Multiply Your Willpower Effectiveness Easily
The Connection Between Willpower And Habits
Here we take a closer look at the relationship between willpower and habits, why we need to use both, and how we can leverage them to bring about permanent and meaningful change in our lives.
It’s an important topic. Without making good use of both willpower and routines and habits, we lose control over all aspects of our lives.
We find ourselves drifting through the days, months, and years without purpose and fulfillment. Most importantly, without these two, we can’t begin to mold the life we want to live.
In this chapter, we’ll start by looking at the connection between willpower and habits and how they interact.
When there’s something you want to change about your personal or professional life, you need to use them both to bring about that change.
Let’s look at an example. We’ll use weight loss and healthy eating since it’s such an important and popular topic and something that often comes up when we talk about willpower.
To lose weight, you need to change your diet, and you need to move around more. That means you need to make changes to your daily habits and routines.
In the beginning, this takes a lot of willpower. Your starting eating habits are not the best, and your exercising habits may be nonexistent.
It takes energy to move away from those existing habits and do something different. That energy is willpower.
It takes conscious thought and effort to fix a healthy breakfast, pack a salad lunch, and avoid snacks and treats throughout the day. It takes conscious thought and effort to make yourself go for a walk on your lunch break or head to the gym before work. You need to use willpower to achieve these things.
The good news is that we don’t have to use willpower endlessly. As we start to establish new and positive routines, they start to become habits.
Habits are things we do without having to think or talk ourselves into doing them. Think of brushing your teeth. You don’t have to give yourself a pep talk to go and brush your teeth before bed.
The idea is to use willpower wisely (more on that later) to form new habits. Once they start to become habits, it takes less and less willpower to make them happen. Eventually, they will become the new way of doing things, and we no longer need any willpower. That’s how permanent change happens.
In short, we need to use willpower to make changes in our lives for the better, and we require quite a bit of it to create new habits and routines.
Willpower Isn’t Unlimited
I have some bad news for you. Willpower isn’t an unlimited resource. If it were, none of us would have any trouble reaching goals from getting fit and losing weight, to finishing a degree and getting our finances in order.
The good news is that we all have willpower and we can tap into it when we need it. The other good news is that the more we exercise our willpower, the better we get at it and the more of it we have at our disposal.
That means we need to use our willpower wisely and we need to work on spreading it out throughout the day.
If we try to do too much at once, or when we don’t exercise our willpower on a regular basis, it tends to fade. We give into temptation. It’s the reason why it’s much harder to avoid the temptation of a tasty snack late at night and easier to pass on the same treat early in the morning.
While willpower isn’t unlimited, it is a renewable resource, and we get more of it every day. The key then is to use it in the right way, and that starts by making a plan and setting goals.
Without proper goals that you can measure, you don’t know where you’re heading. Think of it like going on a road trip with a limited gas allowance.
Without a map and a well-planned out route, it will be tough to get anywhere. You end up wasting gas taking wrong turns and ending up at some random place you probably don’t want to be.
Having a goal and a plan gives you a direction and defines a result. On a daily basis, it helps you spend your willpower wisely.
Let’s run through an example and see how it may look. Let’s say you want to get into better shape. Start by making this a measurable goal. Being fitter could mean being able to walk 5K in under an hour. That’s a measurable goal.
Now let’s put a deadline on it. You want your result and your timeline to be doable, but a bit of a stretch. If you’re very out of shape right now, your goal shouldn’t be to run a full marathon within three months. On the other hand, becoming fit enough to walk a 5K within six months is very attainable, even if you’re not walking or exercising at all right now.
Looking around your local area, you find a 5K charity walk five months out. It’s a bit of a stretch, but a good goal with a real deadline. You sign up for the walk and are ready to map out your plan to reach your goal of finishing the race and doing so in under an hour.
Your starting goal may be as simple as going for a 15-minute walk every day after dinner. Start there and continue to build up both your endurance and your speed until you reach your final goal and are ready for the race.
Training for a 5K walk may seem like a lofty goal that will take huge amounts of willpower to reach. Making yourself go for a 15-minute walk today on the other hand only takes a small amount of willpower.
That’s why it’s important to make a plan and break it down into small individual goals. It allows you to use your willpower wisely.
Create Smart Habits And Routines To Reach Your Goals
Since there isn’t an unlimited supply of willpower, but there is a strong connection between habits and willpower, it only makes sense to create smart habits and routines that help you reach your goals. That’s what we’ll cover in the last chapter of this short report on using willpower wisely.
Let’s quickly review how willpower and habits interact. When we want to establish a new habit, we have to use willpower in the beginning to change our behavior. As time goes on – provided we stick to our new routine – it takes less and less willpower as the new behavior becomes as stronger and stronger habit. Eventually, it takes no more willpower as the new habit becomes fully established.
When we look at our walking example, it takes willpower those first few weeks to go for the daily walk. After a while though, it starts to become a habit and part of our evening routine. We don’t have to talk ourselves into lacing up those shoes and heading outside. Sure, there will be days that take a little more willpower than others (for example, when the weather is bad, or we’re feeling particularly tired), but overall it becomes more and more part of our everyday routine.
That brings up a good point. One of the best and smartest ways to create a new habit is to attach it to an existing routine. You probably already have some routine you go through after you get back home or before you cook dinner. Making the daily walk part of that routine makes it quicker and easier to form a habit. That means it takes less and less willpower.
The key then, to reaching your goals without exhausting all your willpower, is to make the most of your existing routines. Do this on a daily basis to reduce the possibility of failing. Start with established ones and create new ones as needed. Attach new habits to these routines until they become a part of it.
Work on one routine and one habit at a time. Don’t try to do it all at once. Remember that willpower is a limited resource. Use it wisely by making one small change at a time until you’ve made it a habit and part of your daily routine. Then expand on it, push yourself, or work on something new. Follow this smart way to make routines and habits work for you. There’s no reason why you can’t reach your goals, no matter how lofty they are.
Give it a try. Give it time, and don’t give in if you stumble and fall along the way. Trust the plan and work on each new habit and routine until you’ve reached your goal and crafted the life you’ve always wanted to live.