Day 273: On Reprogramming Your Brain
Given our human impulse to pick up the habits and energy of others, you can use that knowledge to literally program your brain the way you want. Simply find the people who most represent what you would like to become and spend as much time with them as you can without trespassing, kidnapping, or stalking. Their good habits and good energy will rub off on you.
Research shows that resisting peer pressure causes emotional discomfort.
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Consequently, humans have a tendency to want to fit in, even when it means not thinking for themselves or doing things they would otherwise never do.
While it’s not a positive phenomenon among college kids who all want to emulate the popular guy or gal who’s into partying hard, it can be a beneficial tool for an adult who consciously chooses the group whose features he or she would like to acquire.
If there’s any shortcut to building self-discipline, it’s this: find a group of people who possess discipline and let the power of peer pressure change you.
For example, if you want to build self-discipline to exercise regularly, join a fitness group or hang out in the park with ripped guys who are into calisthenics.
If you want to become super productive and have enough self-discipline to wake up every single day at 5 in the morning to work
on your start-up, join a local networking group of entrepreneurs or work in a co-working space.
If you want to stop spending so much money on unnecessary things, join a forum about frugality or follow bloggers in the personal finance niche.
Look at it from other perspective, too: if the groups you currently belong to don’t exhibit the traits you’d like to acquire (or worse, exhibit the complete opposite of those traits), ask yourself whether you want to continue to let them influence your life.