Willpower is gravely misunderstood in the modern day and age. 

It’s seen as a character trait you either have or don’t have.

It’s seen as a feature you are either born with or not.

It’s neglected in its importance because of the lack of understanding around what willpower is, does, how to train it and build it, and why willpower even matters.

The no bullshit conclusion of what’s actually up with willpower?

In case it’s not clicking yet, that means you can train it, improve it, and build a willpower fortress. This requires daily effort. 

Let’s go back for a moment though and define what willpower is. 

A desire (in this case) is something negative. It’s superficial. Some common desires people have include:

• Sugar

• Pornography

• Substances

• Distraction & Entertainment

There are many more and they are everywhere in this world. They are what's referred to as “bad habits”.

The abundance of bad habits that evoke primal-level, hardwired desires in us, requires the usage of what we call willpower. 

This is exactly what separates humans from animals. 

Animals do not have willpower.

They do as they like, they chase their desires. You can train animals and influence their behavior, sure. By changing what they want (aka their desires).

If you hit an animal enough times, it will obey you eventually. It doesn’t want to get hit anymore, that becomes their new, primary desire.

The point stands, willpower is reserved exclusively for humans. 

The sad part: The majority of people act no better than animals. You could even argue that they behave worse.

The average person eats like shit (even though he knows it’s bad for him).

The average person consumes mindlessly the entire day (even though he knows he’s not learning anything).

The average person avoids resisting desires at all costs.

The average person also wonders why he’s average. Why he’s not where he wants to be. Why it feels like something is missing. 

Animals learn from getting hit, beaten, and punished by their masters.

Average people don’t want to notice when they get hit, beaten, and punished for their actions by the world. 

Why is that?

Because even though the punishment of mediocrity, of addictions to multiple substances and consumer platforms, and of being on the verge of obesity hurts, it’s not hard.

It’s easy to be average, fat, a semi-alcoholic, thinking ejaculation is the pinnacle of life.

Using willpower is harder. Way harder. 

The underlying “problem” of willpower

People, as we already noticed, avoid effort at all costs. 

This is because effort feels hard, either mentally, physically, or both.

As we also noticed, people do things they desire. Not a lot of people desire the feeling of something being hard. If something hurts. If something sucks.

This means people won’t ever use much, if any, willpower in their day-to-day lives. They are stuck at animal level. There is no desire to use it.

They lack motivation.

Without motivation, without dopamine, no one will decide to start making use of willpower. 

There would be no reason to use willpower at all.

Lucky for us, every functioning human on the planet can strive for grander things in life. These may include:

• Improvement (of the self and the world)

• Meaningful contribution to something

• Purpose

• Transcendence 

• Love

It doesn’t matter what these grander things are. What matters is that these things can fulfill us, make us happy, and give us peace.

To achieve these things, you have to make sacrifices. Sacrifices that have to include chasing superficial desires and indulging in bad habits.

Willpower is disobeying your animal brain. 

It makes it possible for humans to sacrifice instant gratification for the grander scheme of things. 

But every time you have to use willpower, it is going to suck. 

It hurts.

It pains you.

It pisses you off, leading you to think about what could be if you gave in to your superficial desires. 

You know where that leads to, everybody does. 

Hint: It’s not a nice place.

That’s why you have decided to learn more about willpower by reading this text.

It was the motivation to be better than an animal. To do more than live a shallow life.

The happy life is not where you chase all the superficial desires you have.

The happy life comes from making constant use of willpower to achieve grander things in life. 

Willpower is the key. You might say willpower is the way. 

If you have read this far, then you know that statement has truth to it. You know that living a degenerate, shallow, consumer life is not what you want. 

Willpower is necessary (not sufficient, but necessary) to do that. 

How Willpower works

Willpower is a skill. 

Skills can be learned, improved upon, and mastered. 

How do you train a skill?

You practice that skill, over and over and over. 

Building up willpower is like accumulating proof of work. 

