In order to lose weight permanently and maintain your weight loss results for many years, you need to have great willpower. You will have to continue to adhere to the norms of proper balanced nutrition, protect yourself from the temptation to overeat, follow new eating habits and generally lead a healthy lifestyle. This is a huge amount of work on yourself that deserves respect.
But what if it turns out that you have absolutely no desire to change your life, even understanding the need for weight correction? If there is absolutely no willpower to correct dietary mistakes? What to do in this case? Should you come to terms with your weak character and admit defeat without a fight in the battle for an ideal figure, or get together and try to develop willpower in yourself so that one day you can lose weight easily and quickly?
We really hope that you will choose the second option, so we are already in a hurry to help you with our advice.
So, let's learn to develop willpower and motivation to achieve goals...
Willpower and motivation: what's the difference?
In fact, there is a significant difference between these concepts. Willpower is a person’s ability to resist his weaknesses, various circumstances and pressure from others in order to achieve a certain goal. It is always a struggle and an oppositional position in relation to laziness and inaction.
Motivation is the desire and drive to achieve what you want, it is more about accepting your feelings and desires, rather than fighting with yourself. In modern psychology, it is common to use the concept of “motivation,” but willpower is spoken of less and less often. And, nevertheless, without internal discipline it is difficult to achieve your goals, since you can become a hostage to other people’s desires or become disappointed in yourself.
It is worth noting that many of us do not approach the development of our willpower correctly. The mistake is that we try to force ourselves to do what we don’t want to do in order to prove to ourselves that “I can do it.” It’s good if over time you start to like this activity and there is real motivation to continue, but what if disappointment sets in and you become confident in your powerlessness?
For example, you decided to lose weight with a nutritionist and are now doing everything that will help you lose excess weight.
A nutritionist has prescribed a balanced diet for you to lose weight and advised you to include regular physical activity. And so you sadly go to the gym, buy a membership and break yourself twice a week so as not to miss classes. You don't enjoy the process of training, but you think that this is how you develop your willpower.
What do you think: will your motivation to lose weight increase after such torture on yourself? Very unlikely. The thing is that our willpower has a limited resource. If you constantly do something contrary to your desires, chronic fatigue will appear, and your enthusiasm for the idea of losing weight will completely disappear. This kind of work on willpower can completely kill motivation and all attempts to achieve the goal.
Therefore, wise nutritionists who understand the psychology of excess weight and coaching do not insist on doing something through force. Instead, they develop willpower in clients through activities that bring them pleasure and motivate them to take action.
In a word, if regular physical activity is necessary to lose weight, then choose what you like, and not what is fashionable, well advertised, my friends advised. It may not be classic fitness or individual training in the gym, but you will enjoy the way you are moving towards your goal. You will understand that you have willpower, because you will not have to be disappointed, and, therefore, your motivation will strengthen.
On the way to success
Many people ask the question: how to develop willpower? There is no definite answer, each person is individual, and how to cultivate willpower depends on many factors. However, there are some methods that are beneficial for everyone.
First of all, you need to gain determination. This quality will greatly help build character. You must immediately adjust yourself to the fact that this process cannot be interrupted. Excuses like holidays and weekends will only set you back to the beginning of the journey. Strong-willed character is trained only by regularity and constancy.
According to experts, the easiest way to develop these qualities is in sports. In sports, it is easier to set a goal and move towards it step by step. This approach will help develop and train persistence, as well as improve health. The final effect may even exceed all expectations. However, not everyone plays sports.
Experts were able to develop a universal list to cultivate strong-willed qualities.
- Realize and accept your shortcomings that contributed to the growth of problems.
- Imagine all the successful steps and peaks that you could achieve with a strong will.
- Imagine that you are a trained person with strong, strong-willed qualities of character.
After reading this list, think about whether you liked the end result in your mind. Most likely - yes, I liked it. Then all you have to do is gain determination and begin to implement the planned plan that develops willpower.
How to develop willpower in everyday conditions? As observation has shown, the most difficult education of willpower occurs in everyday life. But at the same time, these are unlimited possibilities. Wake up in the morning at a certain time, do exercises, drink coffee, not be late for work/school and many other things. All these things make us want to either not do them or do them - for example, smoke in the morning with a cup of coffee.
We don’t try to get rid of bad habits that we like, while we can put off what is necessary for success for another time. It is in this cycle of simple responsibilities that the question arises - how to develop willpower in such conditions? However, these are the best circumstances - the place and time - to begin developing your stamina and willpower.
Having made a decision, there is no need to immediately tackle everything at once and outline a complex plan. It is worth paying attention to just a couple of aspects of everyday life, developing an action plan and starting to implement it without delay. After a certain time, during which you follow the outlined rules, you yourself will understand how to train willpower in your case, what to add to the plan being developed and how to complicate it.
After all, any person wants all moments of life to please, to be varied in their beauty and success; for this, willpower is simply necessary. To expand your horizons, have broad interests, a considerable number of acquaintances and friends, be able to show patience, responsiveness, and always be cheerful - for all this you need to follow the path of improvement.
How can you improve other than strengthening your willpower? Examples of willpower surround us everywhere, we just need to pay attention to the successes of those around us. You can take any successful person and analyze his actions, but in order to gain strong strong-willed qualities yourself, you need to have unlimited desire and show a desire for self-development. It is also worth developing in yourself such qualities as:
- Determination.
- Persistence.
- Self-control.
- Excerpt.
- Courage.
- Independence.
