Breaking the Cycle: Why Willpower Isn’t the Problem

“Willpower” as a concept is not scientific.  Some people call it “grit”.  Others might frame it as “discipline”.  Some might see it as “virtue”.  Regardless of how you define it, “willpower” is not a uniform or static personality trait.  You are wired for varying degrees of monitoring, both internal and external, and understanding that circuitry is often the key to making changes in your life and shifting behaviors that you keep repeating, regardless of how much “willpower” you dedicate to stopping them.

Those with high levels of internal monitoring are very good at using their own cognitive and emotional resources to reach goals and objectives by directing their own behavior.  Those with lower levels of internal monitoring often struggle to reach goals or shift patterns because they do not have the cognitive or emotional tools to direct their own behavior towards change.  They rely more on outside resources to help them plan and achieve the change that they want in their lives.  

Understanding your own internal v. external monitoring needs can be powerful, because they may vary a lot across different areas of life.  You might be a person with very high levels of internal monitoring where money and exercise are concerned, moderate internal monitoring around sleep and diet, but low internal monitoring pertaining to cleaning and work deadlines.  In contrast, your partner may be gifted with high internal monitoring for work deadlines and diet, poor internal monitoring for sleep and money, and moderate internal monitoring for exercise and cleaning.  These different levels of monitoring can manifest as strengths and weaknesses, which can be harnessed to help change patterns and behaviors that keep repeating in your life and relationships. 

You probably find it easy to succeed naturally in areas where you have high internal monitoring, while constantly coming up short in the areas where internal monitoring is poor to non-existent.  This is why you may feel compelled to focus on changing these areas of your life first, which can often result in disappointment and a sense of failure when willpower does not move the needle as much as you would like. Starting with a behavioral shift in an area where you have moderate internal monitoring can feel easier and more productive because you will just be “tweaking”, not fully rehabilitating an aspect of your life where you are already struggling.  For example, if you have moderate internal monitoring around sleep, you might be able to reach your goal of nine hours a night relatively quickly with a little external support, like using tech to track your progress towards the desired number of hours, asking your partner to go to bed earlier with you, or requesting a friend text you every night to see if you are in bed by 9:45.  These are “doable” changes that may not require huge alterations to achieve the desired outcome.

Starting with an area where you are hardwired to have little to no “willpower” is just a step into potential failure.  If you have very low internal monitoring around money management, then you may need to build an extensive and comprehensive plan to provide the degree of external monitoring that will permanently shift your behavior, and it make take a long time.  This might mean hiring a professional money manager to set savings and investing goals for you and putting those contributions on automatic transfer each month.  You might have to remove your credit cards from your phone, making it harder to spend in the first place.  It might require you to subscribe to a budgeting app and share that data with your partner, who can reinforce boundaries around spending.  You might need to enroll your friends in doing cheap or free activities for a while, until you can recover and get back to a secure place.  You may find it helpful to journal when you go over budget, reflecting on what might have been going on emotionally when you spent that money, and it might help to see a therapist and share that journal work to help build new coping tools for when you want to buy things to solve what is really an emotional problem.  

However you choose to frame the problem behaviors in your life, they can shift, and you are capable of breaking patterns that are not serving you.  Sometimes, that requires you to be honest with yourself about the level of external monitoring that you require to make meaningful shifts and address your own behavior.  External monitoring is one tool in the box of resources that you have.  You might want to start using it.  

Written by: Deanna Diamond, LPC