8 Easy Steps To Improve Your Willpower
This is the time of year when many of us are working to improve parts of our life, lose weight, quit smoking, get fit, build good habits or change/stop bad habits. But it is not always easy, and whilst some may be struggling a little, others may well have given up already and reverted back to their old, familiar habits and behaviours.
It is our willpower that makes all the difference to our success - the inner strength that enables us to persevere with whatever we are working towards achieving or attempting to resist. Plentiful stores of willpower are essential for making any change, enabling us to reject immediate satisfaction, pleasure or comfort, in order to gain something better, even if it requires effort and time to gain.
The most famous study on this subject was carried out by Walter Mischel. He found that children who decided to delay gratification by 15 minutes in order to earn themselves a double portion of marshmallows, displayed much stronger willpower and when followed up years later, were found to have far higher life successes when measured in terms of education, performance at work, health, and other metrics - compared with the children who showed much lower willpower by choosing instant gratification and taking only a single portion of marshmallows.
The great news though is that willpower is NOT fixed. Growing research suggests that willpower should be considered a muscle and one that we can train and develop through very simple activities, in the same way that we are able to exercise our muscles and increase our physical strength and fitness. Put simply, the more we use our willpower, the stronger it becomes.
Here are some simple ways to help:
An easy way to strengthen your self-discipline is to make yourself an unbending rule - to refuse to be controlled by laziness. For example, force yourself to wash up the few dishes in the sink, NOW! rather than later. No longer avoid, procrastinate, or be lazy. Steadfastly refuse to allow laziness to win and to control you and the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
Set yourself achievable goals and have realistic expectations of yourself. Results and achievements (no matter how small) give us a release of dopamine, the feel-good neurochemical. Equally, when you set unrealistic goals, you are losing the game before you even start. An easy and very effective way of encouraging a release of dopamine is to document your results and efforts. Some people do this by keeping a log/record of their actions, or by ticking off their achievements and activities completed on a list or plan. Each tick gives a sense of accomplishment and a spike of dopamine and our willpower skyrockets.
Our willpower is often much weaker when we are tired. With that in mind, make getting quality sleep a priority. If we have slept well, we can cope with almost anything. If we are shattered and wading through treacle, our willpower and self-discipline are significantly tested. It is much harder to resist the biscuit tin, or bottle of wine when we feel this way so doing everything, we can in advance to avoid this situation is a very wise step.
‘Healthy’ stress management techniques will help to strengthen your willpower. Reaching for a cigarette, chocolate, or a beer is very tempting when we have had a particularly demanding day and we feel wound up like a tight spring. But if we succumb, we only feel worse as guilt, disappointment, or regret washes over us. In contrast, if we make ourselves go out for a short, brisk walk, run or cycle ride to help us unwind, we gain in so many ways. First, there are the benefits we get from the fresh air, vitamin D from the sun, and the physical activity of movement - all of which serve to boost our energy levels, improve our mood, and ironically significantly reduce our stress - but secondly, we avoid the feeling of guilt or disappointment and instead strengthen our willpower muscle through the much-deserved sense of pride that we feel by taking much healthier steps to reduce our stress.
Minimise temptation and create a more helpful environment. Many of our habits are environment-specific, so if we change the environmental cues and remove temptation, it makes changing our habits or behaviours so much easier. For example, if you want to avoid using alcohol, going to a pub or to a party is probably a big mistake. You'll have to exercise your willpower constantly, and it may quickly become depleted. However, if you spend the same evening going to the cinema with a friend who doesn't drink, or to a fitness class, etc., you won't be surrounded by the alcohol you're trying to avoid.
Keep your promises to yourself. We often stick firmly to the promises we make to our friends and loved ones and yet find it very easy to break promises to ourselves. We are just as important, and we must value ourselves enough to stick to our promises. If you promise yourself that you will do a 3-mile run first thing in the morning, and you keep your promise, you not only feel great from the exercise itself, but you also feel huge satisfaction from keeping the promise - both of which serve to maintain and grow your inner self-discipline muscle and willpower.
Keep going. We are all human and you will have really good days and some not so good days. Don’t allow one slip-up to carry into the next day, see each day as a fresh start and another opportunity to keep practicing your helpful strategies. Some poor habits might be hard to break, but as long as you keep your goal in mind and work on strengthening your willpower, nothing is impossible.
If you feel you would benefit from working with a Life Coach and speed up your success, please do feel free to drop me a line on dawn@milestone-coaching.co.uk or visit www.milestone-coaching.co.uk
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For further information or to contact Dawn, visit www.milestone-coaching.co.uk
Willpower - One Of The Key Determinants Of Both Personal And Professional Success.
