Today we will talk about willpower - that part inside everyone that is responsible for the decisions we make: to be or not to be, to do or not. Whenever the need arises for an action that is not part of our habits or that contradicts our inner desires and beliefs, we use willpower.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato was the first to offer a description for man's internal struggle with himself, around 400 BC, by comparing the soul to a chariot. In the place of the charioteer, according to Plato, there was a rational principle endowed with a certain willpower. The chariot itself is harnessed by a pair of horses, symbolizing the noble and sensual principles. Obeying the hand of the driver, they carry the chariot forward, but if he is tired or drives the horses too much, he immediately loses control over them, going against his conscious desires.
Our minds are structured in the same way. In a tense struggle with our internal “I want”, he inevitably gets tired, willpower weakens, and, as a result, we can no longer make some decisions that require certain efforts from us. By taking care of personal productivity and controlling our inner desires, we want to make the “charioteer” stronger so that the “chariot” always goes in the desired direction. Simply put, we always want to see the results of our efforts. This can be achieved by training willpower.
What is willpower?
It is not a skill, an innate habit, or a unique talent. According to research by neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky, willpower and the associated self-control are a natural function of the body. It was developed in the process of evolution as an element of survival.
The first people did not live alone - they united in tribes. Collectively they hunted, picked berries, and defended themselves. In such conditions, we had to learn to coexist, which means getting used to restrictions. For example, do not take more food than is allowed, otherwise the tribe will not be able to feed everyone.
Getting used to such conditions, the human brain eventually learned to control instincts and desires.
And everything would be fine, but the world has changed a lot over the past centuries. New temptations have appeared. Alcohol, shopping, computer games, internet, TV, sweets. Dealing with all this turned out to be difficult. But even in such conditions, it is possible to cultivate willpower.
How to overcome obstacles on the path to a strong will
Let's look at the obstacles and obstacles that may prevent you from working on yourself and decide what to do about them. As they say, you need to know the enemy by sight in order to neutralize him in time.
Laziness
Laziness is the unwillingness to do what needs to be done. Traditionally, laziness is considered one of the most serious human vices. Let's figure out why it occurs.
A person experiences stress when doing work that is not enjoyable. Laziness activates to protect us from this stress. Thus, it carries a protective function - it is a kind of instinct of self-preservation from excessive activity.
Therefore, before you try to eradicate laziness from your personality, like cockroaches from the kitchen with dichlorvos, I advise you to listen to it. Why do things that you consider important and necessary cause you such rejection? This may be a consequence of the loss of internal guidelines and a crisis in the emotional and value sphere of the individual.
“Laziness very often turns into spiritual impasse: failure to find or loss of direction in life, when a person does not know for what and what to strive for, where to live and why to do what seems to be necessary.”
Vladimir Levi
Be sure to set important goals that motivate you and try to link all your activities to them. Now you have an excellent goal - to become a strong-willed person. The next time you do something unpleasant for you, think about how you are getting closer to that goal. This will help you tame laziness and ignite the fire that motivates you.
Inflated level of claims
The level of aspiration is closely related to self-esteem. This is a kind of bar, upon reaching which a person evaluates the result as successful. Everything that does not reach this level seems to him to be a trifle, not worth the effort.
An inflated level of aspirations prevents you from achieving real goals. How does this happen? A person works, for example, as a courier, and while standing in morning traffic jams, he secretly dreams of becoming a top manager of Gazprom. In bright colors, he imagines how he will drive a luxury car with a personal driver, go to meetings with respected people in an expensive suit and a stylish tie. Living in such illusions is very pleasant, but returning to harsh reality is not.
Our hero could go to study in order to change his profession to a more prestigious and highly paid one, but it would still be far from the imaginary ideal (at least at the initial stage). This means there is nowhere to scrape together motivation to study.
Motivation is a lever that launches volitional processes. If a person wants something very badly, but deep down knows very well that his dream is unrealistic, then no amount of willpower will help. It won't even turn on. Therefore, set realistic, achievable goals and get rid of the habit of feeding your self-esteem with illusions. On the surface, these sweet thoughts seem harmless, but this is far from the case.
External locus of control
Locus of control is an individual’s tendency to explain events that happen to him by external or internal reasons. A person with an external locus of control usually blames circumstances for their failures: bad weather, evil bosses, corrupt government, etc. For these people, as a rule, everyone around them is to blame except themselves.
With such attitudes it is useless to develop willpower. What's the point of working on yourself and going out of your way if practically nothing depends on you? This is roughly how people with an external locus of control think.
A completely different matter is the internal locus of control. It allows you to concentrate your attention and direct your energy to those tasks that are within your sphere of influence.
