Such a lot of talk about willpower/ Such a lot of talk about willpower/ Ooh talkin’, talkin’, talkin’ willpower/ Desire, talkin’, talkin’, talkin’, talkin’ talkin’ willpower. —“Willpower” by Jack Bruce (2001)
There is something to be said for willpower, and that is, to be succinct, none of us thinks we have enough of it. People who are overweight, smoke, drink too much and, yes, commit heinous criminal acts believe they didn’t get their fair share. Is it something you are born with, like athletic ability or brainpower, or a virtue you have adopted like piety or selflessness.
Patience may be a virtue, but the power to wield it may rely on a small part of your brain.
If you have failed to succeed professionally or to have earned enough money to plop yourself in the lap of luxury, you may feel cursed with a shortfall of willpower. This is generally regarded as a weakness and those severely lacking are deemed losers.
If a wealth of willpower is seen as a virtue, its dearth, contrarily, is viewed as a horrendous failing or frailty requiring tremendous self-control to overcome. Actually, self-control is pretty much the same thing as willpower. You kick it in when you want to resist something that is bad for you or when you really should be doing something you don’t want to do. As important as willpower has become to most of us, few of our great writers, philosophers, artists and musicians have addressed it in memorable prose or verse
In music, I recall a schmaltzy song by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap called “Lady Willpower,” which was less about willpower than some guy stalking a girl who wants no part of him: “… and I would gladly teach you if I could only reach you and get your lovin’ in return…” Hey, would you want to spend your adult life as Mrs. Puckett? That’s the real willpower.
My life has been a continuous testing of willpower. I didn’t want to be born, but somehow I exited the womb, only to find myself bawling like a baby, which I was, and despising myself for not being able to stop. I don’t remember any of this, of course, but, judging by my devastating losses to willpower the rest of my life, it must have happened that way. There was nothing in my childhood that should have alerted me to the willpower deficit I would discover as an adult. I was a decent student, but I didn’t have to study to be one, though I endured several lectures between the ages of 12 and 18 about how I needed to apply myself and how I was an underachiever.
I was a decent athlete, but I was generally regarded as someone who could have been the proverbial contender and stumbled short of the finish line because I didn’t work or try hard enough.
I didn’t realize then that this was about willpower, or the lack of it, until I went off to college, another stumbling start; into the Army to beat the inevitable draft; back to college, this time with more success, and into several decades as a newspaper reporter and editor.
I lost a lot of battles to willpower, including the battle of the bulge; too much spending and not enough saving, and your basic, every day lapses and poor choices. You tend to downplay the triumphs as stuff you should have done and dwell on the failures.
Why would I not see myself as lacking the virtue of willpower after losing so many internal battles? I was up to most external challenges, but I kept losing battles to myself. Every new year my self doubts are reawakened by this compulsion for resolutions that generally fail, and a constant chattering of advice in the media about how to bolster your willpower.
My self-esteem has taken a battering, but modern science brings hope. Imagine the joy of discovering that willpower has little to do with virtue or character. It is more about physiology than psychology, and it is right there in my brain in a place called the prefrontal cortex. A number of studies have confirmed this, and it is best explained in a recently published book, The Willpower Instinct, by Dr. Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist and professor at Stanford University. I say best explained because you do not require much of an attention span to keep reading, which is good news for all of us who are willpower challenged.
The prefrontal cortex is a post-primitive adjunct to the brain—pretty much front and center—that more or less modulates, and when necessary overrides, that fight-or-flight response that kept cavemen from becoming dinosaur munchies. We don’t need the old fight-or-flight mechanism all that much any more, but we sure need to be saved from our inner selves. Modern-day foibles, such as overeating and not planning for the future, originate from the prehistoric necessity to live for the moment. The primitive part of the brain is still there beckoning us to eat as much as we can to store fat to endure a long winter in the cave. That urge covers most human desires, and the prefrontal cortex is the modulator.
“Evolution doesn’t replace our more primitive instincts,” McGonigal writes, concluding that the only thing between me and no willpower at all is the prefrontal cortex.
So, take heart, there is something on which we can blame our lack of self-control. It’s right there in our brain, and, yes, there is stuff we can do to hone our willpower—if we have the self-control to do it. More on that later.
