psychology
Do you think you lack willpower? Why this is (probably) not true
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If we don’t succeed at something straight away, we often blame it on a lack of discipline. Why it can’t do much when the brain is busy with other things – and how you can really strengthen your willpower.
In times when self-optimization is one of the biggest trends Willpower is one of our most important tools. Get up at 5 a.m. every morning and do sports, only eat “healthily” and only do things that optimize us: so that we can constantly improve, we need discipline.
If we don’t reach our set goal, if we oversleep or are simply too tired for our workout, we are often very hard on ourselves. We accuse ourselves of simply not having enough willpower. Because otherwise it wouldn’t be so difficult for us! Or?
That’s why you can’t always influence your willpower
Dr. Faye Begeti is a neurologist and shares insights and findings from her everyday professional life on her Instagram channel “the_brain_doctor”. The brain expert explained in an article why it is often not due to a lack of willpower when we fail to do something – at least not only.
Discipline is one of the so-called executive functions and arises primarily in the prefrontal brain structures, including the prefrontal cortex. This part of our brain has other tasks, such as processing feelings from the emotional part of the brain and deciding whether we should react to them. We call this process emotional regulation.
Stress is poison for the brain – and “blocks” our discipline
This can lead to great stress reducing our willpower. Because our brain is busy processing difficult emotions such as fear, shame or anger – and therefore no longer has room for discipline. So if we’ve had a busy day at work or caring for small children alone, we’re usually pretty exhausted. In the latter case, we not only had to spend energy on our own emotional regulation, but also on that of the little ones – they can’t do it themselves yet.
Once we have reached the maximum capacity of the executive part of our brain, our brain jumps into autopilot. In this emergency mode, our brain seeks short-term satisfaction instead of achieving long-term goals. In other words: we are more likely to sit in front of the television with a bar of chocolate instead of going to exercise.
Of course, it is not impossible to still have enough discipline in this situation to choose the option that is good for us in the long term – and if you are one of the people who manage to do that, you can be really proud of yourself. But most of us tend to give in to convenience and seek out activities or foods that make us feel good in the short term.
This is how we really strengthen our willpower
We won’t solve this problem by being even harder on ourselves and beating ourselves up because we didn’t achieve a goal. Because that only stresses us out further, our brain quickly jumps back into autopilot because regulating our emotions takes up too much space. And the whole thing starts again.
How can we break this vicious circle? By being kind to ourselves and listening to our needs. Are you exhausted from a stressful day at work? Listen honestly to yourself and see whether a little yoga might be a better alternative to a sweaty HIIT workout. In this way, you can actively do something about your exhaustion and perhaps have enough energy for more dynamic training tomorrow.
So: You don’t lack willpower because you’re weak – but because you’ve probably taken on too much of yourself and your brain doesn’t have enough capacity to motivate you. The solution is therefore not more pressure, but rather stress reduction.
Sources used: instagram.com/the_brain_doctor, lanocepsychiatry.com