Willpower Articles

Article / Updated 04-14-2023

Inevitably, you already do physical and mental activities, so upgrading these into exercise shouldn’t require too much effort or willpower. The difference between activity and exercise is that the latter is over and above your normal level of activity and is designed to stretch you physically or mentally. For example, you walk to the supermarket to do your shopping, but you run around the park to get fit. Physical exercise benefits both body and brain fitness, so is the priority for willpower maintenance. Physical exercise is important at any age, but if you’re over 50 or retired, your activity levels usually drop, so planned exercise is more necessary. Brain fitness training isn’t a case of one size fits all. If you’re taking a degree course in a foreign language or doing a complex job (and most jobs are complex!), you’re exercising your mental powers – often to the point of exhaustion. On the other hand, if you’re unemployed or retired, you’re less likely to be giving your brain a workout on a daily basis. If you’re in your 50s or older, you’re likely to benefit more from mental exercise. This isn’t all down to age, however. Older people’s lifestyles can entail less novelty or challenge, perhaps because they’ve retired or are working part-time. Or maybe they’re looking after an elderly relative, which calls for more routine than creativity. Younger folk may also be less mentally active or experience less novelty or challenge because they’re unemployed. Accordingly, if you’re less mentally active for any reason and/or older, it’s especially important that you pursue mental activities that are novel, challenging and diverse. This helps maintain your brain’s ‘bandwidth’ or capacity to process new information and solve new problems. Visit SharpBrains to discover more about brain training. Mental exercise needn’t involve being logged on to a computer. Social interaction and reading a novel with a complex plot give your brain a workout as well. In fact, one of the few activities that doesn’t stretch your brain is watching television. Think about it!

Article / Updated 06-18-2019

When you’ve worked hard on something that challenges and depletes your willpower, suppressed appetites and desires can come to the fore. Thoughts such as ‘I deserve a drink/smoke/extra portion/day off work’ can sound plausible, in effect giving you permission to indulge yourself. These are the wrong rewards at the wrong time! Choosing alternative, more life-enhancing rewards drains unhealthy or unwanted habits of their reinforcement value. Because your willpower is a limited resource, however, striving for one goal means that you may take your eye off the ball: if your willpower is depleted due to sustained effort or stress, a habit you thought you’d conquered can reassert itself. Flow is being immersed or engrossed in an activity or experience for a period of time. Sports commentators describe athletes as being ‘in the zone’ when they’re performing at a consistently high level for a period of time. Another way to say it is that they’re ‘in the flow’. Flow experiences reflect your values, motives, strengths and talents. Episodes of flow can induce an authentic natural high that can be life-affirming and promote willpower. Infrequent or impeded access to flow experiences can lead to negative emotions, including sadness or even depression, and thus weaken your willpower. Identifying activities or pursuits that can deliver the experience of flow is a great way to discover how to reward your efforts. Amazingly, while going with the flow may require considerable physical and mental energy, it requires very little willpower. Consider the image of a dog being let off the leash in a large field and just running in sheer exuberant joy with apparently boundless energy. Okay, humans are a bit more complicated, but have another look at the ingredients of a flow experience. Now, recall a time when you experienced the joy of flow. Behaviour that’s not rewarded fades away. Imagine, for example, getting into a taxi and asking about the driver’s day. If you get no response, you may try, at most, one more time, but if you’re met with further silence you’ll read your newspaper or fiddle with your smartphone. When deploying your willpower to achieve long-term change, it’s essential to reward your efforts along the way. Psychologists call this shaping behaviour, a bit like coaching or cheerleading you in your quest for the ultimate goal.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-27-2016

