Those over 40 probably watched the humorous newsreel “Yeralash” in their childhood and will easily remember the episode called “Willpower,” where a schoolboy trained this wonderful quality by not allowing himself to eat a chocolate bar lying in front of him on the desk. And he succeeded!
However, the secret of such hardening was revealed at the end of the episode, when the surprised viewers were shown a whole pile of wrappers from other chocolate bars lying under the desk, which the main character had managed to eat in order not to succumb to the temptation to eat the very bar that was lying in front of him on the desk.
If your willpower is in a similar situation, it would be a good idea to take our program “ Self-Assessment 360 ” and find out if your weaknesses are preventing you from achieving your goals. And work on yourself with our program “ Be Your Own Psychologist ”.
There are also more serious works on this topic in cinema. For example, Willpower, a film directed by Stephen Hopkins about the African-American track and field athlete Jesse Owens, who won a record four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
This is a true example of courage and willpower, and Jessie needed a lot of willpower already at the stage of selection for the Olympics in order to overcome the prejudices and racism that reigned in America in the 1930s.
If someone today is wondering “how to develop willpower” – perhaps it is worth watching this film and understanding how much smaller and easier to overcome today’s obstacles in the already relatively civilized world are than the order that reigned less than a century ago. If you are not ready to set aside 2 hours 14 minutes for this now, read our article – it is much faster!
Willpower: term and meaning
First, let’s delve into what “willpower” is, the essence of willpower, its main aspects. Human willpower is a psychological quality that allows a person to consciously control their impulses, emotions, and behavior in order to achieve long-term goals, despite difficulties, temptations, and external obstacles.
This is a key characteristic of self-regulation, which helps us overcome temptations, resist distractions, and stay on track despite difficulties.
Let us clarify that self-regulation is the management of one’s psycho-emotional state, which is achieved through a person’s influence on himself through words, mental images, control of muscle tone and breathing.
The main aspects of willpower:
- Willpower as behavioral controlis the ability to control your actions and make conscious decisions that are consistent with your values and goals. For example, willpower against temptations and the ability to refuse unhealthy food to improve your health.
- Willpower as self-control– This involves regulating your emotions so that you don’t let negative feelings like anger or anxiety control your actions. For example, instead of responding harshly to criticism, you decide to act rationally.
- Willpower as impulse controlis the ability to delay immediate gratification for the sake of more meaningful results. For example, saving money instead of immediately spending it on pleasant but not very necessary things.
- Willpower as a strategic choice– this is related to planning and the willingness to follow through on a chosen strategy, even if it requires effort. For example, regular training to prepare for a marathon.
All this is impossible without awareness of your own goals and understanding what and why you want to achieve. Willpower requires motivation and faith that the efforts invested will bring results. And, of course, this requires energy, because willpower and movement towards a goal require enormous mental and physical resources.
Yes, willpower is not only psychology, but also biology. Willpower is associated with the activity of the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is responsible for planning, controlling emotions, and making decisions. If your environment supports you (for example, you all go to training together), developing willpower is easier than if there is no such support. For example, if your friends are exclusively into “literball” and do not bother about a beer belly.
Scientists have found that neural circuits responsible for conscious self-control are extremely vulnerable to even minor stress. When they are switched off, primary impulses go out of control and mental paralysis sets in [ A. Arnsten et al., 2016 ]. You can learn more about how the brain works on our program “ Brain and Neuroscience ,” and we’ll move on.
Why is developing willpower so important and why not let everything in this life take its course, indulging in various kinds of pleasures and amusements? At least because pleasures and entertainment cost money, and even if you organize all this at home, you will still have to get money from somewhere to pay for utilities.
So we won’t be able to indulge in idleness forever, but this has its advantages.
The meaning of willpower:
- Personal effectiveness– people with strong willpower are more likely to achieve their goals. For example, a student with strong willpower will continue to study for an exam despite distractions.
- Improving health– control over habits such as nutrition and physical activity, quitting smoking and drinking alcohol can improve health. Thus, a person with a strong will quits smoking and no longer suffers from shortness of breath.
- Time management– willpower helps you organize your affairs and avoid procrastination and putting things off, including important ones, “for later.”
- Emotional stability– people with strong willpower are better able to cope with anxiety, anger and stress.
