What To Expect
In today’s article, 5 ways to manage your willpower battery for success will go into more depth about where willpower comes from and how to make willpower work to benefit us rather than let it deplete where we give in into temptation we may later regret.
What Is Willpower?
According to most psychological scientists, willpower can be defined as the ability to delay gratification, resisting short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. The capacity to override an unwanted thought, feeling, or impulse.
Where Does Willpower Come From?
Kelly McGonigal, PhD and author of The Willpower Instinct says willpower is a response that comes from both the brain and the body. The willpower response is a reaction to an internal conflict. You want to do one thing, such as smoke a cigarette or supersize your lunch, but know you shouldn’t.
5 Ways To Manage Your Willpower Battery For Success
1. What Should We Automate
Automating is an amazing concept that can help with our willpower battery. We can now automate our finances to prevent us from going into debt and also building our retirement fund. By automating our bills and Index funds.
Not only that but we can automate a lot of things that drain our willpower battery so we can focus on what’s most important to us in our life. This could be using a laundry app that can clean and iron all your clothes for you or hiring an assistant for the generic tasks you don’t want to put energy into.
Look at your life and see what drains your willpower and whether you could fix it by automating it.
2 .Get Rid Of Anything Unimportant That Depletes Willpower
There are so many things around us that deplete our willpower battery. Imagine waking up feeling good, ready to win your day. Then you open your email box, put the news on, go on social media and then bit by bit your willpower and your mood slowly changes. The feeling of win your day can still be there but it’s taken a big chunk already and by noon you could be fully drained.
That’s why it’s important to manage what you read, listen to and watch because the draining of the negatives in our life will cause willpower depletion.
Why is it that some people are motivated full of energy throughout the day and others are not? It’s because some people are conserving their willpower and others are depleting it before they get out the front door.
3. Be One With Your Feelings
What can deplete your willpower battery fast is losing control of your emotions or letting them control us. When there is stress in your life what do you turn to? Is it chocolate, smoking or an ex?
When willpower depletes we are more susceptible to things in our life we don’t really want to do and will later regret. In kelly Mcdonigual book Willpower Instinct. Studies have shown that when you feel any kind of feeling be conscious of it and don’t hold it back but let it quickly flow through you. You then say to yourself this feeling will soon pass and I choose not to do it today.
When we hold off negative emotions it quickly saps all our willpower strength but letting it pass through and dealing with it. Our willpower can be sustained.
4. Be Well Rested
When you’re tired at night have you ever been susceptible to temptation? I know I have with the lure of chocolate.
The same goes for when we wake up after a lack of sleep too. You might not see at first but sooner or later you will become tired quicker and temptations will come towards you thick and fast. That’s why it’s important for your willpower battery to well-rested between 6 and 8 hours following your 90-minute rhythmic cycles.
Within the Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal also cites that “Sleep deprivation (even just getting less than six hours a night) is a kind of chronic stress that impairs how the body and brain use energy. The prefrontal cortex is especially hard hit and it loses control over the regions of the brain that create cravings and the stress response.”
So sleep is an important part of your willpower battery throughout the day.
There is a simple experiment to find out. Just focus on yourself or people around you and notice the difference between getting 4 hours of sleep compared to 8 hours. Watch out for changes in cravings and breaking of habits. You will be surprised at what you see.
5. Be prepared
Similar to automating.
Being prepared each day with your intention, to-do list and schedule.
Helps the brain order the priority of the day.
It allows your brain not to get overloaded with what to do. But allows the brain to focus on the productivity part of the day.
I do this myself. What really helps when writing for a blog post is planning everything in advance. So when I sit down to write I have my title, keywords, headings and research already prepared. So when I’m writing my mind feels a lot more focused and less drained. Whereas it would be drained if I had to do it all at the same time.
We have all heard the stories about Mark Zuckerberg who wore the same style of clothes every day. So he doesn’t have to think and drain his willpower thinking about unproductive energy depletion. Prepare your day, your week even your year to free up space for being more productive. This will keep your willpower battery full for longer.
Over To You
I hope you enjoyed today’s article, 5 ways to manage your willpower battery for success
We all have a willpower battery and when we manage it well with the strategies stated above. Our productivity levels go up as well as sticking to habits more easily too.
If you have any other strategies that work well for you please comment below!
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