There are many more qualities that help strengthen willpower, but many of them will be developed through character training. Moving towards a goal is the meaning of our life. This is a movement that can be controlled, and the more clearly you see where you are going, the faster you achieve what you want. But you just have to doubt, lose willpower, and the movement will stop.
How is willpower formed?
Willpower has several important stages of formation. In order for it to be developed, it is necessary to go through and master them all, but sometimes people get stuck halfway and then stall in this state for many years. We master the very first stage in preschool age (3-6 years), when we learn to control our behavior in public, taking into account the interests of others.
This is the stage at which the child already understands that he should not throw sand, break other people’s things, eat with his hands, or beat those who are weaker. If a person is stuck at this stage and is absolutely sure that he controls his behavior to please others, and not himself, then his willpower will be weak. Anything that is not related to our personal needs significantly weakens our enthusiasm.
Imagine that a woman says: “yes, I need to lose weight, because my husband likes slender girls, and he dreams of seeing me like that.” Reasoning in this way, she does not understand that weight correction is necessary, first of all, for her, and not for her husband, that she will become more beautiful, feel better, improve her health, and be able to wear completely different clothes.
Without realizing your own benefits, it is very difficult to work on motivation, because there is nothing you want to strive for, there are no personal desires and goals. At the second stage of willpower formation (7-10 years), we learn to control the expression of our own feelings, when in certain situations we hide resentment, anger, aggression, disappointment, fear, shame, etc.
At this stage, it is important to learn to distinguish between when feelings should really be hidden (for example, fear, if suddenly there is a fire and you need to get together to save those who are weaker) and when it is better to speak openly about what worries you (for example, resentment towards loved one).
That is why the next stage in building willpower is the ability to take control of your thoughts. It is necessary to distinguish which beliefs you have, and which ones are imposed by stereotypes or people around you. A person with great willpower always listens only to personal beliefs and ignores stereotypes.
Imagine that you decide to take a weight loss course. You already imagine in your mind that you will have to undergo restrictive diets, constant training, giving up restaurant food, your favorite pizza, sweets, etc. It seems to you that losing weight is very difficult, and all because such a stereotype has been imposed on you.
If you approach the issue with an open mind and do not expect difficulties in advance, then there will not be any. Just convince yourself that what you are taking on is actually a simple task, and then losing weight easily and quickly will probably be possible without difficulty. This skill helps you move to the final stage of willpower formation - control over your perception of reality.
In the psychology of thinking, the following rule always works: what you pay attention to is exaggerated. That is, if you concentrate on the bad, it will grow, if you focus on the good, then much more good events will begin to happen. Moreover, you decide for yourself what to focus your attention on.
Let’s say the weather outside is terrible, it’s been raining all day, a strong wind is blowing, you definitely won’t be able to take a walk in the park, but you really wanted it. This is reality, there is no escape from it. In this situation, there are two options for perception:
- you can complain about the injustice of fate, sit at home all day in a bad mood, do nothing and be sad:
- But you can imagine that tomorrow, after the rain, mushrooms will grow in the forest, and you can go with the whole family to pick them, walking through the forest, inhaling the aroma of wet grass, and you will begin to look around the house for baskets for mushrooms and a suitable wardrobe for this event.
In the first case, you will remain in a minor key, in the second, charge yourself with positive energy and inspiration. Having gone through all the described stages of willpower formation, you will definitely be able to achieve what you want and set the right motivation for yourself.
But what about those who doubt that they have this will? If, when setting a goal, you realize that you don’t want to do anything at all, you don’t have any moral strength? In this case, try exercises to develop willpower...
Story 1. I am Malala
“In some parts of the world, students go to school every day. This is their ordinary life. But in some places people are starving for the sake of studying. She is like a precious gift, like a diamond.”
It’s hard to believe that such words could be uttered by a young girl who just yesterday was playing with dolls. But often children turn out to be wiser than adults, especially when circumstances force them to show their hidden willpower and strength of character.
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani girl who, at age 17, became the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her work advocating for girls' right to education.
Yousafzai became famous at the age of 11, when, first under a pseudonym and then under her own name, she began blogging for the BBC about life in the Taliban-occupied city of Mingora. She wrote notes by hand and then gave them to a reporter, who digitized them and emailed them to the BBC website. Malala was especially vocal against the Taliban ban, which prevented girls from attending classes.
“Today there are 57 million children out of school in the world; 31 million of them are girls. There are many girls in Pakistan and all over the world who are forced into marriage at a young age, into family life and without any thought of education. We must invest in girls' education and protect those who fight for their right to education."
So says Malala. The young human rights activist received her name in honor of the Pakistani heroine Malalai, a participant in the Battle of Maiwand during the second Anglo-Afghan War. The name Malala translates to “stricken with grief.” Perhaps this is mysticism, or maybe a simple coincidence, but very soon trouble itself looked into the bright world of the little girl.
On October 9, 2012, a Taliban militant stopped a school bus in which Malala Yousafzai was traveling with her classmates and began shouting: “Who is Malala here? Speak or you will all die." “I am Malala,” the girl said, stepped forward - and then a shot rang out.
The bullet went straight through Malala's head, neck and shoulder. The girl was taken to the hospital in critical condition, but, thank God, everything turned out okay. And now Malala continues her human rights work, despite the threats that continue to come.
“And I said to myself: Malala, you have already faced death face to face. This is your second try. Don’t be afraid, because if you are afraid, you will not be able to move forward.”
