The “Willpower Trap”

Are you trying to lose weight, eat more healthfully or stop smoking? Have you tried to change but not been able to do so? Do you chalk it up to lack of willpower?

When we try to change behavior, most of us get caught in “the willpower trap”—the fundamental belief that personal motivation is everything. When we fail, we decide we need to try harder, which often results in depression rather than change. That is why more than 98% of Americans fail to change their behavior (Patterson et al. 2011). Luckily, the research shows that willpower has very little to do with whether we can kick our lifelong bad habits.

You can change. And it’s about much more than willpower. Professional speaker and facilitator Stacy D. Nelson, EdD, president of Leadership Influence and expert in helping people achieve bottom-line results and become measurably more vital, shares some strategies for making changes.

See also: Which is Stronger: Habit or Willpower?

Beat the Willpower Trap: Turn Accomplices Into Friends

Bad habits are always a team sport—we usually have accomplices who motivate our vices. Peer pressure and the influence of friends and family have extremely powerful effects on behavior change. For example, Harvard social scientist Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, discovered that obesity is partly infectious: Having obese friends increases your chances of following suit by 57% (Christakis & Fowler 2007).

A “friend” is defined as a person who influences us to stop a bad habit and/or start a good one. An “accomplice,” on the other hand, is a person who influences us to start a bad habit and/or stop a good one.

The bottom line is that nobody is as smart as all of us. We need others to support us. This means you may need to avoid accomplices or purposely search out and add new friends who will support our change goals.

Get a Coach or Mentor

Coaches are crucial to behavior change. We all succeed with a little help from others. In fact, people with a half-dozen active friends who play the role of coach or mentor are almost 40% more likely to succeed than those with fewer than a half-dozen friends (Patterson et al. 2011). Accountability is a huge factor in following up and following through with plans for change.

Coaches or mentors do more than simply encourage you. They assist you in getting the help, information and resources you require to make lasting change.

Control Your Space

You can change your environment in ways that make good behavior easier and bad behavior harder. Researchers found that people eat an average of 92% of whatever they put on their plate, regardless of how big the plate is (Van Ittersum
& Wansink 2013). So, swap your 12-inch plates for 9-inch plates, and the 3-inch reduction will help you consume 33% fewer calories.

To help with your environment:

Build fences.  Create rules that cut you off from the bad behavior.

Manage distance. Bring good things close and move temptations far away.

Use tools. Recruit computers, smartphones and other devices to help you change.

Use cues. Post visible tools to record your progress.

These tools help us avoid relying on willpower and provide powerful strategies to help us make real and sustainable change.