Willpower evolved to ensure that human beings survive and prosper both as a species and as individuals by enabling them to make tough choices and forego easy options. If goals were achieved when beckoned by wishful thinking and habits vanished with a click of your fingers, you would not require willpower. Willpower entails projecting yourself into the future, often foregoing immediate pleasure or indulgence in pursuit of longer-term and ultimately more valued goals. This task can be a daunting one which nonetheless you can achieve if you understand willpower and how to maximise it. This Cheat Sheet gives you some of the essential basics up front for doing just that.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Willpower is a uniquely human attribute. The pursuit of valued long-term goals such as health, fitness or success entails discounting or ignoring more immediate wants, needs and desires. Managing this double act – maintaining a long-term goal in the face of temptation or the lure of indulgence – is what your willpower is designed to do. Many people believe that they don’t possess sufficient willpower to meet this challenge. To be sure, willpower varies from person to person. This doesn’t mean, however, that willpower cannot be fostered either directly by practising self-control or indirectly by sculpting your lifestyle to create a context in which your willpower can flourish. Encouragingly, those people who struggle the hardest with exercising willpower stand to benefit the most by adhering to the ten tips described here! Even those people who can justifiably claim robust willpower will benefit from reading these tips because willpower is always limited by mental energy levels, motivation and brainpower. Understanding the limits of your willpower is the first step on your journey to maximise it. Stay focused Willpower is the capacity to stay focused on short-term and long-term goals in the face of inevitable distractions, temptations and fatigue. Thinking ‘focus’ guides you towards maintaining a goal and shielding it from distractions. In addition, taking a focused approach enables you to avoid the implication of weakness on your part: regarding depleted willpower as a weakness entirely misses the point. Everyone experiences a willpower vacuum at some stage, particularly if you are maximising your willpower resources, and staying focused, or refocusing after distractions or setbacks, is the key to fostering willpower. Imagine, for a moment, an athletics coach aiming to get the best performance from his or her charges. Urging greater focus is more likely to deliver optimal performance than shouting ‘use your willpower!’ or simply ‘try harder!’ Similarly, reminding yourself to stay focused, as opposed to telling yourself ‘I need more willpower’ is the best approach. Feed your hungry brain Your brain conducts much of its business effortlessly and unconsciously – when you become adept and skilled at an activity you say ‘I can do it in my sleep’. You summon willpower when your brain is required to do the opposite of this: that is, to make conscious, effortful operations. Willpower, however, is hard work for you and your brain. William James, one of the founding fathers of modern psychology, likened habits (a frequent target for willpower) to a flywheel whizzing around smoothly and requiring little effort to keep going. Stopping that flywheel, however is another matter. Doing so requires effort – or willpower. A fit brain, one that is well nourished, makes it easier to slow and stop the flywheel, or even get it going in the opposite direction! In order to do a job – think quitting smoking or getting up an hour earlier to meditate or exercise, for example – your brain needs food. Your brain, weighing in at about 2 per cent of your body weight, consumes about 25 per cent of your glucose intake. Glucose is the brain’s source of energy and is, of course, a form of sugar. Sugar can indeed give your brain a boost. However, the simple carbohydrates or sugars found in processed foods and drinks such as sodas and candies do not adequately meet your brain’s (or indeed your body’s) nutritional needs. The complex carbohydrates found in natural and generally unprocessed foods, however, take longer to break down but act as a form of slow-release energy. These are by far the better option for providing your brain with the steady supply of energy it needs. A diet rich in fruit, cereals, vegetables and unsaturated fats such as olive oil is better than one high in saturated fats, as found in meat and dairy products and refined sugar. While your brain itself will not get hungry whilst eating these foods, awareness of hunger triggered by rapidly falling sugar levels (refined sugar triggers peaks and troughs) can be distracting, and distraction is the enemy of willpower. Train your brain Your brain never sleeps, and loves it when you are physically and mentally active. Embracing activity keeps your brain cells lively by strengthening the links between them and creating new links. When you consider that willpower is usually summoned when you’re trying to change – either aiming to do something new or to stop doing something familiar or habitual – you will appreciate how a fit and agile brain is a big asset. Treat setbacks with compassion Blaming yourself for setbacks when your willpower proves wanting can turn a drama into a crisis! Remember, as the saying goes, ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’. Having one cigarette after quitting or failing one exam, for example, are best viewed as evidence of effort. If you