When is the last time you said to yourself, I just need more willpower so that I’ll … (fill in the blank: workout more, eat better, get to bed earlier, have a hard conversation, the list is very long)? Each and every week, we find ourselves not accomplishing the habits and decisions that are important to us. It can be a discouraging and frustrating experience.

The truth that I have discovered over years of study and working with people is this: willpower can be strengthened only when we realize that willpower is more of a result than a cause.

What is Willpower?

In other words, when people tell you, “Look, it’s just a choice. All you have to do is choose to get up earlier, not eat sweets, etc.,” they are missing the point. The reality is that our chooser (that is, our willpower) is actually the problem. You can’t willpower your way to success and health.

It is much more effective to think of willpower as a mental mechanism that needs to be fed and developed into a strength. Most people with great willpower are doing the behaviors that require this.

Improve Your Willpower

I believe there are three skills that will strengthen our choosers. Here they are.

#1: Write down your “why.” We tend to do what is important to us, what we value. It helps us focus our energies on those things we deeply love and care about. For example, the “why” of working out more maybe “because I want to be healthy enough to be with my family and love them for many years,” or “because I want to feel good and have my body do what needs to be done,” or both.  The “why” gets you way beyond “just choose it.”

#2: Let those in your Life Team encourage you. Your Life Team is comprised of those safe and honest people in your life whom you trust. Tell this team about your challenges to develop better habits, and ask for their support. Have them text you a couple of times a week with simple encouragements, like “I know it’s been a busy week, but I’m pulling for you to get up early and workout. Thinking about you.”

Neuroscience research is proving to us how much energy and motivation comes from a simple, caring, encouraging statement from others. I am on a flight writing this blog and just sent one to a friend who is going through a very complex negotiation process in the company he runs. It took me one minute, and he replied instantly that it helped him continue on.

#3: Learn from failure. Don’t let the “judge” in your head say, “you blew it again, what a loser.” Failure is merely a learning curve. The only way to indeed fail is to learn nothing from it! So, why did you avoid that hard conversation? Was it because you were too busy, or feared conflict, or had second thoughts? Figure that part out, and forge ahead.

Make Better Choices

Willpower is a great servant but a poor master.  Strengthen it, and you’ll make better choices. You will be amazed at the amount of energy and motivation that goes along with increasing your willpower. Change your mindset to focus on the “why.” Learn to accept (and give) encouragement.

And by the way, when your favorite “willpower” friend says “Well, just choose the right thing,” just say “So we don’t need to understand our reasons, or get encouragement, or deal with our obstacles?” Maybe it will help them, too.

Most of us are a bit hard on ourselves. We have an internal judge who is pretty harsh with us when we fail or screw up. S/he says such supportive things, such as:

“There you go again…”

“You’ll never get it right!”

“You’ve let yourself and everyone down.”

“You are such a loser!”

“You haven’t changed at all.”

This sort of negative self-talk doesn’t drive you to jump out of bed and take on the world, does it? It’s more likely to keep you in bed watching Netflix all day!

We do, however, need a monitor, or judge, in our heads to help us make good choices. This monitor is called a conscience. Just like Pinocchio’s friend Jiminy Cricket warned him from going the wrong way, we need that help as well. People without a developed conscience often end up in prison, where they belong.

So what can you do about your self judge who beats you up a bit too much? Here are some tips to help.

First, know what a healthy judge is supposed to sound like. You need a model of what healthy is so that you can improve what you have. A healthy judge has two aspects: it is (1) warm and (2) accurate.

Warmth relates to a kind tone instead of a harsh or condemning tone. Notice how the two next statements are very different in their tone: the first tone is discouraging, and the second is motivating. Which sounds more like your judge right now?

Discouraging Judge: “Unbelievable! You lost the account because you didn’t understand the client the right way. You are just not meant for this job.”

Motivating Judge: “You lost the account. It’s a significant setback and you are discouraged. But you have resources, smarts, and good people to help you learn from this and recalibrate.”

Accurate has to do with the truthfulness of the judge’s perspective. A healthy judge should cheer you when you succeed and prompt you to change when you fail.

Unhealthy judges will tend to prompt us when we’ve done nothing wrong (a false positive-like making you feel you broke the speed limit when you didn’t). They will also not prompt us when they need to (false negative-like saying nothing when you cheat on your income tax return).

These inaccurate conscience judges don’t do you any good! Only an accurate one does the job right.

Now, let’s talk about how to start improving that judge if it’s not accurate or warm. On a daily basis for one week, record on your smartphone how many times you heard your judge’s self-talk, and what it said. Is it positive and supportive or negative and demotivational? Once you start paying attention, you should begin to see improvement in this area because what we take an active interest in improves!

I have another recommendation for you as well. Twice a week for a month, have a conversation with a safe person in your life and tell them about the times you beat yourself up.

