Did it happen to you so that after several days of self-restraint, you fell into something? Psychologists came up with a special term for this – “exhaustion of willpower.” Its essence is that the more we strain our willpower, the more it is exhausted and the less our composure is to confront the temptations.
The more experts explore willpower, the more they come to the opinion that it can be controlled. According to Professor Roy Baumister from the University of Queensland in Australia, people with more developed self -control are more popular, study and work better, are less likely to arrest or divorce and live longer.
Field studies were conducted showing that our willpower can be exhausted under the influence of stress. As part of one of the experiments, the participants recorded their workload at work and the level of stress in the electronic diary. When they were more loaded and prone to more stress, their alcohol consumption increased sharply. Despite this, there are promising areas of research that demonstrate that we can still control the willpower.
According to one idea, just as physical exercises affect our muscles, if we regularly expose the will of small loads, then it can be exhausted in the short term, and strengthen in a long -term. There is convincing evidence of the effectiveness of this approach. Professor Malta Frieze from the University of Saarland in Germany, together with other psychologists, summarized the results of 33 studies devoted to training willpower with the participation of 2,600 people. It was found that even small, but regular exercises for willpower can improve self -control.
The good news is that training will not necessarily be burdensome in order to have an effect. During one of the studies, for example, students had to squeeze a cystic simulator for two weeks as long as possible twice a day for two weeks. This was enough to improve their average scores in exams. In another study, volunteers were offered to use a non -working hand for a certain time.
If you want to train the willpower, you can try the following actions: do not throw away sweets, drink sweet drink, avoid multiple thoughts about making a decision, control your environment, practice awareness and meditation.
The stiffness and repeatability of ritual actions seems to really signal the person that he has the willpower. This was said by Dr. Julian Schroeder of the University of California in Berkeley. This is just such a mechanism of self -perception.
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