What's the Difference: Motivation, Discipline, Willpower

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Imagine this, it's 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning and you've woken up rotten from the night before with a barrage of yabbering voices from your all too enthusiastic kids. The motivation to drink less has probably never been higher. Then it's 6 p.m. on a Tuesday. You've finished work and the guys are off to the pub, but you are supposed to be heading to the gym for that spin class you specifically booked at this specific time for this very reason. Is this where the discipline to do the right thing is supposed to kick in? Or maybe it's 2 pm on a sunny bank holiday Friday, you've got the whole weekend ahead of you. But Tommy, he's at the bar of your favourite beer garden, getting around in, and you don't want to miss out on the fun, and you're relying on your willpower to help you stick to the plans that you made when you woke up this morning. Words like motivation, discipline, and willpower are all well and good on an inspirational meme. But when the moment of truth comes around, which one is really going to help you drink differently and take back the power of choice from alcohol? You're listening to the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast, where it's my goal to help you take back the power of choice from alcohol. I'm your host and mindful drinking mentor, Denise Hamilton Mace, and this is the start of your journey to a life less intoxicating.

Motivation And Why It Fades

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So, what's the difference then between motivation, discipline, and willpower when it comes to changing decades of drinking habits in midlife? Motivation is what pushes you to do something. It can be internal or external, but it's usually the result of some sort of prior circumstance. You've got a rotten hangover, you see a picture of yourself online after a night out, or you do or say something regrettable that you don't want to repeat. Or externally, it might be something like your boss telling you they need 100% focus for this project you're working on, or the contract will be lost. Um, or your other half telling you that they're fed up of the arguments that you guys keep getting into when you're drinking. Motivation is what gets things started, it's what drives us to take the first steps, okay? It's what got you to, I don't know, inquire about that couple salsa dancing when you were watching strictly, or to subscribe to a podcast about knitting after seeing Tom Daly Paulside, uh, or maybe to sign up to that £60 a month gym membership. Why are gym memberships so expensive, but we never go. Um, the thing about motivation, okay, is that it is largely outside of your control. It's something that you feel when a catalyst sparks some kind of reaction in you. And even those sort of unseemingly uninspi moments of motivation, you know, when you wake up one morning and you're thinking, right, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get that cupboard cleared, I'm gonna go for that run. And this inspiration that seems to come out of nowhere, there was something that happened to set that in motion. Just because you didn't recognize it, it doesn't mean there wasn't something that happened to set that motivation in motion. But when your motivation comes from an external force, and worse, when it comes from one that you you haven't recognized and that you don't know, you can't possibly recreate it when you actually need it. When you're actually standing at the bar or in the supermarket aisle and you're trying to decide what you're gonna buy to drink, you can't call on a motivation when it comes from something that's outside of you. So when motivation is the thing that's pushing you to change your drinking, what happens when all of those motivation factors just go away?

Discipline As A Learned Skill

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Now, discipline. Discipline is what drives you to keep going and keep doing a thing, even when you don't really want to. And it's the one thing that we all wish we had more of, right? We look at professional athletes and successful business owners and entrepreneurs in uh wide-eyed awe and wonder and think, how did they get so disciplined? They must have been born that way, right? Or they spent, you know, uh years of uninterrupted focus doing their 10,000 hours of practice, you know, that that fallacy that it takes 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to get good at something. And then you think to yourself, well, there's no way I can learn to be that disciplined now, not at my age. The thing about discipline is that it probably did start as a repeated practice. There likely were um many early mornings and many birthday parties missed, many holidays not taken, obviously, depending on what the thing someone is disciplined at is. Um and it took conscious, effortful dedication to that cause to get that disciplined at it. But then something changed. And along the way of somebody forcing themselves to get up early, to miss out on nights out, that discipline changed from being a forced activity to something that became almost habitual. Discipline isn't some magical gift that you're either born with or you're not. It's something that you learn. And once you learn it, it becomes more of a habit. And as we know, once something becomes a habit, it becomes very hard to break. That works both ways. So discipline isn't something that you wish for, but it's also not a stick to beat yourself with if you don't think that you have enough discipline. Discipline is the understanding that the choices that you make today, in this moment, will affect the choices that you will be able to make tomorrow. But the thing about discipline is that it takes time to master. It takes years sometimes to be able to get to a state where you are disciplined in any activity. And that includes changing your drinking habits. So when you're standing at the bar relying on a skill that you haven't yet mastered to help you change the way that you've been drinking for a lifetime, well, what happens when that rehearsal doesn't go as planned? What happens when that discipline hasn't quite yet embedded the way that you wish it had?