hadn’t achieved some success to begin with, you would indeed have had nothing to lose. You will have lessons to learn, for sure, but beating yourself isn’t a good starting point. Lack of compassion to yourself is also linked to perfectionism, the tendency to base your self-esteem on the attainment of relentlessly high standards, rather than your values as a person who can be loyal, loving or humorous, for instance. Offer rewards for all! Because willpower generally delivers rewards in the long term, you need to reward yourself for reaching steps along the way to your ultimate goal. Willpower is often called upon to devalue or discount immediate reward – whether that reward is food, drink, sex or just switching off the alarm clock to enjoy ten more minutes in bed – and focus instead on a more distant reward. The distant reward can be much more valuable but in the same way that a distant object can appear small and insignificant to the human eye, the distant reward appears less significant and lacks the motivational magnetism to drive your behaviour. Fortunately, you are programmed to respond to a wide range of rewards. These don’t need to be tangible or appetitive (giving yourself biscuits or cakes as a reward for diligent dieting would surely be self-defeating!). Activities or pursuits that you find engaging and like to spend time doing are, by definition, rewarding. Otherwise you would not choose to expend effort doing them, and miss out on doing something else. The list is as long as your imagination: listening to music, surfing the web, reading science fiction, writing a self-help book (mostly rewarding!), Tweeting, going on Facebook or just watching old movies. The key is to link the reward – for example, an hour watching TV or luxuriating in the tub – to the effort used pursuing the long-term goal. For instance, if you reached your daily quota of exercise or adhered to your new diet, you can then reward yourself. This could simply be noting your achievement. Timely feedback, whether it is a daily summary from a fitness app on your smart phone or counting the amount of hours you worked on a project despite being tired, is itself rewarding. Remember that the willpower pool can run dry Have you ever noticed after a demanding day at work that you are likely to eat more, drink more or shop more than is good for you or your bank balance? This is because the mental effort invested in the workplace – whether you’re dealing with rude customers, insensitive bosses or just the plain pressure of work – draws on a common pool of willpower. When you subsequently encounter a tempting situation with little reserves of willpower you can be like a rabbit in the headlights! One way to prevent this is to plan for a willpower shortage by committing yourself in advance to an alternative activity, say by bringing your gym gear to work. This also acts as a cue or trigger to do what is ultimately of more benefit. Or, you could simply be aware that your willpower is weak after a taxing day and avoid situations likely to require much willpower. The point to remember is that executing ostensibly different tasks or roles effectively draws on a common resource. Tap into the willpower reservoir If a downside exists to viewing willpower as a shared, and thereby scarce, resource, you can also see an upside: that training or practicing in one mode – say learning a new skill or practicing self-control at home – can boost your willpower at work, or vice versa. The analogy is that if you train for a marathon you would also find that you could walk up several flights of stairs (perhaps not immediately after the run, though!) without getting breathless. Your fitness in one area generalises to another. As willpower relies on core processes such as focused attention and short-term memory, any practice that stretches these bolsters your willpower across the board. Be aware of willpower traps Habits, especially those linked to alcohol, other drugs or ‘behavioural addictions’ such as gaming, gambling or sexually motivated acts become hardwired into your brain’s reward system. Even after lengthy spells of control or restraint they can be re-activated by encountering a trigger predicting the reward to come. It is a case of ‘the enemy within’, as part of your sensory system remembers the cues and actively – although subconsciously – seeks them out, probably because in the evolutionary past the ‘impulsive opportunist’ strategy served our ancestors well. Coming across rewards, be they nutritional or sexual, could be rare and the opportunity needed to be seized. In today’s world, the exact opposite holds true for the most part. Consider the vast range of incentives available in any supermarket, for instance. The ubiquitous special offers – buy one, get one free, three for the price of two and so on – appeal to some very ancient instincts, but these offers will no doubt present themselves again in the future, perhaps with even more incentives to indulge. These marketing strategies nonetheless exploit a chink in your willpower armour: susceptibility to immediate gratification. The best way to prepare for the urge to yield to fall for gratification is to know your triggers and expect to encounter them, with a simple coping strategy primed and ready to deploy. It could be ‘if I find myself in a bar with a gaming machine I will leave immediately!’ or ‘if I am offered chocolate I will say “No thanks” and think “I can have a little later, but not until after supper”’. Recall your successes and achievements Recalling your achievements – whether passing an exam, obtaining an award or simply being a good parent, loyal friend or loving partner – can support willpower in two ways. First, it boosts confidence in your willpower by reminding you of what you can achieve and sustain when it really matters. Second, focusing on attainments of which you can be justifiably proud leads to an uplift in mood. Positive moods do not directly boost willpower (although anxious or sad moods do deplete it) but enable you to be more creative and outgoing, both of which offer a better platform on which willpower can flourish. Live a willpower-promoting lifestyle Ultimately, you can never totally rely on your willpower to deliver day after day or week after week. You need to create a lifestyle or context within which it will continue to flourish. Some of the ingredients (literally, in the case of food!) are good diet, regular mental and physical exercise. Meditation is also a remarkable process, sharpening your brain and improving your wellbeing at the same time. Monitoring your stress, and managing it when necessary, is vital. Stress, and associated emotions such as anger and sadness, can quickly grab your attention, and when this happens your willpower is next to useless, as focused attention is vital for willpower. So be mindful of your emotions and, if you experience regular intense episodes, take some time to reflect on your lifestyle you’re your commitments. It could even be that you are simply striving too hard, having discovered the secrets of willpower generation! But that is not where your story should end: willpower is not all about striving and success. Willpower exists to help you achieve the right balance between the things that you have to do, or at least ought to do, such as quitting smoking or saving for a rainy day, and the things you want to do in order to bring pleasure and joy to your life.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Willpower does not exist or, indeed, flourish in a vacuum. Your willpower will work best for you when you’re in a positive frame of mind, able to fully benefit from the support of friends and family, and able to recognise the unconscious thinking traps or biases that can undermine your willpower. The resources outlined here can help you in achieving this, and will steer you towards creating a personal, social and mental context that will help cultivate your willpower. Finding out more about happiness and wellbeing Visit this series of short videos on the themes of happiness, well-being and the role of pleasure and reward in self-regulation, presentations that enable you to discover more about the science of willpower. For example, Barry Schwartz’s talk entitled The Paradox of Choice explains how the explosion of variety in everything from foodstuffs to clothing (You're bound to laugh at his bewilderment at the choices he had to make when replacing his well-worn jeans!) can lead to dissatisfaction with the choices you make. His view is that when you choose something from the wide list of possibilities there is a risk that you can become miserable thinking about what you did not choose – a bit like somebody who has a good catch while fishing but keeps thinking of the ‘one that got away’! Moreover, having to make multiple decisions risks depleting willpower, which is a limited resource. The mental effort you exert in resolving each dilemma reduces the amount of willpower you have available for later decisions. This means that the more choices you have to make in any given transaction, the greater is the likelihood of faulty decision making. Thus, having made numerous careful decisions about specifications for a new car, there is an increased likelihood that your later decisions – perhaps opting for the satellite navigation and entertainment system that can add 15 per cent to the purchase price – will subsequently come to be regretted. Put simply, impulsivity increases while willpower decreases. Supporting willpower by building social networks John's Cacioppo's The Lethality of Loneliness emphasises the value of building and maintaining social networks as ‘scaffolding’ for willpower. A converse lack of social networks, up to and including social isolation or loneliness, is demonstrably bad for mental and physical wellbeing. Professor Cacioppo, in his video essay, presents stark evidence of the negative impact of loneliness. He describes population studies indicating that loneliness is bad for your health and can even shorten your life. This message isn’t meant to be alarmist: these are largely long-term effects which come with the