WILLPOWER

Willpower is a combination of courage, mental stamina and determination. The good news is willpower can be learned and strengthened. Below are some favourite science backed strategies to increase your willpower.

You need to be mentally strong to prepare to meet your goals. As humans, we have tremendous capability. We can solve complicated problems, dream and imagine new possibilities and learn complex skills. But most of us spend our time doing the same mental activities over and over again.

Willpower is what gets us through. People with high willpower:

·         Get more done

·         Achieve greater success

·         Are above average in their abilities

·         Stand out from the crowd

The Willpower Challenge:-

Before we get started, think of your willpower challenge. Think of 3 different willpower goals. Fill in the blanks and use these as you read the tips below.

What do you want to do more of?

I will ___________________

What do you want to do less of?

I won’t _________________

What long term goal are you working towards?

I want __________________

Now that you have your challenges in place, let us talk about how to tackle them.

Self-Knowledge

To increase your willpower, you have to know a little bit about yourself. This is all about increasing your emotional intelligence.

Willpower is about doing. It is also about knowing your trigger points, your mental traps and your habits. So, let us do some self-exploration.

It is time for brutal honesty. Do not worry, it is just you reading this post. Nobody will ever know if you have gone to the gymnasium for a workout or really just took a steam sauna. 

The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Research shows that people who think they have the most willpower are actually the most likely to lose control when tempted.

This is not a new idea. We tend to overestimate most of our abilities. Have you ever seen a High School talent show? Everyone (even if they do not admit it) think they are going to win. Please self-evaluate with the following questions:

·         Where do you most often ‘give in?’

·         When do you most often ‘give up?’

·         What exhausts your willpower the most?

Two Toned Brains

Willpower is a finite resource.

We do not think of willpower as a muscle, but we can ‘run out’ of it at the end of a long day. Just like bicep or quadriceps, it gets fatigued after lots of use. This is because willpower comes from a certain area of our brain. Specifically, willpower is managed by our pre-frontal cortex.

We have two brains. An impulsive pleasure seeker and a wiser achiever. The pleasure seeker wants treats, fun and entertainment. The achiever wants to make good long-term decisions - this is dictated by willpower.

The more our pleasure seeker is tempted by candy bowls in the office or a friend asking to play a game, our achiever brain has to rein us in. After a while, that muscle gets tired of saying no. This is why at the end of a day; you binge eat on ice cream after saying no all day. The willpower part of our brain gets tired when we use it too much. That is because it is constantly fighting the pleasure seeker. We need willpower to make good long-term decisions. Without it we would be eating candy all the time, watching television and never working out. So, willpower is a biological instinct that evolved to help protect ourselves from ourselves.

Gaming the System

You can actually game your two brained system. Here’s how:-

·         Remove as many small exercises in willpower as you can. Get rid of the candy bowls. Ban notifications from your social networks. Do not go to the kitchen before dinner.

·         Make your important decisions during high-willpower moments.  For example, your everyday willpower challenge is to workout. At the end of the day, you are wiped out and want to crash on the couch. So, you should have a system where you text a friend in the morning (high willpower moment) to meet in the afternoon for a hike or tennis. You also book your workout classes ahead of time (and pay upfront) in the morning when it is easy.

·         You can replenish your willpower muscle. Specifically, meditation (which increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex), deep breathing, extra sleep and being outdoors are a great way to recharge.

Strengthen Your Muscle

Since willpower is a muscle, you can strengthen it. Just like doing repetitions at the gym, you can ‘tone’ your willpower. Banish that mental cellulite! Our brain actually puts on the brakes before we reach empty. It is like when your gasoline light comes on - it comes on as a warning, but you know you still have several kilometers left. The brain is the same way. Take running for example. Let us say you are on the treadmill and your legs begin to burn and your brain says, “I am at my limit, I better stop!” In actuality, you could go further, but your brain is playing it safe. When you are training for a marathon, you tell your brain, “Nope, I am going one more kilometer!” And you do. And you get stronger. And you run faster next time.

 License to Sin

You are so guilty of license to sin. This is when you do something good and so you give yourself permission to be bad. Does this sound familiar?

·         I worked out extra hard, now I can have an extra portion.

·         I ate great yesterday; I can have this sweet now.

·         I finished all my work; I can have one cigarette.

This license to sin happens when goals are being associated with “being good,” and so it becomes tempting to indulge in a reward. The only way to stop this behaviour is to untie goals from ‘being good.’

·          “I have been good, therefore I should be rewarded.”

·         Instead: “I have met my goal. That feels great!”

This means tying your goals or actions to long term desires or values. Or seeing the intrinsic benefits of an activity like getting endorphins when you work out (not license to eat more) or cooking dinner with your family means more quality time (not license to watch more television shows).

'What the Hell' Effect

The What the Hell effect is treacherous for goals. It is when good intentions fail and resolutions fall by the wayside. The What the Hell Effect happens when we start to slip on our goals and our willpower fails and so we begin to feel like a failure. As a failure we think, “Oh, what the hell!? I might as well give in…”  This happens because the moment we slip on a goal we feel guilty and self-blame. This self-shame triggers your body to want a dopamine hit (the pleasure chemical) so it can feel better. This means you may now want more dessert, cigarettes, Facebook and french fries.

When people forgive themselves for missing the mark occasionally, the more quickly they get back on track. People who wallowed in guilt tended to spiral into a cycle of indulgence and shame - losing their grip on self-control.

Your Future Self

When we are asked to think about ourselves, certain parts of our brain light up. When we are asked to think about our future selves, different areas of our brain light up. Which areas? The same areas we use to think about other people.

How does this affect willpower? In great and terrifying ways. We tend to borrow credit from tomorrow. Our inability to clearly see the future (we think we will be more like someone else later) leads us into temptation and procrastination. The questions below test how much you are relying on your future self:-

·         Are you waiting for a future you?

·         How will you be different in the future? Will your goals be easier to achieve?

·         Do you think magically about how you will be, what will happen and what comes next in the future?

When making decisions, do not over-commit your future self. Start now, do not wait. Do not defer choices and actions to sometime down the line. Hold yourself accountable to a timeline and stick to it.

Willpower Infected

Rule-breaking and loss of willpower are contagious.

Think of the five people in your life you spend the most time with. On a 1 to 5 scale (1 being no willpower at all and 5 being amazing willpower) where do they fall? Add those numbers up, divide it by 5 and that is probably where your own willpower is at. Other people’s willpower rubs off on us.

If you have some major goals in your life or you want to reboot your willpower, you have to think about who you are spending time with.

·         Who are the mentally strongest people you know? How can you be inspired by them?

·         Who triggers you to lose willpower? How can you minimize their effect?

·         Can you ask for help? Who can keep you accountable?

Never Say, “I Would Not”

Do not think about a purple bicycle. Don’t!!! Really do not think about it!

The more we are told not to think about something, do something or try something the more we want that something. We should stop saying “I won’t” and instead give ourselves permission and freedom of thought. Studies of brain activation confirm that as soon as you give participants permission to express a thought, they were trying to suppress that thought becomes less likely to intrude in the conscious awareness.

Willpower is not about suppressing thoughts; it is about changing action. It is not about shaming your brain into action; it is about inspiring and accepting it.

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