Where There’s Willpower, There’s a Way! How These Simple Self-Control Boosters Can Help You Achieve Your Goals

There is nothing that matters more in goal accomplishment than the ability to resist the urge to give in to little voices that tell us that it’s okay to quit when the going gets tough. Researchers have studied willpower in various forms for decades, and their conclusions are consistent: The key to success with any goal is to withstand temptation and persist through discomfort. The inability to do this has far-reaching consequences.

The key to success with any goal is to withstand temptation and persist through discomfort.

Understanding how much self-control you have now, and how to get more of it when you need it most, is one of the key building blocks in creating your best life and accomplishing your life list goals now and in the future.

Why You Must Say No Sometimes

The seminal work at Stanford University on delayed gratification by Walter Mischel described above has been replicated over the past fifty years by many others who study self-regulation (also referred to as self-control or willpower), and goes right to the heart of whether or not we will be able to achieve life list goals and enjoy a high quality of life. If we cannot withstand temptation when it arises, control our urges when we are tired, start something new and challenging, and invoke the power of discipline when we’re in the final stretches of attaining something important, we will always be destined to live the “pleasant” life, which doesn’t demand much from us, but certainly won’t allow us to maximize our potential and achieve our goals, either.

Self-control isn’t essential for just goal accomplishment, though. It is viewed by many as the bedrock of personal and social stability, and the major difference separating animals from humans. After all, what would life be like if we all dumped gravy on our mother-in-law’s head at every Thanksgiving meal when she criticized our cooking skills? What if we all relieved ourselves publicly because we didn’t want to wait until we found a restroom? And how well would our office function if we told our coworkers and superiors what we thought about them every single time we were angry or irritated about something they’d done?

Dr. Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University who has spent much of his adult life studying the importance of self-control and how we both cultivate it and lose it, believes that “self-regulation failure is central to nearly all of the personal and social problems that currently plague citizens of the modern, developed world.” These problems include, but are not limited to, drug addiction, violence, obesity, gambling, credit card abuse, lack of exercise, and most self-destructive behaviors.

Self-regulation failure is central to nearly all of the personal and social problems that currently plague citizens of the modern, developed world.

One of the major reasons why researchers are so eager to understand self-regulation is because it appears to be dissipating in the face of technological advances and their promises of instant gratification. For example, many high school students don’t bother to listen to cell phone messages because text messages can be read more quickly. Letter writing is now bemoaned as a lost art form because e-mail gives us quicker responses with less effort. And the long-term discipline required to lose weight and stay out of the sun is negated by the ability to sidestep all of that hard work through gastric bypass surgery and lunchtime acid peels.

I'm often asked at speeches and in interviews what I would do differently if I could reparent my three children, knowing what I now know about the research on goal-setting, happiness and grit. My answer is always the same: I would make them wait longer to get what they wanted, whether it was a toy, a snack or a smartphone. When you teach your children to delay gratification, and to work for what they have instead of just giving it to them, I believe you give them the keys to the kingdom.

Chris Peterson and Marty Seligman, coauthors of the definitive textbook The Twenty-Four Character Strengths and Virtues, regard self-regulation as one of the most important qualities a person can devote time toward enhancing, for many obvious reasons. They also fear that America’s increasing departure from the Protestant work ethic, coupled with the excesses of the self-esteem movement, could be creating a generation of children who don’t understand hard work and long-term payoffs, and who may be “weak, narcissistic, and self-indulgent” as a result. This could also be why the trait of self-regulation is usually at the bottom of most Americans’ list of strengths, and why so many New Year’s resolutions and other goals bite the dust so quickly!

Now What?

Don’t despair if you have already identified yourself as someone who could use an infusion of willpower. After working with thousands of people for decades, we know that everyone is capable of change if they want to work for it.

Our self-control gets depleted every day in ways we may not even be aware of. It may explain that strange breakdown between lunch—when you passed up the dessert cart without a second glance—and right after dinner—when you ate a pint of ice cream in bed. Or even why you got through six hours of a tough job interview, only to find that you destroyed your chances of getting your dream job when you made a thoughtless racial joke over dinner. These types of situations are more common than you can imagine, but you can avoid them if you practice the science behind enhancing willpower.

What Makes Our Willpower Weaker

Although the research on willpower and what impacts it continues to be refined, many believe that the following are situations that cause you to deplete your store of self-control:

• You suppress normal urges like saying and doing things that are socially inappropriate, such as telling off your boss or laughing in the middle of a serious meeting.
• You use a lot of mental energy to make decisions that involve self-control and willful planning, like setting up the family budget.
• You try not to think about something in order to focus on something else—for example, trying not to think about your child’s rejection from a desired college while writing an important article for your company’s newsletter, or trying not to think about the sweets in the kitchen while you are trying to lose weight.
• You have two conflicting conscious goals, such as cooking a healthy dinner while avoiding the chocolate cake on the kitchen counter.
• You constantly attempt to hide something about yourself that would hurt your social standing, such as an extramarital affair or a criminal past.

