1. Mind-Body Check-in
Tuning the Levers that Lead to
Excellence

2. Engage your Mind
• Think of a goal.
• Think of a chronic willpower
struggle.
• Think of a habit that needs
improving.

3. I’m Alright
• Too tired?
• Too busy?
• Too overwhelmed?

4. I’m Alright
• We’re all alright
• But are we excellent?

5. Excellence

6. Excellence
• What does it mean to you?

7. Excellence
• Factors of
Excellence
• happier & healthier
• more satisfying and
long-lasting
relationships
• more money
• longer life
• more stable
emotions
• better social
skills
• better physical
health,
• increased
mindfulness,
like-ability, and
sense of control
• more acts of
altruism.

8. Excellence
• Excellence (Google defn.) -
the quality of being
outstanding or extremely good.
• i.e. your best self

9. Excellence
• How often are you your best
self?
• Would you like to be better,
more often?

10. Excellence
• You
• Excellence = Your best self

11. Excellence
• You
• Intelligence
• Willpower
• Excellence = Your best self

12. Excellence
• Willpower
• But how?

13. Willpower

14. Willpower
• Benefits
• happier & healthier
• more satisfying and long-lasting
relationships
• more successful
• more money
• longer life

15. Willpower
• Benefits
• more stable emotions
• better social skills
• better physical health,
• increased mindfulness, like-
ability, and sense of control
• more acts of altruism.

16. Willpower
You
+ more Willpower
= more Excellence

17. Willpower
• What is it?

18. Willpower
• What is it? “Self-control”

19. Willpower
• What is it? “Self-control”
–When you feel an internal conflict,
willpower is your ability to make the
better choice.

20. Willpower
• Muscle
– Strong, Forceful, Yang Energy.
• Mindset
– Soft, Flexible, Ying Energy.
• It can and should be both.
• Baumeister, Roy F., Kathleen D. Vohs, and Dianne M. Tice. “The Strength Model of Self-Control.” Current
Directions in Psychological Science 16, no. 6 (December 2007): 351–55. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00534.x.
• Inzlicht, Michael, and Brandon J. Schmeichel. “What Is Ego Depletion? Toward a Mechanistic Revision of the
Resource Model of Self-Control.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 7, no. 5 (September 1, 2012): 450–63.
doi:10.1177/1745691612454134.
• Job, V., G. M. Walton, K. Bernecker, and C. S. Dweck. “Beliefs about Willpower Determine the Impact of Glucose
on Self-Control.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 37 (September 10, 2013): 14837–42.
doi:10.1073/pnas.1313475110.

21. Willpower
• What can coffee tell us about
our Willpower?

22. Willpower
• What can coffee tell us about
our Willpower?
• The 5 Stages of Grief
– Denial
– Anger
– Bargaining
– Depression
– Acceptance

23. Willpower
• Workshop 1 – Self √
–A Goal you want to focus on
–A chronic struggle you want to
overcome

24. The 3 Tools of Willpower
• Your Environment
• Your Mind
• Your Habits

25. Your Environment
The First Tool of Willpower

26. Your Environment
• Expectations
• Distractions

27. Your Environment
• What creates your
environment?
–Home
–Work
–Friends, and Top 5 people
–Daily paths

28. Your Environment
• Your environment shapes you.
–Mentally and Physically

29. Environment
• Win Without Fighting
–Put the desired behavior on the
path of least resistance.
• The people with the “best”
Willpower… don’t use it!

30. Willpower
• Workshop 2 - Environment
–Expectations in Your Environment
• Home, work, friends, routine
–Distractions in Your Environment
• Phone, Internet, too many
commitments
–How can you make it easy to do the
right thing?

