Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength

by Roy F. Baumeister

Growing up in Brooklyn, Blaine forced himself to practice card tricks hour after hour, day after day. He learned to win swimming races by not coming up for air the entire length of the pool—and then, with practice, eventually won five hundred dollars in bets by swimming five lengths under water. In the winter, he eschewed a coat, wearing only a T-shirt even when walking for miles on bitterly cold days. He regularly took cold baths and conducted the occasional barefoot run in the snow. He slept on the wooden floor of his bedroom, and once spent two straight days in a closet (his tolerant mother brought him food). He got in the habit of continually setting goals that had to be met, like running so far every day, or jumping to grab a leaf from the branch of a certain tree every time he walked under it. At age eleven, after reading about fasting in the novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, he tried it himself and soon got up to four days on just water. By age eighteen he managed a ten-day fast with just water and wine. Once he became a professional endurance artist, he reverted to the same techniques before a stunt, including little rituals that had nothing directly to do with the stunt.