feb 3: Willpower Instinct

Kelly McGonigal: The Willpower Instinct

Willpower is integral for our success and reaching our goals. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal says that willpower is not just in your head, it's a bodily process that, like our muscles, we can strengthen. She sits down with Piya Chattopadhyay to discuss what willpower is and why stress is its natural enemy.

We may all have been born with the capacity for willpower, but some of us use it more than others. People who have better control of their attention, emotions, and actions are better off almost any way you look at it. They are happier and healthier. Their relationships are more satisfying and last longer. They make more money and go further in their careers. They are better able to manage stress, deal with conflict, and overcome adversity. They even live longer. When pit against other virtues, willpower comes out on top. Self-control is a better predictor of academic success than intelligence (take that, SATs), a stronger determinant of effective leadership than charisma (sorry, Tony Robbins), and more important for marital bliss than empathy (yes, the secret to lasting marriage may be learning how to keep your mouth shut). If we want to improve our lives, willpower is not a bad place to start.

Without self-awareness, the self-control system would be useless. You need to recognize when you’re making a choice that requires willpower; otherwise, the brain always defaults to what is easiest.”Without awareness, you simply act out your autopilot tendencies and impulses. You simply live out your conditioning. You’re living a mechanical life, kind of like a programmed robot.

Some neuroscientists say that we have one brain but two minds – or even, two people living inside our mind. There’s the version of us that acts on impulse and seeks immediate gratification, and the version of us that controls our impulses and delays gratification to protect our long-term goals.

Stress is the enemy of willpower. So often we believe that stress is the only way to get things done, and we even look for ways to increase stress – such as waiting until the last minute, or criticizing ourselves for being lazy or out of control – to motivate ourselves. Or we use stress to try to motivate others, turning up the heat at work or coming down hard at home. This may seem to work in the short term, but in the long term, nothing drains willpower faster than stress

Taking slow and deep breaths is probably the fastest way to activate the physiology of self-control. It slows down your heart rate, activates the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, raises heart rate variability, and puts you into that calm and slowed-down space of control.

If you think that the key to greater willpower is being harder on yourself, you are not alone. But you are wrong. Study after study shows that self-criticism is consistently associated with less motivation and worse self-control. It is also one of the single biggest predictors of depression, which drains both “I will” power and “I want” power. In contrast, self-compassion—being supportive and kind to yourself, especially in the face of stress and failure—is associated with more motivation and better self-control