If I can, U Can
What you need to know
Many people believe they could improve their lives if only they had more of that mysterious thing called willpower. With more self-control we would all eat right, exercise regularly, avoid drugs and alcohol, save for retirement, stop procrastinating, and achieve all sorts of noble goals.
Take, for example, the results of the American Psychological Association’s annual Stress in America Survey. The survey asks, among other things, about participants’ abilities to make healthy lifestyle changes. Survey participants regularly cite lack of willpower as the No. 1 reason for not following through with such changes.
In 2011, 27% of Stress in America survey respondents reported that lack of willpower was the most significant barrier to change. Yet although many people blame faulty willpower for their imperfect choices, it’s clear they haven’t given up hope. A majority of respondents believe that willpower is something that can be learned. Those respondents are on to something. Recent research suggests some ways in which willpower can in fact be strengthened with practice.
On the other hand, many survey participants reported that having more time for themselves would help them overcome their lack of willpower. Yet willpower doesn’t automatically grow when you have extra time on your hands.
So how can individuals resist in the face of temptation? In recent years, scientists have made some compelling discoveries about the ways that willpower works. This report will explore our current understanding of self-control.
Lack of willpower isn’t the only reason you might fail to reach your goals. Willpower researcher Roy Baumeister, PhD, a psychologist at Florida State University, describes three necessary components for achieving objectives: First, he says, you need to establish the motivation for change and set a clear goal. Second, you need to monitor your behavior toward that goal. The third component is willpower. Whether your goal is to lose weight, kick a smoking habit, study more, or spend less time on Facebook, willpower is a critical step to achieving that outcome.
At its essence, willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. And there are good reasons to do so. University of Pennsylvania psychologists Angela Duckworth, PhD, and Martin Seligman, PhD, explored self-control in eighth-graders over the course of the school year. The researchers first gauged the students’ self-discipline (their term for self-control) by having teachers, parents, and the students themselves complete questionnaires. They also gave students a task in which they had the option of receiving $1 immediately or waiting a week to receive $2.
They found students who ranked high on self-discipline had better grades, better school attendance, and higher standardized-test scores, and were more likely to be admitted to a competitive high school program. Self-discipline, the researchers found, was more important than IQ in predicting academic success.
Other studies have uncovered similar patterns. June Tangney, PhD, of George Mason University, and colleagues compared willpower by asking undergraduate students to complete questionnaires designed to measure their self-control. The scientists also created a scale to score the student’s relative willpower strength. They found the students’ self-control scores correlated with higher grade-point averages, higher self-esteem, less binge eating and alcohol abuse, and better relationship skills.
The benefits of willpower seem to extend well beyond the college years. Terrie Moffitt, PhD, of Duke University, and colleagues studied self-control in a group of 1,000 individuals who were tracked from birth to age 32 as part of a long-term health study in Dunedin, New Zealand. Moffitt and her colleagues found that individuals with high self-control in childhood (as reported by teachers, parents and the children themselves) grew into adults with greater physical and mental health, fewer substance-abuse problems and criminal convictions, and better savings behavior and financial security.
Those patterns held even after the researchers controlled for the children’s socioeconomic status, home lives, and general intelligence. Such findings underscore the importance of willpower in nearly all areas of life.
A baseball legend
Kobe Bryant was an American basketball player widely regarded as one of the greatest of all time. He was known for his strong willpower and determination throughout his basketball career.
And yet, having joined a summer basketball camp at age 12, he didn’t score a single point. He was ready to give up on basketball, but then he read about how Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team and how it became his motivation to outwork everyone around him (Robertson, 2016).
The story inspired Kobe to follow in Jordan’s footsteps and become the hardest worker in the game of basketball. He began showing up at the gym at 5 am and not leaving until 7 pm while in high school. He put himself through four hours of intense workouts even on game days, played one-on-one games up to 100 points after practice, and worked on his skills with no one else or a ball to perfect his footwork.
Michael Jordan was a role model and inspiration for Kobe, greatly influencing his willpower and motivating him to achieve his goals.
Sadly, Kobe’s life was cut short by a devastating helicopter crash in 2020 that killed him and his daughter, yet he was to become an inspiration for his fans, and his commitment a lesson to us all (Gooden, 2022).
Making a stand for civil rights
Rosa Parks never imagined that her bus journey home would result in her becoming a figurehead for the US civil rights movement.
And yet, on December 1, 1955, when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white person, it led to a 381-day boycott and the ultimate repeal of racial segregation on buses (Bredhoff, Wynell, & Potter, 1999).
Rosa Parks’ strength of will caused one small act of defiance that was part of something that changed history and her being called by the United States Congress “the first lady of civil rights.” (Wikipedia Foundation, 2023).
The science of willpower
Contrary to popular belief, willpower is not an innate trait that you’re either born with or without. Rather it’s a complex mind-body response that can be compromised by stress, sleep deprivation and nutrition and that can be strengthened through certain practices.
In a just published book based on her popular Stanford Continuing Studies course, Stanford health psychologist Kelly McGonigal, PhD, took a closer look at the science of willpower and examined the latest research on the topic. In the Q&A below, she shares some of her thoughts.
Both! Psychologists have found that willpower is a lot like stress: It’s not just a psychological experience, but a full-blown mind-body response.
The stress response is a reaction to an external threat, for example a fire alarm going off. In contrast, the willpower response is a reaction to an internal conflict.
You want to do one thing, such as smoke a cigarette or supersize your lunch, but know you shouldn’t. Or you know you should do something, like file your taxes or go to the gym, but you’d rather do nothing.
