most people overwhelming majority of people think that they want need and want more self discipline and believe that they don't have enough and most just about all people cannot get anymore self discipline nature that's it so that's the bad news the good news it's actually not that important nor for success neither for success nor for happiness you can be more successful and happier with a self discipline that you currently have how if you change your focus from relying on self discipline for bringing about change to introducing rituals changing the focus from self discipline to rituals I'm going to talk about an idea now an idea now that is part of that he's talked about even greater length in the powerful engagement by tony Schwartz that he's talked about even greater length in the powerful engagement by Jim Laurie and Tony Schwartz an excellent excellent book and what they're talking about is essentially a paradigm shift paradigm shift where we need to stop trying to get more self discipline because that in and of itself not enough for success for well being for change and it's because people rely on and what they're talking about is essentially a paradigm shift paradigm shift where we need to stop trying to get more self discipline because that in and of itself is not enough for success for well-being for change and it's because people rely on self discipline for change that's the reason why most organizational as well as individual change efforts fail let me share with you a fun study this was done by Roy Baumeister one of the leading social psychologists of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century great researcher here is what he did he brought in a group of people individually so the person walks into the experiment and they were told once again you'll have to wait vinum in this room waiting room for the experiment to start um so the person sits down there is a table right next to that person and on the table there's a bow land in the bowl their freshly baked chocolate chip cookies just came out of the oven smell the aroma engulfing then you're liking those cartoons going into their nose phenomenal smell they were sitting there next to the chocolate chip cookies that are in a bowl the experimenter responses I'll come pick you up in about 10 minutes for the experiment they won't count and as they're walking out they tell them Oh and just by the way at this chocolate chip cookies there for the next experiment so if you don't mind don't touch them so you were sitting there almost dying but you not touching it and um 10 minutes later experiment just coming takes you to the experiment the experiment is very difficult very difficult um very difficult test but you need to take a test that most people don't solve and requires a lot of perseverance and hard work but most people even with perseverance and hard work do not solve it so the outcome measure what the researcher is interested in is mostly how much did you persevere before giving up on their test how much did you persevere before giving up on their test that was the outcome measure the dependent variable second group randomly picked come into the same room sit on the same chair have the same bowl on the table but instead of chocolate chip cookies would they having the ball are red beet roots freshly baked just came out of the oven and they're sitting there and the experimenter is about to walk out it says just one more thing if you don't mind don't touch those beetroots they are for the next experiment OK fine so you were sitting there for 10 minutes 10 minutes later the experiment experimental comes in takes you to the real experiment sitting down your tank the exact same test the exact same puzzle and once again how long will your persevere before giving up think about it for yourself for a second who do you think persevered more the chocolate chip cookies group or the beet roots group think for yourself for a second but I guessed wrong when I was asked this question OK significantly more perseverance significantly more it wasn't close the group that had the beetroots persevered a lot more why when bombers wanted to understand the mechanism and he did some more experiments to explain the mechanism it's because the chocolate chip cookie group had used self discipline not to touch really they really wanted to touch it but they couldn't so they used their quota of self discipline and when they went into the quote unquote real experiment what happened was that they had little or oneself discipline left and that's that maze that experiment that test required a lot of self discipline the point of this study we all have a limited amount ofself discipline and the question is what do we use it on。