In a problem situation, a person with an internal locus of control will do everything in his power to come to a constructive solution. He understands perfectly well that not everything is under his control and does not waste energy whining and fighting at windmills.
To improve your locus of control, you need to realize the pointlessness of passive waiting and shifting responsibility. Life changes only in the process of active activity and these changes are directly proportional to the work put into them. Focus your attention and direct your energy on what you can change.
The power of three
Psychologist Kelly McGonigal in the book “Willpower. How to develop and strengthen” notes that willpower consists of three key functions. Conventionally, she called them: “I will,” “I will not,” and “I want.”
“I will” is the ability to do what needs to be done, even if you are lazy.
“I will not” is a function that prevents all impulses and decisions from being followed indiscriminately.
“I want” is an element of willpower that reflects our true aspirations.
All three elements are controlled by the prefrontal cortex. They work together to control our behavior.
Imagine: you are walking through a store and suddenly you see an interesting little thing on the counter. You like her so much that only one thing is spinning in your head: “I want it!”
At this point, the prefrontal cortex of the brain comes into play. The "I Won't" feature will explain why you shouldn't buy this item. And the “I want” function will also helpfully remind you that your key goal now is to save more money for a vacation.
If the price turns out to be prohibitively high, this will further cool your ardor, facilitating the work of the prefrontal cortex. Then you are more likely to show willpower and refuse the sudden purchase.
But we know that such a system does not always work. People do not know how to effectively control their “I want”, “I will” and “I will not”. They make decisions impulsively, ignoring brain signals.
Another reason is an overabundance of information. Information overloads our brain, and then the only way to make a decision becomes impulse.
Why our grandparents were more disciplined than us
One of the most shocking discoveries about willpower is this: willpower is like a muscle that gets tired when overused.
Roy Baumeister conducted many experiments in which he asked people to exercise willpower in controlled laboratory conditions (refuse cake, hide their anger, hold their hands in ice water, etc.). It turned out that the details of these requirements did not matter much: people who had to use their willpower experienced a weakening of their ability to control themselves. This was expressed in different ways: those who were asked to control their emotions were more likely to buy unnecessary things, giving up sweets led to procrastination, and so on. In the end, Baumeister came to the conclusion that willpower becomes depleted during use.
Moreover, research has shown that there are many factors that can deplete willpower, some of which we would never have thought of. Sitting in a boring meeting, trying to impress on a date, or being in the wrong workspace can all drain your willpower. Every time you are forced to restrain an impulse or make a decision—no matter how mundane—you are using your “willpower muscle” and therefore depleting the corresponding reserves.
Kathleen Vaughns, assistant professor of marketing at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, notes:
There is research that shows that people's levels of self-control are the same as they were decades ago, but we are bombarded with more and more temptations. Our psychology is not designed to deal with all of our current potential pleasures.
We could look at people from previous generations and admire their self-discipline.
As a martial artist, I remember reading stories about past masters and beating myself up for not practicing the same technique for hours, day after day, like they did. But it seems that the reason that our generation is not as diligent as its predecessors is not at all a weakness of character, but environmental irritants. Would these martial artists be as dedicated to their craft if they had access to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? I'm afraid we will never get an answer to this question.
What to do?
If the signals from your brain do not reach you, you need to learn to listen to it. That is, develop the prefrontal cortex so that its impact becomes stronger. Then the ability to resist temptations will become stronger.
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There are no specific methods like “take a contrast shower, drink fish oil - and you will be happy.” All tools for developing willpower are quite general and require patience.
Tip #8: Motivate yourself
When you set a goal to do something, figure out how you will reward yourself for it. For every achievement, please yourself with pleasant things. For example, you can make a wish-list, set yourself a goal opposite each item, the completion of which will mean that you can go shopping. Thoughts of reward will motivate you. Willpower must not only be controlled by self-restraint, but also encouraged. The greater the result achieved, the greater the reward.
#2. Constant self-analysis
Self-control and willpower disappear when you make decisions on autopilot. When you don’t understand how, when and why you make this or that choice. We are talking about simple daily decisions - they are the ones that become automatic.
A visual aid is the story of Michelle, a student of the book's author Kelly McGonigal. She suffered from the need to constantly check her email. To get rid of a bad habit, Michelle set a goal: to open the drawer no more than once an hour. Did not work out. She realized that she had violated her own attitude only after she had already read a couple of letters. In other words, Michelle did not notice how she made the decision to open the mail.
To fix the problem, Michelle began to observe herself, trying to remember the moment when the desire to open the mail came. Thanks to this, she was able to control him. But the habit has not completely disappeared. Then Michelle continued to observe herself and found that she reached for the box whenever she felt anxious. After leafing through the letters in the mail, she felt better. That is, the need to “live” in the mail for Michelle turned out to be a way to relieve tension.