obvious solution involving recognition of the problem and taking steps to resolve it. Professor Cacioppo talks about how, when people are normally isolated, they become more defensive and their attention narrows. These changes can constrain willpower and contribute to a vicious circle where isolation prevents access to alternative rewards that could incentivise willpower and the social support essential to maintain willed change. There are some surprisingly simple solutions, such as going to the same shop or café, perhaps at the same time each day, in order to increase the likelihood of repeated social interaction. Understanding thinking biases This resource on cognitive biases provides a comprehensive list of thinking biases or distortions. These thinking biases or distortions are important to recognise because they can distort your decision making and propel you down the wrong path. This can waste your willpower in the same way that driving down the wrong road can burn up precious fuel. The gamblers fallacy, for instance, leads gamblers to believe that future probabilities are influenced by past events. Thus, if a tossed coin falls heads up three times this bias misleads by inferring it is more likely to be tails up on the fourth attempt. It isn’t! It’s always 50:50. When betting is involved, this could lead to futile chasing of losses as in ‘the first three horses I bet on lost, so the fourth is much more likely to win’ or ‘I’ve shoved a lot of coins into the betting machine, it’s bound to cough up with the next one’. Such dogged devotion to trying harder in the face of failure can lead to willpower depletion in any domain, not just with gambling. For example, if you applied for promotion at work three or four times only to be met with polite refusal on each occasion and thought ‘I’ll be successful next time’ you might be better advised to re-evaluate your training, qualifications or aptitudes. Don’t interpret this as a ‘quitters Charter’. Far from it! Recognising that willpower is a limited resource and that it is best used to pursue one major goal at a time creates a different perspective: You might decide to invest your willpower in doing further training or broadening your search to other prospective employers. Being aware of the probably false premise that the near achievement of your goal on several occasions is predictive of imminent success can help you to make a more informed decision about how best to deploy your willpower. Another thinking bias is known as the endowment effect, where someone overvalues effort, money or, indeed, any resource already expended to the extent that ‘good money is thrown after bad’. For example, an entrepreneur who invests £50,000 in a business only to see it fail to generate any significant revenue or profit would be best advised to cut his or her losses. But the cash already invested has been ‘endowed’ with value and investors are often very reluctant to cut their losses and seek to invest more funds rather than accept the fact that the business has failed. Willpower, like money, is a limited resource. When willpower proves insufficient because the goal proves unattainable it is best to write off willpower already ‘spent’ and find a more attainable goal. The pessimism bias, the tendency to recall more negative information or to predict more negative outcomes can undermine willpower in two ways. First, negative moods triggered by pessimistic memories and forecasting reduces the ‘bandwidth’ or working memory capacity essential for willpower. Second, negative predictions might simply lead to the ‘I can’t be bothered’ feeling when, in fact, the chances of success were favourable. Overall, these biases operate in the background, often unconsciously, and can lead to willpower exhaustion in the pursuit of a futile goal or in an ultimately hopeless bid to mitigate the perceived loss of the willpower already invested.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Getting the most from your willpower involves ‘dos’ as well as ‘don’ts’. Recognising the limits of your willpower is definitely a ‘do’ because doing so helps prevent you from overloading it. Stressing, worrying and ruminating come under the ‘don’t’ heading because doing so can deplete your willpower and drain your motivation. Here are some key ways to set about giving your willpower a boost: Accept that willpower is a shared but limited resource. Recognising your limits is essential for managing your willpower. If you’re preparing for an exam, for example, the time might not be right to go on a strict diet or quit smoking because both goals would compete for your limited supply of willpower. Know that willpower needs motivation, memory and presence of mind. Willpower flourishes when you are clear with regard to your motives, can ensure that your goal remains prominent in your memory and that you can stay focused on it in the face of distractions. Choose the right goal at the right time to harness your willpower. Be realistic: change one thing at a time rather than trying to reinvent yourself and come up with a ‘brand new you’. Willpower is a wonderful source of strength but it works best when you focus on one thing rather than many. Being single-minded is the key to success! Regulate your emotions to foster willpower. Emotions such as fear, lust or anger grab attention. This disarms your willpower because focused attention is vital for willpower. Regulating your emotions is the most important indirect way of fostering willpower. A good way to start is to reflect on a recent experience of heightened emotion. Can you recall what you were thinking? Your thoughts may have been extreme or biased. (Did being 20 minutes late for the meeting really signal the end of your career, as you may have fleetingly thought?) The next time you experience such strong feelings, aim to balance your thoughts. (If a workmate arrived late one morning would you judge them as harshly as you may have judged yourself?) Supplant habits with routines, rewards and records. Habits require very little willpower to continue but considerable willpower to reverse. The best way to overcome an unwanted or undesirable habit is to supplant it with a new habit or routine. This needs to be linked to a reward and also recorded, because feedback can be a powerful motivator. To establish a new habit, try this approach: Develop a routine: Exercise at the same time and on the same days every week; assign particular timeslots to work or study on particular projects. Reward yourself: Identify a reward or treat to enjoy after you complete the behaviour that you want to make habitual. Keep a record of your behaviour: For example, keep a journal of the distance you run each day, the time you spend exercising or the number of words you write for your school or work project. Make this easy for yourself by using a smart-phone app for logging exercise or recording calories, or monitor the word count on your word processing software. See you later ruminator! Your ability to reflect on yourself, other people and the world defines you as an individual. Something to celebrate, for sure, but this can work against you if the reflection turns into rumination or brooding. Your brain has its own system (called the default network) that is engaged when you’re not focused on a particular task or problem to solve. This can demand as much mental energy as when you are focusing on a task using your willpower. Don’t go it alone. Willpower has the power to transform your life, but not without the support and encouragement of other people. Recall a time when a few words of encouragement or an expression of understanding of the challenges you were facing re-energised your efforts. Social networks such as family, friends, colleagues and yes, even those who follow your wise words on Twitter, do not build themselves, though. Particularly when you are pursuing challenging goals, forgetting about your friends and taking loved ones for granted is all too easy, so take care not to let this happen. There will always be occasions when your willpower proves lacking and you need the encouragement of those close to you. This will prove essential to sustain your willpower in the long term.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

When you do summon up your willpower, you can make your dreams come true and your unwanted habits disappear. In both scenarios, having a clear goal is vital to success. A goal guides your thinking and behaviour and enables you to maintain your motivation and focus your willpower. For example, think about: Sitting in a restaurant on a cold Tuesday in December, imagining what it would be like to swim in a sun-drenched pool the following summer, having shed unwanted pounds and slipped into a slinky bikini. Then you say: ‘No thanks, I’m skipping dessert today’. Looking out at a sun-drenched pool (not necessarily the same one!) but instead switching on your laptop to prepare for three hours of study for an exam in six months’ time that promises to define your future. Saying ‘no’ to a cigarette two weeks after you’ve quit, even though you can almost taste the tobacco. Your mind is once again on the future, which will be longer and healthier for you because of willpower overriding your impulse to smoke. Doing without life’s luxuries because you are saving to ensure your baby will be able to go to college in 18 or so years’ time.