The need for self-control sets into motion a coordinated set of changes in the brain and body that help you resist temptation and override self-destructive urges. It’s called the pause-and-plan response and it puts your body into a calmer state, unlike the adrenaline rush of stress.
It also sends extra energy to the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which keeps track of your goals and helps you override impulses and cravings. The result is you have the mindset and motivation to do what matters most.
Defining willpower
We have many common names for willpower: determination, drive, resolve, self-discipline, self-control. But psychologists characterize willpower, or self-control, in more specific ways. According to most psychological scientists, willpower can be defined as:
- The ability to delay gratification, resisting short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals
- The capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling, or impulse
- The ability to employ a “cool” cognitive system of behavior rather than a “hot” emotional system
- Conscious, effortful regulation of the self by the self
- A limited resource capable of being depleted
For a long time, psychologists thought of willpower as a limited resource—known as the ‘ego-depletion theory’ (American Psychological Association, 2012).
Work by Roy Baumeister led to the view that willpower is finite and–just like energy when muscles are overworked–can be used up. In his famous ‘cookie’ experiment, people who could resist eating them right away (called delayed gratification) had a more challenging time controlling temptation later in other tasks (Baumeister & Tierney, 2011).
The theory suggests that if you set more than one self-improvement goal, you may draw on willpower reserves, leaving you depleted and risking failure (Baumeister & Tierney, 2011).
And if willpower is a limited resource, we must use it wisely to achieve long-term goals (American Psychological Association, 2012).
And yet, recent and contradictory psychological research and theory suggest there isn’t a fixed amount of willpower. “Instead of thinking of willpower as the amount of petrol in a car…think of it as the car’s battery,” says Krishna Savani from Nanyang Technological University (Jarrett, 2018, para. 3).
Savani believes that with the right mindset and motivation, we can ‘own’ our self-control and willpower. And this is backed up by data. Studies show that people are less likely to quit a task when told their resolve is not fixed but unlimited.
While building willpower is not easy, psychology suggests that “a huge part of the solution is simply believing that you can do it” (Hollins, 2021, p. 36).
So, what happens when we do and don’t get things done?
It seems that mindset is crucial. Students coming up to exams that were told willpower was unlimited experienced less stress, fewer bad moods, and could step up their efforts. If we ‘believe’ we have the reserves available to tackle the challenges ahead, we increase our chances of future success (Jarrett, 2018).
The curious case of Phineas Gage
While working on the railways in 1848, twenty-five-year-old Phineas Gage suffered a terrible accident. An iron rod pierced his skull at speed following an explosion, lodging itself in his prefrontal cortex. Although he survived the head injury, he experienced extreme changes to his personality, language, intelligence, motor functions, and self-control.
Previously calm, focused, and mentally strong, he was now impatient and impulsive. His friends described him as no longer being Gage—he had lost his most admired qualities, particularly his willpower.
The damage to the part of the brain we now know is associated with self-control meant that he no longer had the willpower to see tasks through to the end or to stop himself from succumbing to temptation. He never fully recovered (Zeigler-Hill & Shackelford, 2020; McGonigal, 2013).
Creating good habits to boost willpower
James Clear talks about the importance of good strategies in his book “Atomic Habits” and offers the following example of how they can drive willpower (Clear, 2018).
When Trent Dyrsmid began his job at a bank in 1993, he was young and inexperienced – so no one expected much from him. And yet, he formed a powerful habit that boosted his commitment and willpower.
He started each day with two jars: one with 120 paper clips and the other empty. Each time he made a sales call, he moved one paperclip from the full jar to the empty one. He wouldn’t stop until the first jar was empty.
It sounds simple, and yet “[w]ithin eighteen months, Dyrsmid was bringing in nearly $5 million to the firm.” (Clear, 2018, p. 196). He was successful because the good habits he put in place drove his willpower and facilitated his desire for success.
Strengthen your mind
“Psychological discomfort is created because you know you are avoiding your responsibilities, so you engage in a distraction to alleviate that discomfort.” (Hollins, 2021, p. 48). The following exercises can help strengthen your mind, helping you to not take the easy option, for example, choosing unhealthy eating habits or remaining inactive:
Practice mindfulness meditation
To improve self-control and help individuals act from intention rather than habit or craving.
Get enough sleep
Physical and mental fatigue can decrease willpower, so it’s essential to maintain energy levels by getting sufficient and good quality sleep each night.
Use food- or fitness-tracking apps
Tracking what we do or don’t do can help individuals make healthier eating choices and provide encouragement to get up and move by tracking movement and exercise.
Delivering your full potential
Sometimes our biases change how we see opportunities and make us focus more on risks than benefits. Making decisions based on reason can help us realize our full potential along with a kinder, more optimistic view of what we have to offer (Hollins, 2022).
Challenge yourself
Push yourself out of your comfort zone by taking on complex but not impossible tasks. Practice and repetition will boost willpower.
Practice self-compassion
Be kind and understanding with yourself when you make mistakes or stumble, and don’t let setbacks discourage you from continuing to work on increasing your willpower.
Get support from others
Surround yourself with people who encourage and support your efforts to increase your willpower.
It’s essential to remember that willpower is like a muscle and that progress may not always be immediate or linear. Furthermore, like physical exercise, our mental resolve and self-control can be strengthened with practice and pushing against perceived limits.
Note that there is no “right” amount of willpower, but we ought to develop what is needed to live a happy, healthy life where we flourish (Seligman, 2011; Jarrett, 2018).
