The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

by Kelly McGonigal

People who have better control of their attention, emotions, and actions are better off almost any way you look at it.

Robert Sapolsky, a neurobiologist at Stanford University, has argued that the main job of the modern prefrontal cortex is to bias the brain—and therefore, you—toward doing “the harder thing.”

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.

When your mind is preoccupied, your impulses—not your long-term goals—will guide your choices.

Not only does your brain find these things easier, but it actually remodels itself based on what you ask it to do. Some parts of the brain grow denser, packing in more and more gray matter like a muscle bulking up from exercise.

Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness. People who meditate regularly aren’t just better at these things. Over time, their brains become finely tuned willpower machines. Regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness.

Meditation is not about getting rid of all your thoughts; it’s learning not to get so lost in them that you forget what your goal is. Don’t worry if your focus isn’t perfect when meditating. Just practice coming back to the breath, again and again.

It focused your attention and senses on the saber-toothed tiger and your surroundings, making sure no stray thoughts distracted you from the threat at hand. The alarm system also prompted a complex change in brain chemicals that inhibited your prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain in charge of impulse control. That’s right, the fight-or-flight response wants to make you more impulsive. The rational, wise, and deliberative prefrontal cortex is effectively put to sleep—the better to make sure you don’t chicken out or overthink your escape.

Like the fight-or-flight response, the pause-and-plan response begins in the brain. Just as the alarm system of your brain is always monitoring what you hear, see, and smell, other areas are keeping track of what’s going on inside of you.

I would imagine that veterans transitioning from deployment would lack this.

To help the prefrontal cortex, the pause-and-plan response redirects energy from the body to the brain. For self-control, you don’t need legs ready to run or arms ready to punch, but a well-fueled brain ready to flex its power.

The single best physiological measurement of the pause-and-plan response is something called heart rate variability—a

When people are under stress, the sympathetic nervous system takes over, which is part of the basic biology that helps you fight or flee. Heart rate goes up, and variability goes down. The heart gets “stuck” at a higher rate—contributing to the physical feelings of anxiety or anger that accompany the fight-or-flight response.

Heart rate variability training programs (using similar breathing exercises) have also been used to improve self-control and decrease the stress of cops, stock traders, and customer service operators—three of the most stressful jobs on the planet.

The intervention wasn’t a drug at all. The willpower miracle was physical exercise.

Exercise turns out to be the closest thing to a wonder drug that self-control scientists have discovered.

Why does poor sleep sap willpower? For starters, sleep deprivation impairs how the body and brain use glucose, their main form of energy. When you’re tired, your cells have trouble absorbing glucose from the bloodstream. This leaves them underfueled, and you exhausted. With your body and brain desperate for energy, you’ll start to crave sweets or caffeine. But even if you try to refuel with sugar or coffee, your body and brain won’t get the energy they need because they won’t be able to use it efficiently. This is bad news for self-control, one of the most energy-expensive tasks your brain can spend its limited fuel on.

Your prefrontal cortex, that energy-hungry area of the brain, bears the brunt of this personal energy crisis. Sleep researchers even have a cute nickname for this state: “mild prefrontal dysfunction.” Shortchange your sleep, and you wake up with temporary Phineas Gage–like damage to your brain.

When your prefrontal cortex is impaired, it loses control over other regions of the brain. Ordinarily, it can quiet the alarm system of the brain to help you manage stress and cravings. But a single night of sleep deprivation creates a disconnect between these two regions of your brain. Unchecked, the alarm system overreacts to ordinary, everyday stress. The body gets stuck in a physiological fight-or-flight state, with the accompanying high levels of stress hormones and decreased heart rate variability. The result: more stress and less self-control.

In one study, five minutes of breath-focus meditation a day helped recovering addicts fall asleep. This added one hour a night to their quality sleep time, which in turn significantly reduced the risk of drug use relapse. So for better willpower, go to sleep already.

none of this stuff was actually urgent, but late at night, it felt strangely compelling. Lisa was hooked on doing “one more thing” before she went to sleep.

one of the most robust, if troubling, findings from the science of self-control: People who use their willpower seem to run out of it.

Anytime you have to fight an impulse, filter out distractions, weigh competing goals, or make yourself do something difficult, you use a little more of your willpower strength. This even includes trivial decisions, like choosing between the twenty brands of laundry detergent at the market. If your brain and body need to pause and plan, you’re flexing the metaphorical muscle of self-control.

people with low blood sugar are also more likely to rely on stereotypes

What appears in our modern world as a loss of control may actually be a vestige of the brain’s instinct for strategic risk-taking.

The important “muscle” action being trained in all these studies isn’t the specific willpower challenge of meeting deadlines, using your left hand to open doors, or keeping the F-word to yourself. It’s the habit of noticing what you are about to do, and choosing to do the more difficult thing instead of the easiest.

The relative unimportance of the willpower challenges allowed participants to exercise the muscle of self-control without the internal angst that derails so many of our attempts to change.

Whenever she thought, I can’t do this, she said to herself, “You are doing this,” and just kept putting one foot in front of the other, all the way to the finish line.

Noakes, with several colleagues, began to review evidence of what happens to endurance athletes under extreme conditions. They found no evidence for physiological failure happening within the muscles; instead, it appeared that the brain was telling the muscles to stop. The brain, sensing an increased heart rate and rapidly depleting energy supply, literally puts the brakes on the body. At the same time, the brain creates an overwhelming feeling of fatigue that has little to do with the muscles’ capacity to keep working. As Noakes puts it, “Fatigue should no longer be considered a physical event but rather a sensation or emotion.”

athletes recognize that the first wave of fatigue is never a real limit, and with sufficient motivation, they can transcend it.