MAKE SURE IT MATTERS

I’ve written about how willpower takes energy, and when our reserves get depleted – through fatigue, hunger, or overuse – our willpower can weaken. But what if you have to take care of things anyway?

What if you’re tired, you’re hungry, you’ve been overworking all day, and you still need to take care of something that’s very important?

I think we’ve all been in that situation, and we’ve all found that somehow we take care of things. How can this be? What makes the difference?

It has to matter enough to us.

I can remember coaches giving talks before a big game, and part of their message was invariably something to the effect of, "you’ve got to want it!"

You’ve got to want it. Not just a little bit. Not kinda-sorta. You’ve got to really want it. Big things can happen when something matters enough to you. I love the saying, be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid. It’s hard to be bold with something that doesn’t move you.

Sometimes money can be enough of a motivation. In a study by Mauraven and Slessareva, they found that when people who had been depleted from doing self-control activities were paid enough, they could overcome their depletion and perform as well as those who had not been depleted.

This was also the case when they felt that what they did could help others. The bottom line, though, is that when it matters enough to us, we can pull through.

So if something matters to us, then do we grow in willpower? Sort of. We get depleted when we do things that require self-control. With things that don’t require self control, like rote tasks, you can keep going and going. What looks to be happening here is that we draw on whatever allows us to keep going with those kinds of "non-self-control" tasks – when it matters enough to us.

Why is this important? We all know we can reach down inside and plow through what we have to when we need to – if it’s important enough.

If you find that there are things you have to complete, but you’re having trouble drawing on your extra strength to see them through, check your premises; check your fundamental beliefs, and think about why you’re doing them – what’s your purpose?

Maybe you’re thinking about what you’re doing in a way that you aren’t tapping into that well of meaning. Maybe you have other things that are actually higher priorities, or that you value more, and on some level you know that you should be getting to those things first. Maybe what you’re doing is not what you really, genuinely care about, and you need to re-assess what you’re doing.

But we also now know that willpower does get depleted. If you don’t get enough sleep, enough food, enough rest, you’re going to have a harder time concentrating and directing yourself consciously. This is good to know, because it allows us to plan, to create strategies around getting things done that work.

It tells us that if we want the best from ourselves, over time, we need to get good sleep. It tells us to make sure we’re eating well – and not sugar and junk that don’t provide the nutrition we need over time. It tells us to take a break every so often, to refresh and relax, so that we have all our resources available.

But knowing this might also give you the impression that we are somehow less resilient, that we wear out, that we have only so much gas in the tank, and then we have to stop. But we are extremely resilient critters, and we have backup systems. We are made for adversity; and part of that resilience comes from that reserve tank that we can draw from when we need it.

If you’re having a hard time drawing on your reserves when you need them, maybe you have a limiting belief that doesn’t allow you to tap into that reserve tank.

It’s not good to draw from that reserve tank all the time or you’ll end up with too much stress in your life. But you can draw from it when you need it, when it really matters.

It’s also a good thing to practice going beyond your normal fatigue point every once in awhile. When you use your willpower, you strengthen it, just like you strengthen a muscle. Regular, daily practice in using self-control will build this capacity over time. Then you can build your primary tanks to the point where you need your reserve tanks less and less.

But underlying all of this is one thought: take some time to reflect on how you’re spending your time. Are you doing things that matter to you most of the time? Or do you let time go by without considering that question? Do you spend time on things that take a lot of time and energy, but that don’t really matter much to you when you think about it?

Or do you spend most of your time doing things that matter to you? I don’t mean that you have to be working intensively 24 hours a day. It may be that part of what matters to you is to get good sleep, to have plenty of leisure time to spend with the ones you love, and to play.

What matters to you doesn’t have to matter to anybody else. What makes all the difference in the world, is that, whatever it is, it matters to you.

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