Do You Want More Willpower?
Probably my all-time favorite book on self development is ‘Your Brain At Work’ by David Rock.
In the book Rock talks about the fact that willpower is a finite resource driven by your energy levels, and as such it usually depletes as the day goes along.
Your brain acquires energy via sleep and oxygen as well as food and drink that it then converts to glucose to keep itself going.
A deficit of one or more of those things means your brain gets very cranky and stops working properly and your decision making abilities decrease rapidly.
You can of course give yourself a boost of willpower by drinking a high energy drink which rapidly converts into glucose, but it’s probably not ideal to jump on that roller coaster too often because when it wears off you will feel even worse.
When Willpower Starts To Wane
Imagine you’ve spent all day mentally saying, “No I won’t eat you” to the piece of your favorite cheesecake your partner selfishly left in the fridge before going off to work.
By the time he gets home (it’s bound to be a him, no woman would do such a cruel thing!) you may well be a quivering, salivating wreck and want to stab him through the heart with a red hot poker or any other available pointy instrument.
And that’s because, every time you’ve said ‘no’ you’ve used up a bit more energy and drained a little bit more of your willpower.
I bet you can think back to a time when your willpower was completely depleted and you crumbled under the pressure of some instant gratification.
Maybe it was that cookie at the end of a hard day when you were on a diet. Or maybe it was that ice cold beer offered to you on a hot day after you’ve sworn to lay off the booze for a month.
But Was Your Willpower Tank Really Running On Empty?
Let’s take the cheesecake scenario as an example.
100 times that day (and trust me that’s not an unreasonable number) your mind had drifted off on its own thinking how great it would be to eat that cake and 100 times the executive part of your brain had responded by saying “No cake, it’s not yours!”
However on the 101st occasion your mind has had enough of just saying no and sets off down a complicated route of self justification why doing the dirty deed was not just ok, but a down right necessity.
Consequently you head off to the kitchen with a big grin on your face and a fork in your hand.
Unfortunately for you I’ve arrogantly taken it upon myself to be your Life Coach, and I’m stood by the fridge brandishing the worlds most powerful handgun, a Smith & Wesson Model 500 as well as my own rather satanic grin.
I invite you to eat the cake, but as I do I pull the worlds cutest baby Koala Bear from my pocket and level the gun at the little fellas head and advise you that if you eat the cake, my eucalyptus eating friend gets it.
For the sake of this quite frankly ridiculous example I’m going to presume you’re a devout animal lover (if you’re not, pretend I have the gun at your own head).
As such you immediately back away from the cheesecake quite rightly appalled at the thought of seeing bits of bloody fur all over your kitchen ceiling.
Where did that new found will power to say no come from?
Did you have some resources all the time that you were unaware of?
Well of course you did, you never really exhausted your will power, you were just very low and needed some extra motivation to tap into it.
My opinion is that we almost never run out of willpower, but we do run out of the ability to recognize it’s there.
I wrote a post on this subject last year in which I explained motivation always trumps willpower, although I’m not sure I went deep enough.
What Drives Motivation?
Let’s take a look at a slightly more sensible example to demonstrate what I mean.
There have been plenty of prisoners the world over interrogated using sleep deprivation until they were so worn down by the process they were willing to confess to crimes they never committed.
I know this is somewhat contrived, but please humor me because it makes an important point.
Imagine as the person was about to sign the confession his entire family were marched into the room by an equally aggressive opposing force.
He was then told if he did make his false confession his family would be executed on the spot.
What do you think he’d do?
My guess is he’d go through whatever torture his original captors threw at him and even accept death rather than be the cause of his own families death.
What both examples have in common is when the people concerned were struggling to resist temptation and thought their the willpower tank was empty they shifted their focus.
And they shifted their focus on to their values, because it’s your values that motivate you.
In the first example cheesecake was good, but not as good as saving the Koala Bear and a number of core values could be making their presence felt:
- Mercy
- Integrity (if the person was genuinely an animal lover)
- Justice
- Kindness
- Compassion
Or the person may be much more motivated by moving away from their anti-values such as:
- Brutality
- Disgust
- Aggression
In the second example core values such as the following could have risen to the surface:
- Family
- Bravery
- Leadership
- Legacy
So if the answer to the question posed in the title is ‘yes’ then spend more time focused on your values because that’s how you do it.
The more I study, work with, get feedback from clients and write about values, the more convinced I am that they are without question the single most important and underrated aspect of successful self development.
A lot of people talk about them, but few understand their true worth in my opinion.
If you want to know more about values check out Aligning With Your Core Values, because I promise you if you do the work and implement the results you can start to change your world for the better.
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I do this every summer, but as I say, it is only open to subscribers.
