I’ve realized that I’m very mentally weak and it’s impacting my success.
I suspect I have ADHD and whenever I get an urge to distract myself, I rarely manage to resist it.
I think what I am missing is the residtance to discomfort that eg. allows sports people to carry on going even when their muscles are telling them to stop. Or the thing that allows people to defy themselves and step into an ice-cold shower.
Unfortunately I am not a person who enjoys sports and a cold shower is only something that makes sense once a day. Can you think of any exercises that I can do here and now in my room, and practice routinely that will strengthen my willpower so that I can better resist my urges in the future?
If you have ADHD, forget combating it with willpower. You need to reduce distractions.
But most of all, get diagnosed properly and then a psychotherapist can help you further, as might the appropriate meds.
Will do. I just wont be able to get diagnosed until in a couple of months, so I wanted to try how much I could brute force for now
I have found it useful, even healthy in stressfulness work situations, to allow myself the distraction - but only for a little while. This works fairly well for me.
Do one other thing. Play only one round of Minesweeper (yes, that’s me). Read only one thing on Lemmy. Pick one of those. Then get back to work. For a while, anyway.
If I am trying to get things done (write emails) do important research, ya know that kind of thing, I sprinkle in the things I want to do like procrastinate on lemmy, look up random shit, eat a snack, and then get back to the work at hand
What is it you are distracting yourself from? The low motivation could also be that you are not really believing in a goal or you are not enjoying a task because you would rather do something else with your time. As others already said if you “suspect” you have ADHD you could also try therapy.
For me, it’s 100% about positive self talk and mini goals. Instead of trying to motivate myself to run 5 miles, it’s one 100ft section at a time. Fix a goal I can see, then run there and give myself a mental high five for getting there. Then do it again one more time. And then one more time and on and on til I get to the end.
This is covered in a lot or depression literature, where you need to literally rewire your brain to defeat the attempt to reach homeostasis, which has become a depressed state. Little positive actions and thoughts that eventually rewire the neural pathways and create new ones little by little. If you want to learn more about that, the technical side made very understandable by a psychologist and neuroscientist who specializes in depression and anxiety, you should check out “The Upward Spiral”. It’s really good and i highly recommend it. It has helped me start the healing and coping process.
Close this tab right now and promise yourself never come back to see if someone gave you an easy answer…
That would require some one time mental strength but would also make this post a bit pointless…(?)
Trouble is, many of the techniques here are easy. But if you have ADHD, sticking to them is damn near impossible.
Eat the frog
This is going to be funny, but … edging yourself during masturbation.
Heh I guess I can see how that helps. Because I was thinking something along the lines of forcing myself to close a YT video half way through, which is essentially the same effect. (Not that YT videos make me orgasm or anything lol)
Man, I haven’t seen any articles about how gooning can improve your willpower but I think i⁰ts only a matter of time.
This is exactly what you said. Workout and cold showers.
Even if a cold shower is once a day, it is enough. Willpower is like a muscle, you don’t have to exert it constantly, but regularly.
As for working out, you don’t have to like it, to make it. This is the hard pill to swallow, but struggling is part of it, at least in the beginning.
What I find helpful personally, is to watch a coaching video. You follow the moves of the vlogger at the same pace, and only pause when you can absolutely not take it anymore. I end up cursing at the video and hating my life on the spot.I recon that it helped me have more control on myself (like pain tolerance). But as for the ADHD you describe, I am not sure I saw any improvement personally.
Oh I see, do you still have athe link to the video you used? Also, do you know of any good resources about improving pain tolerance? I think that’s essenstially what I’m lacking atm.
This is kinda random advice and I dunno if it will help, but if you want to increase your pain tolerance try doing a polar bear swim. Just make sure you have someone with you, you have somewhere warm to retreat to a towels and fresh dry clothes and that you do it in a temperature tjat isn’t too overwhelmingly cold. Like 40 or 50 degrees probably is the limit for it if you have never done it before because if it is too cold you can go into shock and get hypothermia, but yeah. If you want to start slower just dunk your hand into a bucket of ice water. Over time you will get used to it and will be able to do it for longer periods.
I will DM you the YT channels I follow.
do you know of any good resources about improving pain tolerance?