Think about how well you know yourself. Analyze your actions. Figure out what you do consciously and what you don’t. What do you think about at such moments? What situations most often lead you astray?
The more deeply you analyze your behavior, the better you will control your impulses - and you will be able to effectively train your willpower.
What is it for?
Imagine that you want to lose weight for the upcoming summer season. You are driven by an intention (to eliminate unhealthy high-calorie foods from your diet), based on the desire to look good, wear beautiful fashionable clothes, and have good health.
This desire will be actively resisted by the habit of enjoying sweets and fatty foods, and the inability to resist temptations. The final result will depend on whether you manage to understand how to develop discipline and train your willpower. To lose weight, it is very important to adhere to a certain diet, cope with sudden attacks of hunger, and be able to refuse to buy sweets and other unhealthy foods.
The whole process is like a tug of war. On the one hand, this is a global task (to lose weight), on the other hand, there is an almost uncontrollable desire to eat to capacity.
It is an endless struggle between primitive desires and the desire for more. If a person can figure out how to train and increase willpower, he can effectively resist lower-level impulses in any situation. With low determination, it is very difficult to overcome your own weaknesses.
#4. Pomodoro cycle
This is a good way to build willpower, overcome procrastination and finally do what you have been putting off for so long. The cycle consists of three stages:
1. Put aside everything that distracts you - your phone, books.
2. Set a timer for 25 minutes and start working, focusing on your tasks.
3. When 25 minutes have passed, you have 5 minutes to rest. But without social networks, games, the Internet, you risk getting stuck. It's better to drink tea or play with the cat. Then again 25 minutes of work. Repeat the cycle at least 4 times.
This approach allows you to effectively “connect” the brain to work. The brain focuses for 25 minutes and relaxes for 5 minutes - both modes are important for high productivity.
Postpone pleasures
Our brain insists on meeting needs right here and now. The prospects looming somewhere in the distance to gain slimness, financial independence, good health, a successful life - do not seem so important. Because of this, we constantly succumb to temptations - we neglect our diet, spend large sums on trinkets, and irrationally distribute our free time.
Try to be patient a little. Delay the moment of getting what you want for 10 minutes. This is quite a bit, but during this period your consciousness will “reconsider priorities” and will be more likely to make the right decision.
#7. Meditation
Meditation practices relax and unload the brain, making it easier to think and analyze. They also activate the prefrontal cortex, helping it better control your actions throughout the day.
It is enough to meditate five minutes a day.
What you need: sit down, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Listen to its sound, say “inhale” and “exhale” every time you inhale and exhale. This will help you get rid of unnecessary thoughts. Don't be distracted, even if you have an itch. This is how you learn not to follow every impulse on autopilot.
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Tip #3: Set specific goals for yourself
You must determine what is of utmost importance to you. When making a to-do list, include only those that are important, otherwise, over time, new tasks are added, and old ones are not completed and accumulate at the end of the list. In his book Willpower: Rediscovering Humans' Greatest Strength, social psychologist Roy Baumeister says that without awareness of what exactly you want to achieve, self-regulation will amount to meaningless and purposeless changes. The problem is not that you don't have goals, but that there are often too many of them and some of them contradict each other. The author recommends following the “two-minute rule”: if a task does not take you more than two minutes to complete, do not add it to your to-do list, but solve it immediately.
#8. Breathing exercises
If you feel like you’re about to break down, try slowing your breathing to 4-6 breaths per minute.
By slowing your breathing, you activate the prefrontal cortex and increase heart rate variability. After just a few minutes, peace will come to you, you will gain control of yourself and be able to cope with temptations. This is a good way to develop willpower for those who always act impulsively.
Tip #4: Follow the Plan
Train yourself to act according to your plan. Set yourself daily, weekly, or open-ended goals and meet them. If something unexpected disrupts the planned course, look for a workaround. For example, make it a rule to run three times a week in the morning. You can choose any days, but if you have only run once by Sunday, you will have to run twice that day. The main thing is to carry out the plan. By the way, there are many interesting ways to help yourself plan and carry out your plans. One of the most effective (we tested it ourselves) is the Bullet journal system, invented by Ryder Carroll.
Use the 2 minute rule
Whenever you find it difficult to force yourself to do something, tell yourself: “I will only do this for 2 minutes.” You've probably noticed that starting to do something is the most difficult part of the task. Once things get moving, the going becomes much easier. Instead of telling yourself how much you don't want to do something, make an initial effort to do one small piece of work. It’s easier to decide on something small than something big. Read one page of a book or run one lap of a stadium.
There is a 90% chance that you will continue your activity after the first 2 minutes. At the very least, it will be much easier to decide on the next step. By moving a heavy steel ball from its place, it is easier to maintain the movement rather than stop it. The 2-minute rule is a great way to overcome the first and most difficult barrier of procrastination: getting started.
