Accomplish Goals by Improving Your Willpower

It’s only nearing the end of February, and the gym already looks almost half empty. What happened to all of those New Year’s resolutions to lose? And what about your decision to buy only two new pairs of shoes a year instead of two a week to save money for a new set of furniture?

A new report from the American Psychological Association goes in-depth into these issues of willpower and goals.

The APA report explained that people have major difficulties following through with goals to improve their health and finances due to a lack of willpower, according to a press release. This report is backed up by results from the annual Stress in America poll that was conducted by Harris interactive on behalf of APA in December 2011, and a follow-up survey.

The initial survey results stated that “93 percent of people set a goal to change their behavior this year,” according to the press release. The survey results further show that people at least have the desire to change but are experiencing setbacks when they actually try to make the change mainly due to a lack of willpower.

According to the survey, most people do believe that willpower can be strengthened with effort, so it’s a matter of learning the best ways to do this.

So how do you actually define willpower? According to the report, “willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals.” However, willpower has been defined in multiple ways and has synonyms, such as self-control, self-discipline and “the capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling or impulse,” according to the report.

The report reinforced that willpower has noticeable benefits and can be linked to “higher grade-point averages, higher self-esteem, less binge eating and alcohol abuse, and better relationship skills,” as well as “greater physical and mental health, fewer substance-abuse problems and criminal convictions, and better savings behavior and financial security.”

The report offered solutions for how to improve your willpower, including setting definite goals and planning ahead, engaging in effective self-monitoring and practicing the art of self-control. It’s also important to steer clear of temptation.

Other experts have offered their ideas on how to enhance your willpower.

Christel Parker, a psychotherapist and eating disorder treatment specialist, said in an email that there are a lot of components to willpower.

She defines it as “one part desire, two parts motivation, an abundant source of support coupled with patience and a dash of imperfection.”

Support may be the biggest part of willpower.

“I think that you can have all of the willpower in the world, but without a support system … it's like going in to a boxing match with one hand tied behind your back ... it's an unfair fight,” Parker said.

Here are Parker’s suggestions for boosting willpower:

1) “Create a Pro/Con list, a 'vision board' that depicts what life looks
like after the change and to tell important people in your life about the
changes you are planning to make. The people in your life can remind you
of your motivators when times get tough.”

2) “Let go of the idea of perfection. Our culture supports change that is linear and fast. The real change process takes time and has both ups and downs. Don't be afraid of the downs. That means you're making real changes.”

Positive mental health can be a result of improving willpower, and specific mental health benefits can be “a sense of self-mastery and self-efficacy and a deeper level of connection to self/others,” she said.

Irena O’Brien, a business coach and psychologist and contributing author to an upcoming book “Change One Belief,” shared her strategies for developing better willpower.

“The fastest way to improve willpower is to discover your highest intention that has a deep meaning for you,” O’Brien said. “Ask yourself what is important about the task you need to accomplish. And then ask yourself what is important about that, until you have you have no more answers. That is your highest intention. Some call it your ‘big why.’ Then, as you are doing your task, keep your ‘big why’ in mind.”

Steve Levinson, a clinical psychologist and author of “Following Through: A Revolutionary New Model for Finishing Whatever You Start,” said in an email that “willpower is a measure of your ability to do what you intelligently decide you should do when you don't feel like doing it.”

He said it’s actually ineffective to rely on willpower, and it’s important to plan ahead through “willpower engineering.”

“Willpower Engineering is about deliberately setting things up to make it harder for you to do what you've decided you shouldn't do and/or easier for you to do what you've decided you should,” Levinson said.

Accomplishing goals is a vital part of positive mental health.

“I'm convinced that an important but largely overlooked factor in positive mental health is the ability to maintain relative harmony between what we intend to do and what we actually do,” Levinson said. “I believe the greater the discrepancy between our intentions and our actions, the more our emotional well-being suffers. It takes lots of willpower or, better yet, a mastery of Willpower Engineering to achieve the goals we set to maintain this all-important balance between ‘I really should’ and ‘I actually did.’”

Katie Hawn, the author of “Magic Nights: A Treasure Map and Travel Guide to the Ocean of Power and Possibility in Your Sleeping Mind,” a holistic healer and chiropractor, said in an email that taking care of yourself in general can help with improving your willpower.

“Willpower comes better with rest, a change in attitude or location, a break from the patterns in life that exhaust and create stress,” Hawn said.

Here are some of her suggestions for increasing willpower:

1) “When I am too frazzled to think straight and my to-do list is too long and I feel like I'm spinning my wheels, I just sit myself down and silence my mind. I 'be' for a few minutes and listen to my inner self. Then, usually within about five minutes, an idea comes into my head. Now I know what step to take next, and why it's the perfect step. Inner wisdom is great, if we will only get to know it, trust it and use it to our advantage.”

2) “Another way I get more willpower to get to my goals is to use my mind to set my intention before bedtime. If I set my intention that I want a healthy, strong and resilient body (using just the right words that I have developed) then when I wake up in the morning, I have the willpower to move around, dance, stretch and get healthy in many ways.”

Sources:

American Psychological Association. Lack of Willpower May Be Obstacle to Improving Personal Health and Finances. Web. Feb. 22, 2012. http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2012/02/willpower.aspx

American Psychological Association. What You Need to Know About Willpower: The Psychological Science of Self-Control. Web. Feb. 22, 2012. http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/willpower.aspx

Parker, Christel. Email interview. Feb. 21, 2012.
O’Brien, Irena. Email interview. Feb. 21, 2012.
Levinson, Steve. Email interview. Feb. 21, 2012.
Hawn, Katie. Email interview. Feb. 21, 2012.

Reviewed February 22, 2012
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith

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