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Impulses, whether driving decisions you make or things you do (or, indeed, avoid doing) are the enemies of willpower because impulses arise rapidly before you can mobilise your willpower to override them. Anticipating when your willpower is likely to be tested by impulses and having a plan prepared for the inevitable challenge is essential. The rule to remember is ‘keep it simple’. Plans that are too complicated can be counter-productive and further deplete your willpower. Here are three tried and tested techniques to help you mobilise your willpower when the going gets tough! Making implementation plans: The most effective format for a plan is the if…then approach. Assume, for example, that you’ve quit smoking but you’re likely to be offered a cigarette at some stage in the evening. Rehearsing your response along the lines ‘if I am offered a cigarette I will say, “no thanks, I’ve quit, but I’d really love a cup of coffee”’. If your goal is to keep down your calorie count when eating in a restaurant, rehearsing the statement ‘I’ll have the fruit salad instead of the cheesecake’ gives you both an alternative goal and the means to achieve it. Or, if you’re struggling to complete a study or work assignment, an implementation plan would be: I will switch on my computer at 9:30 AM on Saturday morning and spend two hours working on the project’. Adopting the Now versus Later tactic: Anticipating when temptation will arise and to be ready with an implementation plan is not always – or often – possible. On these occasions a more general, flexible response is required. Temptation, the craving that impulses evoke, happens quickly; in most cases the immediate reward would be gratifying and pleasurable, whether it is linked to appetites for food, sex or simply inertia (think staying in bed for an extra 15 minutes on a wintry morning!). However, there is more to life than the immediate ‘now’: there is indeed a ‘later’. Remembering this, and switching your focus to the longer-term consequences achieves two things: firstly, it interrupts your craving or longing for the immediate reward and, secondly, it provides you with a new motive or incentive to reconsider any impulsive decision. The extra drink or the moment of illicit intimacy could well have consequences that are unwelcome in the longer term. Embracing mindfulness: The ancient tradition of mindfulness, the art of paying attention moment by moment in a non-judgemental way, is a true friend of willpower. Simply practising mindfulness boosts your willpower as you discover how to gently focus and refocus your attention on your breathing, posture or simple movements of your limbs. The ability to pay attention over lengthy periods of time is the key to maintaining your willpower. Moreover, the acceptance and compassion that define mindfulness also enable you to deal with the inevitable setbacks that occur when you’re harnessing your willpower to achieve your goals.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

From eating well to getting good brain exercise to planning where you'll shop, the tips you'll find here can help you boost your willpower and achieve your goals! Eat a breakfast of willpower champions Start the day with a nutritious meal. Your brain has high energy demands, especially when it’s using willpower to achieve something challenging or to suppress an unwanted habit. Eating a good breakfast is particularly important if you’re aiming to lose weight by lowering your calorie count. Keep yourself replenished during the day; if you’re hungry, you’re primed to seek high-calorie foods that have less fuel for your willpower. If you’re too strict with your diet, or choose sugary foods that just provide temporary respite from hunger, you end up with more calories and less willpower. Train your brain Keeping your brain sharp is essential for maximising your willpower. Give your brain a silent workout. For example, try to recall every city you’ve visited and the names of the hotels you stayed in. You can extend this to recalling the name of each country’s political leader or head of state. Challenge yourself to generate as many words as you can beginning with a particular letter such as F, A or S, in a minute. Or you can think of names of animals, plants, modes of transport, musical instruments. De-clutter your personal space Untidy or cluttered worktops, desktops or rooms can be distracting and make things difficult to find – both of which can deplete your willpower. Every distraction means that you have to deploy willpower to refocus. Not finding things can also cause frustration or distraction, which is another tax on your precious willpower. Know what you’re drinking When shopping for alcoholic beverages in the supermarket or an off licence, always check the percentage of alcohol in the product, known as the alcohol by volume (ABV) index. At first glance, the difference between a beer that’s five per cent ABV and one that’s four per cent ABV seems minimal. Surely, a one per cent difference doesn’t matter. But it does! The higher-rated product is actually 25 per cent higher in alcohol! Manage your anger Make an effort to manage your anger or frustration before trying to resolve any conflicts at home or at work. If you’re feeling angry towards somebody you know, you’re likely to say the wrong thing, because your willpower is compromised. Moreover, anger is often expressed towards those entirely blameless, such as friends and family or other drivers who innocently meander too close to your vehicle! Plan your shopping Using a shopping list is an excellent way to conserve willpower and control impulsive shopping. From the willpower perspective, the shopping list spreads the workload. The decisions about what to buy are made in advance, perhaps when