Improving Your Martial Arts Practice

Below is an excerpt from an interesting website, Fierce Gentleman. It's about self improvement in general, but the concepts can't help but improve your practice specifically. The full article may be read here.

Changing your behavior is hard.

Luckily, there is a scientifically proven way to do it that gives you the best chance of success.

Anyone who is trying to change their behavior without understanding this science needs to stop, now.

Read up on the science. Learn to do it the more effective way.

Then, start again, with better strategies, and create the life you’ve always wanted.

Here’s the other thing you should know: behavior change is hard. Hard like algebra. You will work on it for “a while” before you get to that dream-life. What is “a while”? Years.

But that’s okay. The secret of self-development is that everybody has to work hard and put in a lot of work, if they want to achieve something great.

It just so happens that here at Fierce Gentleman we believe that every man is destined for greatness.

So, below we give you the keys to greatness: 23 scientific keys you need to change anything in your life.

Of course, information alone does not lead to life change. (That’s one of the keys.)

But never before has so much high-quality, scientifically-validated information been available for free, to anyone, to get their path started:

23 Scientific Keys to Change Any Behavior

1. Willpower is weak. Environmental influences are much more important than willpower.^1,2
2. Information does not lead to action. Emotions lead to action. (Tweet this) This one is harder to back up with scientific studies, but it has long been my personal experience….over 8 years of studying both my own behavior, and the behavior of others who I’m trying to help. Information allows us to know in which direction we can go, but ultimately, emotions motivate us to take action. See also ²
   
3. The Internet destroys your ability to focus. Unless you’re reading higher-level long-form articles, like this one. Read the book The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.
4. Facebook makes you unhappy. Delete your account (unless you’re using it for business.) ³
5. Today’s processed foods are engineered to flood the reward centers of your brain, and potentially trigger food addictions that will wreck your health and wellbeing. Eat vegetables instead. ^4,5
6. Exercise makes your brain bigger. It also gives you more self-control, lifts depression, and stamps out anxiety. ⁶
7. Meditation makes your brain bigger. It also gives you more self-control, lifts depression, and stamps out anxiety. ⁷
8. Alcohol makes you stupid. Also, fat, sick, ugly, weak of will and — eventually — dead. Give up alcohol. (Personal experience, common sense.)
9. Take time off work. Overwork drains your willpower and makes you stressed and sick. (Personal experience, common sense.)
10. Maximize neurotransmitters oxytocin, GABA and serotonin. Minimize activities that have you “chasing the dopamine dragon.” Activities that stimulate dopamine: shopping, gambling, pornography, binge eating. Activities that stimulate serotonin, oxytocin & GABA: getting a massage, swing in a hammock, spending time with loved ones, meditating, praying, listening to music, reading. (See The Willpower Instinct.)
11. 60% of our daily decisions are habitual. That means that changing our habits is critical to changing our lives over time. (See BJ Fogg’s Persuasion Lab at Stanford University and The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.)
12. Changing habits start small. We call this a “wedge” that we can drive into your life patterns to get leverage for further improvement. The smaller the initial change, the higher the likelihood of success. (See The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg)