According to most psychological scientists, willpower can be defined as The ability to delay gratification, and resist short-term temptations to meet long-term goals. The capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling, or impulse. Self-control refers to managing your behavior to achieve goals, improve positive outcomes, and avoid negative consequences. Whereas willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations and desires to achieve long-term goals.
Willpower is not a new concept, but we still do not have widespread awareness as to how to nurture it
Spiritual leader and activist Mahatma Gandhi described willpower by noting that:
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
Many people have an intuitive sense of what this willpower is but lack the scientific knowledge to understand the forces that undermine it. How can we work with willpower instead of against its stubborn nature? They say knowledge is power, and in this case, knowledge is willpower.
What is Willpower?
People use different definitions to describe willpower, but some of the most common synonyms are drive, determination, self-discipline, self-control, self-regulation, and effortful control.
At the core of willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations and desires to achieve long-term goals. It’s the prevailing source of long-term satisfaction over instant gratification.
Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.
Dan Millman
According to APA (American Psychological Association), most psychology researchers define willpower as:
- The ability to delay gratification and resist short-term temptations to meet long-term goals;
- The capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling, or impulse;
- The conscious, effortful regulation of the self, by the self;
- A limited resource capable of being depleted.
The general idea linking these definitions is of a self effortfully regulating the self.
Studies show that people scoring high on self-control are more apt at regulating behavioral, emotional and attention impulses to achieve long-term goals when compared to more impulsive individuals.
For most of us, when we think of willpower, the first things to pop to mind are the challenges that require us to resist temptation. How do we refuse that chocolate cake, the department store, the internet, that cigarette, or that after-work drink?
It is hard. We have trouble saying “no” when our bodies and senses are screaming yes.
Psychologist Kelly McGonigal calls this the “I won’t power.” McGonigal is a frequent lecturer at Stanford University and the author of “The Willpower Instinct.” In this latest text, she tackles the concept of self-control and why it matters.
According to her, saying “no” is just one part of what willpower is. But the other part of willpower is “saying yes” to the things you know will lead you closer to your goals. It’s the ability to do what you need to do, even if you don’t feel like it, or a part of you doesn’t want to follow through.
She calls this the “I will power.”
These concepts are explained in her video and visual summary of her book, The Willpower Instinct:
If you watched that video, then you already have a better idea of what derails us from our goals and what leads us in the right direction. Overall, it seems that we need to remember what we want.
Willpower according to McGonigal is comprised of three things:
- I won’t power;
- I will power;
- I want power (remembering what you want).
Our brains can harness all three of these capacities and, as McGonigal conveys, the development of these abilities is at the core of what it means to be human.
Why Willpower Is Important
To survive 100 000 years ago, we had to find food, reproduce and avoid predators.
Living in a tribe greatly increased the chances of survival too, but it required self-control. For example, you could not steal someone else’s dinner or girlfriend without consequences.
Self-control was a necessity for survival back in those days and served us well evolutionarily. Today, we are still born with willpower, but some people use their willpower more effectively than others.
In a classic willpower study, Walter Mischel, now a psychologist at Columbia University set out to study self-control in children, with a simple yet effective test.
Known as the marshmallow test, Mischel and colleagues presented preschoolers with a plate of marshmallows. Each child was then told that the researcher had to leave the room for a few minutes and if they waited until his return, the child could have two marshmallows. If the child couldn’t wait, she could ring a bell, and the researcher would immediately return, but she could only eat one marshmallow.
Years later, the research team followed up with these kids and found that the children who waited for the second candy were generally faring better in life scoring higher SATs and lower body mass index (BMI), 30 years after the initial test.
Here’s a video of a marshmallow test, smiles and laughs guaranteed.
Most of us are aware of the importance of willpower, nevertheless, we’ll run through the findings of multiple studies on willpower.
Overall, self-control appears to be a better predictor of academic achievement than intelligence. It is also a stronger determinant of effective leadership than charisma and more important for marital satisfaction than empathy.
Anywhere you look at it, people with greater willpower are:
- Happier;
- Healthier;
- More satisfied in their relationships;
- Wealthier and further ahead in their careers;
- More able to manage stress, deal with conflict, and overcome adversity.
The point is this: we all have willpower and we all use it to some extent. But most of us would be closer to achieving all our goals if we focused on improving our willpower.
Why is this? It is time to examine the human brain.
The Neuroanatomy of Willpower
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the part of our brains, right behind our forehead and eyes that are responsible for abstract thinking, analyzing thoughts, and regulating behavior.
When you meditate or ponder conflicting thoughts, predict outcomes of your choices, and decide “right verse wrong,” you are relying on your PFC. In the figure to the right, it is highlighted in red.
The PFC controls what we pay attention to, how we express our personality, what we think about, and how we feel. In other words, it controls a lot of “who we are.”
The PFC expanded in size throughout human evolution, which indicates a natural selection process in favor of its continued growth and evolution. While the brain itself has only increased in size about three-fold over the last five million years, the PFC has increased its size six-fold over this period.
As social animals, this makes sense: we evolved to regulate our behavior based on what is needed for healthy group interactions.
Studies show that this part of the brain is the last to mature; its development is not complete until around age 25. This is likely why otherwise intelligent and sensible teens still engage in high-risk or excessive behaviors, even though they understand the potential consequences.
Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist at Stanford, believes that the main job of our PFC is to encourage the brain towards doing the harder thing. Ordering the salad instead of the steak, going to the gym when your friends are at the pub, getting started on that project you’ve been dreaming about even though it’s easier to procrastinate, etc.
The “I will, I won’t and I want powers” that comprise willpower draw on different parts of the PFC. The brain region near the upper left side is responsible for the “I will power,” helping you start and stick with not-so-fun or stressful tasks.
The right side handles the “I won’t power,” refraining you from acting on your every impulse or craving.
And the third region which tackles the “I want power,” sits lower in the middle of the PFC, keeping track of your goals and desires. This is the part of your brain that reminds you that you want to live a healthy and full life when everything else in your body is telling you to eat the bacon until you are stuffed.
To understand how important the PFC is for self-control, let’s look at what happens when you damage it. The most famous case and a psychology classic is the story of Phineas Gage.
The Mysterious Case of Phineas Gage
In 1848, Phineas Gage was just a 25-year-old foreman working on the rails. On a very bad day for Phineas, a large iron rod tore through his skull and prefrontal cortex—he survived for the next 12 years, but with some major shifts in personality.
What happened exactly, on this fateful day? This video summarizes the fascinating case study of poor Phineas and his famous personality shift.
As the video covers, September 13th was not a good day for Phineas Gage.
Before this accident, coworkers and family members described Gage as a quiet and respectful gentleman. His physician writes that he was exceptionally strong both physically and psychologically.
But during a routine procedure, a 7-inch tamping iron went straight into Phineas’s skull, piercing his head and blowing away his PFC. The figure to the right shows where the iron impacted his brain and skull.
Surprisingly enough, Phineas did not die from this traumatic brain injury. After a couple of months, he recovered and proceeded about his life. Eventually, he left America to be a stagecoach driver in Chile.
Even though his wounds healed, something was fundamentally different and not quite right. According to friends and colleagues, his personality changed.
His physician Dr. Harlow described the differences like this:
“The balance between his intellectual faculties and his animal propensities seems to have been destroyed. He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times (…) impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires…”
It seemed that when Phineas Gage lost his PFC, he also lost his willpower. And even though most of us, are not in danger of an iron piercing through our skull, multiple states inhibit our PFC.
Being drunk, sleep-deprived, or just distracted, can be enough for us to focus on our impulses, rather than our long-term goals.
One note to consider in the analysis of Gage as a “medical curiosity,” and how perhaps his tale grew to be exaggerated over time. Nevertheless, it was one of the first instances where personality began to be associated with the PFC.
Two systems in conflict
If the PFC is responsible for the part of the brain that makes us question, “Do I really need a highly expensive pair of shoes?” then what part is responsible for our cravings and impulses?
Some neuroscientists say that it is like we have two people living inside our minds.
One is a spoiled brat who “wants what it wants” and is always on the look for instant gratification. The other might consider our long-term goals and delay gratification. Sound familiar with the marshmallow study? It is.
Every human has both of these systems, neurologically, in their brain. We flip back and forth between these parts. The part of our brain responsible for our impulsive desires is referred to by neuroscientists as the primitive brain.
This primitive brain is where the hippocampus, the hypothalamus, and the amygdala are found. This system is responsible for emotions, behavior, motivation and long-term memory, to name a few.
Whenever a willpower challenge occurs, let’s take the marshmallow example, the kids see the candy, and their primitive minds will kick and scream for that piece of candy. Then comes the PFC and reminds them, that what they want is 2 pieces of candy.
In short, a willpower challenge is a clash between these 2 systems, where one has to overpower the other.
Remember Walter Mischel, the researcher from the Marshmallow study? Well, he and his colleagues developed a framework they called the “hot-and-cool” system that aims to explain why willpower will ultimately succeed or fail.
The cool system is the cognitive, thinking system that reminds you why you shouldn’t have that marshmallow. The hot system is the impulsive, emotional part, responsible for your responses to certain triggers.
When willpower fails, a shiny object of your desire activates your hot system, leaving your cool system with the hard part of talking you back in the direction of your long-term goals.
5 Ways to Strengthen Willpower
Aristotle’s quote is at the core of each of the following ways people can improve their willpower.
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Aristotle
Once we understand the root source of our behaviors, it is easier—though still difficult—to work towards our goals. Scientific studies highlight exactly how the following behavioral changes can influence willpower.
Each of these suggestions, such as “improve your self-awareness,” relate to these deeper themes in positive psychology of doing activities that are centered around wellness and flourishing.
1. Improve your self-awareness
How many food choices do you make in a day? One study asked people this very question. On average participants guessed they would make about 14 choices per day.
If you carefully track all your decisions, the average number would be 227. This shows that, for the vast majority, people aren’t aware of all the food decisions they are constantly making.
Any behavior that you aren’t aware of is much harder to manage.
Most of our choices are made on “autopilot,” without any awareness of what’s driving them or the effects they will have on our lives. So, the first step to changing any behavior is self-awareness.
Self-awareness is the ability to recognize what we are doing as we’re doing it. Our thought processes, emotions, and reasons for acting are an important part of making better choices.
With fast-paced lifestyles, constant distraction, and over-stimulation, self-awareness is not something everyone realizes. How does this relate to willpower? Baba Shiv, Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate Business School, found that distracted people are more likely to give in to temptation.
For example, distracted shoppers are more sensitive to in-store promotions, and more likely to purchase items that were not on their shopping list.
One thing you can do to increase your self-awareness is to keep track of all your choices on a given day. At the end of the day analyze which ones supported your long-term goals and which ones didn’t.
For more on decision-making, here’s a short video of Baba Shiv:
As Baba Shiv explains, there are neurological components to decision-making that most people are unaware of. Because of dopamine and serotonin levels, for example, it is much better to make decisions in the morning.
2. Meditate
Meditation does not mean you need to find a quiet view and begin your days by watching the sunrise. Although if you have access and the ability to do that, that’s great.
Meditation can be as simple as taking five deep, calming breaths the next time you are stuck in a long line. The neurological benefits are huge.
“I meditate so that my mind cannot complicate my life.”
Sri Chinmoy
Historically, the psychological paradigm was that we had a “fixed brain,” meaning you were born a certain way, and over time, your brain will decline. This is no longer what science reveals.
With modern technology and research, today’s neuroscientists know that the brain is responsive to experience—it changes based on what you do.
When you practice a certain behavior, you’re strengthening the neural connections for that behavior, making it more accessible and more likely to occur.
Practice worrying, and you get better at worrying because the brain region associated with that will grow denser. Practice concentration and you’ll also get better at it and your brain will respond accordingly.
You can also train your brain for better self-control and meditation is one of the best ways to do it. Why? Because meditation has a powerful effect on a wide range of skills that relate to self-control:
- Attention;
- Focus;
- Stress management;
- Impulse control;
- Self-awareness.
When you meditate you’re training your mind to focus on a particular given point (your breath for example). Paying attention and observing thoughts, emotions, and impulses without identifying or acting on them. Therefore you’re training multiple important skills at once.
Regular meditators have more grey matter in the prefrontal cortex and other areas of the brain responsible for self-awareness. And contrary to what you may think, it doesn’t take years of practice to observe changes in the brain. One study showed that only three hours of meditation resulted in improved attention and self-control, and eleven hours led to visible changes in the brain.
If you want to improve your willpower, try this 5-minute meditation.
- Sit comfortably with your spine straight, and for the first few moments allow yourself to settle in so you can stay still.
- Notice any urges to move, scratch an itch, adjust or fidget. See if you can feel the sensations and not follow them.
