Willpower. The amazing ability to dig deep and keep going, even against seemingly crushing odds. 

While it may seem more of an abstract idea than an actual physical thing, it helps to think of your willpower as if it were a muscle in your body. Picture a piece that’s safely nestled against part of your brain. Something that over time you learn to work at, making it a little stronger each day as you go along.

So how do we work to strengthen this muscle?

According to Nathan DeWall, a psychology professor who studies self-regulation at the University of Kentucky, “One great thing about self-control is that unlike other characteristics like intelligence, it’s easy to improve.”

With practice as well as resistance training, we can better control our impulses. This helps us later on with things like pursuing our goals, giving us the energy to easily resist those moments where we just want to yell defeat and throw in the towel.

Strengthening your willpower muscle is a bit like lifting weights. And like most muscle building exercises, some may be more challenging than others. It’s all about finding out which works best for YOU.

Below are a few easy willpower muscle training exercises that you can try RIGHT NOW:

• Begin to Form Healthy Habits: In some cases, something as easy as starting to do your ZGYM workouts daily may sometimes require some self-control. Maybe you just want to spend the day on the couch, binging on your favorite show, or maybe you just really don’t want to do it. Take a few minutes imagining how you will feel if you don’t go. The guilt, the low-energy, the lack of feel-good hormones. Then imagine how you will feel after you go the gym- strong, powerful, proud, and healthier. Which one do you want the most? Decide on getting your workout and JUST DO IT! The more you start to do that simple act, the more it becomes a habit, which requires much less willpower. When something starts to feel natural, hard activities becomes automatic. 
• Meditate: When you meditate, you are teaching your brain how to focus better and resist the urge to wander/day dream. A 2008 research conducted at the School of Public Health (University of California) showed that after 2-3 days of practicing meditation for 10 minutes, the brain begins to focus better, and you will notice an increase in energy and a decrease in stress.
• Fix Your Posture: Do you often slouch when you sit? Whenever you catch yourself doing so, make yourself sit up straighter. It may sound like something that is extremely simple, but believe it or not it takes some serious willpower to sit up straight. Think of it as “one rep” each time you correct your posture. 
• Control Your Environment: While you can’t change the layout of most of the places you visit, you can control the environment of your home and sometimes even at your place of work. For example, is the housework suddenly piling up, but you just can’t stop playing Angry Birds? It’s much easier to avoid too much slacking off if the game is no longer saved on your phone. Easy fix! 

Your willpower, much like the brain, is a wonderfully flexible tool. It adapts to the demands you put on it, which means you can train it.

Start by setting a goal. Set a goal for yourself right now! 

Start off slowly by picking something that you can work at every day. For example, no electronics at the dinner table. Put that cellphone down and focus on the food on your plate and those around you. Choose something that may cause you to hesitate at first, but is enough of a challenge that you’ll have to work at it.

After a few days, you start to adapt to the new habit. Checking to see the latest updates or if you got a text doesn’t even cross your mind as you settle in for your meal. Keep at the first habit and start on another. This way you are continuing to stress your willpower enough that it’s growing, every day. Soon you’ll find yourself doing things that may have seemed impossible when you first started out!