We all have habits that we want to change, but often find that deep seated habits that we have had for many years are very difficult to get rid of. Somehow, we just do not have enough willpower to do it.
You may think that willpower is something you are born with. Some people seem to have lots of it, and others very little. The Olympic athlete evidently has lots of willpower to endure the punishing training regime that is required to win the gold medal. You, on the other hand may find that you do not have enough willpower to go for a mile jog every day.
Can you train yourself to have more willpower?
According to Kelly McGonigal in her book, The Willpower Instinct, there are ways to do this. Kelly is not some new age, self help guru talking about her own untested ideas. Everything that she discusses in her book is based on sound scientific research. The Willpower Instinct is the most comprehensive book on willpower that I have ever read.
One major interference with willpower is cravings. You are trying to give up fatty foods and you see a cheesecake in a shop window that seems to call to you: “Eat me now!” You feel your body go weak as you feel powerless to stop your feet walking into the shop so that you can have the object of your desire. You feel the tension, the conflict between wanting the cake and wanting to stick to your low fat diet. Kelly describes what is going on in this situation; how your body releases chemicals, what is going on inside your brain, how mankind’s instincts evolved to deal with this type of situation.
Your brain and body want immediate action, they create the impulse to walk into the cake shop right now. The way to combat this impulse is to pause, to wait, reflect on what is going on, to be aware of the consequences of eating the cake. The simple act of pausing instead of immediately following an impulse makes it far easier to act in a more rational way.
Like a lot of things in life, to be able to utilise willpower effectively, you need to understand how it operates, what gets in the way and what helps to increase it.
Subjects that Kelly covers in the Willpower Instinct include:
- How deferred pleasure benefits you.
- How willpower gets depleted.
- How wanting is different than happiness .
- What self control is.
- How we turn willpower challenges into measures of moral worth, and how that can be bad for us.
- How guilt gets in the way of willpower.
The Willpower Instinct is based on a 10 week Science of Willpower course that Kelly McGonigal taught at Stanford University. The course was much more than theoretical, each week students were given tasks and exercises to do. Over the the ten weeks students found that their willpower increased considerably. They became more in control of their lives and consequently were happier and less stressed.
You can use this book as a course. Each chapter discusses an aspect of willpower and ends with exercises and experiments that you can try. It is recommended that you read one chapter a week then practise the exercises over the next 7 days before reading the next chapter. In this way, like the students at Stanford, you will find that your willpower gets stronger and stronger each week.
The Willpower Instinct is a great book. It is written in a very clear, readable style and is a wonderful tool to deal effectively with the issue of willpower.
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