- Bring your attention to your breath. As you breathe in, just in your mind say to yourself “inhale” and “exhale” as you breathe out.
- When your mind wanders off, and it will, just gently bring it back to the breath, again and again. Don’t be hard on yourself if your mind wanders, just gently bring attention back to your breath.
If you found this hard, you’re not alone; anyone who meditates will tell you how hard it was in the beginning. You’ll get better the more you practice. Some days will be harder than others.
If you didn’t resonate with this particular approach, remember there are many different forms of meditation. You can try different ones to see which one suits you best.
If you want more guidance you might want to check out headspace or omvana, both great tools for your meditation journey.
3. Exercise
For a lot of people, exercise is their willpower challenge. But exercise is one of the best tools you can use to strengthen your willpower.
Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng devised a study of treatment to enhance self-control. The participants were 6 men and 18 women, ages 18-50. After two months of treatment these people were:
- Eating less junk food;
- Eating more healthy foods;
- Watching less television;
- Studying more;
- Saving more money;
- Procrastinating less;
- Arriving more on time to appointments.
The treatment? Physical exercise.
These participants were given free memberships to a gym and encouraged to use it. They were not asked to make any other changes, and these were people who didn’t work out regularly before the study.
For the first month of treatment, they exercised on average once per week but increased to three times per week by the end of the study. With such a small number of participants, it would be worthwhile for other researchers to continue this study and compare the results.
Regardless, you may be wondering: how much exercise do I need to do for results? Consider instead, how much you’re likely to do, and start with realistic goals.
Remember that consistency over intensity is more important.
Anything that you like to do and gets you moving can be beneficial. A great idea is to take your workout outdoors. Science shows that “green exercise” decreases stress, improves mood, and enhances self-control and focus.
Any type of physical activity that gets you out in nature can strengthen your willpower.
4. Eat well
Roy Baumeister is a social psychologist well known for his theory of willpower depletion. From the moment we wake up until we go to sleep, we are constantly using our willpower.
A growing body of research proves that resisting temptations takes a toll on us mentally. Some researchers claim that our willpower, just like a muscle, can get tired if overused, and it needs fuel.
“Food is like a pharmaceutical compound that affects the brain.”
Fernando Gómez-Pinilla
In one of his studies, Baumeister brought subjects to a room filled with “freshly baked cookies aroma” and then sat them at a table with one plate of cookies and another bowl of radishes.
Some were asked to try out the cookies and others were asked to eat the radishes. After this, they were given a complex geometric puzzle to solve and were given 30 minutes to complete it.
Participants who ate the radishes, and resisted the cookies, gave up the puzzle after about 8 minutes, while the cookie eaters lasted for about 19 minutes, on average. Did drawing on willpower to resist the cookies drain them of self-control for the subsequent task?
After this work, an array of studies has built a case for willpower depletion or ego depletion. These findings are linked to the glucose levels of our brains. Glucose is our body’s fuel for energy. The brain’s normal functions such as thinking, learning, and memory depend completely on it.
Exerting our willpower uses a considerable amount of this fuel. Leaving our brains in a state of alert trying to get back to normal blood sugar levels. This drop in blood sugar will normally leave us feeling cranky, moody, and more prone to driving to the local bakery. Not all sugars are created equal.
Studies show that sugar, especially the pervasive high fructose corn syrup can increase the levels of stress hormones in the brain and trigger mental health problems like anxiety and depression. To prevent this, eating whole foods regularly and avoiding refined sugars will keep your glucose levels stable and therefore better equipped when it comes to willpower.
Mark Muraven studied ego-depleted individuals and found them persisting longer on a self-control task when they were paid for their efforts or told their efforts would benefit others. So it seems high motivation can be a powerful ally to overcome depleted willpower.
Researchers on self-control also advise that muscles can become fatigued when overused in the short term, but over the long run, they are strengthened by regular exercise.
Similarly, using your self-control frequently and effectively can lead to stronger willpower muscles.
5. Relax
Heart rate variability is one of our body’s physiological indicators of stress and relaxation. It’s the time variation of the interval between heartbeats. Everyone’s heart varies to some degree. For an average healthy person, the heart will have normal ups and downs.
When you’re stressed, the sympathetic nervous system takes over. This is the branch of your nervous system frequently referred to as the “fight or flight system.” It enables your body to respond quickly to perceived threats or stress.
