Why is it so hard to do the things you say you’re going to do?
It’s simple, you haven’t built the skill of self- discipline.
You build it through repetition.
And it all begins with how you talk to yourself.
The language you use determines whether you’ll uplevel your behavior or not.
You can upgrade your behavior with this one sentence stem “I don’t.
I don’t do guilt.
I don’t eat after dinner.
I don’t do worry.
I don’t do overwhelm vs I can’t do overwhelm
It’s been proven that saying “I don’t….” is 8x more effective than other language choices when it comes to upleveling your own behavior.
This is all came to light based on research don by Dr. Vanessa Patrick. She found that when people frame a refusal saying “I don’t” as in “I don’t eat chocolate cake, I don’t skip the gym”, instead of I can’t they were way more effective at resisting temptation.
In fact, when choosing whether or not to eat certain foods saying I don’t was 3x as effective as saying no and 8x more effective than saying I can’t.
When we say, I don’t, we experience that as a choice we’re making. We feel strong. We feel empowered. We feel like were expressing our identity.
The moment you say I can’t you start to feel restricted inside, you feel weak, like a victim. It’s as if there’s some external authority or external circumstance that’s controlling your life.
Go ahead, try using this little sentence stem, “I don’t”.
I don’t do guilt.
I don’t eat after dinner.
I don’t do worry.
I don’t do procrastination.
I don’t look at my phone first thing in the morning.
I don’t do people pleasing.
Your brain is literally a supercomputer that’s going to follow the directions that you program it with. Your brain simply believes what you tell it most. What you repeatedly say to yourself matters.
This isn’t science fiction, this is science fact aka Neuroplasticity.
More specifically Hebb’s Law that says neurons that fire together, wire together.
Your self-talk shapes your brain which shapes your beliefs, which drives your behavior, which creates your thoughts, your feelings, your experiences, which creates the totality of your reality.
So, remember the brain believes whatever you tell it most. And whatever you tell it most about you and your experiences is what it is going to create.
It has no choice. But the conscious creator that is you has a choice. You can start to reprogram your brain, right now.
Repeat after me, I don’t….