WILLPOWER

During tough times you can see the difference in people’s behavior, attitude, thoughts, and a changed mindset. All these indicators together showcase their level of understanding, self-discipline, self-regulation, self-control, resistance, etc. To sum up all these words and more, I can say Willpower.

Understanding Willpower

Willpower is a combination of two important keywords – WILL and POWER. So, let’s go step by step for better clarity:

What is Will? – In simple words we can say – It is the Desire or Wish you may want to achieve. WILL is the capability to make a conscious choice. As WILL is directly co-related to Desire, so it means how strong is your desire to achieve something.

What is Power? – It is the Energy and Control to drive oneself to meet their intention.

What is Willpower?

Willpower is the commitment to do something regardless of any situation. It is achieving the desire made to oneself.  It is the capability to avoid short-term gratification in the interest of long-term goals.

Any person with strong willpower will maintain determinations even during tough, challenging times and other conflicting indications. While on the other hand, a person with little or less willpower will give up easily.

Will and Power are very closely related, as Using WILL is Exercising the POWER.

As per most of the psychology researchers from the American Psychological Association, they define willpower as:

• Willpower is a deliberate mindful control of self by self.
• It is the capability to defer pleasure and refrain from short-term desires to meet long-term objectives.
• The capability to overrule undesirable thoughts, feelings, or desires.
• It is a limited resource capable of being depleted.

Types of Willpower

I would like to categorize willpower into two different buckets:

1. Assist Willpower – This is to do something and encourage self to perform an act.
2. Abstain Willpower – This is to NOT do something and to refrain self from doing an act.

Assist Willpower is difficult as compared to the Abstain Willpower. Let’s see the two in detail below.

Assist Willpower

In the Assist Willpower, you would try to do an act regularly irrespective of any hurdles and problems you face. This category needs complete focus and commitment to self. This focus is possible through self-motivation. One common example of the Assist Willpower is a regular workout for weight loss. Let’s check how to encourage and motivate yourself?

How to motivate yourself?

Here are a few methods for self-motivation I have tried and tested, which really works for effective results:

1. Set your Ultimate Goal and break it into different Milestones.
2. Break those different milestones into your daily acts.
3. Every morning tell yourself – what you want to achieve from the day. The size of the achievement does not matter, but it should be a continuous effort.
4. You need to mentor yourself and pat yourself after completing the daily task or target you have set for yourself.
5. Raise your self-target bar every day from the previous day’s achievement. Don’t worry if you are not able to meet the new target. At least ensure that you cross the previous day’s achieved target.
6. Reward yourself on your achievement of every milestone to reach your Ultimate Goal.
7. Review your achievements fortnightly and see how far you have reached from the point you have started.
8. Consistency and Persistence is the only key for enabling the Assist Willpower.

For self-motivation tricks, you can also check this article – How to Motivate yourself.  (please note that this link is just for your reference, which I think might be a good read. I have no commercial engagement with these websites to share their links in this blog),

You need to understand those triggers which excite and motivate you. Keep those triggers as your rewards on the completion of each milestone.

It is observed and found that willpower and self-control are essential for a HAPPY and SUCCESSFUL Life. Willpower is putting all your attention on trying to accomplish, in whichever area you want to succeed in. 

When willpower fails, exposure to an emotionally charged provocation reverses one’s logical, sensible, and cognitive system leading to impulsive actions. The positive moods, views, and attitudes can help to mitigate the effects of willpower depletion.

Most of the studies show that people achieving high self-control are more apt at regulating behavioral, emotional, and attention impulses to achieve long-term goals when compared to more impulsive individuals.

So, it takes a lot for any person to pursue the Assist Willpower approach in Life, as it needs constant focus, dedication, determination, and persistence to do something regularly.

Abstain Willpower

It is slightly easier to work on the Abstain Willpower as compared to the Assist Willpower. This would require deviating your mind from any habit you want to give up. Diverting the mind helps a lot of people to avoid doing a particular activity regularly, which can eventually turn into a habit or a routine in Life. For example, if someone goes for smoking regularly after every meal, then he needs to engage his mind in something else which does not allow him to think of going for a smoke.