When this happens, your heart rate goes up but the variability goes down, so your heart gets stuck at a higher rate, leading to physical feelings of anxiety and anger.
When you’re in a calm, relaxed state, the parasympathetic nervous system is in charge. This is the other part of your nervous system, often called the “rest and digest system.” You’ll experience a lower heart rate, and the heart rate variability increases since there are longer pauses between heartbeats.
In this relaxed state, you’re more likely to manage stress better, resist impulsive behavior, exert self-control, and experience a sense of focus and calmness.
Recovering alcoholics are more likely to stay sober when they see a drink if their heart rate variability is high, meaning, they are in a calm state with longer pauses between heartbeats.
In contrast, when their heart variability drops they’re at a greater risk of relapse. Other research shows that people with high heart rate variability are better at:
- Ignoring distractions;
- Delaying gratification;
- Coping with stress.
Heart rate variability is a predictor of who will give in to temptations and who will exert willpower.
Different factors influence this physiological measurement, from pollution to the food we eat. Anything that puts your body or mind in a state of stress can interfere, whereas anything that allows you to tap into the parasympathetic nervous system will benefit you.
A 2010 survey by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that 75% of people in the United States report high levels of stress. Americans are also increasingly sleep-deprived, causing an epidemic of poor self-control and focus. Lack of sleep creates impulse control and attention problems similar to attention deficit (ADHD) and hyperactivity disorder.
This is draining their energy and compiling stress that steals their ability to self-control.
Stress will shift your brain to a reward-seeking state. Whatever will make you happy at the moment will become a fixation, as you find yourself craving whatever your brain believes will make you feel better. This is why people who are stressed are more likely to reach for a cigarette, a drink, or fast food.
According to the APA, the most common stress coping strategies are also the least effective ones:
- Gambling;
- Smoking;
- Playing video games;
- Surfing the internet;
- Watching TV or movies (for more than 2 hours).
Some of the most effective stress-relief strategies are:
- Exercising/playing sports;
- Praying or attending religious service;
- Reading;
- Listening to music;
- Spending time with loved ones;
- Getting a massage;
- Meditating and doing yoga;
- Going out for a walk.
To tap into your body’s relaxation response, try slowing down your breath to 4 to 6 breaths per minute. This activates your prefrontal cortex and increases heart rate variability, thus rescuing your mind from a state of stress.
Bringing a sense of calm and focus that is more conducive to self-control.
Importance
Willpower impacts every area of your life. It helps you accomplish a variety of goals, from exercising to saving money. Willpower may be even more important in predicting success than IQ.4
Psychologist Walter Mischel’s “marshmallow test” gives an in-depth look at the relationship between willpower and success.5 The test went like this: A preschool-age child is brought into a room and on the table is a bowl of marshmallows. They are then told they can either eat one marshmallow right away or wait 15 minutes and get two marshmallows.
Several years later, researchers tracked down the test subjects as adolescents. They found that those who held out for more marshmallows:6
- Had higher self-esteem
- Got higher SAT scores
- Managed stress more effectively
- Performed better in school
And these benefits seem to extend well beyond childhood and adolescence. Research shows that adults with high self-control are less likely to abuse alcohol and other substances, have better relationships and have fewer mental health problems.7
How to Strengthen Willpower
While many of us struggle with willpower and self-control, most people also seem to believe that this is a skill that can be learned and strengthened. Fortunately, researchers have also come to similar conclusions and suggest that there are several things you can do to improve your self-control.
Work It Like a Muscle
Think of willpower as a muscle. Just like any other muscle, willpower can be built up and strengthened with time and effort. Exercising your willpower may also make it less vulnerable to being depleted.8
Baumeister suggests creating simple but challenging tasks that require some effort. For example, use your left hand instead of your right hand to open doors. Or turning the light off every time you leave a room. Engaging in these relatively easy tasks for a couple of weeks will hone your self-control skills.
Training your willpower can work wonders. But remember, don’t overdo it.
Get Enough Sleep
Bad sleeping habits (getting too little or too much sleep) wear you out, both physically and mentally. This, in turn, affects your ability to resist temptation. A review of different studies found that sleep-deprived people are more likely to give in to impulses, have less focus, and make risky decisions.
Everyone’s sleep needs are different. But according to the National Sleep Foundation, most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep each night to function at their best.
