Our levels of willpower change during the course of the day. We generally have much stronger levels of self-control earlier in the day than we do later. Like a muscle, our willpower gets tired, but like a muscle we can strengthen it over time.

Willpower is not a personality trait which you either have or haven’t got. We all have willpower, and how strong it is is dependent upon a range of factors such as how well we sleep, our diet, our general state of health, and the extent to which we have purposefully set out to strengthen it.

We can develop and improve our self-control, our willpower. Willpower is like a muscle that we can strengthen through exercise and practice, and which grows weaker if we don’t exercise or apply it. Resist temptations. Do things you don’t want to do. If you always look to take the easy route you will never develop self-control.

Some general self-control exercises (1 of 2):

◦ If you are right handed, use your left hand for certain tasks;
◦ Ensure you thoroughly brush and floss your teeth morning and evening;
◦ Do some regular exercise routine;
◦ Improve your posture in terms of sitting up straight;

Some general self-control exercises (2 of 2):

◦ Always be neat and tidy;
◦ Keep a record of all your bad habits during the day, noting them down as or shortly after they occur;
◦ Stop yourself from using certain swear or inappropriate words;
◦ Always deal with chores, such as the washing up, straight away.

Willpower will be strengthened through persistent effort to do so. But just as it takes time to build up a weak muscle, so will it takes time to build up your levels of self-control. You would not expect a weak muscle to suddenly be strong simply because you started to exercise it, so don’t get disheartened when your willpower doesn’t either. But if you keep at it, if you persist, if you focus on initial small victories that you can build on, you will eventually succeed.

By improving your will power for a particular task you are improving it in general, and thus improving it for all sorts of different tasks.

It is important to manage your energy levels during the day. In general your mental energy levels get replenished overnight whilst you sleep, but they gradually diminish during the day. If you are feeling tired in the early afternoon a short nap, no more than 10 – 30 mins can help you feel more alert in the afternoon. You should also ensure a steady supply of glucose to your brain during the day, with small and healthy snacks such as high fiber snacks and fruit and vegetables every 3 hours or so. Avoid having a big meal in the middle of the day or not eating at all.

Sweets and soft drinks and junk foods can give you a boost which for a short time makes your brain feel alert. However it is only for a short time and you will quickly find yourself feeling drowsy not long after. Spikes in glucose consumption are bad for your brain.

Coffee with caffeine can help give you a boost, however only up to a point. Once you’ve had about 4 cups in a given day you will not be getting much more of a boost and it can start to have a negative effect. Much more than this can also disrupt your sleep and you should avoid taking caffeine after about mid-afternoon.

Negative emotional thoughts will significantly decrease your energy. Don’t let them linger. If you find them coming into your head take some deep breathes and seek to replace them with positive thoughts.

Anything not done at the time you’d committed to having it done saps your energy, even if it is relatively unimportant. If you are unable to do something when planned, re-plan it or decide it doesn’t need doing at all, rather than just leave it as something undone.

Do your most important work of a mental nature early in the day when you have the most mental energy and willpower.

Fatigue, whether physical or mental, is, initially at least, simply our brain’s automated attempt to conserve energy. We are actually capable of far more if we can motivate ourselves through the fatigue, as long distance runners regularly do. We are capable of going further and continuing for much longer than our initial feelings are suggesting. Of course if you keep going you will eventually reach true physical or mental limits. But these are often a long way the other side of the initial sense of fatigue.

Don’t be tempted to just keep pushing for sustained effort all of the time. You will burn out, such that in the long term you are less effective than you would have been with a more balanced approach.

Don’t despair if after you’ve mentally worked for a while, about 50 mins or so, your concentration starts to lapse: it is normal, take a short break, and return to the task 5 or 10 minutes later.

Develop tactics you can fall back on when your willpower weakens, as it will tend to do later in the day. Tactics include removing temptations, having specific plans about what you will do rather than leave it vague, choosing things which are relatively easy to do, and doing things with other people in a low temptation environment. Of course general willpower strenghening exercises will over time lessen the impact of weakening self-control later in the day.

Try to avoid making decisions when you feel your willpower is low. Your decisions will tend to be based on short-term gains and delayed costs, you are more likely to stick with the status quo, and you are less inclined to compromise. If forced to make decisions under these circumstances look to compensate by giving increased weight to longer-term consequences and being clear about the reasoning behind your decisions.

Develop good habits and good fixed routines that are automatic and thus take very little effort or self-motivation. This becomes particularly important later in the day.

