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

by Kelly McGonigal

Since the dawn of time, or at least since researchers started poking and prodding the human brain, it was assumed that the brain was fixed in structure. Whatever brainpower you had was a done deal, not a work in progress. The only change your brain was going to see was the deterioration of getting old. But over the last decade, neuroscientists have discovered that, like an eager student, the brain is remarkably responsive to experience. Ask your brain to do math every day, and it gets better at math. Ask your brain to worry, and it gets better at worrying. Ask your brain to concentrate, and it gets better at concentrating.

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.

Regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness.

One study found that just three hours of meditation practice led to improved attention and self-control. After eleven hours, researchers could see those changes in the brain. The new meditators had increased neural connections between regions of the brain important for staying focused, ignoring distractions, and controlling impulses. Another study found that eight weeks of daily meditation practice led to increased self-awareness in everyday life, as well as increased gray matter in corresponding areas of the brain.

Why you succeed or fail at these willpower challenges can seem like a mystery. One day you resist, and the next you succumb. You might ask yourself, “What was I thinking!” But a better question might be, “What was my body doing?” Science is discovering that self-control is a matter of physiology, not just psychology. It’s a temporary state of both mind and body that gives you the strength and calm to override your impulses.

We’re used to seeing temptation and trouble outside of ourselves: the dangerous doughnut, the sinful cigarette, the enticing Internet. But self-control points the mirror back at ourselves, and our inner worlds of thoughts, desires, emotions, and impulses. For your willpower challenge, identify the inner impulse that needs to be restrained. What is the thought or feeling that makes you want to do whatever it is you don’t want to do? If you aren’t sure, try some field observation. Next time you’re tempted, turn your attention inward.

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. In contrast, when people successfully exert self-control, the parasympathetic nervous system steps in to calm stress and control impulsive action. Heart rate goes down, but variability goes up. When this happens, it contributes to a sense of focus and calm.

Heart rate variability is such a good index of willpower that you can use it to predict who will resist temptation, and who will give in.

Exercise turns out to be the closest thing to a wonder drug that self-control scientists have discovered. For starters, the willpower benefits of exercise are immediate. Fifteen minutes on a treadmill reduces cravings, as seen when researchers try to tempt dieters with chocolate and smokers with cigarettes.

When neuroscientists have peered inside the brains of new exercisers, they have seen increases in both gray matter—brain cells—and white matter, the insulation on brain cells that helps them communicate quickly and efficiently with each other. Physical exercise—like meditation—makes your brain bigger and faster, and the prefrontal cortex shows the largest training effect.

The next question everyone asks is, “What kind of exercise is best?” To which I respond, “What kind will you actually do?” The body and brain don’t seem to discriminate, so whatever you are willing to do is the perfect place to start. Gardening, walking, dancing, yoga, team sports, swimming, playing with your kids or pets—even enthusiastic housecleaning and window-shopping qualify as exercise. If you are absolutely convinced that exercise is not for you, I encourage you to expand your definition to include anything you reasonably enjoy about which you can answer no to the following two questions: 1. Are you sitting, standing still, or lying down? 2. Are you eating junk food while you do it? When you have found an activity that meets this definition, congratulations! You have found your willpower workout.5 Anything above and beyond the typical sedentary lifestyle will improve your willpower reserve.

If you tell yourself that you are too tired or don’t have the time to exercise, start thinking of exercise as something that restores, not drains, your energy and willpower.exercise as something that restores, not drains, your energy

Many of us come to the topic of willpower with ideas about what it is: a personality trait, a virtue, something you either have or you don’t, maybe a kind of brute force you muster up in difficult situations. But science is painting a very different picture of willpower. It’s an evolved capacity and an instinct that everyone has—a careful calibration of what’s happening in your brain and body.

Science also points us to a critical insight: 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.

