By Tim Joshi
Studies show that 90% of people report not having enough willpower as the #1 barrier for not reaching their goals. This article explains what willpower is, why we struggle with it and how to use it more efficiently.
By the end of this article, reaching your goals will become easier! Also, those interested in experiencing a big shift in their willpower can get a pass to an interactive online course (that is the highest rated on Udemy) at the bottom of this page.
Willpower Meaning
Simply put, willpower is applying effort to doing something that doesn’t come easy. When something is easy or enjoyable, it doesn’t require much willpower.
What Is The Difference Between Willpower And Motivation?
Motivation is something you WANT to do at some level — it could be something enjoyable at one level or uncomfortable at another level — but ultimately, it is something that you want to do. Motivation is the “feel good” force of excitement and optimism that propels you into action.
Willpower is the force that keep you going no matter what. It is applying conscious effort to doing something that you, at some level, DO NOT WANT to do (it is uncomfortable or difficult for you). Willpower is the “embrace the grind” force of determination that keeps you going even when you are disillusioned or want to quit.
To reach most goals, you need BOTH willpower and motivation.
Motivation and willpower are siblings and work together. If you increase your deep motivation to do something, you may find yourself needing less willpower. When you have lots of willpower, you can keep going even when your motivation fails you.
How Does Willpower Work?
We have a deep biological urge for comfort. Every time we push ourselves into discomfort, our bodies and minds want to bring us back to the state of feeling good.
We use willpower to push ourselves out of comfort in order to achieve something valuable to us. However, the urges to return to comfort can be so powerful that they can wear down even large willpower reservoirs.
Diets push us into discomfort, so does studying for many students. If you observe carefully, you will realize that discomfort is involved everywhere you need to use willpower, and the urge to return to comfort taxes our willpower.
This urge can be very powerful. For example, drug addicts frequently risk their lives to get back to that state of comfort that the drugs give them.
As I will discuss later, the goal of permanent change is to bring yourself into a state of comfort and enjoyment while progressing to the goal that you are using your willpower for.
Where Does Willpower Come From?
While it is fantastic to have lots of willpower, studies show that successful people don’t have more willpower… they use it more efficiently. The efficient use of willpower has a greater impact on your life than the total amount of willpower that you have.
Willpower has 4 components that determine how much willpower you have or need to reach your goals.
1. Willpower Pool — it’s your base energy and vitality levels defining the quantity of your willpower bank.
2. Willpower Efficiency — it’s about how efficiently and effectively you use the willpower that you have.
3. Subconscious Patterns — these are likes and dislikes that determine how much willpower you need to take action.
4. Mindset — beliefs that you have about your goals, actions, and personal abilities.
Let’s explore each of them individually now.
How Do I Get More Willpower? (Increasing Your Willpower Pool)
You can do some simple thought experiments to realize where one very important source of your willpower comes from (scientific studies confirm these observations):
Ask yourself: if you have a nasty cold, are you more likely or less likely to work on your goals?…
Ask yourself: If you don’t sleep well, are you more likely or less likely to work on difficult goals?…
Less again, right?
Studies show that the more physical and mental energy and vitality you have, the more willpower you have. When you increase your energy and vitality levels, you will have more willpower too. To understand your willpower pool at a personal level, I created a free online assessment that you can use. You can measure your Willpower Pool for FREE and get suggestions on how to increase it — click here to check it out.
Willpower Hacks And Willpower Efficiency
Studies show that successful people don’t necessarily have more willpower, they use what they have more efficiently. When we look further, we find that successful individuals deploy simple strategies that allow them to use less willpower to reach goals and have more available to them all of the time. You can measure how efficiently you use your willpower right now with this FREE Willpower Efficiency assessment.
There are many willpower efficiency strategies that people apply to use less willpower to achieve their goals. You can download this pdf workbook that I created as a part of a course that describes 15 willpower efficiency strategies that you can use to reach your goals.
How Do I Strengthen My Willpower — Subconscious Patterns
Researchers have confirmed: our like or dislike of the taste of coffee is based on a subconscious pattern — not on the hardwiring of our brains or bodies. This is why our preferences for so many foods and drinks change over time.
Hypnotherapists have also frequently demonstrated that they can change the taste experience. Further, we all know that things taste better when we are really hungry and not nearly as good when we are full. Why?
Our taste buds haven’t changed, but the experience has altered completely. As such we can conclude that all our likes and dislikes can be influenced. We realize that our likes and dislikes are patterns deep in our subconscious minds that give rise to our life experiences.
You can shift your subconscious patterns to have more desire and less resistance to doing your goal activities. Examples of techniques that influence your subconscious patterns include:
How Do I Get Motivated — Willpower Mindset
Mindset determines how much willpower we use.