Motivation requires purpose, it requires goals. You cannot be determined without being determined about something in particular. In the absence of clearly defined goals, we become attached to daily acts of trivia, and fritter away our time and energy on short term interests to the detriment of long term interests.

Don’t have too many goals. A few goals or even just one goal that really matters to you are of far more value than a large number of goals. You can do anything, but not everything.

If you have a goal or a purpose that really inspires, you need never be bored again. Purpose gives you energy, and with the right purpose you should be using any spare time towards its achievement, either through planning, or developing supporting skills, or seeking out useful information, or through doing work towards its achievement.

Strive to be the best you can be in your particular niche, and set a goal to be so.

A good source of inspiring goals is to find something you are dissatisfied with: something you know could be and should be better; something you can do something about. Get your emotions to work for you, in that the stronger you feel about something, the stronger should be your motivation for doing something about it.

If you do not feel motivated by your goals, if you do not get a sense of inspiration and energy through thinking about your goals, then you have the wrong goals.

Keep your long-term goals at the forefront of your mind. They help build up your immunity to temptations during the day. They should also help you decide what to do next on a regular basis, and also keep you open to relevant moments of opportunity that might just happen to pass by.

If you’ve got something planned and scheduled then you are far more likely to get on and do it than if you just have some vague idea that you ought to do it sometime. Ensure you have regular planned times for progressing your goals. If you are not regularly moving towards your long-term goals, then you are moving away from them.

Spend a few minutes at the end of each day to reflect on whether or not you have done something that day to take you nearer your goals. Be clear about what you can and will do the next day to take you just a little bit nearer.

If you have something you really believe in you can often inspire others to help. Most people are quite happy to be led, and if you have a clear vision and are willing to lead you will not have too much difficulty finding people to follow you.

Don’t expect to achieve great things without substantial effort. The more effort you put in the greater your chances of success.

There are always hurdles to overcome if you are doing anything challenging or difficult. It’s simply the way things are. Nothing to get down about or upset about. Simply things to work out how to deal with, and then tackle, adapting as necessary. Believe you are the sort of person that tackles and deals with problems and you will be.

Adversity is not something to get you down; it is something to raise you up. Adversity gives you opportunities to grow and to see things from a different viewpoint. It is often only in adversity that we see particular opportunities.

Don’t expect to have to wait for motivation. Get started and motivation will follow.

Don’t kid yourself that there is some future best time to get on with the things you need to get on with. The best time to get on with whatever needs to be done is as soon as you can, irrespective of whether or not you feel like it. Don’t wait until you feel motivated to get on with what is important to you.

Don’t let the fear of failure hold you back, unless of course it is a rationale choice based upon the real damage the failure might do. Whenever we attempt something new or something difficult there is a significant risk of failure early on. It is an essential part of the learning process. If you hold back because of that fear you are cutting yourself off from that learning process.

Don’t sit and wait for opportunities to come your way, go out and create them.

Get into the habit of just getting on with doing the right things. See yourself as the sort of person that does.

When you have a goal or target to achieve, you should approach it with a sense of urgency, and passion to get it done. Tasks are much easier if you approach them with a determination to get them done rather than with a reluctance.

Make your objective in any given circumstance to be to do your best. If your objective is to reach some level of achievement then you are likely to be anxious about your ability to do so. If your objective is to do your best, and you put all your effort and concentration into doing so, then you can be satisfied that you could couldn’t have done more.

You can’t do everything. Get doing everything out of your head. It will paralyze you such that you do nothing. Focus solely on a something you can do. There’s always something you can do.

Don’t let thoughts about what you can’t do stop you from getting on with what you can do.

A small step in the right direction is better than no step at all, assuming the effort could not be better spent elsewhere.

Be tough with yourself, be decisive, and accept full responsibility for your actions and your inactions.

If we want the world to be the way we would like it to be we must start from the way it is. There are plenty of small steps that can take from where you are now which will be taking you bit by bit in the direction you want to go. Don’t make excuses that circumstances are not ideal or be waiting for the next opportunity. Do what you can, now. Aim for progress, no matter how little.

There are many excuses for not striving to do the right thing. But strive anyway. You can make a lot of progress simply by doing so a bit at a time.

Your troubles usually arise because you did not do what you know you could have done when you should have done it.

Visualizing yourself practicing a skill or exercising actually has many of the benefits of actually doing it for real and can play an important part in helping you become more proficient. You need to make your visualizations as vivid as you can.