Everyday examples of willpower:
- Giving up sweets for the sake of healthy eating.
- Continuing to work on a project despite fatigue.
- Staying calm in a stressful situation.
- Regular training even in bad weather.
This is a short list just to make it clear what I am talking about. I think you can add to it yourself, especially when you work on developing your own willpower.
Developing willpower
Willpower is a skill that can be developed. The more you train your willpower, the easier it will be to overcome difficulties and achieve your goals. How can you strengthen your willpower? What methods should you use to strengthen your willpower and how long might it take?
Strengthening your willpower is a process that takes time, awareness, and practice. Remember that willpower is the ability to control your impulses, make informed decisions, and stick to your long-term goals despite short-term challenges and temptations.
The topic is so important and serious that even authorities are concerned about it. In particular, the Department of Labor and Social Protection of the Population of the City of Moscow: Moscow psychologists told how to develop willpower [ DTSS of Moscow, 2023 ]. We took into account the advice of Moscow psychologists when preparing this material.
We will also find the article “How to develop willpower and go towards your goal without being distracted” [ S. Efimov, 2015 ] useful. And the article “How does willpower work and what to do if you don’t have it? A molecular biologist explains” [ N. Golikova, 2018 ]. We have already said a few words about the physiology of willpower, so now we will focus exclusively on practical recommendations.
Top 7 ways to develop willpower:
- Gradual changes.
- Setting clear goals.
- Using “positive habits”.
- The 5 second principle.
- Visualization of success.
- Self-reflection.
- Appeal to external control.
Now let’s talk about each of these methods in more detail.
Gradual changes
The principle of gradualism or the principle of small steps are key aspects of developing willpower and achieving goals. Small steps are simple actions that everyone can do daily, regardless of their starting positions and the grandeur of their planned achievements.
Goal: Develop discipline through small but regular steps.
What to do: Start small and gradually increase the difficulty of the tasks. For example, if the goal is to start exercising , start with 10-minute workouts and increase the time each week.
Why it works: Gradually increasing the load helps avoid overload, which reduces the likelihood of failure.
Setting clear goals
As the ancients said, “no wind will be favorable if you do not know where you want to sail.” At the same time, the goal should be realistic and achievable, and global goals in the spirit of “lose 20 kilograms” should be broken down into smaller goals and steps.
Purpose: Willpower requires clear motivation and an understanding of the end goal.
What to do: Break long-term goals down into specific, achievable steps. For example, if your goal is to learn a new skill, set intermediate goals. For example, take a course, get a certificate, find an internship before applying for your first job in your new specialty.
Why it works: Having clear goals and an action plan makes the process more predictable, which helps strengthen your willpower because you know what you’re working towards and how you intend to move forward.
online course
Self-knowledge
In 4 weeks, with the help of psychological tests and exercises, you will find out what you really want in life, understand your strengths and weaknesses, and analyze more than 50 characteristics of your personality.
View the program
Using “positive habits”
Conventional wisdom says that a habit is formed in 21 days, which is certainly an average figure, depending on both the habit and the person. However, small everyday habits are formed quite quickly, which is often enough to start moving forward.
Goal: to transform willpower into automatic behavior.
What to do: form habits that will gradually lead to the desired result. Make it a rule to take a break every hour and get up from the computer to warm up or stretch, and very soon you will notice that your muscles have become more elastic, it has become easier to move, and fresh thoughts have begun to visit you much more often.
Why it works: When actions become habitual, they require less effort and your willpower becomes automatic.
The 5 Second Principle
Learn to make everyday decisions quickly so that you don’t waste mental energy overthinking them and save your willpower for more important accomplishments.
Goal: stop putting things off.
What to do: When a task appears that needs to be done, make a decision in 5 seconds and start acting immediately. Don’t give yourself time to think or make excuses.
Why it works: The method helps to avoid procrastination and teaches immediate action, which develops discipline.
Visualizing Success
Visualization of success is a fairly common recommendation in many practices. The more detailed you imagine the end result, the clearer it is what you should do next, and the more likely it is not to turn off halfway. Let us clarify that visualization in psychology is the process of translating mental verbal representations into visual (visual) images.
Goal: to motivate yourself through visualization of the end result.
