How To Boost Your Willpower And Become A More Consistent Runner

Definition of Willpower

The ability to delay gratification and resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals.
The ability to override an unwanted thought, feeling or impulse.

Willpower is one of the most important catalysts to change habits. Without it, a positive change in habits does not occur. Learning how to preserve it and use it to your advantage is incredibly important when it comes to running.

Recommended Books on How to Boost Your Willpower

Full Show Transcript:

So, I feel like I have a really good show for you today. It was one that was fun to research and put together and one that I think will help you if you are someone who struggles with running, or goes through phases where it seems like you just can’t, or don’t feel like getting your workouts in. I’ve been there, you’ve been there, we have all been there.

Maybe it is your ability to consistently eat healthy, or be productive after a long day at work. The problem that most of us face from time to time is that there are times when things, like eating a healthy meal or going for a run, is easy. Then there are times when we really want to eat healthy and go for that run, yet for some reason, we can’t just make it happen.

In today’s episode, we are going to continue our series on the mental training and mindset side of running by exploring the topic of willpower and our body's natural tendency to sometimes resist the very things that are in our best interest.

Whether it is going for a run, eating healthier or doing whatever you want to do, we’ll dig into why controlling your willpower can be a struggle. Then I will dig into the tactical steps you can take to increase your willpower to become a better runner, eat better, or just improve your life in general.

But is willpower something we even have control over? As we go through this article, we will get a better insight into when, where and how we can control our willpower.

According to a survey done by the American Psychological Association(APA), a lack of willpower is the #1 reason most people believed they did not follow through with a healthy lifestyle change. But there are people who can follow through with healthy lifestyle changes and are successful. What makes them different? Are they different?

At its simplest level, willpower is the ability to resist short term temptations in order to accomplish long term goals.

Is Lack Of Willpower The Same As Laziness?

Sometimes when we see people (or ourselves) exhibit a lack of willpower we often perceive it as laziness. However, laziness is different than lack of willpower. Laziness goes beyond willpower.

With laziness, there is little ‘intent’ or no intent to do something in the first place. With willpower, there is intent to do the right thing.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are times when being lazy is OK.

We all have those days, where we want to lounge around on the sofa with a glass of wine and chill with some Netflix. This kind of laziness is OK. It is therapeutic, especially after a long stressful day. But if our Netflix and chill day turn into several days, weeks or even months of not doing anything, then this form of laziness is something that will require more effort to pull out of.

Is Willpower in Limited Supply?

Up to this point, I have implied that willpower is something that you have or don’t have. In reality, it is something we have varying degrees of at any given time. In fact, most researchers believe that willpower never truly runs out.

There are times that you can be motivated to tap into it or push through an urge to resist temptation despite feeling like you don’t have any willpower left. Researchers also tend to agree, that willpower can be strengthened with practice.

So How Do We Prevent the loss Of WillPower?

Most contemporary researchers believe that willpower is the strongest for most people when they are rested and refreshed, and the weakest just after ‘tests of temptation’ to our willpower have been done. In other words, the more we are exposed to the temptation, or situation we are trying to resist, the weaker we become.

If I was to invite you into my home at any given time, most likely you would find fresh chocolate chip cookies sitting on a cookie plate covered in aluminum foil on our countertop. My wife and daughter like to make cookies and I can usually resist them when needed. Usually.

When I go through phases where I get strict with my diet, I have found that the more I walk past the cookies, the less likely I can resist them. But the more I am around them, the lower my resistance becomes and soon I will find myself eating them.

I have also observed that in the morning, I rarely get tempted by the cookies, but by the end of the day, I have a much harder time resisting not just the cookies, but anything I am trying to accomplish. Research backs this up, and if we think about it, it makes sense. Our minds are more fatigued later in our day than earlier in our day. We just don’t feel like doing stuff.

What Does the Research Say about Willpower, Willpower Depletion, and Our Ability to Harness it?

If we look at the research there seems to be a strong correlation between fatigue and lack of willpower. The fatigue, in this case, seems to be mental, not physical fatigue.

