The following strategies take willpower to do, but pay you back for that initial investment many times over by giving you more willpower capacity for any willpower-related decisions you’re making in your life. Note that I am NOT meaning this in a metaphorical sense – these activities literally change your brain in ways that make you better at willpower.

1. Exercise
2. Meditation.
3. Enough Sleep.
4. Repeatedly practicing self regulation in order to increase your self regulatory strength over time (but not to the extent of overly depleting your willpower).

For this post, I’m going to focus on #1 and #4.

At this point, I should say that there is no way I would personally be doing many of the things I recommend if I wasn’t fairly constantly exposed to reading the research evidence showing the benefits.

I’m going to explain the results of one specific study that often causes my therapy clients’ jaws to drop when I show it to them.

First, we will locate a copy of the study. Scoot over here and look at the page labelled pg. 725 of this pdf. (It’s page 9 of 17 of the actual pdf – I’m not asking you to open a 725 page file). Open the pdf in new tab in your browser. There are 3 graphs on the page – labelled Figures 4-6. Just find the page for a start and I’ll explain below.

What The Study Shows

The people in the study were given a free gym membership. They logged their exercise using self monitoring forms but they weren’t instructed to do a particular amount. (Tip: Consistent self monitoring by itself usually leads to improvements in whatever you monitor). They weren’t instructed to try to make other life changes but that is what happened. You can see in the graphs of the pdf (labelled Figs 4-6 on pg 725) that the following all decreased a little after 1 month of exercising, and then decreased further after 2 months of exercising:

- Cigarettes
- Caffeine
- Alcohol
- Junk food
- Impulsive Spending
- Over Eating
- Losing Temper
- Choosing to spend time with friends instead of study
- Choosing to watch TV instead of studying
- Missing appointments
- Putting stuff off until later
- Leaving dishes in the sink

- Healthy eating increased.

You’ll see the graphs each include 3 bars. From left to right, these bars show participants’ behavior at the start of the study (baseline), after the first month of the study, and after the 2nd month of the study.

How Did It Happen

Practicing self regulation in one area (i.e., going to the gym) strengthened participants’ brain-level self regulatory capacity.

The way they measured brain-level self regulatory capacity was that they gave participants a task designed to deplete willpower (Participants were asked to try hard to NOT think about a White Bear. This is called a Thought Suppression task) and then got them to do a computer task and tracked how many errors participants made on the computer task. Note that the researchers were interested in how well participants did at the computer task and not the thought suppression task – the thought suppression task was part of the study just to deplete some of participants’ willpower.

The computer task was a Visual Tracking Task that involved needing to play close attention to details in order to track visual stimuli across a computer screen while a distracting video of Edie Murphy was playing. (Weird sounding tasks are normal for psychology studies – a lot of consideration goes into designing them.)

Participants overall made fewer mistakes on the Visual Tracking Task after 1 month of exercising and fewer mistakes again after 2 months of exercising. This is shown by the light grey bars in the graph labelled Fig 3 on page 723 of the pdf. (The black bars on the graph are participants’ performance on the Visual Tracking Task before doing the Thought Suppression Task. You’ll notice that there is no change in this. This is there to show that it wasn’t just participants getting better at the Visual Tracking Task from having done it before. At each time of measurement, the participants did the Visual Tracking Task once, then the Thought Suppression Task, and then did the Visual Tracking Task again. The researchers were only interested in Visual Tracking Task performance after the Thought Suppression Task and not before it, because they wanted to measure self regulatory stamina after a task that was designed to deplete willpower a bit).

In addition to the average improvement across all the participants in the study, participants who improved their brain-level self regulatory capacity the most, showed the biggest improvements in real world self-regulatory behavior. (For people who understand correlation tables, you can see this in Table 4 on page 728 of the pdf.)

What You Can Do

Pick 1 thing you’re not doing out of: Getting Enough Sleep, Meditation, or Exercise, that you are prepared to do so that you give yourself the best shot of achieving your identified Willpower Goal. This should help you in all the little moments when you need to make decisions related to your Willpower Goal.

There is an example that I love in this book of someone who pasted a label that said “Willpower” over the words “calories burned” on his treadmill so that when we saw the number ticking up as he worked out, instead of calories burned it signaled willpower gained.

You could do any version of this yourself e.g., track the number of minutes you meditate each day or hours you sleep and label this as willpower you have banked that will be returned to you when you need it with a lot of interest.

Read Another Post About: 21 Days of Tips about Willpower

Behavior is typically motivated by some type of reward/reinforcement.

What motivates people to buy scratch and win tickets?