Developing a mindset that will reduce the willpower required and increase your results can be done rather quickly.
A Harvard study demonstrated impressive results from just a 15-minute session that influenced belief systems in a controlled experiment. If you want to learn more about this study and how mindset affects your willpower watch this short video.
Your approach to something determines how much willpower you need.
- If you hate a subject, you will need more willpower to study it than the one you like. If you see life meaning and value in a subject you are also more likely to study it.
- If you hate a diet and it makes you feel awful (full of cravings), you will need more willpower to stay on it than on the one that you enjoy. If you eat based on gratitude for your body and all that it does for you and eat as an offering of thanks to it you are more likely to eat healthy.
- If you dislike certain sports you will require more willpower to practice it than the one you can’t wait to do.
The people you know that love salad or super healthy foods and enjoy them need very little willpower to stay on a recommended diet that involves those foods than those that hate them.
Do you see where this is going? It’s not about forcing yourself to do things, but rather finding activities that you like that will still get you to that goal of yours! The other pattern is that the meaning of what you are doing really matters in how you experience the activity.
Mind and the elements of perception, processing, and experiencing of an activity impact how we ultimately feel about the activity whether it be studying, eating, or exercise. The mind is a complex instrument, and the better we are at tuning it, the easier it becomes to reach our goals.
Why Do We Give Up On Our Goals?
Pursuing our goals can create pain or suffering. We can create discomfort or unhappiness in ourselves for a short period of time, but it’s very difficult to do this for a long period of time.
Your subconscious impulses will always try to bring you back to your normal state of comfort. This is why 90% of people fail to make permanent changes in their lives.
How Do I Keep Going When I Want To Give Up?
The best way to keep going is to rebalance your success equation.
1. Can you increase joy and decrease your discomfort and still achieve your goal? This may take some creativity but can almost always be done. It can be done by finding a new activity that will take you to your goal. For example, dancing instead of jogging to get exercise to lose weight. Or make a list of healthy foods that you love.
2. Some techniques can change your subconscious programming or beliefs so that you suffer less and enjoy doing the activities you love. Arnold Schwarzenegger famously trained himself to enjoy muscle burn, allowing him to become the greatest bodybuilder of all time and a famous movie actor.
3. Replace or change your goal to something that is better for you and still gives you great benefits. An example of this includes positive career changes or changing a study major.
4. Push yourself out of a bad habit and into a good one until the good one becomes enjoyable. This happens through positive adaptation.
People naturally built for distance running often have difficulty at first but once their bodies adapt they love it. Others that are not built for distance running may not adapt to it but will adapt to another sport, such as swimming.
We see this with diet as well. Our bodies need to adapt to diet changes. When we discover a truly good diet for us, and our body adapts to it, we feel great and don’t want to leave it.
This happens for every truly positive lifestyle choice. Being healthy in body and mind feels good and very comfortable — the temporary discomfort while going through the adaptation phase to get there is worth it! Reducing discomfort through the adaptation phase is often the key to success.
Is Willpower Over-rated?
Some say that willpower is overrated, but if you really think about it, without willpower, you would always stay in your comfort zone, and very little change and growth would occur in your life.
Some say willpower allows us to get out of bed and embrace life. We are all born with willpower that drives us to crawl, walk, and then run. We learn and grow and develop good habits with willpower.
A better question may be: Are there times when we should not use our willpower, or our willpower is wasted?
The answer to this is: Yes.
We should not use our willpower to do the things that are:
For example, if you want to lose weight and have a bad knee, you don’t want to take on an exercise that further harms your knee. You don’t want to use your willpower to succeed at a career or field of study that makes you miserable. There might be a happier option.
Remember, you want to use your willpower to get through an adaptation period or a temporary state until you are in a better state and life feels good.
When I first started doing yoga, I hated it. Now it is a big part of my life. I don’t love it to the point where I just want to do it all the time but I have better days overall when I do it. So the net feelings are positive for me.
Use your willpower to improve your life and get to a net positive state in your life! So this for one thing at a time and you will find yourself blessed!
Epilogue: How To Achieve Goals
You have learned the most powerful things about willpower, but this learning is only the beginning for you. You can go much further by learning exactly how to put these principles into practice.
The way I help people do this is with a free interactive course that I have created. This way, motivated individuals can achieve their most important goal and then all their goals for the rest of their lives.
The course How To Achieve Goals Using Less Willpower has been the highest-rated Course by Udemy in the area of motivation and goal setting. This Course is NOW available FOR FREE on my website for a LIMITED TIME.
The regular price for this course is $199. Sign-up here.
I wish you success in all that you do!
…Oh, and remember to share this article with anyone who might need it.
Originally published at https://www.timjoshi.com.