Studies have been down that people who were physically fatigued (like through exercise or hard labor) were no more likely to give in to a particular temptation than those who weren’t physically tired. Yet those who had stressful days or jobs that required more mental energy were more likely to give in.

Is Willpower Depletion due to Low Fueling?

It is well known that our brains consume a massive amount of energy. In fact, studies estimate that approximately 20% of the body's energy expenditure occurs in the brain.

Two-thirds of this energy consumption doing things that control the body like firing neurons to communicate with other neurons and the remaining one-third doing self-care and maintenance activities on the brain itself.

So is willpower depletion simply be a result of running out of fuel?

For those that have run a marathon, you know how important fueling is. Not only do we get physically tired, but we also become mentally tired.

Think about this. If you reach a part of your run where you are physically tired, but not mentally tired, what do you do? You push on for a bit longer, right? You tough it out.

But…

If you train your mind to resist giving in, if you learn to tap into your willpower reserves, you can usually find more willpower in you than you thought you were capable of.

So, can fueling during a run help prevent willpower depletion.? Could it really be as simple as adding a light snack of carbohydrates (mainly sugars) to give yourself a boost?

Well, yes and no.

Studies do show a small boost in willpower when adding a sugary drink or consuming carbohydrates but the same studies also show that adding energy alone through small amounts of food not enough to sustain willpower.

So while we certainly need to fuel during our longer runs whether it is through food, sports drinks, or gels there are other factors that can boost willpower and this was shown when people who did not fuel were able to boost their willpower temporarily through other means.

For example, having a positive attitude or belief system was shown to have a positive effect on being able to resist the temptation to quit or give in than those that just fueled alone.

So Can We Train and Strengthen Willpower?

Yes. Willpower is something that we can train and if we are aware of the common characteristics that we see when we study the subject, we can actually use it to our advantage. Especially when we recognize conditions when willpower will drain and get depleted.

Willpower is often thought of like a muscle, and while it acts very much like a muscle in that it appears to gets tired, it supersedes muscle in that other things like thoughts and beliefs influence it.

11 Tips to Boost Your Willpower

Before we get into the tips, I want you to remember these words. Action Changes Things! If we don’t put into action what we learn, then we just wasted time.

1. Establish Your What and Why

To increase your chances of success, you need to establish your motivation for change and be able to express it with a clear goal. This is your ‘what’ and a ‘why’.

The problem I see with many people (and sometimes my own goals) is that they are not clear goals. Many set generic goals like, “I want to run more” or “I want to eat healthier”. What does that even mean and how do you know if you achieved it?

2. Monitor and Measure Progress

You need to measure your progress. For example, I tend to see positive results when I monitor my progress using MyFitnessPal, and I tend to see negative, or mediocre results when I don’t track my progress.

MyFitnessPal is an incredible app that you can put on your smartphone or use online to track your activities, and it is free. I can’t say enough good things about it.

3. Meditate or Take Short ‘Mental’ Breaks Throughout the Day

Meditation or taking a short break is one of the top ways to regenerate willpower.

Practicing meditation for a few minutes each day, or periodically through the day can actually boost willpower by building up gray matter in the areas of the brain that regulate emotions and governs decision making.

The way it works goes back to my earlier comments about the more intense your brain works during the day, the less likely it will be able to resist the loss of willpower. Taking short breaks is a great way to calm the brain and give it a chance to recharge.

4. Get Accountability Partners

It’s easy to make an excuse to not go on a run. But, if you have a friend waiting for you to go for a run, you most likely will go through with it. Seek out others whether it be running clubs, coworkers, or even virtually through the RunBuzz running community.

5. Get Rid of Distractions

For me, getting rid of distractions is huge. I get more distracted than a golden retriever on a squirrel farm.

Figure out what your most common distractions are (like TV, junk food, housework, etc.) and find a way to block them out or get rid of them completely. For example, only keep healthy food in the fridge and throw out junk food or put your phone on airplane mode while working or keep a clean and clutter-free desk, etc.

