Willpower is Overrated

Any ex-smokers out there?  I am.  I smoked for almost fourteen years and I cannot tell you how many times I berated myself for not having enough willpower to quit.  If only I could just have a bit more willpower I’d be fine and quitting would be easy.  Every time I tried to quit I thought I had a new way to manufacture more of the willpower I needed, but most of the time the results were the same…super motivated for a day or two, then the cravings would get the best of me.  Or as soon as I was out with my still smoking friends, the temptation was too much.

When I try to visualize what willpower looks like I imagine it like batteries – some people seem to have these giant willpower battery packs with solar panels and windmills keeping them charged up all the time so they never seem to get run-down. And then there’s people like me who seem to have gotten a pack of D cell batteries with one of those giant chargers from the 80’s that looked like an answering machine – which is fine, but like I keep forgetting to charge them and the charger is really too big to carry around with me and, also, exceptionally slow.  I just never seemed to have enough willpower to sustain me past getting started and getting myself recharged takes forever.

The reality is, willpower is not reliable.  It depends on too many factors – both internal and external. And those people with the giant battery packs of that sweet, sweet willpower, well most of them will tell you their willpower actually isn’t that great.  What they are good at?  Sticking to a routine. Not over-committing themselves. Developing good habits.

The secret sauce is not willpower – it’s developing sustainable habits, and the secret to sustainable habits it starting small and building on what you have going on already.

In the end I didn’t quit smoking using only willpower – I used my habits; when I knew I was coming up to a time when I would normally want a cigarette I had a nicotine lozenge, I celebrated when I averted a craving, I switched out my existing routines for new ones – and instead of saying “I’m quitting smoking”, like I had the dozen other times I’d tried to quit, I said “I quit smoking – I haven’t even had a drag of a cigarette in a x” (days, weeks, months, etc). My habit of cheating a little wouldn’t work with the new wording…so here I am more than 10 years later, a non-smoker who hasn’t even had a drag of a cigarette since March of 2011. Of course it still took SOME willpower, but it wasn’t driven by it exclusively so I had the willpower to continue when I really needed it (like when out at the bar with smoking friends).

The die hard runner you know probably didn’t start out with 10 km.  (If they did they are an anomaly and extremely lucky they didn’t get very hurt…don’t do that.)  Most likely, they started with going for walks and then they got faster and then maybe they tried to jog 1 or 2 kilometers and then they did that a bunch until it felt more comfortable and then they added more.  And when that felt good, or at the very least they felt strong enough, they added a bit more still.  People who are successful at something long term get successful by mastering it and mastering it starts with one foot in front of the other.  Get good at the basics – build a foundation – before adding to it.

When I was a kid my Dad ran a lot but he hadn’t run since I was pretty young.  A couple years ago we were talking about a race I was training for and he said “I loved running when I was your age, but my running days are behind me now.”  Well, then he retired and got back into working out really consistently and started walking his dog for longer distances every day.  The next time I saw him he was power walking instead of just walking and they were going eight or more kilometers each day.  Then he was walking the dog and after he got back went out for a jog.  When his feet and shins were bothering him he asked me what I recommended and we talked about his gait, he made some adjustments and felt good again.  When the distances got longer he went to a running store to get properly fitted for good shoes. His back started bothering him at another point and he went to physio and religiously did all the exercises they gave him and followed their recommendations until it got better. All of this has been over the last couple years, and then a few weeks ago, he ran his first half marathon, at 65, in 2 hours and 44 seconds; that’s running each kilometer in 5 mins and 44 seconds.  For reference, my best half-marathon time is just over 2 hours and 20 mins and my average pace these days is between 6:15 and 6:30. I can’t keep up with my Dad. He started with a casual dog walk and mastered each level until running became a sustainable habit.

I have never been patient when it comes to progress like this (neither is my Dad actually) – when I want something done, I want it done now.  The reason I crash dieted was because if I want to get fit, I wanted to have abs the moment I did a single crunch; if I wasn’t seeing any evidence that what I was doing was working, then I wasn’t doin’ it.  This hasn’t ever boded well for my success with health or fitness because if you really want results in those areas, you have to play the long game and every time I’ve jumped in, I’ve overdone it.  Either I end up injured or restrict my calories so much I feel sick and end up binge eating; I relied on willpower and when it ran out, I crashed and burned. But one thing I’ve learned on this journey is that if you slow down the progress so that you can keep building on it, you get a lot further than if you go so big that you can’t sustain and have to quit.

