Hello! Seiiti Arata. What is it that we truly mean when we say we are suffering from a lack of willpower? Laziness, lack of discipline, or a lack of time are things we use to describe something that’s already been studied by science: the problem of letting willpower run out.
I’m going to explain to you how this psychological phenomenon works. I’ll share three important discoveries from scientific studies that examine the nature and the characteristics of willpower.
This is important because a lack of willpower is a problem when we want to change something in our lives. For example, plans to get in shape, learn another language or read more books.
When we create these plans, we’re full of willpower and we can start the first stages.
The problem is that time passes, and that initial excitement begins to fade away until everything seems to go back to how it was before. That is, it’s not worth promoting a life change that depends exclusively on willpower.
A study completed by the American Psychological Association [ source: source ] discovered that the biggest difficulty for achieving a lifestyle change is actually a lack of willpower.
It’s a mistake to depend on your willpower.
How many of you have started a diet on a Monday, full of grandiose intentions, just to see motivation dropping throughout the week? How many of you have ever made spectacular plans to study more, only to return to old habits over time?
I promised you three scientific discoveries about the properties of willpower. So here is the first scientific breakthrough that will help you to improve your understanding of this subject: willpower can run out.
One of the first scientific studies on the subject [ source: source ] placed participants in a room with a table and two plates on it. On one of the plates, there were some radishes. On the other were warm cookies, fresh from the oven.
The scientists asked some people to only just the cookies. Other people were asked to only eat the radishes. After this, they had 30 minutes to solve a complicated brain teaser.
The conclusion was remarkable. Those who were only allowed to eat the radishes had to exercise willpower in order to resist the nice smelling cookies. On average, those who ate the radishes gave up on the brain teaser after just eight minutes. Those who were allowed to eat the cookies had an advantage: the biscuit eaters didn’t waste their willpower resisting the urge to eat. Because of this, they continued trying to solve the brainteaser for nineteen minutes, more than double the time of the first group!
Since the publication of this study, various other experiments have confirmed the theory now known as Willpower Depletion. The simplest way to understand this theory is to think of willpower like the battery of your phone. As you use willpower, it runs out, only returning to normal after being recharged.
Willpower is dependant upon your beliefs and attitudes.
Willpower is the ability to delay gratification, resisting short term temptations to be able to achieve long term goals.
This resistance ability is the ability to maintain a conscious and planned behaviour pattern instead of simply reacting impulsively to events.
Up until now, you’ve already learned, alongside the scientists, that willpower is a limited resource.
The second lesson is discovering what exactly makes us use up our willpower.
The first theory was that willpower was used up during the day because of physical tiredness. This hypothesis was discarded. [ source: source ].
There was no significant difference in willpower between people who stayed up all night without sleeping and people who had enjoyed a good night’s sleep. But be aware that this is not necessarily showing you the whole picture. I recorded a special class with six activities in order to strengthen your willpower and we’ll also have a specific rest-activity that will help you. Stay here until the end where I explain how to gain access to the special class including these six activities.
The second theory was that willpower can be strengthened or weakened depending on our beliefs and attitudes. It was discovered that those who are always trying to please others use up too much willpower. When you think too much about what others want, you spread your focus. To increase willpower it’s better to stay focused on your own goals and complete your own objectives. [ source: source ]
Something else that helps the potential of willpower is being in a good mood. If you get an unexpected present or watch a comedy film, you enter a good mood state. This good mood can help strengthen you, helping you do what needs to be done.
This leads us on to the third discovery, the one that is the most interesting and valuable of them all: willpower can be trained as if it were a muscle.
Willpower can be trained as if it were a muscle.
After so many experiments, what surfaced was the theory that willpower can be strengthened by way of mental exercises, just like a muscle can be strengthened by physical exercises.
To prove the theory that willpower can be trained, volunteers were placed on a diet for two weeks and told they had to carry out some self-control exercises. These volunteers were compared to a control group who didn’t do the exercises. What was the result? The volunteers that passed the diet and exercised self-control ended up becoming more disciplined. They were able to transform into an improved version of themselves to overcome willpower depletion.