To help you deal with particular future events, you can generate your own mind movie of how you would like events to run. Imagine the specific event, making it as real as you can in your mind. Think about how you would handle variations. When the event itself comes about you will have trained yourself for it. Be wary however of assuming the real world will behave in accordance with your visualization, it may not – be prepared to adapt.

Make your visualizations as vivid as you can. Try to visualize small details, including sounds and smells and tastes if appropriate. Try to imagine yourself feeling as you would feel in the circumstances. The more vividly you can imagine the more your brain will respond as though you were experiencing the actual circumstances.

Dare to release the full potential of who you are capable of being, by bringing yourself fully into the present moment and then just doing.

Don’t wait until you are in the mood you would like to be in. Pretend you are already in that mood and do what you would typically do if you were in that mood. It will put you into that mood.

If you are feeling lethargic, one way of motivating yourself is to get more oxygen. Do some light aerobic exercise such as going for a walk, or do some stretching or some deep breathing.

You can get yourself in the mood for a particular task by putting yourself into the physical state in which you would normally do it. For example, if you are working from home, dress in your work clothes and adopt similar postures to those you adopt when at work.

Even if your energy levels are relatively low you can still get on with some routine tasks.

We imagine our future selves as almost superhuman. We put off doing things now expecting our future selves to have no trouble dealing with whatever it is. However your future self is not a superhero able to do things your present self cannot. If you want to be able to get things done in the future you need to be able to get things done now.

People tend to think the future will be some idealized world without the constraints and distractions of today. They significantly over estimate their ability to exhibit self-control relative to their ability today, and overestimate the time available tomorrow. Best to accept that tomorrow you will make the same decisions as you will make today, and make today’s decisions on that basis.

Most of our large problems arise from not facing up to and dealing with small problems when they arise. And we are surrounded by temptations, and being unable to resist is the cause of many difficulties.

Your habits are not just physical habits such as smoking or eating or watching TV, but mental habits such as your tendency to procrastinate, how you respond to things that annoy you, how you manage your lists of things to do, etc.

If you don’t conquer your bad habits, they will conquer you.

Believe you can change your bad habits. Because you can. Have faith in yourself.

Read up as much as possible about the habit you are trying to change, and pick up tips from others as to how to go about it.

Seek to eliminate one bad habit at a time. Changing bad habits is not easy. It can be done, but it will require a lot of up front effort. If you try to tackle more than one at a time there is a high chance you will fail with them all, whereas if you do one at a time you have a far higher chance of succeeding and then being able to move onto another.

Our brains like habits because they require little effort. It takes a lot of energy and effort to change a habit. But any habit can be changed if you persist and make the effort – usually in about 30 to 60 days, though some may take longer.

Don’t kid yourself that overcoming long established bad habits is easy. It isn’t. If you believe it’s easy then when you have set backs you are more likely to give up. If however you recognize that it’s hard, then you are more likely to put in more effort, be persistent, and put setbacks behind you as you reaffirm your commitment and continue with the struggle.

If you persistently find yourself failing to make a big change, then tackle it as a sequence of smaller changes.

Treat temptations as opportunities to develop self-control. When you feel you are about to give in to a temptation adopt a 10 minute rule, whereby you tell yourself you can now give in to the temptation but will wait 10 minutes before you do so. You may or may not still want to give in after 10 minutes but at least you’ve given your self-control some exercise.

We are not continually at risk from bad habits. They hit us at certain crucial moments and in certain circumstances, for a few minutes or even less at a time. If we can get through those few minutes, the temptation loosens its grip as other thoughts take over. If we can recognize the circumstances and conditions under which temptations arise, we can develop strategies to avoid putting ourselves in the specific circumstances in the first place, or develop automated responses when in those circumstances. For example drink some water whenever you are tempted by an unhealthy snack. Or take deep breaths, or go for a walk, or give someone a ring, or have some other little ritual which will distract you long enough for the urge to pass.

After a slip up, instead of focusing on how you have failed again, focus on the fact that with every attempt you are making progress. If you are struggling, don’t target total success, target doing better. You will grow in self-confidence and get into a mindset that believes you will eventually succeed.

Your environment is the largest determinant of your behavior as we react to our environment in instinctive ways. There are some environments when you would never give in to the bad habit, and others when you frequently do so. When trying to change your habits and behavior look at the cues in your environment, and eliminate those that are hindering you and strengthen those that are helping you. Keep away from places or circumstances that are the triggers to your negative behaviors.

