Take Charge of your Willpower ? Happy Yogis

I was stretched too thin. I was juggling my current work and volunteer schedule, refinancing my house, working on the side for a friend, hosting my in-laws, learning how to cook for my new diet, going to yoga, blogging, and reading every book in history trying to figure out how to get off birth control.

What happened?

Suddenly?my work ethic was shot. I cried whenever my husband left town. I sat through a lunch date with a new friend only to be too zapped of the energy I needed to be excited for her and her new baby. I even started flaking on my friends just because I needed to hang at home for a bit. Finally?I wound up exhausted and crying in the bathroom at work with no clue how to pull myself back up. Here I was zombying my way through a tight schedule. Not productive.?The ability to be ?on? all the time takes more than just time management, it takes willpower.

Willpower

In the mega-awesome (you should totally read it)?book?by Roy F. Baumeister, he starts by describing a study of undergrad students and their ability to practice willpower leading up to and during finals week. When finals week arrived, he expected to find students studying harder, being more disciplined, and logging more?library?hours. In actuality,?he found the opposite to be true. In fact, not only did they study far less than a normal week, they also stopped exercising, smoked more?cigarettes, drank more coffee, binged on alcohol, ate more junk food, showered less, and let dishes pile up in their sink. They didn?t return phone calls, do their laundry, or even change their socks. Why? Because they are stressed out?

Roy concludes that we have a limited reserve of willpower that we can save up or distribute at our own will. Once used up though, we have exhausted our resources and no longer have the capacity to stop ourselves from eating that cookie or being nice to your husband.

What depletes our willpower? Roy details several studies on what exactly depletes your supply of willpwoer, but I?ll give you the cliffnotes here:

1. Control of thoughts or emotions (stop crying, stop thinking about your ex)
2. Avoiding temptations (staying on a diet, trying not to buy those shoes)
3. Performance control (focus,?perseverance, time-management)
4. Menstruation
5. Having kids or being pregnant
6. Suffering a cold
7. Quitting smoking
8. Starting a diet
9. The stresses of exams or presentations
10. There are oh so many more, but I?m sure you catch my drift

Suddenly it all makes sense!

At the time it seemed that my rut came from nowhere. Now I realize that I had a perfect storm of willpower depletion. In October last year when I was diagnosed with food sensitivities, I gave up wheat, dairy, eggs, and my birth control pill all at the same time. I was managing a new diet alongside the very depleting process of hormone withdrawals as well as juggling my new gig as a Young Life leader. That means a sudden onslaught of ?new time-management challenges. That is a lot of willpower depletion at once!!

As he says in the book, this ?is bad news for people hoping to use their self-control to avoid sweets. When people have more demands for self-control in their daily lives, their hunger for sweets increases? It also offers a solution to a long-standing human mystery: Why is chocolate so appealing on certain days of the month?? Ahhh yeah, I get it! When our willpower is depleted there are two ways to replenish it, sleep or eat. Sugar will give it back to you real fast (hence the crash)- but proteins will give you metered strength all day!

Focus on one project at a time

?If you set more than one self-improvement goal, you may succeed for a while by drawing on reserves to power through, but that just leaves you more depleted and prone to serious mistakes later. People who are trying to quit smoking, for example, will have their best shot at succeeding if they aren?t changing other behaviors at the same time. Those who try to quit smoking while also restricting their eating or cutting back on alcohol tend to fail at all three-probably because they have too many simultaneous demands on their will-power.?

In essence don?t try to?conquer?the world all at once. If you are going to start a new exercise program, don?t try to start a savings plan at the same time. If you have just started Crossfit, don?t also go paleo at the same time (you?ll just end up crying all the time like I was!). If you are?menstruating, give yourself some slack! Have some cocoa now and save your willpower for later in the month. Seems pretty logical right?? Wake up after a nice long sleep to a nice big breakfast and you will be ready to go!!

I?m seriously loving the book and hope to give you some more cliff notes soon- but for now- just read the book! It?s so much more awesome than I am making it sound!

Hope you are having a good week. Give yourself some slack!!

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