You don’t need willpower to exercise. You need to exercise to have willpower.

How to improve your Heart Rate Variability—the best physiological measurement of willpower and resilience.

Photo by sporlab on Unsplash

Here’s what most of us get wrong when we start new projects or build new habits:

Willpower is not just a mental construct.

You can’t think and plan and push your way to more willpower (at least not without burning yourself out!)

Willpower is a matter of physiology.

Yes, grit and determination are important. But you also need to get your body on board.

That is one of my biggest takeaways from the book The Willpower Instinct by Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal :

Willpower is a temporary state of both mind and body that gives you the awareness and strength needed to override your impulses and stick to your goals.

In the book, McGonigal outlines two distinct nervous system responses:

• The instinctive “fight-or-flight” response
• The measured “pause-and-plan” response

Each response triggers very different reactions in the brain and body, from variations in heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, to muscle contraction and other automatic functions.

Now, when you’re faced with a willpower challenge (say… resisting a bag of peanut M&M’s while grocery shopping 🙄), which nervous system response would serve you best?

That’s right. You want your body to activate the “pause-and-plan” response. It’s like a mental pause button, giving you time to think, ‘Do I really need these? Will I feel better after eating them, or will I just be hunting for the next sugar rush?’

Research shows that the single best physiological measurement of the pause-and-plan response is something called heart rate variability, or HRV.

The best physiological measurement of the pause-and-plan response: Heart Rate Variability (HRV)

Before we talk about the link between HRV and willpower, let’s define HRV.