If you’re interested, sign up in the box on the left and get two very cool ebooks on motivational quotes and how to set goals by way of thanks into the bargain.
Hope i could buy some willpower from 7eleven! just articles like this proves how to get it bit more, thanks!
7eleven don’t sell it but Wal-Mart do.
Love that cheesecake example coz its my favorite too. Nice strategy. Thanks for posting.
You’re welcome Shania!
I love the example of the cheesecake because it is truly my FAVE dessert, but I can tell you that the way I get more willpower is to remove the source of WANT from my house. As you say, I would think about the cheesecake 100 times a day until it was all gone :). Tim, does that mean I have no self discipline?
Exactly my strategy!
Let me get this straight? TO get willpower, I can go with a boost energy drink or spend my life identifying, evaluating and re-prioritizing my values?
What energy drink do you recommend?
I suggest Red Bull washed down with a dozen caffeine tablet, I think that should be your first course of action.
You’ll end up with no teeth, adrenal fatigue and poor sleeping habits, but the savings in time are well worth worth it.
Aghh.. the food example was perfect!
Anyway, for so long I’ve been looking for motivation, as that seems to be what is lacking in my life right now. i’m glad I read this useful post.
I never really looked closely at the values I hold dear until you mentioned them. The focus does changes and you definitely renew your outlook.
Thanks Tim!
And above all Glori make sure the values you *think* you hold dear are indeed the right ones. I’ve never had a client who truly knew his or her values.
Also, they do have a tendency to be at least somewhat contextual.
That’s one of my favorite go-to books as well. I second your high recommendation.
Now the gun, koala, cheesecake dilemma. Yes, willpower diminishes over the course of the day. That’s one reason why cold turkey is a dismal way to quit smoking. When you point the gun at the furry little critter, you haven’t shot me back to willpower resources. You’ve activated fear and survival circuits. That’s a whole different beast than willpower.
I’ve used your method to discover my number one value is Freedom. Another method says it’s Love of Learning followed by Freedom. A gun threat, or any threat, will violate that value. I will find a way to get around you and have my cheesecake too.
This gets into aversion techniques, and I have low opinion of them.
It’s a first. I disagree with you, Tim. Had to happen eventually! Ha!
Dissent in the ranks, fantastic!
I need to give this some more thought because you’re right my examples were too extreme and would indeed trigger the limbic system that would override values.
Thanks for pointing that out mate. I’m still convinced of the meat of the post, I just didn’t think it through carefully enough.
This works with more than just eating and confessions :D
Earlier this year, when I was stuck in my comfort zone procrastinating the day away, I finally reached a point where I began focusing on what was important to me. I realized that I wanted my goals more than “sitting on the couch”, so I began to take action. If I hadn’t shifted my focus to what I valued, I’d still be stuck on the couch!
Thanks for sharing, Tim!
The couch misses you :-(
Thanks to you I now own “Your Brain at Work” and you are right about its greatness. These are terrific examples of tapping into reserves of willpower as they relate to values. Never thought of it that way. I recently bought a Mississippi Mud cheesecake for a charity fundraiser and when it arrived begged (didn’t require much actually) my husband to take it to his office. Saving my willpower for something else because I wasn’t entirely certain that the “fitting into my summer pants” value would win over the “deliciousness of the cake” value. (Know those aren’t really values, but you get the drift.)
Lol – well done you.
If I don’t intend drinking I simply don’t have alcohol in the house, that way I don’t need any restraint!
Glad you liked the book.
Great points.. and I read just in time… The doughnuts just showed up at the office!!
Let me know if you resisted.
OTOH, maybe an occasional doughnut is no big deal unless you weigh 300lbs!
Without willpower no body makes success. For increase the willpower it’s a helpful and necessary post. like it very much .Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome Logan!
As a matter of fact, it all boils down to:
If there’s a wish, there’s a way.
Right? :)
I really like how you vividly described the idea. Great post, Tim!
Not surer about that bud, wishing sounds a tad to vague for me. A wish is like a goal without a plan.
I get where you’re coming from, but… I wonder if I could actually stop myself overeating just by imagining you pointing a gun at me each time I fancied another caramel Rocky bar. Over time, wouldn’t I just get used to the threat and adapt to it, and end up stuffing myself with choccy biccy goodness, imaginary bullet to the cranium be damned!
Until I can find a reliable way to consistently boost my willpower, the “what if I pointed a gun at you?” argument seems a little academic.
Or am I missing something?
Yeh you’re missing something ;-)
That was merely an example. I wasn’t meaning somebody pretend that’s happening every time. I was merely pointing out that the willpower is there if we can shift our focus.
The fact is, not eating the biscuit may not be an issue for you or out of alignment with your values, so give me an example of something you regularly do that is out of alignment and I can work with that.