The definition of willpower according to the Oxford Dictionary: “the ability to control your thoughts and actions in order to achieve what you want to do.”
It is—apparently—the power that helps you say no to bad habits and yes to hard work.
Hmm… let me think about this for a moment.
If it’s a well-established habit, it’s often easier for my brain to simply do it than to stop and question it.
Yes to hard work. What is hard work? I mentioned this before. For me, the hardest work is to slow down. To pause. To sit still. Do I need willpower for that? No, I need a routine that helps me calm my nervous system.
So, it really doesn’t matter how much willpower I have.
We think falsely of willpower as this superpower. We think success and healthy habits come from a constant inner strength, and if we can’t achieve success and healthy habits, we are weak.
When really, what we need is knowledge about what works for us, and the wisdom to build our lives around it.
Dan Buettner’s work on the Blue Zones highlights how much our environment, routines and everyday way of life can influence our wellbeing. I admire his work, and this totally makes sense to me: if the healthy choice is the easiest choice in our everyday environment, we don’t have to rely so much on willpower and discipline.
For example:
Food — walking past a doughnut stand and not buying one because you want to eat healthy.
I can walk past a doughnut stand without buying a doughnut if I am not hungry. If I ate enough and well before walking past that stand. If I haven’t, and I’m hungry, my brain is already paying much more attention to food. And when I’m tired or hungry, that doughnut suddenly looks like a very good idea. And I will buy the doughnut and devour it like there’s no tomorrow!
However, if my day started with a nice healthy and fulfilling breakfast, if I hadn’t missed my snack (think a few almonds and an apple), and my lunch was a nice protein rich salad, then I can guarantee you, I will be able to walk past that doughnut stand and think “nope, not for me, thank you very much”.
That’s not willpower, it’s biology.
Exercise — going out to exercise or sitting on the sofa watching TV.
It depends. Have I eaten and slept well enough to feel motivated and energized to exercise?
Or am I thinking “exercise won’t help me anyway” – then the question is, why am I thinking that?
Again, not willpower, but state of body and mind.
Emotions — Keeping your voice calm when you feel angry. Your response to a strong emotion like anger depends on so much more than willpower alone. How tired are you? How stressed? Do you feel safe? Have you had time to process what happened? Sometimes the answer isn’t more willpower. It’s understanding what’s going on underneath the emotion.
We can sometimes use “lack of willpower” as an explanation that allows us to overlook more complex issues.
We are also bombarded each day with “temptations” that our brain constantly has to fight to avoid. This is tiring and exhausting and there is only that much fight the brain can put up.
Instead, what might work is this:
- Change your environment – a fruit bowl on the kitchen counter, rather than a cookie jar
- Attach a new healthy habit to one you are already doing i.e. if you sit and have your coffee for 5 minutes in the morning, sit and breathe – consciously breathe – for those 5 minutes
- Build clear and simple routines that work on their own. With these in place, you don’t need to make hard choices every time, and you don’t need to rely on motivation or willpower.
So yes, I believe willpower is overrated.
I also believe our environment, routines and the way we design our lives are underrated.
The healthy choice should be the natural choice. We should not have to rely on motivation or willpower to make a simple life choice. But our society and evolution have made everything so complicated.
So next time you think you’ve got no willpower… pause a little. And look around you.
How is your life designed? Does it help you, or does it fight you?
Can you change it?
Can you make healthy behaviours more automatic?
Slowly and deliberately.
Gently.
Simply.