you’re sitting in your kitchen enjoying a cup of coffee. These decisions require willpower, but you use your cool reflective brain system to do what it’s best at: making rational decisions, unhindered by the triggers drawing you to items you want rather than need. Prioritise your resolutions Make one New Year’s resolution, or commit to one specified goal at any time of the year, and stick to it! Work out your priorities and choose one important goal. With willpower, success fosters success, so achieving one objective strengthens your willpower muscle. Striving for more than one goal dilutes your willpower and compromises success on all fronts. Be assertive rather than submissive or confrontational Practise being assertive: biting your lip and suppressing your feelings repeatedly exhausts your supply of willpower. A strong link exists between submissiveness, or not sticking up for yourself, and subsequent experience of and expressions of anger. However, being assertive doesn’t mean you should go on a mission of zero tolerance of minor slights or acts of thoughtlessness by others! Try to balance assertiveness with empathy and understanding and avoid the double-standards trap, whose technical name is attributional bias, in which you assign causality or blame in a self-serving manner. Tackle your problems stepwise Break complex problems into smaller and more manageable steps. Instead of, say, setting a goal of branching out into a new career, decide to update your CV and send it to a recruitment agency. Or identify a core skill or qualification that could mobilise your career. Willpower works when it’s directed at one goal at a time. Spreading your willpower too thinly is likely to lead to not quite making it on a number of fronts rather than succeeding on one. Willpower works better sequentially rather than in parallel. Be optimistic but realistic Don’t assume that things will be more difficult than they prove to be, or that the difficulties that arise will prove to be insurmountable. Practise realistic optimism, which forecasts the best possible realistic outcome given the circumstances. A pessimistic or negative outlook rapidly deflates willpower. It simply makes willpower irrelevant, because effort seems pointless in pursuit of a negative outcome.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Being your own willpower coach doesn’t boost your brain capacity or invest you with any special powers, but it does ensure that you maximise the key ingredient of success: willpower. A good coach offers encouragement from the first day the novice athlete shows up for training on a cold, dark morning, long before the athlete has any prospect of winning a medal. The coach knows that if athletes don’t receive rewards, they’ll never have an opportunity to go for gold. The wise coach knows that the best way to achieve distant goals is to focus on measurable short-term objectives. Reaching these milestones reinforces your efforts. With the discovery of the brain’s pleasure centre came research into the connection between pleasure and motivation. Researchers discovered that the brain learns very quickly the cues and triggers that predict pleasure. These stimuli can grab attention in fractions of a second. And the brain seeks to continue the pleasurable sensation and constantly seeks out enjoyable experiences. The next time you find yourself looking at something appetising (or someone you find appetising!) be aware that this doesn’t happen by chance. Your brain’s pleasure centre ensures that your reward radar locks onto the signal. This relentless scanning for rewards is a major challenge to your willpower, because it can activate urges and craving. When you use your willpower to forego a source of reward such as smoking, drinking alcohol, or eating sugary foods, your brain’s reward centre goes into overdrive to redress the balance. Unless you find an alternative reward, your willpower will be overwhelmed eventually. Fortunately, a reward doesn’t need to be large or even tangible. It can be as simple as the satisfaction of ticking the last item on your to-do list and telling yourself ‘well done’. Part of the reward process is simply feedback telling you that, yes, you succeeded! Promptly delivered, this rewarding message can prove to be motivational. As your own willpower coach, you should offer verbal rewards at various points throughout your training programme. When it comes to rewards, timing is crucial. The reward should follow the target behaviour immediately or as soon as is feasible. The reason why your willpower seems to evaporate when pursuing long-term aims is that the gains are equally long term. The most effective way to deal with this is to ensure that you’re realising a regular source of reinforcement or reward as you strive for your long-term goals. Just saying ‘well done’ to yourself or identifying a pleasurable activity, an activity you’re skilled at, or a treat (you’re free to use your imagination!) that doesn’t conflict with your long-term goal is the key to rewarding your efforts at each step of the way.