To achieve your goals, avoid using willpower. In fact, use negative willpower. Use your opponent's force against him.
Posted: October 17th, 2023, 5:35 pm
If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.
A crucial key in my free mentoring program and my general system for achieving incredible success is this: utilizing the incredible power of micro-habits.
It is done, in large part, by purposefully and intentionally avoiding creating new macro-habits, meaning avoiding massive abrupt uses of your precious limited willpower.
My system entails you being extremely stingy with your willpower, and then, even when you do use it, you only slowly use it with great hesitation and tentativeness.
In analogy, if you rush through switching gears or attempt to accelerate too quickly in a car, especially one with manual transmission and especially if you aren't yet an experienced expert in such aggressive driving, you can easily stall or even do damage to the car and break it. Don't treat the gas pedal like it only has two states: completely up or all the way down.
A similar process happens with people who skip micro-habits and jump straight to starting huge new macro-habits. Some common examples include when people suddenly go on an extreme crash diet, or invest in get-rich-quick schemes, or after a year of not exercising at all suddenly start going to the gym for 2 hours per day every day. It's usually worse than doing nothing.
Trust me; I've seen the gym on New Years Day.
Attempting to jump up the staircase after years of laying down on the ground is an easy way to fall down the stairs and make your starting position even worse (i.e. lower).
For example, 99.99% of the time, a person is better off not dieting at all than crash dieting.
It's way more effective to make small permanent lifestyle changes, rather than huge drastic ones that thus almost certainly don't last. In fact, the hugeness and drasticness of a huge drastic abrupt change is precisely what makes it tend to be so counterproductive. Extremeness begets inconsistency, and inconsistency begets extremeness. It's a roller-coaster-like cycle of abuse, particularly self-abuse. The absurd ups cause the equally extreme downs and vice versa. When you are trapped in such a cycle, you don't make progress, despite the exhaustingness, and really in part precisely because of the exhaustingness.
I use to wrestle in high school. In wrestling (and many martial arts), if you want get your opponent to go one way, you start by pushing him in the exact opposite way. You end up using his own force against him. Crash dieters and get-rich-quick-schemers end up having their own force used against them. They glorify trying over actually doing, like a teary-eyed adulterer saying they try really really hard to not cheat. Maybe they even grunt and groan while doing all that "trying". That's the endless cycle of a trier: exhausting and destructive, as if it was work, but no progress, just a cyclical trap. In contrast, using the power of micro-habits is a way to not need any willpower. You can instead throw your figurative opponent across the room to an easy defeat with the slightest flick of your wrist. That is grace in a nutshell. It's wu wei. It's effortless action. It's to do without trying. It's to do a lot and achieving incredible results not only without trying but precisely thanks to not trying.
To get to the top of the staircase most surely, go so slowly that you find yourself actually using your willpower to stop yourself from going faster. The only time you want to be using any significant willpower is to push yourself in the opposite direction of your goal.
In that way, you not only use much less of your precious little willpower but actually you use negative willpower, meaning the little bit of willpower you use is to actually push in the opposite direction to thereby trick your figurative opponent to help you so you can use his own force against him.
For example, if you want to build a habit of flossing your teeth every night, start by flossing just one tooth every night. Keep at that pace until you find yourself using a little bit of willpower to fight the urge to floss a second tooth. Then, keep going at the only-one-tooth-per-night rate for at least a few days longer. Make it so that if and when you cave to temptation, you are caving to the temptation to floss a second tooth instead of the temptation to floss no teeth. That is using your opponent's force against him. Then rinse and repeat: Do the same thing with the third tooth and forth tooth. Keep using your opponent's force against him. Then, from the perspective of onlookers on the outside, it will seem like you are magic and as if the tides and flow of the whole universe was conspiring to make you successful, with the way you achieve your goals with absolutely no effort or willpower. Other people will think you have infinite willpower because you never seem to run out and always have a full tank of willpower. They will think you are magic because of the way you achieve incredible success without trying at all.
Here are some short phrases and mantras you can use to remind yourself of these practices:
- Use micro-habits, not willpower.
- To make it to the top, go so slowly you find yourself actually using negative willpower.
- Go so slowly that the temptation you feel is to succeed faster, rather than to give up.
- Ride the tide of temptation (i.e. use your opponent's force against him) rather than using willpower.