Pre-plan how to avoid or deal with certain temptations you are prone to giving in to. If you are prone to buying things when you go out, for example, only go out with so much cash and no credit or bankcards. Make appointments in your calendar to deal with something you’ve been putting off. Make use of software applications to stop you accessing certain on-line sites during certain times of the day. Be clear about what you are prone to give in to, and be creative about keeping yourself away from the temptation.

Your willpower is weaker when you are tired, and you will find it more difficult to resist temptations later in the day. Prepare for this, and ensure you don’t put yourself in the way of temptations when tired or later in the day.

Set strict rules for yourself. One way we give in to temptations is through the ‘one won’t matter’ argument. A strict rule of ‘not even one’ is a counter tactic.

Moral licensing is when we believe it is ok to do something ‘bad’ because of all the ‘good’ things we have been doing. In reality it is a weakness and an excuse, not a justification. It is only right that we should reward ourselves for doing good things, however there is no excuse for this reward to be ‘bad’ things. There is no moral justification for doing bad things just because we did a few things we consider to have been good.

When looking for strategies for resisting a temptation or changing a bad habit we should look to apply multiple strategies all at once. Single strategies on their own, or one after another, are often not enough.

Don’t be paranoid about overcoming every temptation. It is not good to always give up pleasure now for future benefits. You know for yourself however whether giving into certain temptations are a part of a slippery slope or just an occasional and acceptable lapse.

Employing will power to do something drains your energy. Use your self-control to develop good habits, which then become automatic and don’t then continually require will power.

The more you do something the more likely you will do it again in the future. Like a path through the undergrowth, the more times you follow the path the clearer it becomes and the easier it is for you to go down the same path in the future. Persistence will lead to you succeeding in ingraining good habits.

There is no short cut to forming habits. Repetition is the only way. At first it requires conscious effort, but keep at it and eventually it requires very little or no effort at all.

Identify a new habit you would like to form and tell yourself you only need to commit to it for 30 days. It is easier to motivate yourself to keep up a new habit if you know it is only for a limited amount of time. At the end of the 30 days the new habit will often be so well engrained that it takes little effort to maintain it. If it is not, and you have made a genuine effort, then it should be easy for you to decide to continue trying.

Continually take action towards what you want and away from what you don’t want. Even small actions in the right direction are worthwhile and help us get into the right habits.

It you are looking to develop a number of good habits, focus on putting one in place at a time. Once you have established a given habit it requires little effort to maintain, and you can then turn your energies to establishing another habit. Trying to implement more than one good habit at a time often requires too much effort and you are likely to fail in all of them.

If you want to adopt a new habit, pretend you have already adopted it. Set your mind to tell itself that it is already what you do. A ‘fake it till you make it’ strategy.

Find ways to increase the pleasure associated with good habits. For example: healthy food does not need to be bland; see studying as building up a picture of how the world works which is part of the fascination of life; see exercise as a building up of your body.

Making changes, doing things that aren’t already habits, can be uncomfortable. However the very fact that you feel discomfort is a sign that it is going against the grain. And if you keep it up you will get into a groove and the discomfort will lesson. Thus rather than seek to back away from the discomfort, embrace it.

Resilience is our ability to keep going in the face of difficulties. To keep going despite failures and setbacks. To manage our negative emotions so they don’t drag us down. Resilience is a skill we can all learn.

If you want to achieve something worthwhile, expect there to be difficulties along the way, be prepared to accept a long hard struggle, and don’t feel sorry for yourself. If you accept that there will be struggles and difficulties to overcome then you are less likely to get downhearted and demotivated when they occur. When you make a commitment to achieve a goal then also make a commitment to tackle and overcome the difficulties and to keep going even though you have some failures along the way.

Don’t take rejection personally. People are not rejecting you, they are rejecting what you have put in front of them. Improve it. Rejection means you have something to be rejected and it is easier to improve on something that has been rejected than it is to create something in the first place.

See every blow and defeat as experiences from which you can grow stronger. Like a video game where when you start out you will have failure after failure, but slowly you learn and get better and eventually, if you persevere, you get pretty good at it.

See failures as a natural part of the learning and improving process. Indeed you generally learn far more through failures. Having failures, assuming they are the result of action rather than inaction, proves you are pushing at your limits, which you need to do if you want to improve.

Don’t beat yourself up when you fail. It has happened. Now get back to it.

Most success stories involve people who persevered in circumstances when the majority of people would have given up.

