Many individuals believe that willpower is static and finite. But, there are efficient methods that can help us increase it.
We all have demanding days that seem designed to test our self-control. For example, as a barista, you may have to deal with insulting and demanding customers, but you keep calm throughout. Or you are working on an important assignment and must maintain calm concentration without allowing your thoughts to wander to other distractions. If you’re on a diet, you may have spent the last few hours battling the cookie jar while the delectable treats implored you to eat them.
In each scenario, you would have relied on your willpower, which psychologists define as rejecting short-term temptations and overriding unwanted thoughts, sensations, or urges. And some people appear to have considerably more stores of it than others: they find it easier to manage their emotions, avoid procrastination, and stay on track without ever appearing to lose control of their behavior. True, you may know some fortunate people who, after a tough day at work, resolve to do something helpful, such as exercise – while you ditch your fitness goals in favor of junk food and garbage TV.
Our mindsets shape our reserves of self-control and mental focus. Nevertheless, a new study reveals that anyone may learn to build stronger willpower, with major benefits to their health, productivity, and happiness.
The depleted ego
The mainstream psychological idea until recently held that willpower was akin to a battery. You may start the day with full strength, but every time you have to take control over your thoughts, feelings, or behavior, the battery’s charge is depleted. Those resources diminish dangerously without the opportunity to relax and recharge, making it substantially more difficult to maintain patience and focus and avoid temptation.
Laboratory tests appeared to provide evidence for this process; for example, if participants were pushed to avoid eating cookies set temptingly on a table, they demonstrated less tenacity when tackling a mathematical problem because their willpower reserves had been drained. This procedure was named “ego depletion,” after the Freudian term for the part of the mind in charge of managing our desires. People with good self-control may have more willpower at first, but even they will be exhausted when put under duress.
Yet, in 2010, psychologist Veronika Job published a study that doubted the theory’s foundations, offering compelling evidence that ego depletion depended on people’s core beliefs.
Job performed standard laboratory tests on the subjects to assess mental attention, which is supposed to depend on our reserves of willpower. Job discovered that people with a limited perspective behaved as the ego depletion theory predicted. For example, after performing one task that required great focus, such as applying painstaking modifications to a monotonous text, they found it substantially more difficult to pay attention to the following activity. On the other hand, those with a non-limited perspective showed no indication of ego depletion: they showed no decline in mental attention after performing an intellectually taxing activity.
Individuals are the sole determinants of their willpower
Individuals’ willpower attitudes were found to be self-fulfilling. For example, if participants believed that willpower depleted quickly, their ability to resist temptation and distraction evaporated swiftly; nevertheless, if they thought that “mental stamina fuels itself,” this is exactly what happened.
Job promptly replicated similar findings in many circumstances. While working with Krishna Savani at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, she observed that willpower beliefs differ by country. They discovered that non-limited mindsets were more common among Indian students than among students in the United States, as shown by mental stamina tests.
Further research found that willpower attitudes could predict students’ procrastination levels in the run-up to tests (those with non-limited perspectives squandered less time) as well as their final grades. Furthermore, students with non-limited views were better able to retain self-control in other areas of life when under pressure from their lectures; for example, they were less likely to eat fast food or go on an impulsive shopping spree.
On the other hand, those who believed their employment swiftly eroded their willpower were more likely to participate in those vices, presumably because they believed their academic work had already depleted their self-control.
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Willpower attitudes may influence a variety of disciplines, including fitness. Navin Kaushal, an assistant professor of health sciences at Indiana University in the United States, and colleagues, for example, have shown that they can change people’s exercise habits; people with non-limited beliefs about willpower find it easier to summon the desire to exercise.
A study conducted by Zo Francis, a psychology professor at the University of Fraser Valley, produced surprisingly similar results. She watched over 300 people for three weeks and determined that people with unrestricted thoughts are more likely to exercise and less likely to snack than those with constrained perspectives. Again, the inequalities are evident in the evenings when the stresses of the day’s duties have begun to take their toll on people who believe their self-control is easily exhausted.
