Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
If you're relying on willpower alone to help you lose weight, improve your relationships, or achieve more at work, you're doomed to fail. The environment around us is far too powerful, stimulating, addicting, and stressful to overcome by white knuckling. The only way to stop just surviving and learn to truly thrive in today's world is to
proactively shape your environment.
That's the premise of The Proximity Effect by organizational psychologist and Medium.com's most-read writer, Benjamin Hardy. Building on copious existing research, as well as his own experience of growing up in a broken family afflicted by addiction and drug use, Hardy explains how people can change their lives on every level by making small, impactful changes in their environment like:
* Creating "enriched environments"--using tougher challenges and personal investment to force yourself to rise to the occasion.
* Growing into your goals-creating multiple layers of accountability to ensure you stay on track.
* Becoming the teacher-stepping into a leadership role (even before you think you're ready) to accelerate your skill development and commitment.
* Rotating your environments-getting out of your rut by literally changing your physical surroundings throughout the day or week.
From simple steps like removing things that conflict with your values (like junk food, junk media, even junk people), to incorporating new tools (like fasting or embedding "positive triggers" to avoid self-sabotage), these strategies are how you proactively shape your surroundings so you can consciously evolve into the person you want to become.
Synopsis
We rely on willpower to create change in our lives...but what if we're thinking about it all wrong? In
Willpower Doesn't Work, Benjamin Hardy explains that willpower is nothing more than a dangerous fad-one that is bound to lead to failure. Instead of "white-knuckling" your way to change, you need to instead
alter your surroundings to support your goals. This book shows you how.
The world around us is fast-paced, confusing, and full of distractions. It's easy to lose focus on what you want to achieve, and your willpower won't last long if your environment is in conflict with your goals--eventually, the environment will win out. Willpower Doesn't Work is the needed guided for today's over-stimulating and addicting environment. Willpower Doesn't Work will specifically teach you:
- How to make the biggest decisions of your life--and why those decisions must be made in specific settings
- How to create a daily "sacred" environment to live your life with intention, and not get sucked into the cultural addictions
- How to invest big in yourself to upgrade your environment and mindset
- How to put "forcing functions" in your life--so your default behaviors are precisely what you want them to be
- How to quickly put yourself in proximity to the most successful people in the world--and how to adapt their knowledge and skills to yourself even quicker
- How to create an environment where endless creativity and boundless productivity is the norm
Benjamin Hardy will show you that nurture is far more powerful than your nature, and teach you how to create and control your environment so your environment will not create and control
you.