About Willpower and strategies to boost it

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An informative article by Darcy Pittman on willpower and strategies, healthy behavioral practices to boost it.

Everything You Need to Know About Willpower - Talkspace

Psychologist Walter Mischel conducted groundbreaking research on willpower in 1972 with his famous marshmallow test. This study, conducted at Stanford University, tested the willpower of preschoolers based on their ability to delay gratification in eating a marshmallow. The children were left alone with one marshmallow, with the promise of two marshmallows if they did not eat the one on their plate until the proctor came back.

Some children ate their marshmallow quickly when left alone, unable to exert the self-control necessary to hold out for the greater reward of two marshmallows. Others, however, were able to delay gratification and waited to eat the marshmallow in front of them, knowing they’d get to eat two marshmallows when finally allowed to indulge.

Mischel was able to show that people have different levels of willpower starting from a young age. He went even further with his findings 12 years later. Looking at the same children he first studied with the marshmallow test, Mischel found that their preschool level of willpower predicted their behavioral and achievement success 12 years later. Those who showed the ability to delay gratification had higher SAT scores and fewer behavioral problems than their marshmallow-hungry counterparts. Mischel’s research showed how willpower correlates with positive long-term life outcomes in profound ways.

 

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An informative article by Darcy Pittman on willpower and strategies, healthy behavioral practices to boost it.

Everything You Need to Know About Willpower - Talkspace

Old fashion culture used to employ an ever harder test of willpower, which was to delay sex until marriage. Sex is a strong impulse and is often triggered daily by social interaction. It requires a lot of willpower, day after day, to delay gratification until marriage, especially if you found the right person. This epic test of will power was justified away by Psychology and Atheism, due to being too difficult for those groups. They used misinformation to make sound like the low road. It was graduate level willpower.

Willpower places one at the crossroads between unconscious impulses and instinct on one side; internal determinism, and willful choices and sublimations on the other side. In that sense, will power was a way to reprogram the brain, by using the potential within impulses and instincts, to run other neural subroutines that are not original programming.

The celibacy of Priests and Nuns experiment, took this one step further, since the gratification of sex was not just delayed until marriage, but dammed up for life. Something had to change, due to that much willpower willfully damming the libido, rebuilding the dam each time it broke. This test of willpower, for life, eventually reroutes the libido and eventually rewires the brain for other practical and social uses; Saints used this.

Most religions require their flocks use a lot of willpower, since you are not told to just take the easier low road of impulsive determinism. Rather one is required to work harder trying to walk the high road of human and divine choices.

This may be why religious freedom was so stressed in the US Constitution. A country of impulsive beasts; half human and half animals, would never succeed as the land of free people. Following impulse is often the basis for crime and people harming each other. The world religions were formed to help create willpower for use against social impulses that divide.

An interesting exercise of willpower is faith. Faith dams up our natural propensity to use the five senses to verify reality. Even an animal will instinctively wish to use their sense to examine before making a choice. Faith goes against that grain, and require shutting off the five senses in favor of an internal synthesize of data; inner voice. It is a post doctorate type willpower and neural programming exercise.