Meditate
Meditation is one of the most powerful ways to increase willpower. Research shows that regular mindfulness meditation can improve your focus and self-control, even when you’re not meditating.11
Meditation is something you can do anywhere, anytime. A 5-minute meditation session first thing in the morning or during your lunch break is enough to get you started. The more you practice resisting your brain’s urge to wander, the easier it will be to resist other temptations in your life as well.
Avoid Temptations
In Mischel’s classic marshmallow test, children who distracted themselves were able to resist temptation much longer than those who didn’t take their eyes off the plate of treats.5 Some kids closed their eyes, while others turned away and looked elsewhere. The kids who couldn’t take their eyes off the treat, however, were far more likely to give in.
When facing a temptation, whether it’s the desire to eat, drink, or spend, try this “out of sight, out of mind” tactic. Or better yet, physically remove the temptation from your environment. If you can’t do that, then temporarily remove yourself from the temptation.
The 3 Most Fascinating Studies on Willpower
When it comes to the science of willpower, there are three big names you should be familiar with. Each of them studied the topic from their perspective, but the findings of all combined are what has laid the foundation of our understanding of willpower today.
Discussing the scientific aspect of willpower is impossible without mentioning Walter Mischel. Walter Mischel is most famous for his Stanford Marshmallow Test, which remains one of the most valuable studies on delayed gratification. The test is simple but genius.
Children were asked to choose between getting a sweet reward right away or having a double portion after waiting for around 15 minutes. Kids who managed to delay gratification were believed to have stronger willpower (an obvious conclusion). The study, however, did not stop there. The young participants of the Marshmallow Test were subject to long-term evaluation. Over years, it turned out that those who were able to delay gratification as kids had better life outcomes than adults. Life success was measured in terms of education, performance at work, health, and other metrics.
Roy Baumeister is another important figure in the willpower-science scene. In collaboration with other scientists, Dr. Baumeister discovered that our will, just like a muscle, can be fatigued if we spend too much time on activities that require self-control. According to Baumeister, the strength of our willpower depends on the level of energy available in our brains at a given moment. To support his point of view, Baumeister ran an experiment that involved hard-to-resist foods. Participants had to withstand the temptation of eating chocolate and complete a series of mental tasks afterward. Those who managed to resist food temptation appeared to be more fatigued and performed worse in mental tasks.
Back in 2010, a study conducted by Stanford University researcher Veronika Job and her colleagues suggested that our own beliefs about willpower might play a key role. A series of experiments proved that when we believe that our willpower is limited, it becomes limited. Meanwhile, those who believe that willpower is not fixed and cannot be depleted, demonstrate greater self-control and are not likely to lose will under depleted circumstances.
Willpower Is a Muscle You Can Train
Although there is some controversy around willpower, a growing body of research suggests that willpower should be considered a muscle. This leads us to the following thoughts:
- To strengthen muscle, you have to exercise.
- When you overwork, muscles get tired and will need time to recover.
Putting this into the context of self-discipline means training our willpower regularly but allowing ourselves to be relaxed from time to time, so the “willpower muscle” has a chance to restore its energy levels.
How to Train Your Self-Control Muscle (And Improve Willpower)
Contrary to a popular belief, boosting willpower is not about pushing harder. It is rather about understanding the nature of willpower and using this understanding to hack the willpower system.
Below is the list of actionable steps you can take:
- Exercise daily. Thousands of people promise themselves they will exercise every day. With good intentions, they pay for gym memberships, stay committed for a few weeks, and then quit. In nearly all cases, the lack of self-discipline is to blame. Commitment requires willpower, which makes physical activity a great way of training your willpower muscle. The trick, however, is to start small and build up. If your willpower is limited, you have to fool your brain into thinking nothing is really happening. The smaller the better so that your brain (willpower) doesn’t ring alarm bells. If you can’t take the stairs for all 5 flights, take them for 1 then switch to the elevator. Over time, add more as your willpower improves.
- Feed your brain the right food. Willpower and decision-making are cla osely related. Each time you appeal to willpower, you start a fight between the rational and emotional parts of your brain. You have to decide what to choose: instant gratification or delayed, but greater, benefit later. Studies suggest that poor diet makes you inclined to make more emotional choices than if you were well fed. To this end, the same advice to starting small goes a long way. Trade out one cup of soda for tea or water. Replace your cinnamon-sugar bagel with a whole grain option. Keep changes small so that your brain doesn’t realize a change has been made. In no time, you can build up your willpower skills.
