When your mind is preoccupied, your impulses—not your long-term goals—will guide your choices.

Your heart speeds up a bit when you inhale: buh-dum buh-dum buh-dum. It slows down again when you exhale: buh-dum buh-dum buh-dum. This is good. This is healthy. It means that your heart is getting signals from both branches of your autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic nervous system, which revs the body into action, and the parasympathetic ne

“I will” and “I won’t” power are the two sides of self-control, but they alone don’t constitute willpower. To say no when you need to say no, and yes when you need to say yes, you need a third power: the ability to remember what you really want.

the ability to control the impulses that helped us become fully human.

That means that for any instinct that once served us well, evolution has kept it around—even if it now gets us into trouble.

The new meditators had increased neural connections between regions of the brain important for staying focused, ignoring distractions, and controlling impulses. Another study found that eight weeks of daily meditation practice led to increased self-awareness in everyday life, as well as increased gray matter in corresponding areas of the brain.

situation. Imagine yourself facing your specific willpower challenge. What is the harder thing? What makes it so difficult? How do you feel when you think about doing it?

UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: CHOOSE YOUR WILLPOWER CHALLENGE If you haven’t already, now’s the time to pick the willpower challenge to which you’d most like to apply the ideas and strategies in this book. The following questions can help you identify the challenge you’re ready to take on: • “I will” power challenge: What is something that you would like t

without desires we’d become depressed, and without fear we’d fail to protect ourselves from future danger.