- Use skill, not force.
- Work smart, not hard.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.
A crucial key in my free mentoring program and my general system for achieving incredible success is this: utilizing the incredible power of micro-habits.
It is done, in large part, by purposefully and intentionally avoiding creating new macro-habits, meaning avoiding massive abrupt uses of your precious limited willpower.
My system entails you being extremely stingy with your willpower, and then, even when you do use it, you only slowly use it with great hesitation and tentativeness.
In analogy, if you rush through switching gears or attempt to accelerate too quickly in a car, especially one with manual transmission and especially if you aren't yet an experienced expert in such aggressive driving, you can easily stall or even do damage to the car and break it. Don't treat the gas pedal like it only has two states: completely up or all the way down.
A similar process happens with people who skip micro-habits and jump straight to starting huge new macro-habits. Some common examples include when people suddenly go on an extreme crash diet, or invest in get-rich-quick schemes, or after a year of not exercising at all suddenly start going to the gym for 2 hours per day every day. It's usually worse than doing nothing.
Trust me; I've seen the gym on New Years Day.
Attempting to jump up the staircase after years of laying down on the ground is an easy way to fall down the stairs and make your starting position even worse (i.e. lower).
For example, 99.99% of the time, a person is better off not dieting at all than crash dieting.
It's way more effective to make small permanent lifestyle changes, rather than huge drastic ones that thus almost certainly don't last. In fact, the hugeness and drasticness of a huge drastic abrupt change is precisely what makes it tend to be so counterproductive. Extremeness begets inconsistency, and inconsistency begets extremeness. It's a roller-coaster-like cycle of abuse, particularly self-abuse. The absurd ups cause the equally extreme downs and vice versa. When you are trapped in such a cycle, you don't make progress, despite the exhaustingness, and really in part precisely because of the exhaustingness.
I use to wrestle in high school. In wrestling (and many martial arts), if you want get your opponent to go one way, you start by pushing him in the exact opposite way. You end up using his own force against him. Crash dieters and get-rich-quick-schemers end up having their own force used against them. They glorify trying over actually doing, like a teary-eyed adulterer saying they try really really hard to not cheat. Maybe they even grunt and groan while doing all that "trying". That's the endless cycle of a trier: exhausting and destructive, as if it was work, but no progress, just a cyclical trap. In contrast, using the power of micro-habits is a way to not need any willpower. You can instead throw your figurative opponent across the room to an easy defeat with the slightest flick of your wrist. That is grace in a nutshell. It's wu wei. It's effortless action. It's to do without trying. It's to do a lot and achieving incredible results not only without trying but precisely thanks to not trying.
To get to the top of the staircase most surely, go so slowly that you find yourself actually using your willpower to stop yourself from going faster. The only time you want to be using any significant willpower is to push yourself in the opposite direction of your goal.
In that way, you not only use much less of your precious little willpower but actually you use negative willpower, meaning the little bit of willpower you use is to actually push in the opposite direction to thereby trick your figurative opponent to help you so you can use his own force against him.
For example, if you want to build a habit of flossing your teeth every night, start by flossing just one tooth every night. Keep at that pace until you find yourself using a little bit of willpower to fight the urge to floss a second tooth. Then, keep going at the only-one-tooth-per-night rate for at least a few days longer. Make it so that if and when you cave to temptation, you are caving to the temptation to floss a second tooth instead of the temptation to floss no teeth. That is using your opponent's force against him. Then rinse and repeat: Do the same thing with the third tooth and forth tooth. Keep using your opponent's force against him. Then, from the perspective of onlookers on the outside, it will seem like you are magic and as if the tides and flow of the whole universe was conspiring to make you successful, with the way you achieve your goals with absolutely no effort or willpower. Other people will think you have infinite willpower because you never seem to run out and always have a full tank of willpower. They will think you are magic because of the way you achieve incredible success without trying at all.
Here are some short phrases and mantras you can use to remind yourself of these practices:
- Use micro-habits, not willpower.
- To make it to the top, go so slowly you find yourself actually using negative willpower.
- Go so slowly that the temptation you feel is to succeed faster, rather than to give up.
- Ride the tide of temptation (i.e. use your opponent's force against him) rather than using willpower.
- Use skill, not force.
- Work smart, not hard.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
---
In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.