Huberman Lab: How to Increase Your Willpower & Tenacity
Scicomm Media 10/9/23 - Episode Page - 2h 8m - PDF Transcript
Themes
Neuroscience, Psychology, Willpower, Tenacity, Beliefs, Brain, Sleep, Stress, Focus, Lifespan
Discussion
- The podcast explores the psychology and neuroscience behind tenacity and willpower, discussing the brain structures involved and providing research-supported tools for enhancing these qualities.
- It examines the concept of willpower as a limited resource and its connection to glucose availability in the brain, highlighting the importance of maintaining glucose levels to sustain and increase willpower during challenging tasks.
- The role of beliefs in determining the effectiveness of willpower is discussed, along with the controversy surrounding the idea of willpower depletion.
- The anterior mid-singulate cortex is identified as a key brain area involved in tenacity and willpower, which can be developed through specific practices and mindsets.
- Regular cardiovascular exercise is suggested as a means to maintain or increase the volume of brain areas associated with tenacity and willpower, emphasizing the importance of incorporating physical exercise into one's routine.
Takeaways
- Beliefs about willpower and glucose can influence self-control. Understanding the role of beliefs in willpower can help individuals optimize their performance on challenging tasks.
- Building up tenacity and willpower can have significant benefits in various aspects of life.
- Embrace challenges and friction points to build tenacity and willpower.
- Engaging in behaviors that require resistance and avoiding reflexive behaviors can strengthen the anterior mid-singulate cortex and improve tenacity and willpower.
- Regular physical exercise, particularly cardiovascular training, may have positive effects on tenacity and willpower.
In this episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast, Andrew Huberman explores the psychology and neuroscience behind tenacity and willpower. He discusses the brain structure involved in generating these qualities and provides research-supported tools for enhancing them. The episode also touches on the potential drawbacks of excessive tenacity and willpower.
- 00:00:00 In this episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast, Andrew Huberman discusses the topics of tenacity and willpower. He explores the psychology and neuroscience behind these concepts, highlighting a brain structure that plays a crucial role in generating tenacity and willpower. The episode also touches on the potential drawbacks of excessive tenacity and willpower. Overall, the episode provides research-supported tools for enhancing these qualities in any situation.
- 00:05:00 This podcast episode explores the concepts of tenacity and willpower, distinguishing them from habit execution. It discusses the neural mechanisms involved in generating tenacity and willpower, as well as the energy and effort required to intervene in default neural processes. The episode also highlights the continuum between tenacity and willpower on one end and apathy and depression on the other end.
- 00:10:00 The podcast discusses the concept of willpower and its relationship to motivation and tenacity. It explores the idea of willpower as a limited resource and the concept of ego depletion. The episode presents the work of Roy Baumeister on willpower as a limited resource, but also acknowledges conflicting evidence from other researchers.
- 00:15:00 The podcast discusses the controversy surrounding the concept of willpower as a limited resource. It explores the different perspectives on willpower and tenacity, and introduces the idea of modulators as tools to increase tenacity and willpower. The discussion aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic and offer practical strategies for enhancing willpower.
- 00:20:00 The autonomic nervous system, specifically the sympathetic and parasympathetic components, plays a crucial role in generating tenacity and willpower. The balance between these two components determines our alertness and ability to resist movement or thought. Factors such as sleep deprivation, physical and emotional pain, and distraction can diminish our tenacity and willpower. However, the level of autonomic function cannot be easily quantified.
- 00:25:00 The podcast discusses the importance of maintaining a balanced autonomic function for tenacity and willpower. It mentions the lack of a simple metric to measure autonomic function and highlights the need to prioritize foundational modulators such as sleep and stress management. The podcast also mentions the sponsorship of AG1, a vitamin mineral probiotic drink.
The podcast explores the concept of willpower as a limited resource and its connection to glucose availability in the brain. It discusses experiments that show maintaining glucose levels can sustain and increase willpower during challenging tasks. The controversy surrounding these findings and the role of beliefs in determining the effectiveness of willpower are also discussed. The anterior mid-singulate cortex is highlighted as a brain area involved in tenacity and willpower, which can be developed through specific practices and mindsets.