A similar test was done with people who smoke cigarettes. A group of smokers had to exercise self-control for two weeks, avoiding sweets. What was the result? The smokers that trained their self-control avoiding sweets were also much more successful when trying to stop smoking. This became clear when compared to other smokers who didn’t have to practice self-control by avoiding sweets.
So, if you’re someone that complains about a lack of discipline or a lack of willpower, the solution is simple. What you need to do now is complete six purposeful activities to strengthen your willpower. What I’m going to do is introduce you to a special class with the six activities.
Imagine that you had much more willpower than the average person. Do you think you’d be able to achieve your goals more easily, such as losing weight, learning another language, reading more books or anything else you can think of?
You’ve just learned about three important discoveries that have been made in the field of human behaviour: first, willpower is indeed a limited resource. Second, our willpower fluctuates depending on our mentality and our choices. And, third, willpower can be trained through specific exercises.
There are six simple, hands-on exercises for you to train your willpower. In order to have more willpower, you need to 1\) have a specific exercise routine, 2\) avoid un-achievable plans, 3\) prioritise what’s important, 4\) find strategic ways to restore your vitality, 5\) know how to manage stress and 6\) strategically choose the number of choices to make. I teach these six exercises in detail in a special class in our Personal Development training.
The good news for you who’s interested in having more willpower is that I’ve decided to open this class for free to teach the six practical exercises for you to train your willpower. To access this class with the six activities, all you need to do is visit https://arata.se/willpowerpractice
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Landing page: Six practices to exercise your willpower.
Is lack of willpower and discipline holding you back? Do you find it difficult to stay consistent in practising activities that are important in reaching your objectives and goals?
The good news is that willpower can be exercised, very much like a muscle. As a courtesy of the Personal Development training, you will also have access to our tips, starting with a special class centred around six practices to exercise your willpower. All you need to do is fill out your name and email in the form.
Video: Six activities to exercise your willpower
Hello, and welcome to this special class of the Personal Development training. In this training, we’ll see how you can train your willpower in practice through six simple exercises.
Willpower is a limited resource. That is, the more you use your willpower, the more it runs out. It works the same way as your phone battery.
The good news is that willpower can be exercised. In the same way that a muscle gets stronger the more you do certain exercises, willpower can also be strengthened through some simple techniques.
This is what we’ll do now. Six simple techniques to exercise your willpower. Starting with an exercise in the literal sense.
1. Impose a routine of physical exercises on yourself.
It’s not a surprise to anyone that a healthy body is reflected in a healthy mind. And a healthy mind is capable of having more willpower.
In a study carried out by the Macquarie University, volunteers were submitted to a challenging two-month exercise routine. [ source: source ]
After the two months, the volunteers that were able to complete the routine without giving up had much more willpower than the control group.
Furthermore, the successful volunteers reported improvements in other areas of their lives, like drinking less, smoking less, dietary improvements, better control over financial spending and even better study habits.
The conclusion was that exercising willpower regularly with the practice of physical exercises improved self control in practically all areas of life.
Therefore, make a note in your notebook as to which physical activity you’ll incorporate into your routine. Be specific, noting what date you’ll start and set an alarm as a reminder.
2. Don’t make grandiose plans.
You know those new years resolutions when you say you’re going to lose weight, learn another language, change job, run a marathon, start a company, play the guitar, go backpacking around the world, volunteer and be a better person all at once?
Science says that this is the worst way to approach your goals and dreams. This is because a failure in one of the goals negatively affects all of the others.
For example, if you fail your goal of getting in shape, this failure reduces your willpower to learn another language, and so on.
Because of this, it makes much more sense that you focus on just one small goal at a time.
As a new habit or objective is completed, you no longer need to use as much willpower to maintain this habit. Therefore, you can carry on to the next goal.
Think about your goals like a snooker game. First, you pot the most important ball, and then you position yourself to pot the second most important, and so on.
Now, as a practice method, view the different goals you have in your plans. Select just one that will receive your maximum willpower over the next few days. Also make a note of the other goals, making it clear that they are not the priority. Simplify to gain greater completion power over your plans.
