We know you lash yourself mentally time and time again. For eating that Skor bar on your coffee break. For tipping back those two extra glasses of chardonnay last night. For not saddling up for that Saturday morning spinning class. If only you had more willpower, you think, you would quit all your nasty habits and live up to your perfect idea of a super-healthy, super-successful superwoman.
Well, the measure of a woman is not the amount of willpower she has. Most experts actually loathe the word willpower because of the moral overtones associated with having none. The cultural stigma of being "powerless" over mastering impulses implies - unfairly - that people are weak, says Dr. Ian Nicholson, chair of professional affairs at the Ottawa-based Canadian Psychological Association. And our celebrity-obsessed culture doesn't help: take yummy mummies Kate Hudson and Denise Richards, both starlet mothers lauded for shedding their baby weight virtually overnight.
In fact, the best way to nurture your personal resolve is to stop beating yourself up over not having enough. Our perceived lack of willpower - which feeds into Canada's $45 billion a year beauty and diet industries, to cite but two examples - can actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We're so hard on ourselves about minor lapses in resolve that we end up thinking we have none in the first place. And that becomes an easy excuse to avoid changing bad habits or taking on any challenging health goals (will you be wearing a bikini or a one-piece and wrap this bathing suit season?).
The truth is, willpower is not an inherent capacity you either have or don't have - it is a set of skills you can develop and put into practice whenever you want, according to Dr. Nicholson. And while genetics and life experience can influence those skills (think of families with two or more overachievers), they don't define them, says Jana Hyer Davies, a registered psychologist in Red Deer, Alta. Here are a bunch of simple boosts that will help you reclaim a lifetime reserve of self-control.
Maybe you've failed diet after diet, but you have managed to finish your MBA while parenting an energetic toddler. "People don't recognize the self-control they already own in other aspects of their lives," says Dr. Nicholson. it's because many of us overemphasize our failures and underemphasize our successes. Rather than letting your failures loom large, think through your life to find areas where you've successfully used will-power, and continually remind yourself of those successes whenever you criticize yourself. Try these tips, too.⢠Accept your weakness, then be positive. Coeur Birmingham, a 33-year-old Calgary-based administrative assistant, knew she was a worrywart. So, over the year she tried to get pregnant, she simply focused on not letting herself slip into a negative funk at the arrival of another period. Now that she's expecting, she stays positive by remembering not to fret over every cramp and strange feeling. "Every day I remind myself of my end goals of having a healthy baby and enjoying this pregnancy."
• Handle one problem at a time. Vowing an oath of exercise, and quitting smoking and Smarties, can be too much to handle, according to a recent study published in Psychology of Addictive Behaviours. Researchers believe willpower is a finite "personal resource" and tapping into it for more than one change at a time can render it ineffective.
