Willpower is essential for a happy and satisfied life. Without it, life’s challenges are harder to overcome, and it is much more difficult to achieve your goals. But what is willpower, and how can you develop more of it? This article will tell you all you need to know about willpower and give you some tips on how to increase it to achieve your goals and dreams. 

What Is Willpower?

BetterHelp defines willpower as the “self-awareness and ability to use decision-making skills.” With willpower, you have the strength and discipline to control your thoughts and behavior so that you can achieve your goals and shape life the way you desire. In addition, willpower helps you to drop habits that keep you from achieving your goals while building better habits and resilience to reach them. 

You cannot overcome any obstacle, finish any task, or achieve any goal without willpower. Those who lack willpower often give up on their goals quickly and become quite passive to their circumstances. 

Willpower is what allows someone to reach their weight and health goals. It is also necessary to pursue a new career or start a business. Without the proper determination and self-control, all of these goals become significantly harder to achieve. 

However, not everyone has high willpower naturally. If you struggle to remain motivated and disciplined, luckily, there are many ways to increase your willpower. Let’s now delve into some tips on how to increase your willpower so you can’t start achieving your goals and dreams. 

Tips to Increase Willpower

Create Deadlines

People commonly lose willpower when their goals don’t have deadlines. With nothing to keep you accountable, it’s easy just to give up altogether. But if you want to achieve your goals or stick to your healthy habits, you need to hold yourself accountable.

Creating self-imposed deadlines is a great way to stay accountable for your tasks and goals. Remember in school when you had deadlines for every task and assignment? If you’re like most people, those deadlines gave you the willpower to complete those assignments on time. For this reason, teachers rarely give flexible deadlines as they know their students will not complete the tasks promptly.

Therefore, it’s important to create deadlines to motivate you to complete all your tasks. 

Use Mindfulness in Decision Making

Many of the decisions people make each day are automatic and without much thought. These decisions can range from skipping a workout to deciding what to eat. This is why so many people often make decisions that aren’t healthy for them; they aren’t thinking much before making their decision. 

But mindfulness is essential for willpower and to create a healthier lifestyle. For example, being mindful of your actions means you are more likely to grab a healthy snack rather than chips or cookies. Mindfulness also means you’re more likely to stick to your workout routine and good sleeping habits rather than sabotaging those goals in order to watch television or look at social media for another hour. 

Before making an automatic decision, be mindful for a minute and think about whether the action will help you towards your goals or not. Will watching television for another hour be beneficial for your sleep routine? Will checking social media again help you finish your work task on time? Get in the habit of using mindfulness in your decision making and you will surely build up your willpower and be more productive. 

Break Down Goals Into Manageable Steps

Overwhelm is a common enemy of willpower. When people are faced with an enormous task, they often lose the necessary resolve to complete it. 

This is why breaking down your tasks into smaller goals is so important. Instead of focusing on how large or overwhelming the task is, you can simply focus on smaller steps until the entire task is complete. Each step should be far easier to accomplish, reducing your stress and helping you to complete the task in manageable chunks. 

Stop Being a People Pleaser

When you monitor all your thoughts, words, and actions to make others happy, you leave very little energy and willpower for yourself. Doing this every day for a long period depletes you and ensures you don’t have the necessary motivation for your personal goals and tasks.

People pleasing can have a negative effect on various parts of your life and mental health, so it’s a bad habit to drop anyway. Instead, focus on your happiness, goals, and lifestyle, and you will have the willpower to achieve your dreams. 

Replace Bad Habits With Good Ones

Dropping bad habits can be difficult. It’s all too easy to give in to temptation or allow stress to keep you from breaking the habit for good. 

However, building positive habits to replace bad ones is often more successful. When you’re happy and enjoying the positive habit, it’s far easier to replace the unhealthy ones. 

For example, when you start cooking healthy food that you love, you are more likely to succeed in your endeavors to cut out junk food. You will naturally enjoy eating healthily, meaning there is little temptation to pick up that piece of chocolate cake. 

Willpower requires some joy or positivity to develop. By creating habits that you enjoy, your brain will not miss the unhealthy habits that you leave behind. 

Bottom Line

Willpower is a necessary tool to create a happier, healthier life, and yet, it eludes many of us. However, with mindfulness, self-discipline, and proper self-care, you can build up the willpower and resilience needed to accomplish all your tasks, goals, and dreams. 

Marie Miguel has been a writing and research expert for nearly a decade, covering a variety of health- related topics. Currently, she is contributing to the expansion and growth of a free online mental health resource with BetterHelp.com. With an interest and dedication to addressing stigmas associated with mental health, she continues to specifically target subjects related to anxiety and depression.