🧭 Willpower Explained: How To Increase Your Willpower

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Good Day, and welcome to The Growth Compass. We are like the Duolingo for resilience, mindset, and leadership. We provide guidance and learning and help you grow in a fun way!

Here’s Where We Are Headed Today:

• Napoleon Hill on Willpower

• What Willpower Really Is

• How to Increase Your Willpower and Tenacity

• The Experts on Willpower

• Free Mental Fitness Links 👇

• Quick Takeaways from Today’s Newsletter (TLDR) 👇

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What Willpower Truly Means

What is Willpower: Willpower is the inner strength to make decisions, take action, and persist in the face of challenges. It's a blend of self-discipline, self-control, and the ability to delay gratification. Willpower is a mental muscle that can be strengthened with practice.

Why It Matters: It’s the driving force behind goal setting, maintaining focus, and overcoming the lure of immediate pleasures for more substantial, long-term achievements. Strong willpower is linked to improved mental health, relationships, and overall well-being.

What the Science Says:

1. A study led by Roy F. Baumeister and his colleagues, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1998, focused on understanding the role of self-control in academic achievement. They found that students who demonstrated higher levels of self-control were more likely to achieve academic success, regardless of their IQ. This research concluded that self-control could be a more significant predictor of academic performance than intelligence, suggesting that willpower is a crucial factor in educational outcomes.

2. The famous "Marshmallow Test," conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in the late 1960s and early 1970s, explored delayed gratification in children. Children were offered a choice between a small immediate reward or a larger reward if they waited for a period. Follow-up studies revealed that children who were able to wait longer for the larger rewards generally scored higher on standardized tests like the SAT, achieved higher educational levels, and maintained healthier body mass indices in adulthood. This longitudinal research provided compelling evidence of the long-term benefits of willpower in various life aspects.

How to Increase Your Willpower

Step 1: What You Need to Know

1. The research classically has said that willpower is a limited resource, but here's an intriguing twist: It depends on what you believe. Your core beliefs about willpower will determine the outcomes of your self-control efforts.

   • If you see willpower as finite, it will be a finite reservoir.

   • If you don’t see it as finite, you will be able to draw more of it even when you’re tired.

2. Your willpower is affected by several factors: Stress, breathing, immune functions, and autonomic functions can all affect your willpower. When your mind is in a constant state of fight or flight, every decision feels like a tough task.

3. Willpower is correlated with positive life outcomes: better grades, higher self-esteem, lower rates of substance abuse, greater financial security, and improved physical and mental health. It's a cornerstone of a successful, well-balanced life.

4. Willpower is a muscle that grows over time: In a study of people who smoked, smokers who practiced self-control in small ways, like avoiding sweets or squeezing for 2 weeks before trying to quit, were more successful at quitting than those who didn't engage in such self-control exercises.

Step 2: Why this is Important

As mentioned before, willpower is correlated with positive life outcomes, but let’s take the example of super agers. Super agers are people who are 60-100 years old, but have the cognition function of somewhere from 20-40. That is amazing! What makes them so unique?

• They embrace new challenges and novel situations.

• They actively seek out friction points.

This perpetual learning and adapting might just be the key to their impressive willpower. They never stop pushing themselves.

Step 3: How to Implement and Improve your Willpower

1. Manage Your Mind, Body, and Health: Your overall wellness impacts your willpower. A balanced diet, regular exercise, and sufficient sleep are foundational.

2. Try 5 “Micro-Sucks” Every Day: Embrace small, mildly annoying tasks daily. The key is that you need to feel resistance to wanting to doing these activities. If you enjoy cold showers then taking a cold shower doesn’t help building your willpower muscle. Examples include:

   • Take the stairs instead of the elevator.

   • Do 1 extra set of a workout even when tired.

   • Add 1 new healthy item to your diet.

3. Try 3 “Temptation Testers” Every Day: These are micro-sucks that specifically challenge your temptations and urges for self-control. Examples include:

   • Not checking your phone for 1 hour after waking up.

   • Not watching that last show before bed.

   • Reducing your social media time by 10 minutes.

4. Understand (or Change) Your Core Belief About Willpower: Reflect on your views about willpower. As discussed, your belief about whether you think willpower is finite or not will define how you act. Are your thoughts limiting you?

5. Have a Plan in Place: Anticipate challenges and have strategies ready. Forethought and preparedness can boost your willpower when you need it most.

Remember, your willpower is more within your control than you might think. Small, consistent steps can lead to significant gains in your self-control and overall life satisfaction.

The Experts on Willpower

That's a wrap for today. If you want to spread the joy, make sure to refer the newsletter to someone you think would benefit!