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Train your willpower traveling
Self-control and willpower are like muscles, they can get stronger over time. Contrary to popular belief, willpower is not an innate trait that you’re either born with or without. No, it’s a complex mind-body response that can be compromised by various factors and that can be toughened through certain practices.
Maintaining a healthy diet and actually sticking to your travel fitness routine in the hotel gym, can get tricky when it comes to hitting the road. There is something about traveling that makes you ditch all diets and exercise plans. Is it the jet lag, the sugary food or just all the distracting temptations? Whatever the reason, willpower is the one thing you should work on.
At its essence, willpower is the ability to resist short-term temptations in order to meet long-term goals. And there are plenty of good reasons to do so. The University of Pennsylvania explored self-control in eighth-graders over the course of the school year. The researchers first gauged the students’ self-discipline (their term for self-control) by having teachers, parents and the students themselves complete questionnaires. They also gave students an assignment in which they had the option of receiving $1 instantaneously or waiting a week to receive $2. They found students who ranked high on self-discipline had better grades, better school attendance, and higher standardized-test scores, and were more likely to be admitted to a excellent high school program. Self-discipline, the researchers found, was more important than IQ in predicting academic success.
Contrary to popular belief, willpower is not an innate trait that you’re either born with or without. No, it’s a complex mind-body response that can be compromised by stress, sleep deprivation and nutrition and that can be toughened through certain practices. Trying to control your temper, ignore distractions or refuse seconds all tap the same source of strength. Research also shows that willpower decreases over the course of the day, as your energy gets “spent” on stress and self-control. This has become known as “the muscle model” of willpower. When you use willpower intensely, it becomes fatigued, reducing the amount of strength available for the next challenge. After some time and with rest it recuperates, but telling someone who is completely and totally exhausted to just “try harder,” isn’t going to cut it. It just doesn’t work that way. All tasks draw upon your willpower, from regulating emotions to making daily decisions, to communicating with coworkers, friends, family and kids. Before Steve Jobs was famous for wearing jeans and a black polo every day, there was Albert Einstein buying many versions of the same grey suit. They both knew that by saving brain power on decisions like what to wear, it could be better used elsewhere.
How can we avoid a total breakdown of your willpower after an intense trip? This is where a routine of behaviour that is repeated regularly comes in really handy. Some people call this a habit. For example, if showering is part of your automatic morning routine, then you don’t have to think about using the shower every morning, you just do it. It’s a habit and it saves willpower for your more important challenges. Healthy nutrition comes into play because it also influences how available energy is for the brain. Something as simple as eating a more plant-based, less-processed diet makes energy more available to brain and can improve every aspect of willpower from overcoming procrastination to going to the hotel gym as you had planned to do. Especially when you are traveling, watching your sugar intake can make a major difference. So indeed, skipping that muffin is good for your body and your mind.
Self-control and willpower are like muscles, they can get stronger over time. You can increase your willpower by training. And avoid behavior that will deplete your willpower like having too much stress, sleeping too short and eating unhealthy. Furthermore you can use these five tactics if you actually want to stay fit while traveling