6. Eliminate the Option of Not Doing it

Set yourself up so you will not be able to back out. For example, sign up for a race, pay all the fees, get yourself a partner to race with, tell all your friends and family to meet you at the finish line.

I use a Fitbit to force myself to get 10,000 steps in each day. Not that 10,000 steps mean much in and of itself, but to get in 10,000 steps, you have to be doing something active. It helps me get my runs in because running is a great way to hit my step goal. On the days I don’t run, I walk or use the elliptical.

Using my Fitbit, combined with MyFitnessPal (they are synced) is an easy way to measure and capture the metrics I use for positive lifestyle changes. Then, I use my Garmin Forerunner 45 when I track my run data when training.

7. Do Your Challenging Things First

We lose our willpower throughout the day. So the best way to combat that is to do your most challenging tasks in the morning.

In fact, if you have never read the book, The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, do yourself a favor and do so. This book is a must-read. If you do the activities in this book, it is life-changing and I am aware that is a bold claim.

Researchers studying the most successful people on earth have found a common characteristic between most of them and that is one of having a dedicated, morning routine. By putting what is most important to you first thing in the morning, you get the benefits of actually getting them done before other outside influences get in the way.

Since starting my own morning routine, I have never felt better. I was NOT a morning person and it took me several attempts to get it to stick. Now it is addictive. Since starting a regular morning routine, I have been promoted, lost weight, returned back to running after my injury, but one of the biggest things I am noticing is that my mind is not as foggy and I am getting stuff done consistently.

8. Use the 5-Minute Rule

Sometimes the hardest part of doing something is just getting started. Tell yourself you can do something for at least five minutes, whether it’s working out, running, meditating, or any other task that you may be struggling with. Once you get going, it is much easier to keep going.

9. Journal Each Night for Five Minutes Before Bed

Change is slow and we often can’t see it from day to day. There are times when using a journal, helps remind us of our progress when we may not see it ourselves.

If we journal before we go to bed, it sets our mind right before we go to sleep. Think about it this way for a minute.

If you look back on your sleep and wake habits the past several months, have you ever had days where you didn’t want or just couldn’t get out of bed? For me, it was on Mondays-Fridays. But on Saturday mornings, I leaped out of bed because I was excited. It was running club day.

I look forward to Saturdays, more than Monday mornings.

But when you combine a morning routine with journalling the night before, you are setting the goals and triggering your brain to what you want to accomplish the next morning

When you journal, you want to list what you accomplished that day and what you are happy for, but you also want to plan out the next day.

For me, I list what I accomplished that day, and put in writing what I will accomplish the next morning before work.

For example, I list what I will do when I wake up, what I plan to eat for breakfast, what exercises I will do, what article I will read (I always try to read at least one article a day as it helps get my brain juices flowing from a creative perspective as well as it is an organized way to learn new things.

I usually do light bodyweight exercises and stretching in the morning and save my runs until later because I prefer to run in the evenings.

Creating this little journal helps burn into my mind what I want to accomplish, and as a result, I am more likely to ‘want’ to get up early because I look forward to ‘my time’ while the world is still quiet and asleep. Before, I just force myself into the daily grind of my life and put my own well being and what I wanted to accomplish, last.

In the recommended book section above I share the journal system I use but you could also just use any notebook. The one I use allows me to do some level of meal planning, exercise logging and gives me space to put some free thoughts down as well.

Looking back, I used to think journalling was total BS until I tried it. Now, it is the most consistent thing I do before I go to bed.

10. Make the Decision to Be 100% Committed

If you are only 99% committed, it is easy to talk yourself out of doing the thing you are trying to accomplish. But if you decide from the start that you are going to be 100% committed to finishing your goal, you will be way more likely to succeed.

This statement of commitment helps burn it our goal into our subconscious mind. It becomes a goal or activity that becomes more focused, and we imprint that commitment into our brain to use during times when our willpower is being tested.

11. Forgive Yourself for Failures. To a Point.

When you give in to temptation, understand that it happens to all of us. It is OK. Just pick up where you left off and continue. No one said anything worth doing would be easy.

