 What does science say around expectations and their role in our willpower? And what can we do to harness science to increase our willpower? Yeah, I mean, I was kind of shocked by this research. Because, you know, I'd always really believed the research on ego depletion, which was just the idea that your brain has like limited resources to practice self-control after a certain point when those resources are diminished, it's much harder for you to either stay focused on the task you're doing or to stay committed to your goal. So you become more impulsive, more distracted, you give in to temptation, whatever your goals might be. So it could be, you know, you don't end up going to the gym and you sit watching a box, say it could be that you're, you know, you reach for the cookie jar rather than kind of sticking to your diet, you know, all of these things that could be the like for me that I'm like always on social media rather than like writing my next book. So, you know, I really believe there's like when you get fatigued, when you practice self-control after a certain point, it's kind of diminished. But the research shows that actually a mindset is that is the result of a mindset. And actually, you have some people who see their willpower as being easily depleted in this way. And that becomes their self-fulfilling prophecy. You have other people who see willpower as being kind of self-enhancing. So it also makes intuitive sense actually, if you think about it, that you kind of get into the zone with doing the task that you're doing. Like, you know, if I was writing, for example, sometimes I can be really in the zone. And then it actually, once I've got that, it's very easy for me to keep going. It's like it becomes self-perpetuating. The same way of self-control. You might think that first day of giving up candy is going to be really tough, but then it gets easier after that point because you kind of built up your strength on that first day. So two very different mindsets, both of which can become self-fulfilling prophecies. And actually, most of us probably might have, you know, a mixture of the two. We might have one mindset for one type of task, like sticking to a diet, another mindset for another type of task, like exercise or kind of avoiding distraction at the workplace. But the good news is that, you know, whatever mix of mindsets we have, you know, in the situations where we have that depleting, limited mindset, we can, you know, once we're aware of that, we can remind ourselves that that's not necessarily the case. We can remind ourselves of the times when we have actually had this self-perpetuating willpower. And by doing that, we find that actually, you know, we've changed the script again. And we're on this new trajectory where our willpower in that particular area now is enhanced simply by changing our mindset. And what I love about that, we talk a lot of this on the show, you can't think your way into acting, but you can act your way into thinking. And in a lot of these examples, okay, we need to find other situations where we had that mindset and things came together and created that willpower. Well, if you're not experiencing life, if you're not allowing yourself and stretching yourself in various areas, picking up a musical instrument, as well as learning public speaking, as well as reading and listening to all of this content, then you're not going to have those experiences, the action points to draw from to make those mental models for other future activities that you're working on. So we talked a lot about exercise, we've touched a little bit on diet. And one thing that came out in the book was the power of words and language and how it can cue us and frame things in a way that impact our expectations. Is the meal going to be satiating or is it going to feel like it's basically prison food, flavorless, you know, something that I would dread eating versus a diet that I would actually look forward to. So what role do words and language play in our expectations and how can we harness the science to use that to our advantage, whether it is in dieting or reaching some of our other goals? Yeah, I mean, words are incredibly important in the way we frame all kinds of experiences. But using the example that you kind of started with food can change the way that your body responds to what you're eating. And I found that incredible. If you have a milkshake and you have been told it is this kind of sensible, but totally insipid health shake with few calories, and no, you know, real ice cream, no kind of chocolate flavoring. If you've just been told that is prison food, then hormonally your body responds to eat to consuming that as if you've eaten nothing as if it contain no calories at all, like the response with in your ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone, just barely changes at all. It's like the worst thing of your dieting for you to consume stuff, but it's actually not helping to satiate you at all. And you're still going to have all of those hormonal signals to seek food. Now, if you have that same milkshake, and you're told it's luxurious and decadent, full of like delicious double cream, then your body starts treating that as if it's a really satisfying meal. And you see that drop in the hunger hormone ghrelin. So your appetite decreases after you've eaten it in just the way it should do. Now, again, you mentioned earlier that are we conscious of this happening? And we're not really conscious of that happening. Like I think we consume a lot of food without really considering the associations that we've got with that food, how it's been presented to us, but all of that is incredibly important. And I think in dieting in particular, you know, we can easily think that like, just forget about flavor, forget about enjoyment, it's all about reducing the calories. But this research shows that's the absolute opposite of what we should be doing. Like the flavor, the enjoyment, the pleasure that we're getting has to be a crucial ingredient in whatever we're eating, even if we're trying to reduce the overall number of calories. And going along with that, it's important to not distract yourself while eating. So you talked about your social media habit. Many of us will be on our phone and mentally checked out while we're eating and very quickly not feel satiated even after having a high caloric meal. And we're also pretty bad judges of whether or not food actually has the right calories, because again, we're cluing into these words. So we'll hear healthy or low fat. And all of a sudden, we're making expectations about what that's going to taste like, if it's going to fill us, if actually we're going to feel satiated at the end of that meal, all based on the words and the labels of the packaging of the foods we're consuming. Yeah. I mean, it's really unfortunate that say people have this, it's called the unhealthy is satisfying intuition. And so basically, if a food is simply labeled as being healthy, we assume it has fewer calories that it's not going to be so satisfying. And that becomes the sole fulfilling prophecy. We assume that if something is, you know, if we're eating a hamburger and chips that that is going to give us more satisfaction, even if the calorie content is identical. So you know, if you're on a diet and you're eating like played broccoli, a little bit of salmon, you know, you've we've got this kind of intuitive response that means that we expect to experience hunger pangs later on, and we do as a result. So overcoming that intuition, educating ourselves about food, about the calorie content, about the nutritional value of what we're eating, and then making sure that, you know, if you're eating those healthy foods, that you're still getting all the pleasure that you would have done from that junk food, you know, that is as essential to the process of dieting as just kind of, you know, trying to cut the calories without really considering like all of those associations.