- Develop your reward system. The human brain is wired to favor instant gratification over a delayed reward (no matter how much bigger it is). Knowing this fact about your brain can help you resist temptation. If you break your big goal into a few smaller goals and assign a valuable reward for each small goal achieved, your willpower will be activated.
- Train your willpower, but don’t overdo it. Studies suggest that training our willpower works wonders, but everything is good in moderation. If you become a self-control maniac and remain so for too long, you’ll burn out. Remember that your willpower will need to recharge.
- Work on your stress levels. According to studies on the connection between stress and willpower, goal-oriented behavior suffers when our fight-or-flight signaling is on. When we are calm, we are more likely to listen to the rational part of our brain — a good friend of willpower — instead of acting emotionally and falling for temptations.
- Set realistic goals. There is nothing wrong with being ambitious unless you’re regularly going all out. When you set unrealistic goals, you are losing the game before you even start to play. The process feels inspiring in the beginning, but as soon as you realize you are not going to make it, your self-esteem decreases and so does your willpower. Set goals that are big enough to be motivating but still doable. Alternatively, break your goals down into sub-tasks and work on one smaller goal at a time. The feeling of making progress will boost your self-esteem and empower your willpower (sounds crazy huh?)
Looking to beef up your self-control muscles?
To master your willpower, keep these facts in mind.
Willpower gets stronger with regular use. You can train your willpower with small things like making your bed every morning or choosing a fruit over a cookie at least twice a week. Start small and scale it up as your self-control skills grow.
Willpower is a muscle you can train. Hear this: You are not forever bound to your bad habits. Of course, some poor habits might be hard to break, but as long as you keep your goal in mind and work on strengthening your willpower, nothing is impossible. You can become a better version of yourself; the power to make this happen is always within you.
Willpower is one of the best tools you can use to resist distraction and boost productivity. Willpower is a good tool, but not the only one. If you would like to learn more about fighting distraction and being productive in all aspects of your life, make sure to join the #DistractionDetox Challenge. Not only will you join a squad of like-minded people, but you will also receive lots of valuable insights on the topic.
Willpower Weakeners
By now you’ll have a pretty good idea that stress is one of the biggest obstacles to self-control.
Two other hindrances are self-criticism and temptation.
Self-criticism
Two psychologists, Claire Adams and Mark Leary invited a group of weight-watching women into the lab and encouraged them to eat doughnuts and candy—for the sake of science. They planned to make half of these dieters feel better about giving in to the doughnuts.
They hypothesized that if guilt is a self-control deal-breaker, maybe the opposite of guilt would support willpower.
The women were told they would be taking part in 2 different studies: one was on the effect food has on mood and the other was a taste test. For the first part, all the women were encouraged to eat a doughnut and drink a full glass of water (meant to assure the women felt full and slightly uncomfortable).
For the second part of the study, before the taste test, a researcher came in and encouraged half of the women to be kinder to themselves and to remember that everyone gives in to temptation now and then. The other half of the women received no message at all.
These women were then asked to sample an array of different candies. All the women were told to eat as much or as little as they wanted.
The woman with the self-forgiveness message ate 28 grams of candy. The women who had no message ate about 70 grams of candy. Contrary to common sense, guilt and shame often don’t lead to change but to overindulging. Feeling bad makes it harder to resist temptation because we want to cover our shame and guilt with instant pleasure, or in this case, candy.
Study after study shows how self-criticism is correlated with less motivation and worse self-control.
In contrast, self-compassion (being supportive and kind to yourself as you would to a friend, especially when confronted with failure) is associated with greater motivation and self-control.
Temptation
Did you know that erotic images make men more likely to take financial risks? Or that fantasizing about winning the lottery makes people overeat?
When your brain is in a reward-seeking mode it releases a neurotransmitter called dopamine.
When your system is flooded with dopamine, the appeal of immediate gratification is amplified, leaving you less concerned about your long-term consequences and more prone to temptations of any kind.
Subliminal environmental cues create tempting environments and retailers are fully aware of how these can trigger your impulses.
That’s why grocery stores will put their most tempting articles front and center. Food and drink samples in markets will also leave people hungrier and thirstier, therefore in a reward-seeking mode. This reward-seeking mode might result in extra purchases and unintended buying of candy and chocolates.
Marketers use the promise of reward to sell you their projects. That’s why it is key to reflect before you act.