3. Start early and with the most important goal.
Although there are no conclusive studies about the relation between willpower and physical tiredness, it’s believed that our ability for self-control decreases throughout the day.
In this way, a good practice would be for you to complete activities that require more willpower early in the morning, leaving the tasks that require more formed habits for afterwards.
It’s recommended that you already have the more challenging tasks in your morning ritual. As you already have more willpower in the start of the morning, it will be much easier to complete your more difficult tasks. And this generates a cycle of positive reinforcement that increases your willpower with time.
Note down, therefore, which activity you’ll do early in the morning. If you can incorporate this activity as part of your morning ritual, even better.
4. Take a nap.
Remember the analogy between willpower and phone battery? As willpower runs out throughout the day with use, we need to have a way to recharge this willpower. This recharge is done with sleep.
In the book The Challenges of Willpower, psychologist Kelly McGonigal explains that sleeping for less than six hours per night causes most peoples’ prefrontal cortex to lose control of the cerebral regions responsible for your will.
It’s because of this that, after a bad night of sleep, it’s much more difficult to resist the desire to eat something not in your diet, for example.
Sleeping at least an hour more a night improves our ability for self-control so much that we even end up avoiding a relapse of chemical dependents.
If your routine allows it, taking a small nap throughout the day, after lunch, for example, is an excellent practice to recharge your willpower.
This nap can be as short as twenty-five minutes. A technique to take quick naps is to drink a cup of coffee straight after lunch. As coffee takes about twenty-five minutes to take effect, you’ll naturally be woken up after this time.
5. Keep stress under control.
Whenever we experience an emotional imbalance it becomes more difficult to find the determination for us to stay in line. In other words, when the emotional side is imbalanced, it’s much more difficult to maintain willpower.
When we’re stressed, we tend to only pay attention to short term goals.
Because of this, learning to control stress and anxiety is one of the most important things you can do to strengthen your willpower.
This is a gigantic subject, but there are some simple practices that you can adopt to keep stress under control. The most efficient ones are to have a healthy diet, practice physical exercise, do things in fresh air exposing yourself to the sun and nature, practice meditation and focus on the present moment.
A lot of the stress we experience is part of a narrative, a story we tell in our heads. Because of this, every time you feel that stress is affecting you, go to an isolated place, with a pen and notebook. In a single paragraph write a message of gratitude. Even in the middle of that stressful day, you can find gratitude for something in your life. Be creative and give a sincere effort into finding a source of gratitude and note it in the book.
6. Reduce the number of decisions being made.
Did you know that Steve Jobs always wore the same clothes? The legend goes that the founder of Apple didn’t want to use up his willpower making the decision of what to wear every day. In this way, he simply eliminated the need for this decision by wearing the same clothes every day.
Fact or fiction, the story of Steve Jobs has a certain foundation. With every decision that we have to make throughout the day, a little willpower is used up. This is called Decision Fatigue.
The reason why making decisions tires us is very simple: deciding is choosing; choosing is losing, and none of us likes to lose. In this way, when we decide to go for one thing at the expense of the other, part of us always wonders how it would have been if we’d have chosen the other thing. And this tires us out, even if we don’t realise it.
One of the secrets to reducing the need to make decisions is to reduce the number of possessions and material goods, keeping just the essential. Another secret is creating morning and nighttime rituals, as well as maintaining a list of habits and tasks.
Reflect for a few minutes. What are the decisions you need to make most days? Choose an area to simplify this week. Even if this means less variety in your life, you’ll profit from more willpower, as the focus of your attention will be dedicated to what really matters, and not on details of little importance.
Start small.
Keeping with the analogy that willpower is like a muscle, remember not to be too hard on yourself. Even the strongest of athletes start with light weights and progress with time.
You must do the same.
Start small in training your willpower and evolve over time. Start so small that it’s impossible to invent an excuse for procrastination.
But start now. Retake control of your life now.
Your dusty life goals. Your stationary dreams. The plans you dreamt up with so much enthusiasm and hope and afterwards abandoned. Everything must get back on track now.
And don’t fool yourself. Now is not too early: you can’t leave it until tomorrow. And now isn’t too late: you can’t think that the time has already passed.