So how do you form better habits?  Let’s use eating breakfast as an example.  A lot of the time when clients come to me for help with their nutrition, they admit that they skip breakfast and then end up eating a processed, sugary baked good at 10 am because suddenly they realize they’re starving and reach for the quickest and easiest thing.  So the first thing I often do is not take food away, but challenge them to add a small breakfast. Often, they haven’t eaten anything for breakfast in so long they don’t even know where to start, so we break it down – what would they ENJOY for breakfast?  Also, since you’re not going to go from no breakfast to an omelette, pick something that is reasonable to make. In this case let’s say they’ve landed on half an English muffin with natural peanut butter.  Great, they know what they’re eating, now what does their morning routine look like, where will this new habit REASONABLY fit in.  You can’t force this, trying to fit a square peg in a round hole is when things fail.  Look at your existing routine and find something you’re already doing that you can add this new task of making your English muffin with peanut butter to so the existing task reminds you to do it; connect a new habit to an existing routine that you do religiously, something that is pretty automatic.  Maybe you stand at your counter for a few minutes while you wait for your coffee or tea to brew in the morning or you already make toast for your kids and could just throw in another piece – there is somewhere in there that works but it’s personal to you, look at your current habits and find where you can tie it in.  Once you’ve figured out what, when and how, make your English muffin and peanut butter every day – maybe the first few days all you do is have a bite, or maybe half of it, that’s fine!  It’s progress.  The habit you’re forming is making the breakfast and eating SOMETHING, nowhere in there did we say you had to eat the whole thing. If you made it and had a bite, that’s a win.

The beauty of starting small is that it’s easy to be successful and feel good so when you’re thinking of a habit you want to implement imagine what the end goal is and then break it down to a very small version – so my clients looking for help with nutrition, they start with a slightly healthier breakfast and then hopefully once that’s a solid habit we expand, the processed baked good is replaced with something more filling and nutritious and once that’s a solid routine we look at making some swaps at lunch.

My husband and I both hate feeling rushed in the morning so we make and pack our lunches and snacks the night before as soon as we get home.  Andrew, I swear, has eaten some sort of bread with peanut butter almost every day for the 20 years I’ve known him and it is a part of what he packs for himself.  When he first started packing his lunch at night, he would leave making his toast and peanut butter for the morning, but overtime he’s decided that he would rather make it the night before – even though it isn’t as fresh when he’s eating it, that compromise is worth it to spare himself the hassle in the morning when he’s already not the happiest.  The habit evolved and got better for him.

A few other common habits people talk about implementing might be:

• drinking more water- start by placing a full glass near you and anytime you have to get up, finish the glass first and refill it while you’re up.
•  reading before bed – place your book or e-reader beside the bed and commit to only one page, if you read more than one, great, but if you read your one page then you succeeded.  I read even just a page or two even if we’ve been out for the evening and get home at 1 am because it’s my habit to do it.  My brain equates that with going to bed so I always do it. (Yes I have fully read a page inebriated after a wedding and had to reread it the next night but I still read my page!)
• walking every day – commit to just putting on your shoes at the door.  Even if all you do is lace up at the door or even step onto the porch for a moment and come back in, fine, but at least put the shoes on.

The last important part about creating habits?  Celebrating the wins!  You may feel like you want to downplay these things as things you “should” or are “supposed” to be doing but that is the wrong attitude.  The point is that you weren’t doing the thing you are trying to implement and it is something you want for yourself; if you were struggling to make it happen before and find a way to implement it then that is AMAZING and you need to give yourself the credit you deserve!  Like I said last month, I’m here for the joy; if you want to WANT to continue doing something, make it feel good! We don’t want to do humdrum stuff, we want to do stuff we’re excited about, so get excited about walking or reading or flossing or drinking water or whatever else it is that YOU want to do.

You don’t seek out unreliable people when you need help – stop relying on unreliable willpower.  Save your battery power for when you really need it!