Whenever someone asked me – what’s your biggest attribute – I would say “ My Will Power” and that indeed worked for me in a few instances. Until I realised that willpower, self-control, resisting temptation doesn’t work all by itself - We have to build our Willpower Muscle!
Our mind is a magnificent machine, it gets its efficiency by creating patterns so that all its ‘tasks’ are completed. If the patterns are ‘good’ then they help us, but if the patterns are ‘bad’ then create roadblocks for us.
One classic example that we all can relate is – weight loss/fitness. Many people want to make changes to their fitness or eating routines, but the truth is, it can any time bounce back to the old patterns and habits. You can try to ‘Will’ yourself to make changes, but temptations will drain you and make it harder for you to be able to make long-term changes.
Our mind works with triggers and cues and these make it hard for us to make changes when we are constantly trying to fight it on what it has already learned it should be doing - This is why we have to build our willpower muscle.
We believe that willpower is that in-the-moment feat of self-control against a craving or temptation. However, just like any muscle, the willpower ‘muscle’ also needs conditioning with regular workouts, and that's how it grows stronger.
Here are the 3 steps to building your Will Power Muscle:
1. Eliminate/ hide the temptations – Eliminate from your environment. For example, if you want to stop eating sweets, all you need to do is make sure you don’t buy them, as well as throw out any that are at your home and even avoid visiting stores where your favourite sweets are!
2. Practice self–control on smaller things - Identify simple things you can do to practice self-control, where you can easily control yourself without any tug of war. For example, waiting to check social media, portion control on unhealthy snacks, sitting up straight, having a glass of water every 30 mins etc. Small wins make your brain crave for more!
3. Visualise – Since it’s a game with the mind, in fact, the unconscious one - mentally project yourselves into the future into a situation that is a trigger, imagine the trigger happening but you are not responding like you normally would instead respond with the desired behaviour. Practising this mentally helps you break a pattern in the mind. You will be able to it break better when you are exposed to the trigger in reality as your unconscious mind has already rehearsed the new pattern. Remember – this needs a lot of repetition.
Let me share one small win of mine. I just love to drink tea, and when I decided to stop having tea.. I stopped making tea for everyone else at home! 🤩
Now, it’s time to identify at least 3 small patterns/habits that you can change magically. Let’s get started! 🙌
Comments