Implement good habits
Habits are a way to perform actions without losing mental energy, automatically. They allow you to do the same thing day after day, without spending a drop of willpower on it, the reserves of which are limited for each person.
Having spent time and energy once on implementing the desired habit, you will save an order of magnitude more in the future. The easiest way is not to do it from scratch, but to replace old, unnecessary or bad habits with new ones. Automatisms are formed due to the fact that the brain receives a certain reward in the form of a release of joy neurotransmitters - dopamine and endorphins - after performing a certain action. For example, after smoking a cigarette. There is no need to deprive him of this reward - just change the source of pleasure. For example, the brain will like morning meditation no less than scrolling through a social media feed.
In addition, under the influence of stress, we tend to go into automatic mode, escaping from unpleasant influences with the help of habits - good or bad. Therefore, if you feel stressed at the end of the working day, it is better to go to the gym rather than to the bar. You will receive your dose of endorphins and thereby further strengthen your new healthy habit.
Tip #10: Don't do anything.
If a large amount of work has accumulated, and you don’t have the strength or desire to start, don’t do anything. Put things off until later. You can look out the window or just sit on the couch, but don't allow yourself to sit down reading a book, watching a movie or social media. It's either getting the job done or nothing. This way, boredom will take over and you will certainly have the desire to get to work.
Our possibilities are truly limitless, but in order to turn words into concrete actions and achieve our goals, we need to work on willpower every day. It has been scientifically proven that people with developed willpower live happier lives than those who do not show their strong-willed qualities. Thanks to this core, they quickly climb the career ladder, know how to manage their emotions and overcome difficulties. The lack of willpower is tantamount to a lack of freedom, which in turn negatively affects the quality of your life. Determine what is more important to you: living life with the question in your head “what if?” or take control of your life and achieve big goals in small steps? Willpower will give you this opportunity.
Tags: self-improvement self-control willpower psychology
How to gain freedom of action
Developed willpower allows you to get rid of bad habits. A person who acts solely according to his instincts has no choice.
He may realize that he has problems that drag him down and do not allow him to open up to his fullest extent, but his lack of character does not allow him to get out of the current situation correctly.
It is for this reason that many people cannot realize themselves in life; their plans never come true.
Show yourself compassion
Contrary to popular belief, there is ample evidence that self-compassion works much better than self-criticism when dealing with failure or not achieving a certain goal.
In a study conducted at a women's college, researchers divided participants into two groups and asked each group to eat a donut from a plate. Then the experimenters talked to one of the groups. They told the participants phrases that went something like the following: “I hope you don’t find it difficult to eat these donuts. Everyone eats unhealthy food sometimes. All participants in this study eat donuts.” Later, participants were asked to eat some chocolate. And the group that was treated earlier consumed much less sweets than the control group.
People who practice self-compassion tend to be more willing to admit and learn from their mistakes, and to address their weaknesses.
When we realize that failing is a normal part of our lives and that we can learn from them, it will be easier to bounce back from setbacks and make positive changes.
Develop self-confidence
If a person decides to become a strong-willed person, he needs to train self-confidence, since a lack of faith in himself and his strength will lead to him abandoning his original goal and taking the path of least resistance.
K.E. Fisher, while studying the mechanisms of will formation, came to the conclusion that a prerequisite for the formation of this character trait is strict self-discipline.
A person's lifestyle and thoughts affect his self-confidence. If an individual falls into apathy, he is overcome by pessimism, then he feels weak. He suffers from this realization. To change the situation, he needs to change his attitude towards himself and his life.
Tip No. 9. Play sports
Exercise, even in moderation, will help you develop willpower. The author of the famous marshmallow test (marshmallow experiment), Walter Michel, in his book “Developing Willpower,” advises not to start with a full workout in the gym using all the simulators: morning exercises and jogging will be enough. When you get used to the appearance of sports in your life, you can increase the load and go to the gym. Sports will help you overcome laziness, since daily training requires persistence, adherence to a daily routine, exercise techniques and physical activity. An active lifestyle will add additional strength to your body to accomplish your plans.
Summary
Our physiology has a huge impact on our mental state, including our willpower reserves. So take care of your body - get enough sleep, eat healthy foods and make time for physical activity. Study your biorhythms and plan your day according to them. Meditate - just 10-15 minutes of this practice will bring about long-term changes in your willpower. Introduce healthy habits - this will allow you to put many energy-consuming actions on automatic. Pay attention to the things around you - are they distracting you from the task at hand? Use the 2-minute rule to overcome resting inertia and solve problems in parts.
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Key words:1Psychoregulation, 3Psychoregulation