It’s the anticipation of possible reward. Actual reward (i.e., actually winning) might never have been experienced. The behavior of buying the tickets is reinforced by the positive feeling of anticipating possible reward.

Why do advertisements for Coke feature hot, naked people? It’s partly because in our evolutionary history, the presence of a naked person likely meant sex was a possibility (unlike now when it so often means someone is trying to sell something).

When we detect a signal of possible reward, our Dopamine neurons fire very strongly, activating our attention and behavior towards seeking that reward (Saying “Yes”).

Going to a Cafe

Let’s say you are trying to reduce your consumption of certain foods and go to a cafe. Your Dopamine neurons fire in response to all the cues associated with a reward being on offer – the sight of the menu, the waiters bustling around, the other patrons getting their orders, and the cakes on display in the cabinet.

This might be a case where the feelings your experience associated with anticipation of reward are a more powerful reinforcer of cake purchasing behavior than the pleasure of actually eating a piece cake.

Anticipation of reward is a type of pleasure feeling but it’s different from the pleasure feeling associated with actually experiencing something.

(Notice that this is not quite the same as the idea that you think you’re going to enjoy the cake more than you actually do – although this could be true too.)

Which of your unwanted behaviors is motivated by the anticipation of reward?

To Try Yourself

If you have a willpower goal related to saying No to temptations, rate some situations associated with your willpower goal in terms of

- How strongly are you experiencing feelings associated with the anticipation of reward? How intensely are your Dopamine neurons firing? 0 – 10 (0 = none, 10 = intense)
- How strong are the feelings of actual reward when you do partake? 0 – 10 (0 = none, 10 = intense).

Sometimes it’s just helpful to know that your behavior is being driven by the anticipation of reward and your Dopamine surging, rather than actual reward. It can help you understand better.

Because Dopamine firing is so powerful, that’s why willpower strategies tend to work better for helping the alcoholic not go into the bar compared to helping them not drink the alcohol when it’s already sitting in front of them (I’m using this as a metaphor). In the presence of stimuli we are trying to say No to, or cues strongly associated with upcoming reward/reward being on offer, the person’s Dopamine is already surging and Dopamine turns on behavior.

What You Can Do If You Find Yourself In the Presence of Strong Anticipation of Reward Cues

- Take yourself physically away from the cues.

- Once you’ve done that, DON’T try to suppress thoughts about the reward. Often the main mechanism that creates ongoing intrusive thoughts is that the person is attempting “thought suppression.” There is a mountain of research showing that attempting thought suppression causes more of the thoughts you’re trying to suppress rather than less, and that it strongly depletes willpower reserves. (This can be where it’s useful to know some skills from mindfulness based cognitive therapy, because you can learn to observe your thoughts without getting stressed out by them and allow them to naturally dissipate on their own).

- Sensitize yourself to actual reward (e.g., mindful eating, enjoying nature) so that you get pleasure from actual reward as well as anticipating reward.

Read Another Post About: 21 Days of Tips about Willpower

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify the next time you’re experiencing the “Oh Bugger It Effect,” while it’s occurring.

The Oh Bugger It Effect refers to when you’re in the middle of violating one of your willpower rules and, once you notice you’ve broken your rules, you completely surrender to temptation, and either plan to start again on Monday, tomorrow, next month, etc or tell yourself you’ve failed again.

Examples
- eating binges
- drinking binges
- shopping
- destructive arguing
- staying up late
- spending 3 hours on FB or writing emails
- skipping exercise
- ruminating without attempting alternative coping

- skipping anything you have committed to doing as part of the willpower process (e.g., weighing yourself once a week or doing self monitoring if you are participating in binge eating treatment)

- skipping one of the precursor behaviors – e.g., skipping putting clean yoga gear in the car the night before, skipping planning your meals for the week before going to the supermarket, skipping making a shopping list.

- doing something that increases the chance of willpower failure later e.g., buying big bags of potato chips at the supermarket, agreeing to do another activity near your planned supermarket trip time meaning that you will be rushed at the supermarket if your day runs a little bit late.

- You haven’t called your Mum in 2 weeks and you think, I’ll do it next week.

- You haven’t called any of your friends in 2 weeks and you think, I’ll do it next week.

- You’re in a situation that is triggering self sabotaging thoughts e.g., I’m at dinner with my family and they’re all overeating.

Alternative Coping

You’ll need to plan an alternative coping response for when you notice you’re mid Oh Bugger It Effect.

Include two components

1. A Self Compassion Statement
2. A Skillful Behavioral Response

A Self Compassion Statement

Self criticism destroys willpower. For example, here’s a study that showed that reducing self criticism led to restrained eaters eating fewer lollies after eating a donut.

