Does Willpower Exist?

With the New Year now well under way, I’m wondering how everyone’s getting along with their New Year’s Resolutions. We’re going to get fitter, go to the gym five times a week, stop smoking, eat more healthy food, quit scrolling social media etc, etc, bla, bla, bla. Unfortunately, statistics indicate that almost half of New Year’s Resolutions have been abandoned by the end of January. In fact, this Friday (9th January) is nicknamed “Quitter’s Day” because that’s when people are most likely to abandon their goals.

Only around 8% of people manage to commit to their goal for the whole year. But how do they do it? And how can I be in that 8%?

Every January, I do write goals. I even set SMART targets (spot the teacher, haha!) But I am yet to succeed in all of them. (Please note, I said all of them. I do usually succeed in at least one of my goals.) I also prefer to call them goals with the idea that by avoiding the phrase New Year, it takes the pressure off a bit.

Back in September, I read an article on the BBC quoting a psychologist who said that “there’s no such thing as willpower. Willpower is not this magic thing inside you, instead your ability to stick to something is about the way you’ve arranged the world around you. Willpower [isn’t] about increasing your tolerance to distress and suffering, but simply being more organised. It’s not that people aren’t motivated, but rather that setting unrealistic goals and lacking a clear plan can lead to frustration and burnout”

I pondered this for a couple of days and it resonated with me. I was thinking about the goals that I have achieved over the years. In most cases, they had included tweaking my daily routines in some way. I was beginning to think that it was probably true, that willpower doesn’t exist. Then earlier this week on 5th January, the BBC published another article entitled, “The Myth of Willpower.”

But by this time, I had already concluded that willpower, at least in some form, actually does exist. I remembered our Mum stopping smoking after 40 years’ addiction to cigarettes. This was in the days before ‘vapes’ and e-cigarettes. I remember that she tried the nicotine patches for a couple of days, but didn’t get on with them. So she just stopped. No change to routines. No cigarette substitutes. No planning ahead. Nothing. She just stopped. Was it willpower? Perhaps. But as I thought about this and took a stroll through my memories, I remembered the days when Mum was a smoker. Everyone in the family had stopped smoking except Mum. But Mum didn’t care; she was very stubborn and no-one was going to tell her to stop smoking. So when the day came that Mum decided that she would stop smoking, it was that same stubbornness that meant she never had even a single puff of a cigarette again.

So whether you believe in the existence of willpower or not, I hope that you will have success in at least some of your New Year’s resolutions.

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Happy New Year!

Sharon x