But at the same time, do not use self-forgiveness as an excuse to give in. We don’t want to teach ourselves the habit of failure. Just recognize the weakness, learn from it, admit that is was OK and that you will commit to do better and move on. The more you dwell on it, the more willpower you are using up and it serves no useful purpose.

Your Next Action Is Critical

Ok, guys, I have dwelled on it for long enough, I have one last exercise for you…. In the last episode, where I kicked off the series, I had you write down your feelings and things that you struggled with. The purpose of this was to identify the types of challenges you were struggling with as well as the feelings associated with it. Because these struggles and feelings have a way to burn into our subconscious and drive our day to day behaviors.

This week, we are going to take what we learned last week, and then apply how willpower impacts our ability or lack of ability to drive the change we want in our lives.

So step on is to create the specific goals we want to work towards, identify the metrics we want to capture and start a journal. Next, if you are up to it, I encourage you to start a new morning routine.

The key to all this is recognizing how willpower plays into it and using the steps outlined in this podcast drive towards the outcome you want using the support system of the RunBuzz community, email me if you need to, check out the show notes page at runbuzz.com/44 and take action.

In fact, after wrapping up this podcast, take just 5 minutes to get started.

If you feel it is a waste of time after 5 minutes then go do something else, but if you can spare, 5 minutes you may find yourself 10 minutes in actually getting excited and after 15 minutes have your day planned and be well on your way to retraining your brain. Like anything that is worthwhile, you can do it. You just need practice, and I know you can do it.

The Importance Of Routine In The Habit Formation Process

When it comes to the habit formation process, so many things come into play. Emotions, fear, willpower, perceptions, your surroundings, your personality, and so on. Because of this, it can be hard for us to adopt new habits and integrate them into our current, everyday routine. It just is. On one hand, we have routines that are fairly common and we follow them so much we rarely think of them as habits.

For example:

Brushing your teeth
Driving to and from work, specifically taking the same route every day
Always doing your long run on a certain day of the week
Stopping to get coffee on the way to work each day
Our routine before bed

Most of these things are habits that we fell into without really thinking about them. But, when we have something we really want to make a regular habit, we seem to struggle at it.

To be honest, you are not going to walk away today being a master at creating new habits. But you will walk away with a good understanding of how habits are formed and burned into your daily lifestyle. You’ll know what it takes to increase your chance of success at creating them.

The problem is multifaceted and not something that simply repeating a task over and over again will fix. Just doing something for 21 days, 45 days, 90 days, will necessarily mean it will develop into a habit.

The context of today’s discussion is focused on making or getting into the habit of adding things into our running program like consistency, or getting better at stretching, or eating healthier.

Many of us struggle with starting or sticking to a running program.

You know one of the top compliments I get from my coaching clients is that coaching helped them maintain consistency with their workout schedule. People who struggled with being consistent and intentional towards their running found that by being a part of a structured running program found that they started getting their runs in more consistently.

They started eating healthier meals and started seeing improvements not only in their running but in other areas of their lives as well. I wasn’t planning their meals (that’s not part of the program) nor was I forcing them to get their runs in.

I wasn’t babysitting them. They did it because personalized run coaching not only provided them structure, but it also allowed participants to become intentional.

Habits don’t change on their own. If you aren’t intentional, you will just slip back into your old ways. It happens every single time.

Habits Make Us Who We Are (Well, Mostly)

We are the product of what we do repeatedly, consistently, and systematically. We just are. Since good habits lead to good outcomes, we are often perceived based on our daily actions as a direct result of the habits we built.

Habits don’t completely define us as a person, but people often judge us based on our actions. For example, let’s say you have the habit of drug addiction. It doesn’t necessarily by itself make you a bad person. You just need help.

Drug addiction can, however, turn you into a bad person. Drug addiction often brings out the worst in our character. But whether or not we really are bad, others may perceive you to be a bad person since you are a drug addict.

Let me give you another example that maybe we can all relate to.