• Breathe your way to self-control. Slow down your breathing to four to six breaths per minute to shift into the physiological state of self-control. • The five-minute green willpower fill-up. Get active outdoors—even just a walk around the block—to reduce stress, improve your mood, and boost motivation. • Zzzzzzzzzz. Undo the effects of sleep deprivation with a nap or one good night’s sleep. • Relax to restore your willpower reserve. Lie down, breathe deeply, and let the physiological relaxation response help you recover from the demands of self-control and daily stress.

Researchers have found that self-control is highest in the morning and steadily deteriorates over the course of the day. By the time you get to the stuff that really matters to you, like going to the gym after work, tackling the big project, keeping your cool when your kids turn the couch into a finger paint masterpiece, or staying away from the emergency pack of cigarettes stashed in your drawer, you may find yourself out of willpower.

Low blood sugar levels turn out to predict a wide range of willpower failures, from giving up on a difficult test to lashing out at others when you’re angry. Gailliot, now a professor at Zirve University in Turkey, has found that people with low blood sugar are also more likely to rely on stereotypes and less likely to donate money to charity or help a stranger. It is as if running low on energy biases us to be the worst versions of ourselves.

“choice architecture,” systems that make it easier for people to make good decisions consistent with their values and goals.

Whenever we have conflicting desires, being good gives us permission to be a little bit bad.

When psychologists ask people about their licensed indulgences, the indulgers report feeling in control of their choices, not out of control. They also don’t feel guilty. Instead, they report feeling proud of themselves for earning a reward. They offer the justification, “I was so good, I deserve a little treat.” This sense of entitlement too often becomes our downfall. Because we’re quick to view self-indulgence as the best reward for virtue, we forget our real goals and give in to temptation.

When you feel like a saint, the idea of self-indulgence doesn’t feel wrong. It feels right. Like you earned it. And if the only thing motivating your self-control is the desire to be a good enough person, you’re going to give in whenever you’re already feeling good about yourself.

It’s just human nature—we resist rules imposed by others for our own good. If you try to impose those rules on yourself, from a moralizing, self-improvement point of view, you’re going to hear very quickly from the part of you that doesn’t want to be controlled. And so when you tell yourself that exercising, saving money, or giving up smoking is the right thing to do—not something that will help you meet your goals—you’re less likely to do it consistently.

Have you ever made a list of everything you need to do on a project, and then felt so good about yourself that you considered your work on that project done for the day? If so, you’re not alone. Because it’s such a relief to make that list, we mistake the satisfaction of identifying what needs to be done with actual effort toward our goals. (Or, as one of my students said, he loves productivity seminars because they make him feel so productive—never mind that nothing has been produced yet.)

Progress can be motivating, and even inspire future self-control, but only if you view your actions as evidence that you are committed to your goal.

In other words, you need to look at what you have done and conclude that you must really care about your goal, so much so that you want to do even more to reach it.

In contrast, people who are asked, “How committed do you feel to your goal?” are not tempted by the conflicting behavior. A simple shift in focus leads to a very different interpretation of their own actions—“I did that because I wanted to,” not “I did that, great, now I can do what I really want!”

The next time you find yourself using past good behavior to justify indulging, pause and remember the why.

For example, people who merely intend to exercise later are more likely to overeat at dinner. This habit allows us to sin today, and make up for it later—or so we tell ourselves.

Sometimes the mind gets so excited about the opportunity to act on a goal, it mistakes that opportunity with the satisfaction of having actually accomplished the goal.

a fundamental mistake we make when thinking about our future choices. We wrongly but persistently expect to make different decisions tomorrow than we do today.

Psychologists have shown that we wrongly predict we will have much more free time in the future than we do today.

Aim to reduce the variability of your behavior day to day. View every choice you make as a commitment to all future choices. So instead of asking, “Do I want to eat this candy bar now?” ask yourself, “Do I want the consequences of eating a candy bar every afternoon for the next year?” Or if you’ve been putting something off that you know you should do, instead of asking “Would I rather do this today or tomorrow?” ask yourself, “Do I really want the consequences of always putting this off?”