- 00:30:00 The podcast discusses an experiment that explores the concept of willpower as a limited resource. Participants were divided into two groups and asked to resist either radishes or freshly baked cookies. The study found that those who had to resist the cookies had less willpower to engage in a subsequent challenging task. This led to the belief that willpower is a limited resource, although the exact nature of this resource was not specified.
- 00:35:00 The podcast discusses the concept of willpower and its connection to the brain's need for glucose as a fuel source. The experiments conducted by Balmeister and colleagues showed that maintaining glucose levels can help sustain and even increase levels of willpower during challenging tasks. These findings shed light on the physiological basis of willpower and its impact on mental energy.
- 00:40:00 The podcast discusses the controversy surrounding the interpretation of the Balmeister results on willpower as a limited resource linked to glucose availability in the brain. The discussion highlights the replication attempts and meta-analyses that questioned the findings. The counter interpretation of the results is also mentioned, focusing on the study conducted by Dr. Carol Dweck in 2013.
- 00:45:00 The podcast discusses a study on willpower and the impact of glucose on self-control. The study found that ingesting glucose can improve performance on challenging tasks, but the degree of improvement depends on whether individuals believe willpower is a limited resource and whether they believe glucose is the source of willpower. The results highlight the importance of beliefs in determining the effectiveness of willpower and tenacity.
- 00:50:00 The podcast discusses the different perspectives on willpower and tenacity, highlighting the research of Baumeister and Dweck. It explores the role of glucose as a limiting resource for willpower and the impact of beliefs on its effectiveness. The conversation also emphasizes the unified source of tenacity and willpower in specific brain areas.
- 00:55:00 The anterior mid-singulate cortex, a brain area located in the frontal lobes, is believed to play a crucial role in tenacity and willpower. Multiple studies have shown its involvement in these psychological traits, and it is known to receive inputs from various other brain areas. The anterior mid-singulate cortex can be developed and strengthened through specific practices and mindsets, allowing individuals to tap into their tenacity and willpower in various situations.
The podcast explores the role of the anterior mid-singulate cortex in generating tenacity and willpower. This brain area is involved in regulating behaviors, emotions, reward pathways, and hormonal functions, contributing to our ability to exert self-control and persevere in the face of challenges. Studies demonstrate that stimulating this cortex generates feelings of willpower and urgency, helping individuals push through obstacles and achieve their goals.
- 01:00:00 The anterior mid-singulate cortex is a brain area that plays a role in learning, tenacity, and willpower. Various studies have shown that its activity levels are associated with different factors such as task difficulty, academic performance, motivation, and resistance to temptation. However, it is important to consider all the evidence together to fully understand its function.
- 01:05:00 The podcast discusses the relationship between anorexia nervosa and the reward pathways of the brain. It also explores the concept of super-agers, individuals who maintain youthful levels of cognition as they age. The anterior mid-singulate cortex is identified as a brain area associated with tenacity and willpower.
- 01:10:00 The anterior mid-singulate cortex plays a crucial role in willpower and tenacity. It receives and sends information to various brain areas and body systems involved in regulating behaviors, emotions, reward pathways, and hormonal functions. This communication network contributes to our ability to exert self-control and persevere in the face of challenges.
- 01:15:00 The podcast discusses the anterior mid-singulate cortex and its role in generating tenacity and motivation. It highlights the importance of this brain structure in achieving goals and cites studies that demonstrate its capacity to generate feelings of willpower and perseverance. The stimulation of the anterior mid-singulate cortex creates a sensation of pressure and the need to resist, indicating its role in generating a sense of urgency and the ability to push through challenges.
- 01:20:00 The inter mid-singulate cortex is believed to be the brain hub responsible for tenacity and willpower. It plays a role in allocating resources to different brain functions based on motivational goals and challenges. This concept of allostasis, the allocation of resources, is important in understanding how the brain generates tenacity and willpower. The episode discusses the inter mid-singulate cortex and its function in more detail.
