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Part of Being Human

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Submitted By roadhawk
Words 1030
Pages 5
Dillan Middlebrooks
English 848
Chris Dowling
09/29/2014
Part of being human If there’s one thing that we all could use more of it would be self-control. Look at the least successful people you know and the most successful. The one thing that makes these two types of people different is their ability to do the right actions and do them continuously. Recently I read The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.it first explains that willpower is an instinct, like stress, that protects us from ourselves. Then the book goes through ways we sabotage our own willpower and she also gives strategies to improve your willpower. One thing that The Willpower Instinct made crystal clear was that everyone struggles in some way; it could be addiction, distractions, temptations, and procrastinating. Motivation is key to resist our short-term pleasures. “When you find your biggest want power…bring it to mind whenever you find yourself most tempted to give in or give up.”(75) Whenever you are on the verge of giving up you need to just remember where you want to be and it will help you get to your overall goal. The beginning of my senior year of high school I was 80 credits behind so I had to take seven classes the first semester, but I only passed half of those and then I had ten classes the final semester in order to graduate with three credits over the requirement. Along the way I had people telling me that I “could” and “couldn’t” graduate. I definitely wanted to just give up along the way but I decided to tuff it out and I am glad that I kept focused on my goal of graduating high school because if I would have just stopped fighting and stopped giving the effort I would have probably stopped going to school and I would have not graduated, but I stuck it out and I kept fighting and trying as much as possible and I ended up getting my end goal. Meditation is very useful when focusing on stress management. “Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, street management, impulse control, and self-awareness.”(24) By practicing relaxation techniques we learn to let go of unhealthy emotional states that lead to problems, we also learn to be more aware of our self and our surroundings. I decided to meditate for three hours and I felt completely recharged, and clear minded. I was able to completely clear my mind and block out all my surroundings and it was a trip, I felt like a totally new person, after I went for a bike ride and my reactions to my surroundings were totally enhanced and my breathing was a lot more fluent and calm. I want to try the eleven hour meditation but I can’t find the time for it. The worse a person felt about getting intoxicated, the more they drank the next time. “The worse a person felt about how much they drank the night before, the more they drank that night and the next.”(144). When feeling bad about being under the influence the more intoxicated they wanted to be next time so that they didn’t have to feel as bad. When I lived in San Francisco I use to live near a dive bar that I would walk pass almost every day, and I would see people drunk as early as ten o’clock in the morning, and now it makes sense why I would always see the same people there. The best way to stay focused is to not have autopilot turned on. “If there is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention…its noticing how you give yourself permission to procrastinate, or how you use good behavior to justify self indulgence.”(237). Paying attention is a key to self-control. Procrastinating won’t get you to where you want to be, I use to weigh two hundred and thirty-five pounds in seventh grade and I would always put off doing exercises, I would make excuses of why I couldn’t run or participate in physical education. I realized that I wasn’t effecting anyone but myself also I finally realized that I was constantly doing nothing in physical education and that I was just cheating myself and that doing so wasn’t going to get me to where I wanted to be in life, so I started exercising every day, I started hiking with heavy loads, I also started riding my bike more and it really helped cut back the pounds and do it in a short amount of time. People who are dieting are defenseless against temptations. “People who are on a diet are more likely to cheat on their spouse… Once exhausted you are left defenseless against temptation or at least disadvantaged.”(56).Because the dieting people became more physically and emotionally exhausted and where more likely to cheat on their significant other, because dieting made them defenseless against the temptations. I don’t know about the whole cheating on your spouse while dieting, but I have definitely cheated on my diet while dieting. It’s just impossible to stay on a dieting regiment when you’re surrounded by food even the smallest temptations can ruin a diet. Also when your dieting you can be very moody depending on when and what you have eaten. I have been on diets where they make you feel completely horrible, like zero energy just completely drained, but I have also been on diets where they make you feel like you can do anything almost like you have superhuman abilities. The key to success is self-control whether it is people struggling from addiction, distractions, temptations, and procrastination and the key to self-control is to find out what makes you lose control and what losing control feels like . Let me make it clear that these are not weaknesses; they are all part of being a perfectly normal human being.

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