Willpower And Decision Fatigue

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And then there's our old friend willpower. So willpower is what you rely on when you don't have a set plan. Some new studies, okay, have shown that willpower may not be as finite as we had thought. So often you'll hear uh people say that we only have a finite amount of willpower and that you wake up in the morning with a set amount, and when it's done, you're done for. That was what was believed for a very long time. There are some new studies now that are looking into whether that is as accurate as we had once thought. But either way, decision fatigue plays a huge part in your ability to make the same choices for yourself at 6 p.m. as you made for yourself when you woke up 12 hours earlier. So willpower works in a sort of short, sharp bursts. And, you know, let's imagine we're at work or at the office and there's been a birthday, and every time Peggy Sue offers you an extra slice of birthday cake, you're making an in the moment decision as to whether or not to have it. As the day wears on, what happens is those moments, those in-the-moment decisions, take longer and longer and longer to make. And the decisions that you're trying to make become harder and harder to commit to. Whether the amount of willpower that you have is finite or not, what all the studies do seem to agree on is that it uh diminishes as the day goes on. But cake and cocktails aren't your only choices, okay? This isn't just about whether or not to indulge in the extra calories or the extra units. It applies to everything. And this is why it diminishes throughout the day, because from what to wear in the morning to which route to take to get to work, to bigger decisions like I don't know how much to invest in a new opportunity, whether to broach the topic of your promotion with your boss, all these sorts of things. You know, how to handle conversations with your colleagues, how much to shout at the kids when they won't pick up their stuff from the floor. You know, all of these things add to the accumulating uh decision fatigue that we feel that that we feel throughout the day. So come wine o'clock, it's no surprise when it kind of feels like game over. You're just exhausted and depleted, and yet we rely so heavily on something that is so fleeting to help us make changes that are so impactful for our

Which One is Better For Drinking Less?

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lives. So, which one of these then, discipline, willpower, motivation, is actually best to help you to change the way that you drink after years and years of building up reliable habits around alcohol? Well, the clue was actually in the last one. Okay, so I introduced willpower as what we do when we don't have a plan. Because the truth is that motivation is an extremely powerful driving force, but once it runs out, we have nowhere to get it from. Discipline is an extremely effective focus and achievement tool, but it takes a really, really long time to build, and it needs a strong scaffold around it while you do. And willpower can absolutely fight in your corner at any given moment, but as that fight goes on, as each round goes on, it gets weaker and weaker. But a plan,

The Case For A Simple Plan

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a plan that you craft and build, and importantly can adapt over time, doesn't need any outside stimulus to help you achieve what you set out to achieve. A plan doesn't need to be practiced for 10,000 hours before you implement it. It can be effective from day one. And a plan removes the worry and the stress of decision fatigue because the choice has already been made and all you have to do is find a way to stick to it. Now, having a plan doesn't mean that motivation, willpower, and discipline can be abandoned or that they don't still have a role to play. Of course they do. But having a plan means that you move the decision making to a time when you were more capable of making it, and in the moment, your only task is to be true to it. Because the you that made the choice not to drink tonight at 8 a.m. this morning is not the same version of you who is standing at the bar at 8 p.m. in the evening. That you is tired, overworked, hungry, and not in the right frame of mind to put your own self-care first, or at least not in the way that's going to serve you best. So it becomes easier in that moment to just reach for the simplest, most convenient, most reliable tool that you've used in these moments for the last 20 or 30 years or so. So what you actually need to do is to make it easier for yourself to reach for a plan that you feel will serve you better instead. And if