You prove to yourself consistently, over a (very) long period, that you can resist your urges and impulses. 

If you prove to yourself for a week that you don’t eat junk food, you are less likely to eat junk food the next week. 

At some point, you will relapse and have to start over. And you build more proof, accumulating more and more evidence that you can resist the junk food. 

After some months you’ll have no problem anymore staying away from junk food.

That makes sense, right?

When you resist a bad habit, an urge, an impulse, or a desire, your willpower grows. But you must want to indulge in it.

If I “resist” a chocolate bar, even though I don’t like chocolate (I don’t want it), it doesn’t improve my willpower skill. 

But if I do like chocolate (I really want it), but I resist cheating on my diet, that improves my willpower skill. 

Again, because this is important: Every time you resist a desire, you grow your willpower skill. 

The opposite though is also true, which makes willpower a double-edged sword. 

If I do take the chocolate and indulge in the bad habit, my willpower skill shrinks.

That’s right, it gets smaller again.

Here is a visual to make sure you get this.

There is a constant balance of willpower and its opposite, weakness, that is going on inside of your head. 

This is why it requires daily action to maintain and improve your willpower. There is no end goal in this endeavor.

This is scientifically proven, which makes this a fascinating topic to explore. I promise I’ll keep this part concise.

You have a structure in your brain known as the AMCC (anterior midcingulate cortex). You don’t have to know the name. 

This brain structure is interesting as it’s the central station, the hub and motor of your willpower. Yes, you have a dedicated brain area responsible for controlling willpower and discipline. 

Every human on the planet has this brain area. 

There is no excuse for not being able to resist desires. 

The good news? It’s incredibly plastic, which means it can change in response to experiences super well. 

Yes, this structure grows (literally, physically grows!) when you resist desires. 

But it shrinks when you give in to them. 

This is absolutely fascinating in my eyes and deserves your utmost attention.

This brain structure cannot differentiate between the tasks that require it to grow, it is generic. 

This means, when you make use of willpower in one scenario (resisting the chocolate) you also get better at every other scenario requiring willpower (e.g. resisting doom scrolling).

This is good for us.

It means that we can get better at resisting/doing anything that requires willpower.

The AMCC is so important in humans that it is directly correlated to your literal will to live. 

You better start training it, now.

The No-BS step-by-step guide to increase your willpower

Willpower isn’t something that you get amazing at over a 4-week boot camp. It’s a lifelong journey, so keep that in mind. 

The advantage you have? 

Nobody is working on their willpower. You are going to be better than 99% of people in this crucial skill by implementing the following. 

There is a reason behind why you want to quit the bad habits. 

A higher goal, a higher ambition that you are striving towards. 

You don’t want to quit the junk food because “you want to”.

You want to quit junk food so your diet and health improves. 

So that you can make more progress in the gym, build muscle faster, and lose fat more efficiently.

So that you can look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of yourself. Or so that you can impress other men and attract women. 

It does not matter what your higher goal of improving your willpower is. It can be status, girls, money, freedom, or whatever you like, that’s not the point right now.

To find what makes you a human compared to animals.

To find out the higher level desire that you are willing to sacrifice your superficial desires for. 

There is an immediate, grave difference in willpower if you stay away from the junk for the sake of attracting your future wife (compared to doing it because the internet tells you to). 

Or when you stop watching YouTube and playing video games for the sake of being able to financially free yourself and your family (by studying hard/building a business etc.). 

Spend some time on this, journal about it, and make your real, authentic desires clear to yourself.

Your monkey brain is going to try to convince you that you don’t want your higher-level goal that much. 

That it’s fine to give in to your superficial desires because no one will know. 

There is no doubt about it. There is going to be a part of your head that wants you to fail. It exists in every human being.

You have to face this voice and tell it why it’s wrong. 

This is why step 1) is so important. If you have no real reason to start using willpower, you won’t have any arguments against the monkey voice.

