knew what he was doing right so I've structured my life now to create as many rituals as possible throughout the day and I'm even training my 10 month old daughter the same way you know she sleeps as at a certain time she eats at a certain time we take her for a walk at five o'clock in the evening every day at 5 p.m. she baits at a certain time just to Train rituals and rituals shape the subconscious mind helps you to create those patterns in the subconscious okay that's absolutely incredible so what would your message be for everybody who's watching if we're gonna give them a challenge I would say you know step one truly take time to figure out what your passion in life is because that that's really going to drive your ability to discipline your life in one of the ways is being just by yourself yes and the simple ways simple thing to do is wake up in the morning have a shower find a quiet spot in your apartment or your home and sit down with yourself for five minutes no music no books no podcasts nothing and just have a conversation if I wanted to get to know Jim I might have a conversation with you I need to ask you questions right if I ask you what you ate yesterday I don't learn very much but I ask you why do you do what you do tell me about your lying passion if I do that every week I'll really get to know you so have that same conversation with yourself if you do that every day I bet you after month or three months you'll start to discover what is truly important in your life and that becomes your passion which then you can align your willpower by finishing what you begin every day pick one task making your bed in the mornings you don't make the bed in the morning start making your bed every morning wake up make your bed or wash the dishes wash the dishes and every time you finish what you begin don't think that you're making the best think that you're developing will power your training your training it's a training practice right so when I make the bed I don't look at it as oh I'm making the bed I look at it as I'm developing my role power and that drives me to make the bed and that the bill power I'm developing here allows me to spend time to discipline my life which allows me to get more what I love in my life just dominating that's why I make the bed I love that you've done the funny how do people stay in touch with you and and find out more about your teachings uh I would say the easiest way is to go to my website which is done to Pawnee dog I also have an app on the App Store on the Play Store okay so they can download it I love that we'll put up links to everything to dhandapani site to is app and more and his social media and our show notes always at jim quick calm /and notes and i challenge everybody to take a screenshot of this episode this video or this audio and tag dhandapani tag myself in it so we see it and say what you're gonna do to to challenge yourself your specifically your your willpower and to be able to exercise your willpower to have greater levels of discipline what's one thing you're gonna add to completion because how we do anything is certainly how we do everything yeah thanks for being on the chef thank you very much too [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Jim Kwik

Views: 208,550

Rating: 4.9469857 out of 5

Keywords: kwik learning, Jim Kwik, Kwik Brain, Memory, brain, reading, speed reading, mind valley, jay shetty, focus, success, improvement, motivation, habit, dandapani, how to, willpower, discipline, monk, meditation, tips

Id: 3ebcDjPMI68

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019