Plans For Nights Out And Stress

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you're worried when I'm saying plan, I'm not talking about some sort of 12-page manifesto with no room for deviation and every incident set out in you know six-point PowerPoint presentation slides. The best plans are often the simplest ones. So a couple of examples. When you're going out for a planned night out, your plan could be something as simple as when I'm in the pub tonight, I'm only drinking this specific alcohol-free drink. And then you plan ahead, okay? Either going somewhere where you know the drinks menu already, so you know what your alcohol-free options are, or calling ahead or sending an email and asking the venue what they've got that you can drink. And you make a decision before you get there. Now, I'm not suggesting that every time you go out, you're only able to have one drink. But maybe if it's the first or second or third time that you're going out for an alcohol-free drinking evening around other people who are having full strength, it might actually be easier for you to just pick one drink, just pick one thing and just stick to it and know that tonight I'm just drinking, I don't know, alcohol-free pearoni, or I'm just drinking Guinness Zero, or I'm just drinking uh naughty sparkling rose. Whatever it is that you choose, you just stick to that for one night. That's your plan, no other choices to make. And then when you get home, you can reassess it and think about it for next time. Maybe you're going out for a meal, and so your simple plan is to say to yourself, right, at dinner tonight, I do want to have a drink, and I'm going to enjoy one glass of my favourite red with my main course. Um, or to my American friends, my entree. Uh, you know, that way you allow yourself a little bit of indulgence. You get to enjoy your favourite wine with some delicious food and savour the experience instead of risking drowning out the memory by overindulging in too much wine, forgetting how wonderful the food was, and then getting home and all you've got to remember the night, uh the morning after is a very expensive restaurant bill. When you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, your simple plan might be something like: when I get home from work tonight, I'm going to demand, insist, however you want to phrase it, uh, an uninterrupted half an hour to myself to do whatever I want to do. You have your other half take care of the kids, and you go and you take a bath whilst eating, I don't know, a tub of Hagandars, or you go for a walk, or you pour yourself a glass of low-no bubbles, or you phone a friend, or you just take some moment to go and sit and breathe. Whatever it is, whatever you consider to be uh self-care for yourself, it doesn't really matter what it is, it's about what makes you feel better, what gives you some time to yourself, what allows you to decompress without reaching for that automatic glass of wine that's in your hand most nights before you even remember making the decision to pour it.

Keep It Flexible

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But one of the most important things about these plans, whichever you decide to make for yourself, is that they are adaptable. Okay, and I and I really want you to understand that the best plans always allow for some flexibility because life doesn't care about what you decide. Okay, it's gonna keep on lifeing, as the kids say, if we're lucky. So we need to be prepared to adapt. So if the bar doesn't have a good low-no selection, then maybe you speak to the bartender when you get there and get them to make you something special. Or if you don't think that's gonna work, then you suggest going somewhere else with your friends. If the restaurant doesn't have your favourite wine of choice, don't just settle for something mediocre and say, oh, right, well, I'll just have two glasses to make up for it. Try something different instead, like a sparkling fermented tea that really compliments your fish, whatever you're having. If you're a single parent, maybe, and you don't have a partner to take the kids off your hands, then maybe you try asking a friend if they can have them for a play date on the weekend for two hours instead, and then you plan something extra special to do with your me time.

Review & Improve at Home or Away

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If you want to be the type of person who doesn't wait for motivation, rely on willpower, or falter at discipline, you need a plan that works for you, for the way that you want to drink. Keep it simple, keep it realistic, and every time you go out or stay in, wherever you're drinking, and you drink more than you intended, or things went really well and you actually stuck to your goals. I want you to go back to your plan, make a note of what worked and what didn't, and keep tweaking it until you find out exactly what plans work best for you in what situations. That's it from me for this week. Thank you very much for joining me for another episode of the Mindful Drinking in Midlife podcast. I'll catch you next Wednesday, and until then, cheers to a life less intoxicated.