5 Ways to Increase Your Willpower
This post originally appeared as an original blog post at ty-hicks.com. See the full, original post here.
WHAT IS WILLPOWER?
Willpower is one of those concepts that affects the quality of our life deeply and virtually none of us have learned how to master.
We claim that we want to start a diet, lose weight, make more sales calls at work, keep our date night scheduled on a weekly basis, keep our temper under control, and more. Yet, we so easily tend to fall back into old habits. Why?
The answer is incredibly interesting and consequential.
Let's start with getting clear on our definition. What is willpower anyway? It seems to be one of those concepts that everyone understands yet no one can define.
Let's try anyway.
The definition of willpower that I find to be the most useful is "the ability to delay short term gratification for long term gain."
Perhaps better still would be "the ability to act in accordance with your values when your impulses conflict with them."
PROOF THAY OUR WILLPOWER IS LIMITED
Scientific studies have verified that our willpower is limited. The famous study that showed this was one in which participants were brought into a lab setting and were sat in a room by themselves.
One group of participants had a bowl of radishes placed in front of them. The other group had a plate of warm, chocolate-chip cookies placed in front of them and were told that they couldn't eat any. How cruel!
After sitting in the room with their food for a period of time, the participants were then asked to solve a very challenging puzzle. They had the option to quit if they wanted.
The individuals who were sat in front of the cookies ended up taking longer to solve the puzzle and were more likely to quit in a shorter period of time. Their willpower reserves had been partially depleted from resisting the urge to eat the cookies, and so they had less to use when they were faced with a novel challenge.
In another test, participants were told to eat a number of raw radishes – yuck. These participants quit the fastest. I don't know about you, but eating raw radishes would drain my willpower too.
The bottom line: our willpower can only be used for so long before it is depleted. Like a muscle, there is a point of exhaustion.
OK, SO HOW DO WE GET MORE WILLPOWER?
While it may seem like a difficult thing to expand, your willpower reserves can be grown with conscious effort and the right strategies.
If willpower is like a muscle, then we can strengthen it by pushing it further than it has gone before.
While your ability to exercise willpower over extended periods of time will always be limited to some degree, the goal is to expand your range of willpower so that you have more to call upon when you need it.
The following strategies are ones that I've found both personally powerful, and my clients have as well. If you are looking for a wider array of high performance strategies, you can also find those here.
5 WAYS TO INCREASE WILLPOWER:
1) Focus on what you DO want, not what you DON'T want.
Try something really quick: Don't think about white bears.
No really, DO NOT think about white bears, whatever you do.
What are you thinking about? Probably white bears.
The mind is a very powerful machine, but it has some significant limits. One of them is that it cannot process a negative command like this – your mind has no choice but to register the concept of "white bears" and bring it into mental focus.
In fact, the more that you DON'T want to focus on white bears, the more you find yourself focusing on them.
So what do you think is happening when you are telling yourself to NOT eat that extra cookie at lunch time that will break your diet?
Or when you are telling yourself to NOT watch another episode on Netflix when you have important work to do?
When you give your mind these commands, you may think that you are pushing your focus away from these temptations, but the fact is that each time you give yourself this command you are implicitly commanding your mind to do the very thing you don't want it to do.
Wherever you direct your focus, your energy will go to. When you think about watching Netflix, you'll want to watch Netflix. But when you are thinking about how good you will look after you've completed 90 days of your diet and work out routine, you will be gravitated towards behaviors that lead you to that outcome.
Don't focus on pushing yourself towards where you want to go; focus on a goal that is so compelling that you feel pulled towards it.
2) Inoculate yourself to temptation.
It is possible to reduce your susceptibility to temptation by exposing yourself to it in small increments over time.
If you are trying to reduce the amount of candy that you eat, for example, you could place a small bowl of candy in a hallway that you walkthrough many times a day.
Each time you say "no" you are increasing your willpower reserves.
Train your "Do Power" as well as your "Don't Power."
There are two main types of willpower: "Do Power" and "Don't Power."
Do Power is what gets you to lean into a challenge and take action even when it doesn't feel convenient.
Don't Power is what you use to keep from doing things that you know you shouldn't. It keeps you from ordering that dessert with dinner or turning on the TV right after work.
In order to maximally increase your willpower, you have to become consciously aware of both of these muscles and use them to your advantage. Seek new challenges to grow them every day, and soon what used to feel difficult will be easy.
3) Meditate
Studies have shown that regular meditation tangibly increases your willpower reserves. The reason is that meditation requires a higher level of conscious attention to your thoughts and behaviors. Additionally, through the act of mediation you are reigning in the focus of your mind and centering it in a direction of your choosing.
The mind is a like a dog. When untrained, it will chase it's own tail and act on impulse. But when it is properly trained, it will come and go wherever you command it to.
Meditation is a great way to increase your willpower because it is easy to do, and even 5 minutes a day can create large results.
4) Redefine your rules.
Although you may not realize it, you live your life by a certain set of rules. These are rules that have likely never been spoken, have never been written, and you are likely unaware of, but you live your life by them all the same.
To learn what your rules are, do this.
First think: do you have any habits that you are trying to shake? Pinpoint exactly what habit it is.
Next, think and write: when do you end up doing the behavior that you are wanting to change? What are all of the times and situations that cause you to act in this way? Think about a typical day, and get very specific.
What you may end up with is something like "every time my coworkers ask me if I want to go smoke a cigarette, I go and smoke a cigarette." Make sure your list is complete.
What you will start to realize is that your behavior is predisposed on environmental stimulus and a conditioned set of reactions. You brain has learned that "when X happens, do Y." Now, the task is to retrain your brain so that "when X happens, do Z."
So the last part of this process is to go back through your list and redefine your rules. Specify exactly what you are going to do under these new circumstances instead of unconsciously falling into your old behaviors again.
Designing an extraordinary life is about moving out a mindset where we are merely reacting to life and moving instead into a mindset where we are intentional and in control of how we live.
5) Nudge your behaviors.
A muscle is grown not by attempting to take on an unbearable weight all at once but through deliberate exposure to increased resistance.
If you take on too much too quickly, you may fail hard and then get discouraged enough to not try again. Real, lasting change is completed only through consistent, deliberate action that continually expands the boundaries of what we are capable of.
You don't have to be perfect, you just have to keep yourself on the path to growth. As you rise to a new level of performance and quality of life, define what the next level will be for you so that your willpower has its next challenge to grow into fulfilling.