will power

Working with Willpower: An Interview with Kelly McGonigal

How do you define willpower?

Well, I define willpower as the ability to make choices that are consistent with your biggest goals and your highest values, even when some part of you doesn’t want to.

The things that really challenge our willpower are the things where part of us gets distracted by immediate gratification or maybe gets overwhelmed by anxiety or stress and we find it difficult to remember in those moments what matters most to us.

And so willpower is the ability both to remember what matters most and the willingness to do things that support those goals even when self-doubt is present or even when cravings or physical pain or anxiety are present, um, to be able to hold those difficult inner experiences or other impulses and still direct your energy and attention to things that matter the most.

How does willpower work?

I like to think of willpower as having three powers. I will, I won’t, and I want. Um, and we tend to think, you know, we think about willpower, we think of this classic example of resisting a temptation, you know, I won’t eat that chocolate, or I won’t buy that thing that’s out of my budget, I won’t smoke that cigarette, or I won’t say that thing that will get me into trouble.

And that’s just one aspect of willpower, it really is the ability to recognize when you are about to do something that is inconsistent with your goals or values and literally putting on the brakes. So that’s I won’t power.

But we also need the ability to take action in the direction of our goals and values; the ability to say yes to things that maybe are boring or uncomfortable.

You know, an example of that, which I call, I will power, would be something like being willing to stay on the treadmill for another five minutes, even though your legs are saying they’re tired, or your brain is telling you, “this is boring and I’d rather to do something else.” Do you have the motivation and the energy to keep going even in the face of fatigue or boredom?

And the thing that supports both of those strengths is this last power that I call I want power. And that is the ability to actually walk around in the world with a sense of what your core goals and values are, um, rather than allowing, sort of, the universe to impose on you its own agenda.

You know, so much about daily life is, we get interrupted on our devices, somebody wants this and it’s an emergency to go do that, and so our, our schedule and agenda can get hijacked in that way.

We go into a store, we go into a restaurant and people want to sell us things that are not healthy for us or go beyond our budget, and we have to really be able to interact with the world; uh, with a key sense of what is it we care about and what matters most to us. And that is a skill that can be strengthened as much as the I won’t power of resisting impulses and the I will power of taking positive action.

Is it true that I can run out of willpower?

There’s this really interesting area of willpower science that talks about willpower’s unlimited resource and there’s a whole bunch of research behind this, and the basic take home point is that - we have a limited amount of willpower strength and when we use it we run out of it. And so, you know, if we’re spending all our willpower on doing one thing like counting calories we may not have any willpower leftover for paying full attention to our kids when we get home from work.

But I have to say, so, I’m a little skeptical of this research. Um, and I will say that when you take a really close look at the data behind it, what seems to be limited is our ability to force ourselves to do things that we don’t really want to do.

And that does seem to be a limited resource. You know, most of the research that is looking at this question has asked people to do things that are difficult and boring and not important, and not connected to any actual, personal goal. You know, things like keeping your arm in a bucket of ice water, or doing really challenging but boring computer tasks that require heightened attention and focus.

And in those laboratory experiments this is what you see, that people basically run out of willpower. Uh, in the real world, it seems like if you can define the things that take willpower as being what you truly want, that willpower is a much less limited resource, and it’s one of the reasons why I talk about want power, as being such a key foundation for willpower. Because when you view, say, making the healthy choice, as something that is consistent with what you care about, then it’s exciting when you see something healthy on the menu, like, “Oh there’s something I can order that supports this goal I have of creating health.” And it doesn’t feel like, “Oh I have to force myself to eat a vegetable” and all that depravation mentality.

I think too often we believe that who we really are is the one who wants indulgence. The one, you know, who we really are is the one who will only be satisfied with immediate gratification. And if you are totally identified with that small part of you, then yeah, your willpower will is going run out, because every choice you make that is for your long-term good is going to feel like depravation or feel like you’re forcing yourself to.

How can I use willpower now to create a happier and healthier future for myself?

So, one of the findings from willpower research that I found most fascinating is the fact that most people view their future self as a stranger. That when they think about themselves 10 years or 20 years in the future, it feels like somehow it’s not really them.

And so when you ask people to think about, say, saving money for retirement or quitting smoking now to benefit the future self, people will say things like, “well it seems like a waste”; like, “like I’m giving my money to a stranger instead of being able to actually have my money that I earned”

And one of the ways that I found working with people that really helps people connect to their future self is to try to find what researchers call a “self-defining future memory.” If you look back over the course of your life, there may have been moments that are really meaningful to you, the birth of a child or maybe getting your college diploma, a graduation ceremony.

Research has shown that people have a much easier time looking backward than looking forward for their self-defining moments. And to the degree that you can look into your future and imagine a real, vivid, future memory, of something that’s going to feel important that’s going to reflect an enduring theme and value during your life and you can imagine it like a memory that has already happened - that greatly increases motivation and willpower and really support people in making important changes.

So I think that, you know, when we’re thinking for ourselves about how to change our behavior, there are all different exercises you can do to, to take this more hopeful and optimistic sense of imagining the life that you would like to have and who you would like to be in the future and the future memory is one of them.

I often had people in my classes write letters from their future self, expressing gratitude to their present self for the courage or the willingness to do the really difficult things now, whether it’s quitting smoking or beginning an exercise program, or beginning to save money, and really imagine yourself as that future self, looking backward with this great gratitude and compassion to the person who was willing to make that change when it was difficult.