It is not talent that will get you to where you want to be, it is staying power.

When faced with a challenge don’t give up at the first sign of failure. Adapt your plan. Learn what works to get you closer to where you want to get to, and what doesn’t work. Keep trying and adjusting until you succeed.

It is not crisis or adversity that is the problem; it is the way you react to it which is the problem.

Beating yourself up about your own lack of willpower, being overly self-critical, is counterproductive. It leads to less motivation, not more, and drives us towards depression. Being understanding with yourself, forgiving yourself, but still being determined, increases your motivation and chances of gaining the self-control you are looking for.

It’s hard to be motivated when you are confused. Simplify your life and you will have greater focus and be more motivated.

It is not necessarily discipline you need, just a disciplined approach.

The will to win is not as important as the will to prepare to win.

We have far greater stores of energy than we normally deploy. We work far within the limits of what we are capable of. Put more of your stored energy to use and move closer to your limits. You’ll be surprised at what you can achieve.

It is a lot of effort to overcome intuitive predictions and therefore it is only generally worth doing if the stakes are high and it is important not to make mistakes.

Clear your workspaces and keep work well filed. You are able to exhibit higher levels of self-control in a neat and tidy environment. Clutter and difficulty finding things is very demotivating and holds you back from getting on with things.

You will generally feel more motivated in well-lit areas.

Chewing some sugar free gum increases the flow of blood to your brain and helps you concentrate better.

If is easier to hold on to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold on to them 99% of the time. Once you give way on your principles ‘just once’ because of unique or particularly circumstances, you find unique or particular circumstances are everywhere.

Keep the resolutions you have already made, rather than continually make new ones. Get into the habit of succeeding to do what you have set out to do rather than continually moving onto something else.

Learn about yourself: what motivates you and what demotivates you. What sort of music inspires you and lifts you up. Do certain smells make you feel more alive? Do some foods make you feel sluggish? Use your self-knowledge to help you get things done.

A balance between too much and too little anxiety is best for getting on and doing things. Too little anxiety leaves us unmotivated to make the effort; too much anxiety prevents us focusing on the task itself.

In order to gain long-term commitment it is important that people accept inner responsibility for their actions. Having people respond to strong outside pressures such as large rewards or punishments does not engender personal responsibility. Ironically, small rewards are often more effective in engendering long-term commitment than large rewards.

Meditation, whether religious or not, increases our ability to focus and concentrate and our overall self-control. It helps us become less prone to impulses and distractions.

Getting into a positive mood will increase your will power and self-control.

Exercise does wonders for your self-control. It doesn’t have to be strenuous. Going for a walk or jog will significantly reduce stress levels and increase self-control. Think of exercise as something that restores your energy rather than drains it.

If you are fully committed to your goal, maintain motivation by focusing on what is left to complete it. If you are not fully committed, focus on what you have already accomplished.

Our brains generally respond better to external input than to internal input. For example, when exercising we will usually keep going longer if someone is telling us to do so rather than if we are just telling ourselves. You can increase the likelihood of responding to your internal thoughts by writing them down, talking aloud to yourself, or putting them on tape and playing them back. Different parts of your brain then light up to respond to this what has become external input.

Look to be with people who are significantly better than you at what you do or with people who are high achievers. Set aside any feelings of inferiority and allow yourself to be inspired by them. See what tips you can pick up from them, and feel uncomfortable about yourself to the extent that you are determined to move your game to the next level.

Take inspiration from others, whether living or dead, whether real or fictional. You are the hero of your own life and there’s no reason you can’t learn from other heroes by trying to emulate them.

Regularly read and re-read inspiring motivation books and inspiring personal stories, or listen to them as audio or even attend seminars. The more you expose yourself to motivational material the more it will seep into you, and the more ideas you will come across that you can try out and occasionally find of real benefit.

The best way to adopt a given behavior is to mix with people who already display that behavior.

You can prime your brain to feel more motivated to do a given task by reading motivational words or quotes. Write them out on cards and put them out in front of you when you have the time to get on with something but are hesitant about just getting on with it. You should seek out your own words or phrases but the following are some just to get you going: Do It Now; The world belongs to those who do; Discipline; With Purpose; Awaken; Empowered; Energy; Whilst others sleep; This next hour: use it or lose it; I can and I will; With each step; We are what we do; The time will pass anyway, put it to use; Some succeed because they are destined. Some succeed because they are determined; The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little bit extra; Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.