How to Increase Willpower and Self-Control

The studio isn't perfect right now, and it gets so hot in here during the day. I tried to shoot this video two times, and I got way too sweaty. So now, I'm filming it at night, but I'm still doing [Music].

Also, there are like moths and flies in here 'cause I accidentally left the door open, and they were attracted to the light. So, in an earlier video, I talked about how willpower is a finite resource that depletes throughout the day with every decision that you make. When you fall asleep at night, that willpower replenishes back to max level. But what about increasing that maximum? Is it possible to upgrade the amount of willpower you have in general?

Neurologists and behavior psychologists generally understand willpower as something that can be strengthened through practice, which can help combat things like procrastination. For example, when we procrastinate, the things that we're doing to procrastinate are obviously more exciting or more stimulating than the thing that we're avoiding. Unfortunately, this is mostly inescapable. Procrastination wouldn't exist if doing super hard work was really fun! Thankfully, though, you can combat this phenomenon with willpower, which might be disappointing to you if you're looking for some type of brain hack. But really, plain old-fashioned willpower is super helpful.

The problem is a lot of people these days don't seem to have much of it and don't really know how to improve it either. Let's talk about one of the greatest ways to strengthen overall willpower and potentially make the quality of your life better in general, and that is by regularly practicing acts of self-denial. Self-denial is the willingness to forgo personal pleasures in the pursuit of the increased good of another.

Doing what I just read can be as easy as not taking the last cookie from the cookie jar, even if you think you really deserve it, and there's no real reason not to. Or only watching one episode of your favorite Netflix show, even when Netflix starts auto-queuing the next one, diabolically like it does. So there you go, just do that every day, and your willpower will increase.

You're probably not satisfied with that, though. One of the most popular and well-known scientific experiments in psychology is the famous marshmallow experiment. This took place in the 1960s. In the marshmallow experiment, psychologist Walter Mischel sat a bunch of elementary school children down one by one and offered them the choice of one marshmallow now, or if they could wait 5 minutes, they would get two marshmallows.

So, after this happened, Mischel sort of followed these children all the way. Walter Mischel sort of tracked the performance and overall life quality of these children as they became adults. He found out that the ones that were able to resist temptation earlier on in life found greater success academically, career-wise, and they even had lower rates of marital separation. This study suggests that self-denial directly translates into success in other areas of life.

Another study shows that self-denial not only translates into success in other areas of life but could also have an impact on overall happiness. According to a 2013 paper published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, this study took place at the University of British Columbia and involved 55 participants. To simplify things, there were three groups in the study: group one was given a bunch of chocolate and told not to eat it; group two was just told nothing; and group three was given a bunch of chocolate and told to eat as much as they comfortably could over the next week.

One week later, all three groups came back, ate a piece of chocolate, and then reported on their feelings of overall happiness. Unsurprisingly, group three, who binged on chocolate all week long, were the least happy about eating that piece of chocolate, whereas group one, who couldn't eat chocolate that whole time, were the most happy.

It may not be surprising that self-denial makes people long for the thing they can't have. Yet, the chocolate study shows that people who practice self-denial are actually happier in the end because they savor more. So, in societies where there's abundance, overall happiness and improved well-being are not a guarantee. Sometimes, discipline—saying no to the thing that's right in front of you, even when there's no real reason why you can't have it—leads to greater happiness and success in your life.

In the end, if you like this video, be sure to hit that like button. If you like these videos in general, hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. If you want to say something to me, either positive or negative, leave it in the comment section below. I don't really like a ton of negativity, so I'll probably delete your negative comment, but you might as well give it a shot anyways.