A self compassion response needs to include
a) Mindfulness
b) A sense of Common Humanity
c) Self Kindness

Here’s a sample Self Compassion Response. For example, you’ve eaten 5 pieces of toast and you’re tempted to start on the big tub of ice cream in the fridge.

“Hey – this is the Oh Bugger it Effect! (mindfulness). Right now I feel disgust, shame, and anxiety. This is a really common situation people find themselves in – I’m not the only one that struggles with it (common humanity). This is a moment of suffering and I’m going to treat myself how I’d treat a good friend. I’m going to give myself proper comfort for the strong emotions I’m feeling rather than more food. (self-kindness)”

Write one for yourself related to your willpower goal, so that you can read it when you need to.

A Skillful Behavioral Response

What type of skillful behavioral responses could you make when you notice the Oh Bugger It Effect is happening?

Prepare some ideas for your typical “Oh Bugger It Effect” situations.

For the person above, it might be

- doing an alternative activity that’s incompatible with continuing bingeing e.g., going to the uni library even if its just to read magazines.
or
- doing something s/he finds physiologically soothing e.g., having a cuddle with her cat.
AND
- eating at her next scheduled time for eating rather than skipping or extending out that time, as per binge eating treatment protocol.

Prepare these ideas for a skillful behavioral response in advance. Don’t include ideas you won’t actually do.

Read Another Post About: 21 Days of Tips about Willpower

In order to achieve your willpower goal…

What do you need to say Yes to?

What do you need say No to?

Answering these questions will help you identify your decision points.

Examples:

If your willpower goal is eating more fruits and vegetables, you might write

- “I need to say Yes to buying salad ingredients at the supermarket.”

- “I need to say No to eating lunch for 2 or more consecutive days at places that do not serve fruits and vegetables (e.g., the Donut cart)”

- “I need to say Yes to preparing my lunch after cleaning up the dinner dishes”

If your willpower goal is improving your relationship, you might write

- “I need to say Yes to doing my share of the household chores”

- “I need to say No to being on my computer after 10pm”

- “I need to say Yes to Connecting Time after 10pm.”

The above can help you identify potential times of low willpower. You’ll need to identify alternative coping to deal with these.

In addition, given that decision making itself uses up willpower, you’ll want to reduce decision making as much as possible. For example, having a bedtime routine means you won’t need to make completely new decisions each night. Or, having a shopping list of salad ingredients will help reduce decision making about what you need to buy. Or, having a babysitter regularly booked will help reduce the decision making necessary to go out. Having a day of the week when you do eat a donut for lunch will reduce decision making about which days you’re not going to do that.

What’s one routine you’d be happy to implement that would reduce willpower drain from decision making?

Lastly, write yourself a card or a post it note that states the main positive benefit (e.g., greater well-being) you hope to experience as a result of achieving your willpower goal. Put this somewhere you’re see it near the beginning of each day. You can copy this from yesterday’s exercise.

If all this feels too hard to do on your own

Book an appointment with a psychology PhD and identify the Yes and No decisions involved in your willpower goal together.

Read Another Post About: 21 Days of Tips about Willpower

***Before you start this exercise, identify ONE willpower challenge that you want to think about these tips in relation to. Keep this focus for the duration of the 21 Days. Splitting your focus is not really even giving yourself the chance of success. Pick something you’re really sure you actually want.***

Don’t be put off that there are multiple steps involved in this tip. It’s not too strenuous.

1. Scoot over to this article. and look at the top of the page labelled p.34. It will open as a pdf. You’ll see a series of overlapping circles. These represent your sense of continuity between your current self and your future self. How much does your future self feel like the same you? Before you continue on, choose which one of the pictures best represents your sense of future self continuity.

2. Next, head over to futureme.org and compose a a quick email to future self. You might pick a date 10 years from now. You can pick whatever time period you want. Write a thank you email from your future self to your current self to thank your current self for putting in the hard yards to achieve your willpower goal. Write about the most positive outcome of realizing your wish (e.g., “greater wellbeing”) and events and experiences your future self has experienced associated with this positive outcome. Use your imagination. Don’t read Step 3 until you’ve set the email to send.

3. Go back to Step 1 and do the circle exercise again. Did writing the email increase your sense of future self continuity? Hopefully it did. Studies have shown that when people have a greater sense of future self continuty, the more they make decisions that benefit their future self. Here’s a study showing this related saving money – article.

Credit: This tip is heavily inspired from this book
which I love and is well worth purchasing.

Read Another Post About: 21 Days of Tips about Willpower