Let’s say you work for an employer who requires you to be at work from 8 am to 5 pm. Now, let’s say you routinely roll into work somewhere between a few minutes early to maybe a few minutes late. You probably aren’t perceived as someone who has a problem with getting to work on time.

But most of us work with people who consistently roll in at 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, and so on, and still leave at 5:00 pm most days. What is your perception of them? Not as a person, but as far as their commitment to being a good employee? Do you ever hear the office jokes that go on behind their backs? “Hey look, it’s Kevin. He’s on West Coast time for arrival and East coast time for leaving!”

Whether your habits are real or perceived, they do impact us. If we have healthy habits, we most likely will be healthy people.

As runners, if we can’t be consistent, or get our runs in, we won’t come anywhere close to our potential.

2. Be Intentional With Tracking Progress

When it comes to building habits, if you aren’t tracking your progress, then chances are, you aren’t being intentional enough with trying to learn your new habit. When you track something, you are more likely to stick with it. The action of tracking progress helps reinforce the behavior.

The-Simple-Ways-to-Track-Your-Running-Progress

When it comes to running, you don’t necessarily have to log every last detail of your workout. While nice, it is simple enough to cross a big, black ‘X” across the day on your calendar to get started. At the end of the month, you can look back at your calendar and you will know exactly how many runs you got in.

That tiny little action of logging a workout feels good. It is a small token of success. You crossed something off your list, you completed a task. However you choose to track it, you just created an entry in mind that has this ever so small reward associated with it that helps imprint that activity in your mind. The more you do it, the more it reinforces the behavior and ultimately the habit creation process.

Some of you may already have great habits when it comes to running. But what about stretching? Cross-training? Your Diet? Your sleep? There is always something that we can improve, and tracking your progress is a critical component.

3. Incorporate New Habits Into Your Normal Routine

Whether we realize it or not, our days are full of daily routines.

This doesn’t mean that we follow it exactly each day, but we tend to do the same things over and over again. To increase the chances of getting a habit to stick, look for ways to get your new habit ingrained into your daily routine. Look at your existing routine and optimize it. Michael Hyatt refers to this as your ritual. He defines ritual as anything that you do regularly that you invest your time and energy in and invest with meaning.

I like the word routine better, but either works here. The point is we need to understand our patterns and if we try to disrupt our pattern (like creating a new habit), we have to be prepared to know how that may interfere with our routine.

If you routinely sleep in and miss runs, you may want to routinely lay your clothes out the night before. Go to bed earlier, and move your alarm clock across the room away from your bed.

I use my iPhone as my alarm and I found I was literally sleeping with the damn thing. As soon as I routinely found myself hitting the snooze a few times and failing to get out of bed, I moved the phone and charger to a wall jack across the room so I was forced out of bed, and walk across the room to turn it off. And I didn’t cheat by setting it on a nightstand or even my dresser which allowed me to just take a step or two and dive back into bed. I mean I literally roll out the left side of my bed, walk around the foot of the bed and over to the other side of the room.

So I got rid of the original routine of hitting snooze and sleeping and created a new routine of placing my phone in a location further away so that I could develop the habit of being an early riser.

Routines can be small. They don’t have to be these big things. I mentioned in the past the importance of creating a morning routine, but that may be too difficult to start with. Instead, look for small things you can do.

Here is an example of one habit I added to my routine:

I have a lot of things on my plate. We all do. I used to come home from work, say Hi and then head off to do other things. I got so busy I really did not connect with my family until much later. So I introduced a small habit, I heard from Michael Hyatt. It's called “Five for Five“. The idea may not have originally come from Michael, but he is where I heard it from.

Five for Five starts with the basic idea that when you walk into your house after work, go stand within five feet from your spouse or kids. Then, spend the next five minutes, 100% focused on them. Put your phone down and spend 100% of your time focusing on them. This exercise is about finding what is going on in their life, not yours. Find out about how their day went and so on. While this may seem like a tiny, tiny thing, over time it communicates caring, empathy, and the importance of the other person in your relationship.

What small things can you do that can be incorporated into your routine?