Abstain Willpower is ideally simpler than Assist Willpower. Ideally, in any of the Abstain Willpower approaches, deviating the mind in something else helps to avoid doing a particular task. It means not giving enough time to the mind to engage in the activity you want to leave or quit.

Why Willpower is Important in Life

• As per my observation and Life Lessons, willpower plays a vital role in life to develop self-control in any person, which eventually makes the person handle stress and challenges in a positive way.
• It also helps us to learn the power of delayed gratification instead of getting tempted by short-term wins. 
• Willpower makes the person self-disciplined and committed, which means the person is true to himself.
• You don’t need any other external person to monitor your acts.
• Walter Mischel’s famous Stanford Marshmallow Test, which is one of the most valuable studies on delayed gratification, it mentions that those who were able to delay gratification as children had improved life results as grownups. 

How to check your Willpower

Though there are different ways to check your willpower, the best way is to check is by the achievement of every milestone within the defined timeframe. You also need to check how frequently you are deviating from your daily tasks. If you can stick to your daily tasks without any delays, and complete them as per your predefined criteria, then you are doing good and possess good willpower.

if you are faltering on your daily tasks and delaying in reaching your milestones, then you need to work hard on improving your willpower. It is just committing to yourself and adhering to it, will make you strengthen your willpower.

There are multiple online tools to check your willpower score. You can also do a quick check of your score through this Willpower Test. This link is just a sample for you to quickly take the test, if in case you want to. I do not have any commercial engagement with this website for testing willpower. You can check some other online tests to check your willpower score.

How to increase the Willpower

There are multiple ways to improve and increase your willpower. As a GBS survivor (Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a rare neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks part of its peripheral nervous system—the network of nerves located outside of the brain and spinal cord.), my best-preferred option (tried and tested) is to activate our subconscious. It is self-affirmation every day through positive self-talk.

GBS is a kind of paralysis, where the body power goes off completely, but the senses go hyper. I was actually on a deathbed. In just overnight, my life got changed because of the GBS.

You might have noticed that people speak to themselves while doing anything like running, walking, driving, etc. And when you keep repeating similar thoughts while doing your work, your subconscious mind takes that thought (either positive or negative) and starts driving you in that direction.

Some other ways to improve Willpower are:

• Increase your capabilities to take and handle the pressure. It is more to learn how to handle stress and tensions in daily life.
• Ensure to maintain and stick to the plan or routine fixed for self.
• Get a minimum of 6-7 hrs. of a sound sleep at night.
• Meditation is one of the key components to improve focus, attention, self-awareness, and stress management.
• Eat nutritional food instead of processed food items.
• Regular physical exercise is equally important. As every time you need to challenge yourself to achieve a new milestone while doing the exercise. This eventually helps you to build stronger willpower.
• Reward yourself after completing every milestone you have set to reach your goal.

Concluding Key Notes:

• Willpower is the ability to resist short-term satisfaction in the interest of long-term objectives.
• When willpower fails, exposure to an emotionally charged stimulus supersedes one’s logical and cognitive system, leading to impulsive behaviors.
• One’s capacity for self-control appears to be constant. Children with superior self-control as kids likely to have improved self-control as grownups.
• People with low self-control demonstrate conflicting brain patterns when presented with attractive provocations or stimuli.
• Reduction in willpower influences a variety of behaviors, including food consumption, violence, and buying activities.
• These effects of willpower depletion may be mitigated by positive moods, attitudes, and opinions.
• With the right motivation, you may be able to proceed even when your willpower strength has been depleted.
• Maintaining stable blood glucose levels, such as by eating regular healthy meals and snacks, may help prevent the effects of willpower depletion.
• Just as muscles are strengthened by regular exercise, regularly exerting self-control may improve willpower strength over time.
• Train your subconscious regularly with positive thoughts.
• Keep challenging your self in your daily tasks to check, improve, and strengthen your willpower.

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Disclaimer: The content shared in this blog is based on personal experiences, observations, and self-understanding through research. The details provided here are only for educational and informational purposes, and it is not a piece of expert professional advice to the reader. The details mentioned in this blog do not bind or compel any person to follow the remedies or methods given here. The intent to write and share this blog is to communicate some insights on willpower, which can help people to look at the positive side of life during these challenging times.

STAY HAPPY and HEALTHY!