Michael Glover

Michael Glover is a Mindset & Performance Coach and a regular writer for Goalcast Willpower is often a pretty glorified concept. Being able to ‘grind through’ something, not give up and come out the other end a winner is a story many of us like to meet with applause. In fact, it’s frequently seen as a cornerstone of a ‘strong mindset’ and sometimes even as a necessary attribute for anyone wanting to achieve something with their life. Of course, there are times in each of our lives where we will have to do things we don’t really want to do. Where we’re required to take a deep breath and just ‘get it done’. And willpower is a very useful thing to call upon in these situations. The problem, though, is when we start pulling that magical bottle of willpower off the shelf over and over again in an attempt to change our long-term thinking, habits and behaviors. Because, like a bottle of anything, willpower is a finite resource. We will run out at some point. And it’s not so easy to run down to the store and stock up every week like it is with the ketchup. Change vs Transformation Changing our habits in any area of life typically follows a very similar outline. Take losing weight, for example. We find a ‘plan’, will ourselves to keep doing it, maybe get some kind of result before, more often than not, falling off the wagon and it all ending up back at square one again. It’s a similar story time and time again when it comes to businesses, careers, self-improvement, relationships and many other aspects. We start, will ourselves to stick to habits, fall out of the habit and then swiftly move on to the next thing. Essentially, we continually call on willpower in an attempt to force ourselves to do stuff we don’t really want to do. We use willpower to temporarily change our habits and see temporary change in our lives, without ever really achieving true transformation. Because change, by its very definition, is…changeable. We can change a habit quite easily, hold on by our fingertips for a period of time, get a result, be hugely grateful when it’s over and then change back to what we were doing in the first place. It’s like holding your breath and hoping you can just will yourself through life without having to exhale. Transformation, on the other hand, is much more permanent. We don’t go back on transformation. By definition, we have transformed, and going back would require another transformation back into the old again. How to Transform These are subtle, yet very powerful differences. But it all begs the question of how we actually transform. How do we make sure that we have actually transformed, and are not just clinging to change hoping it will stick? A huge player in doing this is a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. This is, to put it simply, what could be referred to as the ‘home of habit’. It’s where we store actions and behaviors that the brain sees as beneficial to store and be available on autopilot. Unfortunately, accessing the basal ganglia isn’t as simple as willing yourself to do something for 21 days, 60 days, 90 days or however long many ‘experts’ suggest it takes to form a habit. Because calling on willpower, regardless of how long we manage to do it, is, in fact, counter-productive to habit creation. The brain is always listening. And repeatedly doing something while thinking how much you can’t wait for it to end is a big, fat red flag. Not only will the brain decline to store this behavior as a habit, it will also send you every impulse, craving and signal it can to get you to stop doing it as soon as possible. Work with the Brain So we are literally fighting our own brain when using willpower in an attempt to store long term habits. Unsurprisingly, it’s much more effective to work with our brain. The brain is much more willing to input an action or behaviour into the basal ganglia when we’re repeating something we want to do. Not just that we want the outcome of a repeated action, but that the action itself is something we genuinely want to do and enjoy doing. Finding ways to enjoy, or even love, what you’re doing is a much quicker and more effective path to getting those habits on autopilot and achieving long-term transformation. In fact, it simply becomes a matter of discipline, not willpower, in order to repeat something enough times to input it into the basal ganglia. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a long winded “just do what you love and everything will be ok” speech. I’m still advocating the relevancy of moving towards specific aspirations, goals or visions for the future in various desired areas of life. And I’m certainly not saying that everything should always be amazing and be full of sunshine and rainbows without any signs of resistance showing up at any time. But when the path to getting to wherever it is we want to go isn’t filled with so much resistance and struggle, it becomes monumentally easier to take consistent, repetitive action that soon becomes habit. The Most Optimal Way? At this point, many people start wondering about whether doing this is the most optimal way of achieving a goal or vision for the future. Surely, if we want to achieve something, the best advice is to copy or learn from someone who’s already achieved it. But we can look at this both objectively and subjectively. Objectively, the best and most optimal way forward to a goal, whether it be in business, health or anything else, is to find a specific, exact and definitive path to achieving it in the shortest time possible. You take the step-by-step actions over and over and you get the desired result. In reality, however, if that ‘optimal’ way forward isn’t suited to us, as individuals, then it’s not going to work. Or at least, it’s not going to work long term. And if the fruits of our labor don’t last particularly long, is that really the most optimal way? Following these paths that we can’t stick to, no matter how ‘optimal’ they seem to be, end up becoming not so optimal because results take longer to achieve and aren’t long lasting anyway. And perhaps the path that maybe seems slower at the outset and gets criticized by others is, in fact, the most optimal because it’s our own path. The one we want to take and enjoy doing. So simply using discipline to repeat the actions and behaviors we enjoy taking in order to store them as habits is the most optimal way to achieving our goals. Because we will never achieve a life we love by repeatedly doing things we loathe. And isn’t loving life what it’s all about?