4. Accountability Is A Key Component To Habit Formation

If you are trying to establish a more significant habit, having an accountability partner is huge. You don’t need someone to nag you but you do need someone who gets you, can relate to you, and who understands both the positive and negative outcomes of the habit. This person should be a person of encouragement.

Let’s say you are struggling with establishing a consistent running habit. Your family may be great accountability partners, but what if they don’t get your fixation on running? Maybe they are supportive but they just aren’t going to be the right person who goes out of their way to challenge you.

Finding someone who will run with you would be ideal, but that isn’t always possible.

Another option to find accountability partners is going online to a Facebook Group or special interest group focused on the same type of habits you want to create. When you find someone, consider doing a daily text message exchange, or email. If you struggle to get out the door in the morning, maybe even have them call you 15 minutes after your alarm was supposed to go off to make sure you got your butt out of bed.

Seeking accountability is huge. It works.

5. Don’t Boil The Ocean

I eluded to it earlier, but only take on one, maybe two new habits at a time. And make them small.

For example, if you want to become more consistent at running, make running your primary habit goal, and eating healthier, a nice to have. Then, once you have a running routine, attack the nutrition side of things. Often, we get highly motivated and too frequently we take things to extremes. We may start an exercise program, try to eat healthier, get more sleep, be a better spouse, get to work earlier so we can get that promotion, and 100 other things all at the same time.

That is boiling the ocean.

By trying to focus on all things, we end up with nothing. Make incremental changes towards who you want to be, instead of massive change at once.

Remember the acronym FOCUS – Follow one course until success. I have heard that term coming more from a business perspective but it works here. Small, incremental changes are sustainable. Going all in and making sweeping changes at once isn’t.

This is also the reason why most diets fail. The majority of people who fail with dieting is that we wake up one day and decide to go all-in with the latest:

“No Sugar, No Carbs, No Processed Foods, No Trans Fats, No Dairy, No Alcohol, No GMO, No MSG, Low Sodium, Only Vegetable Fats, Lean Grass-Fed Organic Free Range Beef, plus insert some form of network marketing protein and nutrition shake of your choice that your friends are hawking on your social media wall 24×7 and a 100 other things” diet.

Good luck with that.

Let me know how it is going for you in about 30 days.

It’s not that those things are bad. They’re not. In fact, most of those things are perfectly fine. But attempting to make all those changes at once isn’t sustainable. Sorry, it just isn’t.

Even if you could do all those things, you miss out on some of the enjoyment that has positive impacts on our lives when consumed in moderation. Food is also a mechanism that brings people together for fellowship and community. Just eat healthier, but don’t be so strict that others view you as the food Nazi.

Now, if you took some of those things (whatever you feel works best for you) and slowly, incrementally added them into your life (not in some bogus 7, 10, 30 day cleanse) but rather slowly introduce them into your diet, so that they don’t become a burden to implement, but rather instead become a natural part of your lifestyle, now you are on to something.

Don’t boil the ocean.

6. Create Milestones and Checkpoints

Creating milestones lets us know we are on track. Just like with goals, milestones act as markers to help us measure that we are where we need to be with our habit formation. Achieving milestones also helps keep us motivated. For example, signing up for a 5k, before you even start training makes it more likely you will stick to your 5k training plan. Incorporating milestones and markers along the way helps make habits stick

A Quick Wrapup On Habits

There are dozens of tips when it comes to building habits. I have only touched on a few. The study of habits and habit formation is incredibly broad, yet well researched. Just like everything else, knowledge is power. The key is to not give up. If you fail, forgive yourself and try again. It may take several attempts. It may take one hundred attempts, but it is worth it. What you are doing and trying to accomplish is worth it.

Mental Training And Mindset For Runners: Final Thoughts

I encourage you to make sure that you complete all five podcasts in this mental training and mindset series if you haven’t because while they all were separate topics, they all are interrelated. Be persistent. be mindful, be self-aware, and then use the tips and strategies outlined over this series to achieve whatever it is you want to accomplish.

I hope you have enjoyed this series, and don’t hesitate to reach out to me if I can be of any help.