Willpower is like a Muscle

Intro:

Hello guys! My name is Yogesh and I will use this platform to write about skills we need in life to make it meaningful. I will back-up my writing with case studies, scientific evidence, current affair situations etc..

Today, I will be writing about Willpower. So what is Willpower? How can it act like a muscle? How I see it is that it’s an intrinsic quality, something which needs to be trained, almost like a muscle.

The muscle which I am talking about is your mental muscle, not the physical muscles you train when you go to the gym.

We are so used to changing our lifestyle in the physical aspect, but are we thinking about changing our lives in the mental aspect?

Let’s relate this to science:

The Human Brain has approximately 86 billion neurones. Let’s round that to a nicer number, so I’ll round up to 100 billion.

With that each neurone connects to 20 other neurones via synaptic passage ways. On top of that, there are approximately 100 firings per second. So, per second, 20 million billion units of information are floating around your brain.

It’s quite striking how much our brain is doing, even if we feel like we are not doing that much, in specific moments throughout the day.

Our brains have all the facilities to allow us to do anything we want really… It’s the most complex organ in the human body and we can rewire this concept of willpower into us. This is not an instant process, it takes time. A long time.

It requires self-control, it requires changing your daily routine to manipulate the results we want. The first step is the hardest step, to come out of the old routine and create a new one, but are you prepared to do that?

Linked to a study:

In 1996, a group of hungry students, who had been asked to fast overnight walked into Roy Baumeister’s laboratory. In front of them was a pile of the most deliciously smelling, freshly baked cookies.

However, one group was instructed not to eat the cookies and to eat the radishes instead. The students, who thought that they were being tested on their intelligence, were then asked to do a set of puzzles. Little did they know that those puzzles were impossible.

The group of students who ate the cookies contently worked on those impossible puzzles, not getting anywhere for nearly 20 minutes. The group of students who ate the radishes gave up after only 8 minutes. The difference had nothing to do with the hunger as a control group of students, who had also fasted but were offered nothing to eat, also worked on the puzzles for 20 minutes. The key difference is that they didn’t have to exert their willpower in resisting those cookies.

This, and several subsequent experiments, have shown that willpower is like a muscle. The more you use it the more likely it is to get fatigued and then temptations become irresistible.

This is why students start eating junk food during exam time.

And smokers who are trying to quit gain weight by overeating.

And, also, why many of us, after having had a long stressful day at work, school, university etc… not that stressful now with corona around although the media may make that worse for some, may lead people to indulge in sweets, chocolates, anything that can give you a sort of satisfaction to experience brief moments of euphoria.

This is the biggest mistake that dieters make when starting out by doing too much too soon. They want to change their entire life, diet and exercise regime in one quick swoop. This quickly drains willpower resources and they soon give into temptation.

This is why I personally hate catchphrases like “go big or go home” used to advertise ridiculously intense exercise programmes and diet plans as, when your willpower reserves serves run out, you will end up going home to devour the entire contents in the fridge.

So sometimes it’s ok to have a little treat if it’s going to prevent us from bingeing on the entire contents of the fridge in the evening. The exact balance will be up to you to decide.

link: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/04/the-chocolate-and-radish-experiment-that-birthed-the-modern-conception-of-willpower/255544/

Conclusion:

I have just given a specific example here where willpower is needed. There are also many other situations where I could go into more detail where it is required e.g. drug-using rehabilitation, turning bad habits into good habits, but I’m pretty sure you get the gist, that willpower can be applied in all scenarios, regardless of the activity being carried out.

It’s an important life skill to have. Without it our life will have no bounds. There will be no order. Everything will be distorted and we will be just become slaves to our desires…

Just like we have a shredding plan for our body let’s start our ‘shredding plan’ for our mind.

Are you ready to make that new connection?

Stay tuned for more next week…