“I just can’t get the results I want. If only I had more willpower.”
So many people believe that if only they had more willpower, they’d achieve their goals easily and effortlessly. When they fail, they blame themselves and attribute their failure to their lack of this seemingly magical ingredient of success.
Rely on willpower, however, and you will fail each and every time.
There is a simple reason for this and it is the same for everyone. Willpower is part of the conscious mind. It is only designed to provide very short-term motivation, and is never meant to be relied upon for long-term change. Willpower will help you to refuse a single offer of a piece of chocolate but it will never, by itself, enable you to give up chocolate permanently.
Think of willpower as being like “mental adrenalin”. Adrenalin provide you with a short-term burst of extra strength in an emergency situation, after which it diminishes back to normal levels. Willpower is exactly the same. Say, for example, you want to give up chips and you use willpower to help you attain this goal. You will hold out for as long as you can, maintaining the struggle for as long as possible. It might be a week, a month or even 6 months. One day, however, your willpower reserves will eventually expire and you will eat a big plate of chips.
Most people, only knowing the one method, will blame themselves and return to another tortuous path of willpower-fuelled deprivation. This time, however, will be a little different. Whereas you may have been able to hold out for as long as 6 months the first time, you may struggle to last even half that length of time the second time around. Since its reserves are limited, your willpower levels diminish until they eventually expire to nothing. If you want to make permanent changes in your life, be sure to realise that doing so is impossible using willpower alone.
This is why diets are ineffective for long-term change. Since they are based on deprivation and “being good”, it’s only a matter of time until you give in and revert to those “bad” foods once again. Being healthy, slim and fit does not mean a life of suffering and pain. When you change the way your brain works, then your thoughts change and the way you act changes too. Different actions cause different results.
So realise that it all starts off in your mind.
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