Why Willpower Fails and What Actually Drives Change

Good Morning Team!

If you’re reading OPB, it’s because you’re constantly seeking to improve, even if it’s just in the slightest of ways. This week, I want to share with you just how important it is to consider the role of willpower and motivation in getting the outcomes you want – and maybe more importantly – the outcomes you want in others (ie: your kids). We’ll start with an innocent example of where lack of willpower tends to show up…the grocery store.

The reason that grocery stores have a bunch of high sugar, unhealthy snacks in the checkout aisle is because they know you don’t have the willpower to resist purchasing candy after you’re done shopping.

Well, maybe you do, but clearly others can’t resist. A 2009 study found that products placed in checkout aisles can account for up to 30% of supermarket sales.​

What this tells us is that humans are just flat out bad at making choices when they have their willpower depleted. After all that shopping, choosing, and maneuvering through aisles, your brain is drained of the energy it needs to resist unhealthy candy bars at the end of your trip to the store – you cave – and purchase.

When it comes to understanding motivation, we need to appreciate that what we believe people are capable of doing, and what people actually do, are two different things. No matter how motivated you are, there’s always a limit to what you’re going to be willing to do.

WORK IN PRACTICE

I was recently working with a client who has a goal to lose weight. He came to me with a question that I think centers our discussion nicely:

How do I lose weight and eat right when I know what the right thing to do is, but can’t seem to do it at the moment?

What he was getting at was willpower & motivation – a common theme I see in my practice when working with clients who present as undisciplined, unmotivated, and unable to launch their lives forward. This teed us up nicely to discuss both cognitive and behavioral ways to shape his behavior to be more favorable in the direction that he wants to head towards.

Cognitivity:

This client ascribed meaning to the food he desires which in turn is driving his behavior in that direction. For him, when he is bored, food is pleasure, and if he thinks about food giving him pleasure (or a release from boredom), he will be more driven towards that, than away from it.

Behaviorally:

His environment is set up in such a way that makes it easier for him to make the choices he doesn’t want to make versus the choices he does want to make. In a previous edition we talked about removing barriers as just as effective a way to motivate people as adding things for them to do. Here, a similar strategy can be applied. As an example, if you don’t want to be in a position where you are eating ice cream, don’t have ice cream in the house.

To break the pattern of eating unhealthily, we need to fundamentally challenge the notion that we’ll be able to exert the discipline necessary to resist the temptation when the time comes, and rather, build in a different habit loop.

Continuing on with this client’s experience – this would mean craving something different when he’s bored, something that he ascribes a greater reward to (a cognitive intervention), and thus elicits a changed response.
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​Current Habit Loop:

New Loop:

It would look something like this:

Now, borrowing from the grocery store example, the client would be advised to orchestrate his environment in such a way that is conducive to cue him properly to crave exercise. To do so, things like putting his running shoes by his bedroom door, or wearing athletic shorts while in his room (where he primarily gets bored) could be ways to establish a cue to go exercise while bored.

We could all apply this same logic with ourselves and with those that we work with. Rather than trying to lecture your children or your friends about what they should be doing to exert more discipline and motivation – which, you now know, is asking them to draw on a minimal resource of willpower – instead, create the conditions for the desired behavior to take place. Transform the environment to cue a different kind of response.

YOUR KID'S GRADES AND THIER POTENTIAL

One final example of this comes from work that we’ve as a team done to help families reduce arguments about their kids not putting in enough effort to get good grades. It sounds something like:

Here is where I would frame motivation cognitively – challenging the student to try and zoom out from their narrow focus on the class being something they are or are not interested in – and rather focus more on the behaviors that they themselves want to display or grow.

Here’s how this would go:

Equipped with a new frame on what matters – by ascribing greater meaning to the efforts themselves, rather than results that come from efforts – we can get students pursuing changed behavior for the sake of personal growth, not just better outcomes…or worse yet…because their parents told them it was important.

Here’s to new and improved habits this week – and remember, eat before the next time you go grocery shopping or the candy bars will win :)
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​If you’re interested in nerding out on willpower some more – check out this brief discussion about how your brain’s structure can actually change when you exert yourself to do things you don’t actually want to do.

Thanks for reading as always.

Time to win the week 🏆

See you next week :)

– J

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