Michael Glover is a Mindset & Performance Coach and a regular writer for Goalcast Confidence is one of those things I’m sure almost all of us have struggled with at some point in our lives.Being confident and having ‘more self-confidence’ can help us achieve great things. Yet a lack of it can leave us playing a much smaller game than we’re capable of in all areas of life.I’ve struggled with self-confidence my entire life and it’s held me back in many areas. In fact, it’s only a sign of my own recent personal growth that I can confidently, yet paradoxically, admit to having struggled with confidence.My past is filled with moments of choosing not to put myself out there or go beyond my comfort zone. Whether it be progressing in sports, talking to girls or trying to be successful in business, my scarcity of self-confidence always seemed to be a huge obstacle in my way.What is Confidence?After spending a large part of my life wishing to be one of ‘those people’ who ooze confidence at every turn, I came to the realization that I was thinking about it in a way that was serving me very poorly.A huge mistake we make when thinking about confidence is seeing it as this ‘binary’ concept. We tend to think about people being confident in either a ‘you are or you aren’t’ way. But this is vastly oversimplifying things.We all feel confident in some areas of our lives and lack confidence in others. I’m very confident in my ability to write, coach, produce a podcast, play soccer, drive a car and various other things. Yet if you asked me to fly an airplane, my confidence would come crashing back down to earth.So the idea that we can either be ‘a confident person’ or ‘not a confident person’ in such a clear cut way becomes pretty nonsensical.Action Comes FirstWhat this means, then, is that we have somehow developed confidence in certain areas of our lives. We pick things up, do them repeatedly and eventually get to a point where we feel confident in doing them.The key aspect to pick out here is that the action comes first, not the confidence.When we first learn to drive, most of us are not confident. In fact, most people I know were pretty terrified their first few times of getting behind the wheel on an actual road. But getting back in that driver’s seat time and time again allows us to keep building our confidence to a point where we end up jumping in the car without thinking twice about it.We don’t sit at home waiting for confidence to suddenly appear. Just hoping that one day it’ll all sort itself out and we’ll just have the confidence of someone who’s been driving for 30 years injected into us.And this rings true in any situation. Piloting an airplane seems monumentally daunting to anyone who’s never done it before. But, in essence, it’s no different than learning to drive a car. You learn how, practice and eventually become confident in your ability to do it.It’s the action that comes first and enables us to keep building up that confidence.Getting to the RootMaybe that news of action coming first isn’t exactly groundbreaking to you. Even if you hadn’t consciously thought about it before, it might seem kind of obvious when brought to the forefront of the mind.And it still leaves us in this ‘catch-22’ situation of needing to take action to build confidence, yet not having the confidence to take the action in the first place. It’s easier said than done, although not entirely ludicrous, to suggest conquering a lack of confidence in public speaking by just getting on stage and doing it.The root, I believe, of all this that needs addressing comes back to our idea of self-worth. Or, more specifically, how we measure our own self-worth.Driven by societal ideology, without really thinking about it we create this story in our heads about our self-worth being attached to how well we perform. As if we’re only worthy of being an upstanding member of the human race if we perform to some high standard in many, or even all, of the things we do.Ironically, this strive for higher and higher performance actually creates poorer performance due to the sheer desperation to prove ourselves surrounded by it. And what’s more, poorer performance that’s potentially combined with a barrel load of anxiety and inner turmoil.To put it simply, we lose confidence in something we want to do before we even begin due to the fear of negative judgment on our performance. We start off lacking confidence because we don’t have faith in our ability to do a particular thing and perform to some exceptional standard.Your Existence is Your WorthDon’t get me wrong; I’m not saying we should all just stop striving to achieve things in life. That we should all just sit back and not care about performing well in anything and everything we do.But it’s powerful to understand that reaching higher levels of performance in many things in life can come from not tying our own self-worth to it.When it comes down to it, each and every person reading this article is proving their own self-worth simply by being here. It’s in-built and not something we have to find elsewhere. In fact, our existence is proof that we are worthy of existing.When we reframe it in this way, it becomes okay to maybe be at 50% one day or to struggle and not be any good at certain things. That this happening doesn’t somehow make you any less worthy of being a human or receiving whatever you desire in life.Understanding this opens up space for us to just show up wholeheartedly each day. We let go of this exhausting desperation to prove our worth to ourselves and others through our performance in each and every little facet of life.So we gain the self-assuredness to go out there and just… perform. Perform to the best we possibly can. And while knowing that how we do doesn’t somehow detract from our worth as a human being.It’s a much more peaceful way of doing things.Looking for more resources? Check out our quotes on confidence.