Where does this leave someone with goals and challenges then? Simply summarized: avoid temptation when you can, and go easy on yourself when you indulge.
What we can learn from people who are good at self-control
So who are these people who are rarely tested by temptations? They’re doing something right. Recent research suggests a few lessons we can draw from them.
1) People who are better at self-control enjoy the activities some of us resist — like eating healthy, studying, or exercising.
So engaging in these activities isn’t a chore for them. It’s fun.
“‘Want to’ goals are more likely to be obtained than ‘have to’ goals,” Milyavskaya said in an interview last year. “Want-to goals lead to experiences of fewer temptations. It’s easier to pursue those goals. It feels more effortless.”
If you’re running because you “have to” get in shape but find running to be a miserable activity, you’re probably not going to keep it up. An activity you like is more likely to be repeated than an activity you hate.
2) People who are good at self-control have learned better habits.
In 2015, psychologists Brian Galla and Angela Duckworth published a paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, finding across six studies and more than 2,000 participants that people who are good at self-control also tend to have good habits — like exercising regularly, eating healthy, sleeping well, and studying.
“People who are good at self-control … seem to be structuring their lives in a way to avoid having to make a self-control decision in the first place,” Galla tells me. And structuring your life is a skill. People who do the same activity, like running or meditating, at the same time each day have an easier time accomplishing their goals, he says — not because of their willpower, but because the routine makes it easier.
A trick to wake up more quickly in the morning is to set the alarm on the other side of the room. That’s not in-the-moment willpower at play; it’s planning.
This theory harks back to one of the classic studies on self-control: Walter Mischel’s “marshmallow test,” conducted in the 1960s and ’70s. In these tests, kids were told they could either eat one marshmallow sitting in front of them immediately or eat two later. The ability to resist immediate gratification was found to correlate with all sorts of positive life outcomes, like SAT scores and BMIs.
More recent work has cast doubt on these findings. A recently published replication of the marshmallow test study showed that the ability to delay gratification at an early age isn’t correlated with better outcomes later in life if you control for the kids’ family background (i.e. socioeconomic status and parenting) and intelligence.
What’s more, the kids who were best at the test weren’t necessarily intrinsically better at resisting temptation. They might have been employing a critical strategy.
“Mischel has consistently found that the crucial factor in delaying gratification is the ability to change your perception of the object or action you want to resist,” the New Yorker reported in 2014. That means kids who avoided eating the first marshmallow would find ways not to look at the candy, or imagine it as something else.
“The really good dieter wouldn’t buy a cupcake,” Kentaro Fujita, a psychologist at Ohio State University, said in 2016. “They wouldn’t have passed in front of a bakery; when they saw the cupcake, they would have figured out a way to say yuck instead of yum; they might have an automatic reaction of moving away instead of moving close.”
3) Some people just experience fewer temptations.
Our dispositions are determined in part by our genetics. Some people are hungrier than others. Some people love gambling and shopping. People high in conscientiousness — a personality trait largely set by genetics — tend to be healthier and more vigilant students. When it comes to self-control, they won the genetic lottery.
4) It’s easier to have self-control when you’re wealthy.
When Mischel’s marshmallow test is repeated on poorer kids, there’s a clear trend: They perform worse and appear less able to resist the treat in front of them.
But there’s a good reason for this. As University of Oregon neuroscientist Elliot Berkman argues, people who grow up in poverty are more likely to focus on immediate rewards than long-term rewards, because when you’re poor, the future is less certain.
Conclusion
Stress, self-criticism, and temptations are some of the biggest obstacles to willpower, whereas paying attention is one of your greatest allies.
A willpower challenge involves a conflict between two systems: the cognitive system and the impulsive system.
Training yourself to notice when you’re making a decision—rather than acting on autopilot—is an effective strategy. Other willpower-strengthening activities are exercise, healthy eating, meditation, and relaxation. All of these increase your PFC activation and willpower.
The essence is to train your brain to pause before you act.
The promise of reward doesn’t always equal satisfaction. Your mind tricks you into believing the object of your desire is what will make you happy. But long-term satisfaction is rooted in your ability to refrain from impulses that stray from your goals and values.
Next time you’re faced with a willpower challenge, what will you do?
People with low willpower use it to get themselves out of crises. People with high willpower use it not to get themselves into crises.
Roy Baumeister
