% rules
Everything starts in the mind, if you lift weights at the gym, you know that after a certain number of reps, your body feels as if it can’t continue. But the 40% rule states that when the mind starts telling the body it’s tired, we have only reached 40% of what we are capable of.
At this point, it’s up to you to choose to believe that you’ve still got another 60% left in you. To push past the 40% threshold, you must accept the mental and physical pain you are enduring at that moment.
The majority of people never reach their full potential because as soon as they feel the burn, they are ready to give up. By applying the 40% rule, you begin to realize that you have unlimited potential. The key to tapping into this reservoir of potential is to ignore the voice in your head telling you it’s time to throw in the towel, and push through the pain. When you truly believe you are capable of more, you will shatter your pain points, which builds confidence and mental toughness. For example, after doing ten pull-ups, you start hearing the voice in your head saying you are too tired, too weak, and too sore to keep going. But if you take a break for a few seconds and then keep going, you’ve just proved to the voice in your head that it was wrong! You then take another short break and do one more, and before you know it, you’ve done 20 pull-ups. You had to slow down to achieve it, but you ended up doing 20 more pull-ups than you had first anticipated.
Belief is one of the key ingredients to improving your self-discipline. Success becomes your reality when you believe you can do more, and it allows you to break down the limitations you have placed on yourself. Self-discipline is about endurance. When you are determined to continue but your mind is telling you to quit, you will build a resilience that will make you unstoppable.
The mind becomes our best friend when we believe in ourselves, but when we have accepted the narrative of failure, it becomes our worst enemy. The next time you feel like giving up, use the 40% rule to empower yourself.
I want you to take a moment and think about this: even though you know you are not fit enough because you haven’t practiced, you decide to run a marathon. As you are running, your legs start feeling weak, you can’t catch your breath, and at this point, you decide that running a marathon when you were not prepared wasn’t a good idea. It probably would be wise to give up and save yourself the agony it would cause if you completed the marathon. But if someone wanted to cause you harm and you were running for your life, you would keep running regardless of how tired you were, because if you stopped, the person chasing you might kill you. The point is that most of us are ignorant of what we are really capable of. We have become complacent, we put on 10 lbs., buy a larger size, and convince ourselves that our stomach isn’t protruding; or we work at a job we hate but the bills are getting paid, so we tolerate it. When we don’t challenge ourselves, it is impossible to get a glimpse of our true potential. The people who master discipline have done so because they have chosen to be extraordinary. Outside of the excitement and camaraderie of watching sports, one of the reasons we love it so much is because we are admiring the players’ ability to master their craft. If we were to invest the same amount of time we spent sitting in front of the TV watching other people display their expertise, we would probably be a lot farther ahead in life.
Several studies confirm that our physical abilities are determined by our mental strength. A popular study known as “the placebo effect ” discovered that performance is enhanced when an individual believes they have done something to improve their performance. The European Journal of Neuroscience published a study in 2008, which found that participants who were told that the sugar pills they had been given were caffeine, put more effort into their weightlifting session. Due to the caffeine they believed they had ingested, they found additional strength and energy that allowed them to perform at a higher level.
Scientists agree that the placebo effect is a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which the brain chooses an outcome and then does what is required to make sure that the outcome is achieved. The placebo effect provides us with irrefutable evidence about the power of the mind. Several studies have also found that there is a chemical transformation in the brain when it thinks that something is real, even though it’s fake. Therefore, it is enough to believe you’ve got another 60% left in you to make it possible.
Arousal Control :
When we are in high-stress situations, large doses of cortisol and adrenaline are released, which activates the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response. The average person is unable to control this process, but the Navy SEALs are capable of doing so because they have been trained to, and depending on the situation, their responses to stressful situations could mean the difference between life and death. They use several techniques to do this, including box breathing. When a SEAL starts feeling stressed or overwhelmed, they focus on their breath to regain control. They take a series of breaths for four seconds at a time—they breathe in, hold their breath, and then breathe out. This process is repeated until the heart rate returns to normal.
A stressed-out mind is incapable of doing anything productive; therefore, you must remain calm to operate at your full potential. Box breathing is a technique you can use at any time no matter where you are when you start experiencing the physical symptoms associated with anxiety. Experts often advise people to manage stress, but I don’t think this is good advice when the Navy SEALs prove you can stop it altogether.
The 10 X Rule : Grant Cordone is the pioneer of the 10X rule. He believes we should set goals ten times higher than the desired outcome because it will make us take ten times more action to achieve it. The aim of the 10X rule is to force us to evaluate the way we think about our possibilities and the steps we are going to take to achieve our goals. Your current existence was created by your thoughts and actions, and if you want to overcome your limitations and start living the life you know you deserve, you must start thinking and acting in ways that are beyond your expectations. When using weight loss as an example, let’s say your goal is to lose 10 lbs., apply the 10X rule and your goal is now 100lbs. Although you don’t need to lose 100lbs, it will encourage you to change your diet permanently. The idea is that you don’t need to do that much to lose 10lbs, which means the odds are increased that you revert back to your bad eating habits once you’ve lost the weight. However, when you have it in your mind that you need to lose 100lbs, you will focus on changing your diet and exercise habits as a lifestyle instead.
The 10X rule will maximize your potential. When you believe you can achieve more than you initially thought, you will do what is required to achieve more, which will strengthen your discipline. It’s the norm for us to set low goals for ourselves so that we don’t feel so worthless when we fail. But if you want to get more out of life, you are going to need to raise the bar and set your standards higher.
The 10 Minute Rule :
You would assume that humans had better decisionmaking skills since we are far more mentally advanced than any other species. But a Harvard University study proves otherwise. The research involved giving chimpanzees and humans the same choice—to get two treats immediately or six treats in six minutes. The chimpanzees chose to wait for more treats seventy-two percent of the time, and the humans only chose to wait nineteen percent of the time. How did this happen? The problem is that the human brain is so overdeveloped that even when an answer is obvious, we overthink the decision. And because we have the ability to rationalize our behavior, we cheat ourselves out of a more favorable outcome. Humans tend to find it difficult to differentiate between a justification and an excuse. In the experiment, the humans may have convinced themselves that they deserved the treats because they were hungry and needed to satisfy their hunger, or that they weren’t too concerned about getting six treats later because they didn’t really like them anyway. Whereas the chimpanzees don’t have the ability to rationalize their decision; they act on instinct and it’s about survival of the fittest for them.
The ten-minute rule becomes effective at the rationalization stage. Let’s say you are trying to lose weight and you decide you want a bag of chips, pause for ten minutes and then ask yourself if you still want the chips. If you decide you still want the chips, go ahead and eat them, or you can wait for another ten minutes since you’ve already managed to wait the first ten minutes. By choosing to wait, you eliminate the “immediate” from immediate gratification, enhance your decision-making skills and raise your discipline levels at the same time.
You can apply the 10-minute rule to a variety of situations. Let’s say you are in the gym running on the treadmill and you start feeling tired. Instead of jumping off right away, keep running for another ten minutes and see how you feel. After doing it once, you will realize that you were not that tired after all and keep going.
There is nothing easy about discipline. We are not born with it, and all disciplined people develop it over time, including the Navy SEALs.
Everyone has the ability to live a more disciplined life if they choose to. However, it is also important to note that there are some things that can hinder your self-discipline if you are not aware of them