31. Willpower
Your Mind

32. Your Mind
• Belief
• Awareness
• Acceptance

33. Your Mind
• Willpower in the 1800s
–Toughness, toil, and tread.
–Virtues from the Victorian Age.

34. Your Mind
• Controlling through strength,
pride, and ego uses the muscle.
–Too much Yang, not enough Ying.

35. Your Mind
• Explore the real cause
–Ask: “What do I really want.”

36. Your Mind
• Explore the real cause
–Ask: “What do I really want.”
–It’s like using aikido to re-direct
•resistance into understanding
•Yang into Ying
•Coffee grief » “Acceptance”

37. Willpower
• Workshop 3 - Mind
–Beliefs about Willpower
• Challenge them
–Awareness about Willpower
• What’s really going on?
• Food √
–Acceptance
• + Resilience, Bounce-back-acity

38. Willpower
Your Habits

39. Your Habits
• Ever complained about not having enough
energy?
• Ever got down on yourself for not doing
enough?
• Finding yourself failing in your willpower
efforts?
• Let’s talk about…

40. Your Habits
• The Foundational Habits of
Willpower
–Sleep
–Diet
–Exercise

41. Your Habits
• Sleep…exciting!
• Things we don’t pay for, we
don’t always appreciate.

42. Your Habits
• Don’t talk to me about not having enough
willpower if you’re not getting enough sleep.
• Get enough sleep and the world’s your
oyster.
• Don’t and play your day with a handicap.
• Don’t and box Mike Tyson with a hand tied
behind your back.

43. Your Habits
• A Healthy Habit House
–Sleep
• Bedrock (get it?)
–Diet
• Foundation
–Exercise
• Walls

44. Willpower
• Workshop 4 - Habits
–Sleep
• How consistent are you 6.5-8 hours?
–Diet
• Are you depriving or enjoying?
–Exercise
• Do you ever smile?

45. Mind-Body Check-in
Tuning the Levers that Lead to
Excellence

46. Excellence
• Q&A
–Primers
•Goals, Willpower struggles,
Environment, Mind, Habits,
Sleep, Diet, Exercise

47. *Excellence Hack
• Attention
–The most important resource
–120 bits per second
–Count of Monte Cristo
• "What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?”
• "Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have
evaporated in a thousand follies."
–Freely imposed non-freedom is very
liberating

48. *Excellence Hack
• Attention
–David Blaine, The Iceman, LeBron,
Ghandi, people with seemingly endless
willpower.
–The 3 Tools of Willpower combined
• Environment
• Mind
• Habits

49. *Surprise Challenge*
• 30-Day Willpower Challenge
–I am going to take the 30-Day Ramadan
Fasting Challenge.
–Not any of the religious elements
–Only the fasting elements
• No food or fluids from ≈ 3:45am – 8:30pm
– We’ll see what happens. I’ll journal the
struggle.

50. Excellence
• You
• Excellence = Your best self

51. Excellence
If you want to be excellent more
often
you need the energy and the
willpower to do the better thing,
more often.

52. Excellence
The answer…
• Don’t use it!
–don’t use willpower, so you have
it when you really need it!

53. Excellence
• 4 Tactics
• Small Levers
• Exponential Results

54. Excellence
1. Design your Environment.
• Win without fighting
• Make it easy to do the right thing

55. Excellence
1. Design your Environment.
• Win without fighting
• Make it easy to do the right thing
2. Listen to the Resistance
• Search for the root cause [Ying]

56. Excellence
1. Design your Environment.
• Win without fighting
• Make it easy to do the right thing
2. Listen to the Resistance
• Search for the root cause [Ying]
3. Develop Better Foundational Habits
• Sleep, diet, exercise (in that order) [Yang]

57. Excellence
1. Design your Environment.
• Win without fighting
• Make it easy to do the right thing
2. Listen to the Resistance
• Search for the root cause [Ying]
3. Develop Better Foundational Habits
• Sleep, diet, exercise (in that order) [Yang]
4. Ruthlessly Eliminate Distractions
– Guard your attention with your life

58. Excellence
• You
• Excellence = Your best self

59. Excellence
• You
• Excellence = Your best self

60. Mind-Body Check-in
Tuning the Levers that Lead to
Excellence