Working out and cold showers are enough on that matter imo
Thanks 👍
I would say first and foremost be kind to yourself, @SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml. Strengthening your willpower begins with good self-care techniques. Set regular, realistic, and achievable goals and when you achieve them, do something positive for yourself. Too often we are our own worst enemies and by beating yourself up you actually make it harder to achieve what you really want. This is something I struggle with even though I do not have ADHD. Will-power comes not from negative reinforcement but from the positive kind. 😀
Thanks for this reminder, you’re right it’s really easy to start blaming yourself for failing at things that it’s not your fault you’re failing at
“Just do it” is such easy advice to give but I feel your pain OP. There are things I want to accomplish that I CANNOT get myself up to do. I can’t execute plans or schedules for things that don’t immediately threaten my livelihood. It’s a real PITA. Executive dysfunction is a term I’ve read about recently that describes this.
I’m convinced the way we think about things is the driving force. For example, I’ve always struggled to work out regularly. What’s really been helping me the last month is the mantra “I’ll never regret working out but I absolutely will regret not working out”. So try to critically evaluate your thought processes behind the things you want to accomplish and see if there is another way of thinking about it that makes doing it easier.
I really like your mantra – yeah it really helps me when thoughts like this reframe the way I look at things. I often struggle with being paralized by guilt, for example the guilt of having put an email off for too long, or tge fear that starting ti revise for my exams now would make me feel guilty that I didn’t start preparing earlier. I wish I had a similar mantra for that
Yes! The guilt eats you alive and completely paralyzes you! I never could figure out what made me tick to help improve my study habits. But I just graduated so I managed and now I’m done forever! You will always wish you started sooner, no matter how early you start.
For little things like emails, consider how they take barely 5 mins to do. We have 1,440 minutes in a day and we can’t even take 5 to send the freaking email?! I use that mindset for chores too. I gripe and moan about the kitty litter box but it takes 60 seconds to just scoop the damn thing.
Ahh putting it into perspective does sound like it would help me. Unfortunately for me writing an email usually takes closer to 20 minutes because I’m really slow at phrasing what I have to say and I sit around stuck on trying to phrase my email in a way that doesn’t sound too commanding/impolite/etc . Have you ever had this? It might be an ADHD thing idk.
I’ve experienced that as well with emails. I’ve gotten faster over the years because of the amount I’ve had to send but have definitely spent 30+ minutes writing some of them. I will write it and then read it out loud to myself to make sure it makes sense and, like you said, doesn’t sound rude or aggressive. Realistically, no matter how careful you are people still might misinterpret it. I’ve never been diagnosed or sought to be diagnosed with ADHD so it’s hard to say. I’m too stubborn to seek a diagnosis and try meds because it’s just one more thing for me to forget to do 😅
Don’t overthink it. That helps me. Obviously match your phrasing to the situation like if it needs to be formal, be formal, but if not then just write it out and send it.
In most cases it is not a lack of willpower but rather an exhaustion of the same. Try to arrange your daily routine around things you WANT to do and limit the things that burn attention and mental energy (doom-scrolling social media, ….).
It’s all about managing your (dopamine) resources economically.
Delayed gratification.
I always get myself to do things I don’t want to by thinking “Future-me is going to be much happier when he finds that present-me did this already.”
Helps me find the motivation to exercise, make myself a good cup of coffee instead of a kcup, do the dishes after dinner, lots of things. And past me is such a bro, saved me from present-me having to do those things.
I’ve tried this before but it hasn’t worked for me so far unfortunately :-/ I thunk it’s because my brain sees tomorrow-me to be a different and detached person…
When I was in grade 2 I had an old substitute teacher tell us a story about how he trained his willpower by setting an alarm every night at 3 am and when it went off he’d do 10 jumping jacks.
I tried it that night, got out of bed and did 2 jumping jacks before realizing this was the dumbest thing ever. If I had the willpower to get out of bed in the middle of the night to exercise I already had the willpower in the first place.
But weirdly enough ever since that night I’ve been able to get out of bed on the first alarm
Buy yourself a pack of cigarettes.
Smoke one, I promise it will be disgusting. Later that day, will yourself outside to smoke another. Repeat 2 or 3 times a day until the pack is gone. Live this way and be addicted to nicotine for a year. After a year, do it in reverse and quit.
Afterwards, you’ll be able to will anything into reality.