It gives you the sense of both connection to that future self and the sense that it’s possible. And, you know, believing that change is possible is, um, is part of what actually drives our willingness to do things when it’s still quite difficult.

What is the role of self-compassion in willpower?

Self-compassion is a hugely important part for any sort of difficult behavior change or health change. Um, and it’s funny, when I first started teaching the science of willpower, was the thing I got the most push back on - I would say, “Research shows, that it’s really important to forgive your mistake or your setbacks.” That, you know, “You need to be less self-critical, and less hard on yourselves,” and I would have, you know, people in my class would raise their hands, and

these are, you know, grown adults, uh, and they’d say, “No you don’t understand - I need to be more hard on myself, right, I’m so screwed up, you know, I have so many bad habits, I know I should change, and I haven’t, you got, you got it completely wrong.”

When in actually the reality is when you forgive yourself for a setback, it actually allows you to connect to the part of you who wants to make the change. And when you heap on the self- criticism, the guilt, and the shame, it actually primarily motivates people to try to escape the feeling of shame or guilt, uh, often by going back to the very thing that they would use to numb negative feelings in the first place, like getting drunk, or buying something, or comfort food.

Part of self-compassion is, is making the time to actually allow yourself to feel the desire to change, even though, right now, the gap feels large. And it’s a very sort of tender and vulnerable place to be in, that’s important to, to be willing to go into, to actually feel with your heart and your mind, that you want this change for yourself, even as you maybe are unsure of how that change is going to unfold, even if there is self-doubt about your ability to do it. And that’s one of the ways that self-compassion can really support us. It’s in those moments of setbacks or self- doubt, and you make contact with your goal and you think about how not alone you are, you know, that every person struggles with some sort of willpower challenge, that, you know, everyone knows what it feels like to feel stuck and wonder if it’s possible to change, and to recognize that this process doesn’t say anything about how uniquely screwed up you are; uh, it says that you’re human and you’re just in the middle of it right now. And, your future self at some point will be able to look back with gratitude, from the other end of the experience.

How can mindfulness improve my willpower?

So, I define mindfulness as a, sort of a three-step process. Often it gets reduced, sort of, in, in Western psychology to just paying attention in the present moment. But if you really think about mindfulness as a process and the rich tradition it comes from, it starts with intention, right, that you have to have a connection to something you care about. There is a commitment to some intention. And so part of mindfulness is, really, what we talked about, is this kind of want power. Do you know what you want to orient toward in life, do you know what matters most to you, or how it is you want to show up in the world? What is your core intention?

And then, mindfulness includes attention, really paying attention in an open and curious way, in a self-compassionate way, to how your own thoughts, and words and actions are either in line with that intention or not.

Are there things in your environment that support that intention or not? Are there relationships that support that intention or not? Being really curious about the process, of how you either choose your intention or move away from your intention.

And then the third part of mindfulness is action. The willingness to take action based on what you observed; sometimes referred to as skillful action. And so when you train that process,

getting very clear of what your intention is; willingness to pay attention to how you, yourself move towards it or away from it, the things in your environment that can support you or sabotage you. And then you take committed action, small steps every day. “Well, I don’t know how I’m going to make this change completely, but I’m going to wait five minutes, when I wake up in the morning, I’m going to wait five minutes before I check my email,” for example. You know, “and then I’m going to be making a small action of choice that is consistent with my intention” and trust that that process eventually supports a much bigger change.

Do you have any tips for using willpower to overcome an addiction to technology?

So when it comes to technology there’s sort of a three-step guide how I think about breaking addiction to it. One is to recognize that there is nourishing ways of relating to technology and destructive ways. And there are actually things you can do online and with phones that will make you happier, that will make you more connected to other people, and that aren’t inherently addicting. You know, things like, uh, targeted response to other people on Facebook, has been shown to make other people like you more and care about your more. When you go online and you respond to a friend’s photo and it strengthens the relationship and it also tends not to be as addictive when you’re not just scrolling through, but you’re actually using it to strengthen real world connections. That sort of thing, you should make time in your life to do it. I mean, forget about trying to control it, uh, in the same way you would look for nourishing foods, things that would actually sustain you. And, the same time to recognize that there are all these destructive ways to getting lost online, and to really begin to recognize the cost that it takes on your life, to really ask yourself, “what is this getting in the way of?” And then to start experimenting with small changes that are consistent with your intention to change. Like, I was saying, you know, it’s a big thing for a lot people to get out of bed in the morning before they check their phone. And if you’re sleeping with your phone and you’re used to getting up in the morning by scrolling and checking email, then yeah, that’s going to be a really good first starting point.

Or maybe you set a rule for yourself that, you know, the first hour that you’re at home, the cell phone goes in a drawer. So you get at least 60 minutes of whoever is in the house with you, you know, kids, spouse, they get your undistracted attention. And then after that hour you can pull your phone back out and do whatever you want.

Many people, you know, they’re spending an hour or two hours a night before they go to sleep on their phones or on their computers and they’re not going to sleep on time and then they’re also having difficulty falling asleep, because of the way that technology and blue screens interfere with sleep biology.

So for another person it might be, forget what you’re doing during the day that’s fine, but the phone, you have to hide it, for at least an hour before you think you want to go to sleep.

Again it’s all about paying attention to what it is that matters for you.