In contrast, the following situations do not cause you to use up your valuable self-control, and should have no impact on whether or not you have willpower left at the end of the day for important tasks:

• You do something difficult or mentally challenging. When you do something hard, like solve math problems, you are not necessarily using willpower, and people who rate something with high “task difficulty” do not necessarily have lower self-control when tested immediately afterward.
• You are mentally fatigued. People who are simply fatigued don’t show signs of self-control failure, and may even do well on tests of self-control when they are tired because the tests are a new challenge that engage different faculties than the ones used in self-control.
• You have low self-esteem. In one study, participants were divided into two groups that received positive and negative feedback about their performance on a self-control task. Regardless of their feedback, both groups showed poorer responses to a second test of willpower, which proved that there was no correlation between self-efficacy and self-control.

Refilling the Willpower Tank

Because this is such a new and cutting-edge area of research, there are only a few interventions we believe can restore our self-control levels, giving us the energy to persevere on a subsequent self-control challenge:

1. Making yourself smile.

Participants in the white-bear study, for example, were divided into two groups that watched either a funny video or a film of a dolphin encounter. The participants who were induced to be happy by watching the funny video showed no loss of willpower in a subsequent task, while the participants who watched the dolphin video—which was non-arousing and neutral—were not able to replenish their strength as quickly.

2. Eating a small amount of sugar.

Participants in another study who used willpower on one test were found to recover completely for a second task by drinking a glass of lemonade that contained real sugar, not a sugar substitute. (Author's note: although this finding was believed to be true when Creating Your Best Life was published in 2009, it hasn't received as much support in replication studies since then.)

ICYMI: How These 9 Simple Actions Can Help You Feel Happier (& Get More Grit!)

Other Willpower Boosters

It’s exciting to discover that scientists are finding ways that we can improve our willpower in many areas. These findings give fresh credence to the efficacy of behavioral exercises seen in many parochial schools, such as neat handwriting, good posture, and adherence to wearing a prescribed uniform. Public schools that have prescribed rules of behavior, such as no gum chewing, are also helping students to improve self-regulation skills, whether they are aware of it or not.

Following are some willpower boosters that have been proven to work:

1. Hide temptations

People who had chocolate candies on their desks showed less self-control in eating them than people whose desks were placed six feet away from the same treats. Avoiding the sight of something tempting allows you to be more successful at resisting temptation.

2. Follow a regular exercise program

Participants in an Australian investigation led by Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng who embarked on a two-month physical exercise program of weight lifting, resistance training, and aerobics experienced reduced caffeine, cigarette, and alcohol consumption. They also lowered their junk-food intake and ate more healthy food. As if that weren’t beneficial enough, these participants had improved emotional control, better spending habits, and fewer hours of television watching!

3. Start a money-management program

Oaten and Cheng did another study of self-regulation, this time asking participants to engage in a four-month program of financial monitoring. Again, they found that taking control of this one area improved self-regulation in a variety of other areas, such as healthy eating, maintenance of household chores, better study habits, less cigarette and alcohol use, and lowered coffee consumption.

4. Avoid alcohol

Numerous studies, including those conducted by Roy Baumeister, have shown that alcohol undercuts all attempts at self-regulation, regardless of the goal, and that people who drink alcohol are more apt to fail at self-control than those who don’t when it comes to spending money, handling anger, eating—and almost any behavior that requires self-control.

5. Meditate

Improvements in self-regulation around overeating and impulsive behaviors with food have been noted among women with eating disorders who were taught mindfulness meditation. Psychologists at Australia’s Griffith University, Michelle Hanisch and Angela Morgan, noted that the mindfulness practice allowed the women to “learn that thoughts and emotions don’t have any power over us as they are just passing phenomena and aren’t permanent.” They also found that the eating disorder sufferers reported less dissatisfaction with their bodies, increased self-esteem, and improved personal relationships.

6. Get Rid of the Clutter

People with poor self-control are also habitual procrastinators, so removing the instant gratification of e-mail, online poker, and online shopping will strengthen willpower while eliminating some of the most common causes of procrastination. Experts are unanimous in their advice on how to deal with procrastination and willpower challenges as they pertain to technology and its seductive lure:

• Check your e-mail only twice a day. Very few e-mails need to be attended to within five minutes of delivery.
• Remove instant messaging programs from your computer, or use them only at designated times during the day. One of our clients found that his work output skyrocketed when he eliminated a program that opened all of his instant messaging programs at once, which kept him tied up in reactive text conversations for hours, with no evidence of real productivity.
• Remove all games from your computer and cell phone.

The takeaway for people who want to accomplish their life goals and have more willpower is to say no to themselves on a regular basis if they want to enjoy all of the fruits of self-regulation.

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This post includes excerpts from Caroline Adams Miller’s book "Creating Your Best Life," which has numerous footnotes supporting the research cited here. To learn more about CYBL, visit: www.creatingyourbestlifelist.com.

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Read More:  How to Get More Grit: 10 Traits That Every Authentically Gritty Person Needs

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Photo credits (in order of appearance): Brooke Lark, Gemma Evans, Cristian Escobar, Evan Kirby and Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

Tags: #CreatingYourBestLife, #CYBL, #Goals, #GoalSetting, #GoalAccomplishment, #Resolutions, #Willpower, #SelfControl, #SelfRegulation, #WiseInterventions, #AuthenticGrit, #Happiness, #PositivePsychology, #Meditation, #Grit

?Copyright ? 2017 Caroline Adams Miller. All rights reserved.