What to do: Visualize the result of your work as if it has already happened. Imagine how you will get what you want and how it will affect your life.
Why it works: Visualization helps maintain motivation and increases determination, especially during challenging times.
Self-reflection
Self-reflection is a person’s ability to immerse themselves in the individual inner world of the psyche, containing feelings, thoughts, states, experiences, dreams, personal knowledge, behavioral patterns, emotional manifestations, which leads to the ability to evaluate personal actions. In simpler terms, self-reflection is an analysis of one’s feelings, emotions, desires, and behavior.
Goal: to develop awareness of one’s strengths and weaknesses.
What to do: Every evening write down your thoughts about what worked, what didn’t work, why you couldn’t cope with something, what could be done better.
Why it works: Self-reflection helps you find weaknesses in your strategies and makes you more conscious in your decision-making process.
Appeal to external control
We already know that if your environment supports you in your intentions, the process of developing willpower is easier. If your inner circle does not share your aspirations, no problem, because in the era of social networks you can always find support in specialized groups of runners, muscle pumping, losing weight, learning foreign languages, etc.
The goal is to involve other people in your process to create a system of accountability.
What to do: Share your goals with a friend or colleague who can monitor your progress and provide feedback.
Why it works: Feeling accountable to another person helps increase discipline and willpower because you now have a promise to keep, not just to yourself.
And, of course, when developing willpower, it is important to remember the general principles of a healthy lifestyle: proper nutrition, exercise, healthy sleep, adequate rest. All this recharges you with energy and does not allow your will to “go limp” due to lack of strength, rest, food, etc.
How long might all this take? And how long will it take to build willpower? It depends on your individual characteristics and the complexity of your goals. Expect the first 5-7 days to be spent becoming aware of your habits and making small changes, the next couple of months to start making your new habits part of your daily routine, and after three months of consistent use, your ability to control impulses and achieve goals will improve dramatically.
Strengthening your willpower requires constant practice, discipline, and patience. Using techniques such as gradual changes, clear goals, and visualizing success, you can develop sustainable habits that will lead to long-term results. The key is to not give up and keep working on yourself.
And then there remains another important question: how to understand how developed your willpower is and whether you need to work on it further?
Developed willpower: basic criteria
Since our university philosophy course, we all remember that the main criterion of truth is practice. If your efforts have led to the desired goal for which you took up the development of willpower, then everything has worked out. If not, you need to work some more.
However, it happens that you don’t have any clear goal, but just want to stop getting up at night to go to the refrigerator, stop looking for excuses why you don’t want to do exercises again, etc. Well, there are quite clear criteria for all this.
Ability to stick to long-term goals:
- A person steadily moves towards his goals, even if the process requires time and effort.
- The ability to stay motivated despite challenges, distractions, and lack of immediate reward. For example, not rushing to drop out of college after the first bad grade in a session.
Impulse Control:
- The ability to say “no” to momentary desires that conflict with more important goals.
- The ability to choose what is important, not idleness. Let’s clarify, this does not mean that you do not need to rest. You need to rest, but not in a 25/8 mode.
Emotional stability:
- The ability to remain calm in stressful situations and not allow emotions to control behavior. For example, not to lose your temper in response to provocations, but to react rationally to conflict.
- The ability to maintain attention on an important task despite distractions.
Self-discipline:
- The ability to regularly perform routine but important actions, even if they seem boring or tiring. For example, 10 pull-ups on the horizontal bar or 1 English lesson per day.
- The ability to follow a plan you make unless there is a compelling reason to change it.
Responsibility for your actions:
- A person takes responsibility for the decisions made and their consequences.
- A person is ready to take responsibility for others if he is a team leader.
Patience and endurance:
- The ability to wait and continue working, even if the results do not appear immediately.
- The ability to perceive failures as an opportunity for growth, rather than a reason to give up on a goal.
Work-life balance:
- The ability to allocate resources in a way that avoids burnout.
- The ability to say “no” is when a person knows how to refuse others or himself if it interferes with his goals.
So, the main indicators of developed willpower:
- Endurance and consistency in achieving goals.
- Effective management of emotions and impulses.
- The ability to balance between effort and recovery.
- If these criteria are consistently demonstrated, we can talk about strong will, which is a key factor for success in life.