7 ways to handle having ZERO willpower when you’re a perfectionist
I’m not going to pretend I have all the answers to this one. I’m sat typing this with an intense vigour only present in someone who needs this outlet as a form of self therapy, having recently spent my entire weekly budget before Wednesday arrived.
But I do hope to challenge your thinking on willpower and give you some options to help you manage the total mind fuckery that comes with feeling like you have none.
What’s it like being a perfectionist with no willpower?
Imagine getting someone who has completely unrealistic expectations, someone who is highly critical, and someone who’ll do anything to avoid the negative emotion that failure brings. Then assign them a group leader who lives completely in the present, with no ability to anticipate future benefits, and make them work together to navigate through a maze which has no final destination.
WELCOME TO THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF THE WILLPOWERLESS PERFECTIONIST.
A few reasons why this is a particularly difficult combination:
High expectations lead you to set lofty goals. A lack of willpower leads you to not achieve them.
Self criticism leads to an unhelpful and un-motivating internal dialogue about this failure to meet your goals.
Perfectionism makes you feel you have to do and be everything. Like everything is your individual responsibility, and if it doesn’t work, your individual failure. You don’t realise that there’s more to achieving your goals then relying solely on your willpower.
Which leads me to TWO important things to clarify! ...
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HAVING ZERO WILLPOWER. This is your pesky perfectionism setting that bar way too high. No-one can execute 100% self-discipline and self-control 100% of the time. You do exercise will power as you go about your daily life, you’re just often fixated on the areas you’re not doing it.
IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT THE WILLPOWER. One of the most (I’d argue THE most) challenging part of living in today’s society is that we are constantly bombarded by information, distractions, choices and things to resist. Therefore, we’re having to exercise willpower more than ever, and more than we are evolved to handle! That can leave us willpowerless lot feeling particularly helpless, but as it turns out, it takes more than willpower! (More to follow).
Try these 7 things to manage your perfectionist mindset about willpower…
Ditch the shoulda woulda coulda.
“If I had good willpower, I’d be able to do ANYTHING. I could stick to my diet. I could save money. I would be free from the mental torture of constantly trying and failing to stick to my goals.” Shoulda, woulda, coulda, whatifdiddlydo. You are where you are. You are who you are. Don’t get stuck in this unhelpful mindset. It’s frustrating, and doesn’t move you forwards.
2. Ditch the research
I’m a lover of any research study that’s gonna give me a scientific insight into the complexities of being human. But I have to be conscious of when that’s fuelling the perfectionist beast. The last thing you want to add into the ‘why is my willpower so terrible’ dialogue are facts and statistics about why having no willpower will leave you penniless, friendless, unsuccessful and ugly (it won’t.)
3. Embrace alternative views
Alternatively, there’s a benefit to reading ideas that contradict your unhelpful thought pattern. Anything you read in this blog that references changing your environment, I have just yesterday read in Benjamin Hardy’s book ‘Willpower Doesn’t Work’. As someone who’s recently been feeling like nothing but an empty sack of good intentions and instant gratification, there is nothing more motivating or satisfying then reading a book that literally says you do not need, the thing you don’t have. Sorted.
4. Understand what’s behind your poor willpower
Choosing short term gratification over achieving a long term goal is essentially a desire for positive emotion. Either to feel one in the moment, or avoid a negative one. Understanding which are at play can help you tackle your willpower.
For example, if I’m going to my Toastmasters public speaking group one evening and I decide the same day I don’t want to go, I interrogate that decision. It’s pretty much always that I’m trying to avoid the uncomfortable, negative feeling of being out of my comfort zone. For me, just knowing what’s really behind it keeps me accountable to myself and makes me go.
On the other hand, saying I’ll go to a workout class that I know for a fact I’ll enjoy and will benefit me long term, but then losing interest and bailing an hour before, is just me being lazy. It’s the same desire operating, avoiding the negative emotion of having to do something when I don’t feel like it in that moment, but it isn’t anything like fear of failure taking the reigns. It’s pure laziness, so I need to treat that differently - working this one out is a work in progress!
5. Remove things from your environment that make you feel bad
There are environmental changes you can make so it’s easier to exercise your willpower, such as not having any chocolates in the house if you’re trying to eat healthier. But there’s also creating an environment for yourself that minimises negative thought patterns.
Marie Kondo’s book ‘Spark Joy’ is an interesting take on how to spring clean your house. It’s built around the idea that when deciding what to throw away you should hold the item and ask yourself ‘does this bring me joy?’ if it does, keep it. I’ve done this a few times and it’s amazing what weird, subconscious associations we can have with inanimate objects. For me it was as much about figuring out what brought me joy as it was about figuring out what was taking up unnecessary mental space.
For example, I realised yesterday that every single time I choose what to wear from my wardrobe, I see about 8 items of clothing that inspire a ‘I’ll wear you when I’ve lost half a stone ‘cause you don’t fit right now’ thought. Health is a priority for me right now, but weight loss is not. Having this thought makes me feel bad about a goal I don’t even have of myself. The answer? I’ve put them in a bag under my bed so I don’t have to waste mental energy every day feeling bad about things I’ve chosen not to prioritise.
6. Understand what depletes your willpower and stop expecting yourself to use it in those situations
There’s lots of research that shows what makes it harder for us to exercise willpower (yes I do like to read scientific research if it validates my feelings). For me it’s being tired, being hormonal, being in a particularly good mood (or bad one) or over-structuring myself so there’s no room for flexibility (an inner rebellious demon appears). I cannot tell you how many years I’ve spent trying to force myself to ‘just be better at willpower’ in those situations, rather than accept the reality that it just won’t work. If you keep trying and failing and trying and failing, start understanding when is hardest for you to flex your willpower and think of a more creative way to handle it then just expecting yourself to magically find it easy one day.
7. Ask yourself why you need to use your willpower
Often we need to use willpower because there’s something we want, that we’re trying to resist or something that we’re trying to make ourselves want. The classic scenerio of struggling to do a circuit exercise class every week, then under closer inspection you realise you hate circuits, you’re not a circuits person! We often have an expectation of who we should be, what we should like or what we want to become, that isn’t aligned with who we actually are or what we actually want.
I’ve created a free expectations guide you can use to help manage your willpower mindset:
understand what expectations you have of yourself
work out if they’re aligned to what you actually want
re-shape the expectation and stop beating yourself up about failing to do things that you don’t even care about.