Willpower.
People who have better control of their attention, emotions and actions, are better off in almost
any way you look at it.
They are happier in their friendships, their marriage lasts longer, they make more money
and go further in their careers.
With willpower we can accomplish the list of goals we often struggle to get done.
That might be something like quitting smoking, starting a business or something as simple
as cleaning your room.
Willpower is a general strength that improves everything along with it.
In fact, willpower is a better predictor of how well you do in school or how successful
you are at work, than intelligence.
If we want to improve our lives, willpower is not a bad place to start.
It has to be noted that willpower is like a battery.
When used, it slowly gets depleted.
You can see that on college campuses, during the final exam period.
Students fill their heads with facts and formulas, pull all nighters, and push themselves to
study hard.
However studies show that these efforts come at a cost.
During the final exams, many students seem to lose the capacity to control anything other
than their study habits.
They seem to smoke more cigarettes and have more emotional outbursts.
They skip showering and rarely make an effort to change clothes.
Dear god, they even stop flossing.
People who use their willpower seem to run out of it.
And that's not all.
Trying to control your temper, stick to a budget, or refusing that slice of cake, all
draw from the same source of strength.
This means that if you turn down the dessert, you'll be more likely to get angry.
And if you manage to control your anger, you're more likely to overspend and not stick to
your budget.
Scary.
But if willpower is limited, are we doomed to fail at our goals?
Luckily there are things you can do to overcome your willpower exhaustion and increase your
self control.
Willpower is the highest in the morning and slowly degrades over the course of the day,
almost like your phone battery.
However, if you want your willpower to be full in the morning, you need to get some
quality sleep first.
If you are surviving on less than six hours of sleep a night, there's a good chance you
don't even remember what it's like to have your full willpower.
Being sleep deprived makes you more susceptible to stress, cravings and giving in to temptation.
So 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night, is what you should be getting to get your willpower
fully recharged.
One of the reasons sleep is critical for self-control, is because your brain requires blood glucose
as a fuel.
Especially the front part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.
This brain region has been associated in controlling behavior and decision making.
When we don't get enough sleep, our prefrontal cortex get sluggish and less responsive.
It's almost the same as being drunk.
And if you ever had too much to drink you know you don't make the wisest decisions.
However, the brain scans showed that when the sleep deprived participants catch a better
night’s sleep, they no longer show signs of prefrontal cortex impairment.
So while lack of sleep can impair the prefrontal cortex, there's a way to actually increase
its size and efficiency.
The answer is slow breathing meditation.
People who meditate just 10 minutes a day, build gray matter in their prefrontal cortex
and after a couple of months their brains look different.
But why slow breathing?
The reason is it increases our heart rate variability.
Heart rate variability is a variation in the time interval between heartbeats.
To exert self control, the heart rate has to go down, but the variability needs to go up.
Studies have shown, heart rate variability starts increasing as the breathing rate drops
below 12 breaths per minute.
For best results, you have to slow down breathing to 4 to 6 breaths.
It's slower than you normally breathe, but it's not too difficult with a little bit of practice.
Slowing the breath down helps shift the brain and body from a state of stress to relaxed
self control mode.
A few minutes of this technique will make you feel calm, in control, and capable of
handling your challenges.
If you're on a diet it's a good idea to practice slowing down your breath, before you start
looking at that slice of cake.
In one study, where they were experimenting with a new treatment for enhancing self control,
two researchers were stunned by their findings.
While they had hoped for positive results, nobody predicted how effective the treatment's
effects would be.
After just two months of treatment, the participants in the study showed improvements in attention
and ability to ignore distractions.
They also reduced their smoking, drinking and caffeine intake - despite the fact that
nobody had asked them to.
They were eating less junk food and more healthy food.
They were spending less time watching television and more time studying.
They were saving money and spending less on impulsive purchases.
What is this miracle drug and where can I get a prescription?
The intervention wasn't a drug at all.
The willpower miracle was physical exercise.
The participants who never exercised regularly before the intervention, were given free membership
to a gym and encouraged to make good use of it.
They exercised an average of just one time per week for the first month, but were up
to three times per week by the end of the two month study.
The researchers didn't ask them to make any changes in their lives, and yet the exercise
program improved self control in ALL aspects of their lives.
Exercise turns out to be the closest thing to a wonder drug that self control scientists
have discovered.
It also increases heart rate variability, which we talked about earlier.
If you tell yourself that you are too tired to exercise, start thinking of exercise as
something that restores your energy and willpower, not drains it.
Now let's say you decide to quit smoking.
Everything is going great for a week or so, but then you suddenly find yourself with a
cigarette in your hand.
Maybe you felt stressed, maybe you just weren't thinking, who knows.
It's best to be self critical about it, right?
Feeling guilty that you lit that cigarette, will surely remind you not to do it next time.
Well the problem is that guilt is driving people back to doing the very thing they want
to avoid.
After all, what do you do when you feel bad?
You do something that reduces the bad feeling.
Usually that's the very thing that you want to quit, so it's no wonder alcoholics want
another drink, smokers want to light a cigarette and dieters want to eat another slice of cake.
Remember, everyone is bound to fail sooner or later, so it's important how we respond
to this slight setback.
Rather than telling yourself things like, "Why did I do that again?
I'm so stupid.
I'm never going to change."
Start talking to yourself in a second person, as if you were talking and giving advice to
a good friend.
Basically say to yourself, "You know what?
This is the process of change.
Sometimes we fall off the wagon.
Everyone is imperfect."
So after a willpower failure, it's better to encourage yourself, rather than criticize.
After all you're only human.
Are you currently working on improving anything your life?
Let me know in the comments below and maybe I could help you overcome some problems you
might be facing.
Together we'll become better than yesterday.