Don’t let him/her dismiss what you did if you really screwed up – that is denial (and not helpful). Instead, allow your safe person say, “Yes, you were pretty inappropriate in that conversation. I’m OK with you, and I’ll help you brainstorm what to do next.” You can watch my video on safe people here for more information.

Over time, these practices will help you have a useful and helpful tool in your mind to move away from negative self-criticism.  A healthy judge will keep us out of trouble and help us learn from our mistakes.

 

It’s very easy to confuse what we do with who we are. As one sociologist said, “Most people define themselves by their job. When they retire, they need a narrative about who they are now.”

Any change in what we do can easily trigger a crisis of identity. What is the story we are to tell others about ourselves when experiencing a change? How do we get comfortable with our new identity when it still doesn’t seem to fit right?

Weathering The Identity Shift

When your work is your identity, change can shake that sense of identity. Comparison to others can also drive you to maximize your identity. We all feel it: it is a longing for significance, to be known and recognized, to be validated for our labors and achievements.

This is nothing new. Even the author of Ecclesiastes saw this:

“Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. (Ecclesiastes 4:4)”

The New Testament version of that insight comes from 1 Timothy 6:6–7:

“But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.”

Focusing on Jesus Shifts Our Perspective

When the transition of being career-focused to being parenting-focused is happening, this new season of life should not be taken lightly. At times, it might seem very challenging. In these moments, remember to have grace on yourself.

You will feel and experience many changes. Changes in your schedule, relationships, daily routine, and more! This is normal. Embrace it and see what you can learn!

Today the ability to have a career and be a good parent is possible, so long as your most important focus is your children. You can read more about finding balance when you’re a career-oriented parent here.

Putting your kids before your career may be a hard transition for the strong career man or woman. That’s okay! Growth isn’t easy! This transition can sometimes feel like you are giving a part of yourself away or “up” for the benefit of your children. I offer the following insight on seasons and timing from The Bible for your consideration.

Our affirmation does not come from the kind of labor we do.

As Christians, we are to be grounded in Christ’s identity, even as we add other roles and ways to express that identity in relationship to others. We might have an interesting job for a season. We might be married for a season. We might have children at home for a season. But those things can be taken away from us — or never given to us at all. They are gifts for this life only.

Jesus has promised that if we choose to sit at his feet, we have made the best choice of all. We will inherit the better portion, that which will never be taken away: a relationship with God, his word, and the promise of eternal rewards and life with Him in heaven.

Simply put, Jesus shifts our earthbound perspective, taking us high above our daily lives to see the importance of being his disciple. That perspective shift is all we need to settle a crisis of identity.

Let’s say it’s close to the end of your work day and you review your to-do list for what was supposed to happen. Have you ever said to yourself, the right stuff didn’t get done? Join the club, we all have that experience. Setting and sticking to priorities can be challenging!

In a busy life, establishing the right priorities are a valuable tool, and can help you feel a bit better when you next review that list. Here are some tips.

4 Tips for Establishing the Right Priorities

#1: Get an app. Unless you just don’t like the digital world, go online and get a simple to-do app for your smartphone. Task apps these days are geared to help people stay prioritized. Make sure to download an app that syncs easily between all of your devices: phone, laptop, tablet, and desktop. Ask a tech friend or look at online reviews for some suggestions.  In fact, I recommend that you try out several different apps, as organization is a very personal preference.

#2: Use Covey’s Time Management Matrix. I haven’t found anything clearer or more helpful than Stephen Covey’s diagram from his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”  Below is a listing of each quadrant of this matrix, plus I have added an example.

1:  Urgent and important: Receiving a call from a major client who is upset with your company

2:  Not urgent, important: Planning your monthly calendar based on your goals

3: Urgent, not important: Receiving a call from a friend who is always in crisis, but doesn’t take your advice

4:  Neither urgent nor important: Organizing desk drawers

The most important point to remember is to never let #3 become #2.  It is so easy to do the urgent and not-all-that-important, while you neglect the non-urgent but very important! Don’t fall into this prioritization trap!

#3: Learn to accept losses. The psychology underneath the software issue is that lots of us have pretty good priorities, but we don’t budget for losses. We are optimistic, positive, energized and full of hope – and that’s a great thing. But the real winners at some point will also say, “To succeed at what’s really important to me, I need to accept that there are lots of things I won’t have time to do.” I know so many people who are full of potential, and as they age, they repeat the same startup projects year after year, because they can’t let go of the “good” for the “best.”

#4: Review your priorities with the right people. Priorities in our heads don’t stand a great chance of succeeding. Priorities reviewed weekly or monthly with people who are on your life team will keep you encouraged and focused. Sharing priorities with other people also helps keep you accountable to them.

It can be very difficult to know how to prioritize when everything seems important. Remember the four tips I’ve shared above to help you establish the right priorities. Keep in mind, too, that being flexible and adaptable is key to success in this area as you learn to accept time losses.