Week #6: Willpower
What It Is
In its simplest form, willpower is our ability to control ourselves and delay short-term gratification in favor of long-term goals. It’s what allows us to restrain ourselves from indulging in emotionally-charged feel-good impulses today in order to create a better tomorrow. Willpower is passing on the jelly donut today to have a six-pack in six months. Willpower is contributing to that 401k instead of leasing that Dodge Charger today. Willpower is studying for that exam instead of heading to the bar with your friends. Willpower is going out and meeting real people instead of playing another game of Halo. Willpower is waking up at 4 am for that run instead of hitting snooze.
Willpower is something most of us are pretty terrible at exhibiting. This is the reason so many of us are fat, poor, and dumb. We live in the most comfortable, safest world in the history of humanity. We’re surrounded by temptations that test our willpower. And we often fail.
The heart of self-improvement is learning to exercise willpower. This is the sixth week of The Curvy Road Project. Think about the four foundational ideas we covered in the first four weeks. How many of us have done what we need to do to get good sleep, have eaten a good diet, have been exercising regularly, and have been meditating at least twice daily?
I know I haven’t.
I mean, I’ve been pretty good, but FAR from perfect. Why? Because my willpower has been tested by potato chips, wine, a comfy bed, and Facebook. It’s like any other exercise, though. We’re not going to be great in the beginning; we just keep at it. Over time, our ability to resist those temptations decreases. This post will give us some good strategies to continually improve our willpower.
The Problem with the Idea of Willpower
Okay, so now that I explained what willpower is and why it’s important, I’ll cast doubt on the entire concept. In recent years, psychologists have started to reconsider what willpower is and whether it’s actually important to success in life. The problem is a lot of early experiments on willpower haven’t been successfully replicated.
In all likelihood, though, this probably just means “willpower” is a more complicated concept than we think. The rather simplistic experiments devised to test the idea of “willpower” just haven’t been able to capture that complexity.
How to Do It Right
Regardless of what the science says, there are some concrete steps we can take to exercise more willpower. Relevant to The Curvy Road Project, we want to get better at getting enough high-quality sleep, eating the right foods in the right quantities, exercising regularly, and meditating daily. Here’s how:
Step #1: Make a plan.
Make a daily plan and stick to it. The idea is to set up a series of habits that remove decisions from our day-to-day routine. The less we have to think, the less we’ll be presented with temptations we have to resist. The plan should include, at a minimum:
When we wake up.
When we eat and, if possible, what we’re going to eat.
When we exercise.
When we meditate.
When we go to bed.
My own plan looks something like this:
4:00 am: Wake up, make coffee, meditate for 10 minutes.
4:15: Eat a piece of fruit (for the carbs), drink a few cups of coffee, and do some writing if time allows.
5:00: Go to the gym for the primary lifting workout.
5:45: Take the dogs on a run.
6:30: Eat meal #1 (breakfast), prep food for the other meals for the day, and do some writing if time allows.
7:25: Start getting ready for work.
10:00: Eat meal #2.
1:00 pm: Eat meal #3.
4:00: Get off work, and do the secondary lifting workout.
5:00: Run errands, do chores, or take care of anything else that needs to be done.
8:00: Meditate for about 10 minutes, then read until I fall asleep.
I keep this schedule throughout the week (though Wednesdays are rest days; no exercise.) On weekends, I have a far more flexible plan. I’m considering changing this, though, because that unstructured time is when I’m most likely to skip exercise, eat too much, or decide to drink wine when I really shouldn’t.
Step #2: Get enough sleep, eat a good diet, exercise, and meditate.
The four foundational skills combine to reduce anxiety, regulate our bodily systems, and keep us functioning at an optimal level. Together, they create circumstances where exercising willpower is much easier.
Step #3: Reframe the internal battle into an act of compassion.
I initially discussed this idea in the “food cravings” post from a few weeks ago. Most of the time, when we desire something, we create an internal struggle. The “good” side of us wants to resist the temptation. The “bad” side of us wants to succumb to the temptation. If the good side winds out, we feel like we’re depriving ourselves. If the bad side wins out, we feel shitty for not being able to resist. It’s a lose-lose situation.
A better strategy, when confronted with a temptation, is to think about the future self we’re working to become. Our decision to do the “good” thing now becomes a gift we’re giving that future self. Why? Because we really like that future self and we want them to be successful.
That simple mental reframing exercise eliminates that lose-lose, good-versus-bad dilemma into something that’s entirely positive. I’ve been using this strategy for a while, and it works surprisingly well.
There’s still an issue of “FOMO” (fear of missing out) where we rationalize those temptations. After all, life is short and we should enjoy ourselves. For that reason, I like to plan my debauchery so it fits in with the bigger plan of self-improvement.
Step #4: Learn to like stuff that’s good for us.
The simplest (but oftentimes hardest) solution is to learn to love doing the things that are good for us. It’s easy to get enough sleep when you love sleeping. It’s easy to eat a good diet when you love food that’s good for you. It’s easy to exercise when you love whatever you’re doing for exercise. It’s easy to meditate when you love the experience of meditating.
Step #5: Practice.
Expressing willpower can be thought of as a skill that can be practiced. The more you practice, the better you get. The general rules of willpower practice are much like exercise - start small and increase the workload progressively.
Conclusion
Willpower is our ability to control ourselves by putting off good feelings today for a payout tomorrow. Mastering willpower is one of the most important aspects of self-improvement. By following the five steps above, we can improve our ability to exhibit willpower.
Got your own favorite willpower techniques? Share them in our Facebook Group!
~Jason
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