Richard O'Connor Quotes

Keep a journal of disappointments, failures, and self-destructive actions. It's important to write this down because these are the kinds of things your self-serving bias will want to forget or minimize.

You know very well what the right choice is, yet you keep making the wrong one.

Get up with the alarm, shower, get dressed, and have breakfast. Without much effort, you've already put yourself in a good position for the rest of the day. If you have to struggle to get out of bed and decide every single day about showering and breakfast and what to wear, you've put yourself in a depleted state before the day has really started. The person who's taking care of herself without thinking about it, getting to work on time without procrastinating, has much more will power left in reserve when important decisions come up. This is why people with high self-control consistently report less stress in their lives; they use their will power to take care of business semiautomatically, so they have fewer crises and calamities. When there is a real crisis, they have plenty of discipline left in reserve.

This is a little dirty secret of mental health economics: if you're depressed, you don't think you're worth the cost of treatment. You feel guilty enough about being unproductive and unreliable.

People believe they lack will power, but will power is not something you either have or don't, like blue eyes. Instead, it's a skill, like tennis or typing. You have to train your nervous system as you would train your muscles and reflexes. You have to take yourself to the psychic gym - but with the certainty that each time you practice an alternative behavior, you've made it easier to do next time.

Perhaps the best antidote and preventive for burnout is the feeling of solid connection with the people in our lives. When we can share our frustrations with family and friends, our burden is eased and we can get new perspectives.

Avoid enablers. These are people who make it easy for you to perform your self-destructive behavior. People you go on a smoking break with. People who encourage you to take risks. Your partner, if he or she encourages you to be lazy or feeds you too much food. Try to enlist these people in your reform efforts, and if you can't, put some distance between you.

Across thirty-two cities worldwide, people in 2006 were walking an average 10 percent faster than they were in 1994.

we have a plastic brain that changes in response to our experience. It bears repeating: The brain doesn't tell us what to do; it is part of a system in which our life experience teaches our brain what to do. So you can practice mindfulness, will power, overcoming procrastination, and other healthy new skills with the confidence that you are changing your brain. Each day's practice does some good, and if you slip and fall off your diet or exercise program or mindfulness practice, all that you have learned before is not undone; it's still there in your brain waiting for you to get back in the saddle.

There is a lot of research to suggest that we feel better overall as we are progressing toward our goals; we have a sense of purposeful involvement, we give ourselves mental pats on the back for being so good and industrious, our self-esteem is enhanced, and our general life satisfaction is raised.

Though there can be other causes, most self-destructive behavior is the result of the fact that we have two minds that don't communicate very well.