HOW TO STRENGTHEN YOUR WILLPOWER

The chocolate cake or the apple?

Staying in bed or going to the gym?

Watching another YouTube video or focusing on your work?

Spending or saving?

Every day, all day, choices challenge your willpower: the ability to exercise self-control when you need it. The problem is that sometimes your willpower is weak, and you “fall off the wagon.”

You make New Year’s resolutions, and within less than a month, you find yourself feeling like a failure.

“Your promises and resolutions are like ropes of sand… What you need to understand is the true force of the will” (Steps to Christ, pg. 47).

Professor Kelly McGonigal, author of The Willpower Instinct based on her popular Stanford University course “The Science of Willpower,” reveals how when you fail, you tend to give up and think: “What’s the use! I broke my promise, my diet, my resolve… I failed, so what’s the point! I can’t go on.”

McGonigal demonstrates how study after study proves that those who were able to forgive themselves when they “fell off the wagon” instead of beating themselves up were more likely to get back on the wagon, achieve their goals, and resist harmful habits than those who condemned themselves and filled their minds with regrets.

A teenage boy I once taught, I’ll call him Mark (not his real name), made the decision to do five pull-ups every time he passed the pull-up bar at school.

By the fourth day, he was just too sore and too tired, so he quit. He just couldn’t go on. “It simply wasn’t in me,” Mark confessed to me.

At that point, Mark chose to turn to God; after praying, he opened his Bible, and his eyes fell on these five words: “We are saved by hope” (Romans 8:24). While he meditated on those words, Mark could see in his mind Jesus tenderly helping him through his struggle. Even though he had given up and failed, Mark knew Jesus was there for him, and that epiphany energized him to keep on going, taking on his challenge one pull-up at a time, one day at a time.

When you choose to do the right thing, it’s hard, so don’t be surprised if you fall more often, feel weaker, and even fail repeatedly. Like Mark, turn toward God, and see how He is leading you into situations that test your resolve and show you more clearly your need of Him.

Professor McGonigal further identified four practices that help people like Mark succeed in strengthening their willpower:

1) Get 8 hours of sleep every night

2) Eat a plant-based diet

3) Get at least 150 minutes of exercise a week

4) Spend 15 to 20 minutes a

day in spiritual contemplation, meditation, or prayer.

Mark noticed his ability to do more pull-ups decreased when he stayed up late the night before. He was also more likely not to go for his morning run nor wake up early enough to read his Bible and pray. That late night would push over the first domino in a chain reaction of lethargy and lack of self-control, and Mark would more likely eat a candy bar or donut to refuel his flagging energy.

Whenever he found himself feeling disappointed, Mark turned to Proverbs 24:16: “For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again.”

Although he fell and failed repeatedly, Mark never gave up! He kept taking baby steps, and he listened for the tender voice of Jesus encouraging him: “Well done, my child. Keep going!”

In his final year of high school, Mark could do 50 unassisted pull-ups every time he walked past the pull-up bar.

Now, that’s willpower!

~ Mike Lemon