The researchers followed up with these kids once they reached high school. They found that the kids who had the willpower to wait for the second marshmallow performed better in school. They had better grades, more disciplined study habits and outperformed their less-disciplined counterparts by over 200 points on the SATs.

Willpower is a skill

The good news is that you aren’t limited to the amount of willpower you’re born with. Willpower is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and expanded.

While there is no single way to increase one's willpower, the following will help you get started.

1. Set clear goals and priorities: Define what you want to achieve and why it's important. Break down your goals into smaller, manageable tasks.
2. Establish healthy habits: Develop routines such as regular exercise, balanced nutrition, and sufficient sleep to reduce reliance on willpower.
3. Manage stress and prioritize self-care:  Practice stress-reduction techniques like meditation and engage in activities that promote relaxation and wellbeing.
4. Practice self-discipline consistently: Make choices aligned with your goals, even when it's challenging. Start small, celebrate victories and learn from setbacks.
5. Seek support and accountability: Surround yourself with encouraging individuals, seek support groups or accountability partners, and celebrate progress together.

Willpower is a muscle

If willpower were purely an expandable skill, it would be consistent in our lives. After all, if you can paint a picture on Tuesday, you also have the skill to paint a comparable picture on Saturday.

However, we are all painfully aware that while we may have great willpower on Wednesday, depending on how much we used that day, we may not have comparable willpower on Thursday. We’ve all experienced ebbs and flows of our willpower; sometimes from one day to the next, sometimes from hour to hour.

This brings me to one of the most fascinating aspects of willpower: its similarity to a muscle. Like a muscle, our willpower becomes stronger as we use it regularly, but also becomes fatigued and eventually fails when pushed to its limits.

Understanding your patterns of willpower, and its highs and lows, is critical to managing challenging and unpleasant tasks that require extra willpower. Let's take prospecting as an example.

You've likely heard me say “Prospecting is the scariest, most difficult part of a scary and difficult job (selling).” We all know prospecting consistently takes an abundance of willpower.

Identify particular days of your week or times of your day that aren't typically preceded by stress or other willpower-depleting circumstances. This ensures your willpower reserve is full. Scheduling your prospecting times around these periods of maximum willpower provides you the ability and energy to push through.

Happy prospecting and selling, my friends.