Do you wish you had ‘ stronger’ willpower ?
What can we do about ‘weak’ willpower ?
1. We can structure our physical and social environment to provide support to our willpower.
That is what this workshop is about.
2. We can use strategies to increase our baseline willpower slowly over time.
3. We can learn to use mental ( in our head ) strategies to ‘maximise’ the willpower we have
(how to do numbers 2 and 3 are covered on Cathie’s other classes)
There is evidence that changing our physical and social environment has a larger impact than the other two approaches.
We struggle with temptations more than our great grandparents did.
Research shows that people still have the same levels of self control as in decades past.
The reason we struggle more is because the environment we live in has changed. Temptations are much more numerous than in decades past.
The environment we live in today promotes high energy intake, sedentary behaviour and procrastination. We are exposed to, and have easy access to tasty high energy food multiple times a day. Entertainment and distraction are available at the push of a button.
What can we do to make our environments more supportive of our health and long term goals?
We can lobby for law changes and we can make changes in our personal physical and social environments.
A self-controlled person is usually seen as one who has a capacity to exercise tremendous willpower. However research has shown that rather than having an increased ability to resist temptations, these people tend to be people who are able to organize their lives in such ways that they are less likely to be called upon to exert willpower.
At this workshop we will focus on ways to organise our physical and social environments to reduce the need for willpower. This means that we will behave in ways that are in line with our long term goals, even when we feel we have ‘ weak willpower’.
