Is Willpower All You Need?

What does it really take to defeat a negative habit? Toughing it out? Having a support group? Admitting helplessness? Trading in your personality? Well, let’s keep it simple and look just at the “toughing it out” component of ending negative habits in this piece.

Let’s listen in to the self-talk of two people trying to lose weight and trying to employ willpower. It’s been 4 or 5 days, each has started a diet, and each has gone into a convenience store to pay for some gas they’ve just pumped. One uses willpower by saying to himself, “Jeez, I would love to have that donut. Doesn’t it look great? I’m dying to have that donut. Wait, I better not. I’m trying to lose weight.” He pays for the gas and doesn’t buy the donut. The other says, “There will be donuts at the counter. Ugh. I just see more weight around my waist when I look at that donut. I see the cholesterol building up in my arteries. That donut is just an ugly pile of fat. Yuck.” That person pays for her gas and leaves without buying the donut.

So both people used “willpower” and both left without the donut. Which of those two willpower users is going to be more successful in the long run, do you think? Which will have more intense cravings for the next hour or more?

Right. Now let’s look a little closer. Willpower in these cases involved three phases:

1. The awareness that willpower was called for.
2. The motivation to use willpower once awareness kicked in.
3. The knowledge of good willpower strategies.

So with our friends, both had awareness, although the second person had the awareness earlier in the sequence and prepared herself ahead of time. Both had motivation to use willpower. But the willpower strategy of our second dieter was significantly superior to the first.

Simple mental tricks like that are effective in heightening willpower skills. And it isn’t just on a psychological level that we understand this. There's a lot more going on with a strategy like that than you might think. Did you know that musicians can improve their skills by rehearsing a piece in their mind that they are learning? Or that a gymnast can improve his/her performance by repeatedly rehearsing mentally a complicated dismount? It’s true. Thinking about something activates and refines many of the neural circuits involved in a behavioral sequence. So, every time our first dieter friend thinks about that donut and how much he wants it, he’s activating all his old negative habit circuits that associate that donut with yummy taste, satisfying feelings, and he kicks off an increased motivation to have that donut. He is also activating circuits causing feelings of regret for being on the diet and feelings of being cheated or deprived.

Our second person, having learned to prepare herself before going into the store, and secondly, using a strategy of changing her perception of the donut from attractive to yucky, is much more likely to feel good about not having that donut. She not only didn’t activate a “desire” circuit, she is building a brand-new “disgusting donut” circuit. She doesn’t feel cheated, she feels gratified that she didn’t put that yucky pile of fat into her body. And the more she does that, the easier it is going to be. In fact, (drum roll here) if she continues to practice changing her perception to donut-as-pile-of-yucky-fat, before long she’s built and strengthened a brand-new neural circuit and she won’t even need willpower anymore around donuts. With the new neural circuit firing, she wouldn’t even think of eating one.

Our gentleman friend, on the other hand, pining over not having eaten that donut, will try for a while but will most likely eventually give up, thinking that he doesn’t have willpower, even though he’s using it as frequently and as intensely as he can to lose weight. You see, we all can buy a hammer. It’s learning how to use it well that makes you a carpenter.

One other point. If you have confidence in your skills, you more frequently do a better job. That's true for willpower as well as sports competitions or any complex activity. Believing that you can make it if you try is an important part of making willpower work for you. Just as an experienced jogger knows that if she keeps going after that initial phase of tiredness, that she can finish her workout comfortably, when you learn willpower strategies to take on negative habits, you dramatically improve your chances of success. So, let's add a fourth "principle" to our list:

1. Awareness that willpower is called for
2. Motivation to use willpower once awareness kicks in.
3. Knowledge of good willpower strategies.
4. Belief that the willpower strategy works well for you.

A postscript: Traci Mann, PhD, a very talented researcher and author of Secrets From the Eating Lab calls strategies like these "Smart Regulation Strategies" and argues against "willpower" being effective for weight regulation. We, however, include every "smart regulation strategy" we could think of as integral parts of our definition of well-trained willpower users, and we've loaded our apps with these smart regulators, including our app for emotional eating, Willpwr-ee. Dr. Mann is probably correct to make the distinction, technically, but we kept it simple and folded smart regulators into our definition of willpower. Especially because we already branded our apps as Willpwr!