“Remember, you and you alone are responsible for maintaining your energy. Give up blaming, complaining and excuse making, and keep taking action in the direction of your goals – however mundane or lofty they may be.”
With a busy schedule, making time to exercise was an ongoing challenge for me. Four years ago my wife decided to pursue a professional degree, and combined with running businesses and raising a son, my life conditions significantly changed. Initially, I did not adjust my strategies, and as a result, I routinely missed workouts. My mental health suffered and I began to see a negative impact on my life.
As I discovered, life routinely presents challenges and your ability to work through setbacks or changing conditions will determine if you thrive in this world. Willpower plays an important role in making breakthroughs in life and is now commonly identified as a key trait for helping you become successful. Having willpower is worth developing and certainly will set you apart from your peers.
Willpower is extremely important but I do not believe mental toughness alone tells the whole story. The key to persevering through challenges is to have effective strategies and establish successful habits. When I changed my strategies, I have not missed a day of exercise in several years.
A few facts you should know about willpower:
Willpower is defined as the ability to control your actions; having a strong determination that allows you to do something difficult. Resiliency, willpower or mental toughness are routinely used to describe your ability to work through tough moments and challenges. Willpower is exhaustible-meaning that it can waver and needs time to recover. In challenging moments when resiliency is needed, your willpower can be compromised, and this can decrease your creativity, focus, impulse control, and an ability to persevere through tough times. Because willpower lacks endurance, combining effective strategies will help support your purpose.
If you believe your consistency is not where it should be, you are not necessarily mentally weak, you could be using ineffective strategies, not creating a favorable environment or relying too heavily on willpower. When you understand how easily your willpower can waver, you will begin to appreciate the importance of establishing an effective strategy that helps you persevere through challenges.
Here are 10 tips to help your willpower
Tip 1: Be Aware of the Impact Life Events Have on Your Willpower
Understand how life events may compromise your resolve to stick with your objective. Look for ways to reduce stress in all areas of your life and this will save energy for supporting your desired changes. A good start for helping your willpower is to know what reduces your self-control.
- Implementing new behaviors
- Filtering distractions
- Resisting temptations
- Suppressing emotion
- Restraining Aggression
- Suppressing impulses
- Taking tests
- Trying to impress others
- Coping with fear
- Doing something you do not enjoy
- Selecting long term, delayed rewards over short term gratification
- Hunger
- Tired
- Stress
- Lonely
- long work day
Tip 2: Train Your Willpower
Practice using willpower and you will become better at exerting self-control. When you combine willpower with effective rituals and habits, you create an easier path to do the right thing.
Tip 3: Create a Supportive Environment
People are incredibly sensitive to their surroundings and your willpower would benefit from creating a supportive environment. Pay close attention to the people you spend time with and how you manage your entire household. Do not ignore how much your environment shapes your life and avoid behaviors and people that sap your energy, divert focus, and reduce your willpower.
Seek out a person you consider mentally tough and ask them what they do to accomplish their goals. Recruiting a trusted family member or a friend will also help support your progress.
Tip 4: Be Well Rested
Be well rested and have energy when willpower is needed. Being tired depletes your self-control and you can lose your motivation.
Tip 5: Focus on Brightspots
Avoid being focused on the sacrifices and how difficult the challenges will be for you. Instead, focus on the positive outcomes from your behavior and the bright spots along your journey. Establish a vision of the possibilities in yourself.
Tip 6: Make Choices in Advance
Make healthy or desirable choices in advance and in moments of greatest strength.
Examples of helping your self control:
- Eat from a smaller container often results in eating less.
- Ask the restaurant server if they can box up half of your meal before they serve it.
- Fill your plate with extra vegetables
- Avoid environments or situations that trigger old, less desirable habits.
- Make meal choices well before mealtime when you are not hungry.
Tip 7: Plan to Tackle Difficult Challenges at Peak Energy Times
When you have peak energy, tackle your most difficult challenge of the day.
Tip 8: Establish Good Habits.
You can use habits to help establish healthy patterns and free up mental energy. If you want your behaviors to be running on auto pilot, commit to daily rituals and develop habits so eventually you will not rely heavily on willpower. Developing good habits will create an automatic routine and this starts by understanding the habit loop: set up a cue that triggers the pattern, which gives you a reward.
I use this strategy to help me exercise daily: I set out my running shoes and clothes for easy access in the morning (the cue), I go for a 30 minute run (the pattern), and I feel great and have improved health (the reward). You will establish your habits by consistently craving your rewards and strategically planning triggers to motivate action. A great resource to learn more on habits is “THE POWER OF HABIT WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO IN LIFE AND BUSINESS”, by Charles Duhigg.
Tip 9: Forgive Temporary Setbacks
A single mistake does not mean you are mentally weak. It may mean you have already exceeded the limits of your current ability or willpower and now you deserve a rest or reward to restore your strength.
Tip 10: Provide Yourself with Simple and Clear Direction
-Have a written goal
-Script the critical moves. Make the direction clear, precise, and simple
Unclear Goals
-I want to be healthier
-I want to reduce my calorie and fat intake
-I want to associate with people that have a positive influence on me
-I want to be a better worker
-I want to save money
-I want to be more productive with my time
-I want to be a better leader
Clear Path Goals
-I will exercise 4 x/wk for 30 minutes every morning before work
-The next time I am grocery shopping, I will write down on my list and purchase 1% or skim milk instead of whole milk
-I will clearly define my positive role models and/or mentors and reach out to them 2x/wk to discuss my goals/issues
-I will set up a feedback session on [set a specific date] with my supervisor so I can determine what steps I need to improve my value at work
-By [set a specific date], I will determine a spending plan and determine how much money each month I can save and/or invest
-I will create a must do list and write down a set time to accomplish each task.
-I will read leadership books or listen to videos 1 hour per day at [set a specific time]
“Willpower is essential to the accomplishment of anything worthwhile.”
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