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

by Kelly McGonigal

I believe that the best way to improve your self-control is to see how and why you lose control.

Some neuroscientists go so far as to say that we have one brain but two minds—or even, two people living inside our mind.

This week, commit to watching how the process of giving in to your impulses happens. You don’t even need to set a goal to improve your self-control yet. See if you can catch yourself earlier and earlier in the process, noticing what thoughts, feelings, and situations are most likely to prompt the impulse. What do you think or say to yourself that makes it more likely that you will give in?

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. 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.

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.

It’s important not to fidget when you meditate—that’s the physical foundation of self-control.

five. A short practice that you do every day is better than a long practice you keep putting off to tomorrow.

Andrew felt like a terrible meditator.

The fifty-one-year-old electrical engineer was convinced that the goal of meditation was to get rid of all thoughts and empty the mind.

The “worse” the meditation, the better the practice for real life, as long he was able to notice when his mind was wandering.

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.

Imagine yourself facing your willpower challenge, and doing the harder thing.

What makes it hard?

What does the impulsive version of you want? What does the wiser version of you want?

Track your willpower choices.

Five-minute brain-training meditation.

You know when you’ve met a real willpower challenge because you feel it in your body.

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.

The good news is that you can learn to shift your physiology into that state when you need your willpower the most.

What’s going on in the brain and body now? A few things. First, your brain is temporarily taken over by the promise of reward.

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.

Many factors influence your willpower reserve, from what you eat (plant-based, unprocessed foods help; junk food doesn’t) to where you live (poor air quality decreases heart rate variability—yes,

You won’t find many quick fixes in this book, but there is one way to immediately boost willpower: Slow your breathing down to four to six breaths per minute.

Start by timing yourself to see how many breaths you normally take in one minute. Then begin to slow the breath down without holding your breath (that will only increase stress). For most people, it’s easier to slow down the exhalation, so focus on exhaling slowly and completely

One study found that a daily twenty-minute practice of slowed breathing increased heart rate variability and reduced cravings and depression among adults recovering from substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Heart rate variability training programs

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

It not only relieves ordinary, everyday stress, but it’s as powerful an antidepressant as Prozac.

Lower-intensity exercise, like walking, has stronger immediate effects than high-intensity exercise.

If you are surviving on less than six hours of sleep a night, there’s a good chance you don’t even remember what it’s like to have your full willpower.

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.

Studies show that the effects of sleep deprivation on your brain are equivalent to being mildly intoxicated—a

a state that many of us can attest does little for self-control.

In one study, five minutes of breath-focus meditation a day helped recovering addicts fall asleep.

Try one of these strategies—catching up, stocking up, or napping—to undo or prevent the effects of sleep deprivation.

The later it got, and the more tired Lisa got, the less she was able to resist the immediate gratification that each task promised.

With seven hours of sleep each night, Lisa found that infomercials and other late-night temptations lost their appeal.

All of these mental tasks—focusing your attention, weighing competing goals, and quieting stress and cravings—require energy, real physical energy from your body, in the same way that your muscles require energy to fight or flee in an emergency.

But just like living under chronic stress is unhealthy, trying to control every aspect of your thoughts, emotions, and behavior is a toxic strategy.

Your brain takes a break from planning the future or analyzing the past.

Willpower can be disrupted by sleep deprivation, poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle, and a host of other factors that sap your energy, or keep your brain and body stuck in a chronic stress response.

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.

Learning how to better manage your stress is one of the most important things you can do to improve your willpower.

We’re also an increasingly sleep-deprived nation. According to a 2008 study by the National Sleep Foundation, American adults now get two hours less sleep per night than the average in 1960.

Obesity rates are much higher among those who sleep for less than six hours a night, in part because sleep deprivation interferes with how the brain and body use energy.

This week, test the theory that stress—whether physical or psychological—is the enemy of self-control. How does being worried or overworked affect your choices?

When our willpower challenges overwhelm us, it’s tempting to assign the blame to who we are: weak, lazy, willpowerless wimps. But more often than not, our brains and bodies are simply in the wrong state for self-control.

The Idea: Willpower is a biological instinct, like stress, that evolved to help us protect ourselves from ourselves.