You will find yourself agreeing with it. 

You will find yourself relapsing.

You want the girl who is going to become your wife, the money that is going to free you, the confidence to live a happy life.

You don’t want porn, junk food, consumption and substances. 

Embrace the inner dialogue, tell yourself what you really want, and engrain it into your mind. 

Do this over and over again, every time you have to. Speak to yourself out loud. 

Let the monkey voice talk first and you will see how ridiculous you sound. Counterargue with reason and logic, and most importantly, what you want out of life.

This will 100% feel weird. Uncomfortable even. 

That’s a good sign. 

Hot triggers are the specific cues that cause you to relapse in any bad habit.

When you see a hot girl on the internet alone in your room, what do you think is going to happen? 

There are certain bad habits that you can try to remove every hot trigger from, porn is the primary example.

Just don’t look at any girl on a screen ever again. 

This may sound extreme, and it is. For most people. But you’re not part of “the most people” anymore, right?

Try it out. For the next week, whatever your bad habit of choice may be, think about when you get the desire to indulge in it. This can include: 

• a particular image or visual cue (the hot girl on screen/seeing junk food)

• an emotion or state of being (bored, demotivated, hungry, alone)

• a physical environment (your room/bed/desk, hanging out with friends)

All these can serve as hot triggers. 

Now, for the bad habits you struggle with the most, remove them. 

• get rid of every possibility to see the visual cue (delete all social media, stop watching bullshit content, etc.)

• do something healthy that leads you out of the emotional state (go for a walk, call somebody, exercise, play with your dog)

• don’t get into the physical environment in the first place or get out of it ASAP as soon as the desire arises

If you follow these, you’ll be able to reduce the moments of random desire by a lot. 

The caveat with this is that you do not train your willpower when you manage to avoid all hot triggers. Ideally, you wouldn’t have to use it.

This is unrealistic, as there are going to be plenty of situations where you are going to have to rely on your willpower. 

Still, with the bad habits you struggle most with, avoid hot triggers as best as you can.

To activate and grow the AMCC (the willpower hub in your brain), you have to do things that suck. 

Thus introducing: Micro-sucks.

Micro-sucks are small, almost neglectable things that you can do throughout the day. 

They just have to be small. And suck.

To give you an idea of what these could be: 

• not delaying any household task by a second (e.g. as soon as you finish your plate, clean it instantly)

• implement something you hate (stretching, breath work, cleaning your room, cold showers) into your daily routine

• making your bed every morning, doing pushups after every meal, not looking at your phone for an hour, etc.

Once a micro-suck becomes habitual (it doesn’t suck anymore) it loses its willpower-enhancing effect. 

That doesn’t mean you have to quit doing it if it’s good for you. Rather, you have to think of something new that sucks. 

Doing micro-sucks throughout the day, especially when you don’t feel like doing them, will grow your willpower. 

We know that willpower is generic, so it doesn’t matter how you train it. You simply have to not want to do it. Which is why these micro-sucks are so practical.

Similar to micro-sucks, there are macro-sucks. 

Macro-sucks work the exact same way, they take longer to do but require more willpower at the same time. These could include: 

• Learning a language (if you hate languages)

• solving math problems (because it’s your least favorite thing)

• playing an instrument (even though it sucks)

• doing your least favorite form of cardio 

All these will enhance your willpower even more.

As we know, willpower isn’t something to race towards and then give up on. It requires constant effort to keep up and improve your current level of willpower.

If you don’t adhere to it daily, by 

• resisting every desire you can

• aiming for higher goals and milestones

• integrating things that suck daily

your willpower is going to stay average and even deteriorate over time. 

Similar to the gym, you might not see results very fast. 

But when they come, they are going to be noticed, by you and others. 

And you are going to love them. 

Building up your willpower will give you the ability to resist and do anything - this is what leads to a fulfilled life.

Thank you for reading.

~ Improvement Wolf