- 01:25:00 The anterior mid-singulate cortex plays a crucial role in allocating energy and resources for generating tenacity and willpower. It receives input from both the brain and body, and its activation levels are higher when facing resistance. Building up the anterior mid-singulate cortex through specific behaviors can enhance tenacity and willpower, which carries over to other challenging aspects of life.
A study published in 2006 found that regular cardiovascular exercise, specifically moderate intensity cardiovascular training for three hours per week, can help maintain or increase the volume of certain brain areas associated with tenacity and willpower. The study suggests that engaging in regular exercise can potentially enhance these cognitive abilities. However, it is important to note that the study does not prescribe a specific exercise regimen, but rather emphasizes the importance of incorporating physical exercise into one's routine. The podcast discusses the importance of challenging tasks and pushing oneself to build tenacity and willpower, while also highlighting the potential hazards of this approach.
- 01:30:00 A study published in 2006 explored the effects of aerobic exercise on brain volume in aging humans. The study found that moderate intensity cardiovascular training for three hours per week helped maintain or increase the volume of certain brain areas, such as the anterior mid-singulate cortex and the anterior white matter tracts. This suggests that regular cardiovascular exercise may have positive effects on brain health and volume.
- 01:35:00 Cardiovascular training done three times per week for an hour at a time at moderate intensity has been found to increase the size of the anterior mid-singulate cortex and the white matter tracts associated with it. This suggests that engaging in regular exercise can potentially enhance tenacity and willpower. However, it is important to note that the study does not prescribe a specific exercise regimen, but rather emphasizes the importance of incorporating physical exercise into one's routine.
- 01:40:00 Engaging in cardiovascular training that elevates the heart rate can lead to changes in the brain structure associated with tenacity and willpower, according to a study. However, activities that are easier to carry out, such as calisthenics and stretching, do not produce the same effects. To further activate the brain hub for tenacity and willpower, individuals already engaged in moderate to high intensity cardiovascular or resistance training may need to add additional activities. It is important to engage in challenging tasks that activate the anterior midsingulate cortex without causing psychological or physical harm.
- 01:45:00 The podcast discusses the importance of maintaining neuromuscular function and strength, and suggests ways to build tenacity and willpower. It emphasizes the value of engaging in tasks that are challenging and require effort, even if they are not desirable. The potential hazards of this approach are also highlighted.
- 01:50:00 The speaker discusses the importance of activating tenacity and willpower in various aspects of life, such as physical training, academic challenges, and personal growth. They emphasize the value of pushing oneself to the point of difficulty and embracing endeavors that have no end point. The concept of the will to live is also explored in relation to the brain's allocation of resources and its impact on longevity.
- 01:55:00 The anterior midsingulate cortex plays a crucial role in generating tenacity and willpower. By continually engaging this brain area, individuals can strengthen their ability to resist unwanted behaviors and thoughts. Additionally, research suggests that successfully overcoming stressors and rewarding oneself can further enhance tenacity and willpower.
02:00:00 - 02:07:58
The podcast explores the concept of tenacity and willpower as limited resources related to brain energetics and fuel consumption. It emphasizes the importance of taking care of autonomic functions for maintaining these qualities. The neural underpinnings of tenacity and willpower are discussed, focusing on the anterior mid-singulate cortex. Engaging in challenging activities is suggested to build up this brain area and increase future capacity for tenacity and willpower.
- 02:00:00 The podcast discusses the concept of tenacity and willpower, exploring the idea that they are limited resources related to brain energetics and fuel consumption. It also highlights the importance of taking care of autonomic functions for maintaining tenacity and willpower. The neural underpinnings of tenacity and willpower are explored, focusing on the anterior mid-singulate cortex. The podcast suggests engaging in challenging activities to build up this brain area and increase future capacity for tenacity and willpower.
- 02:05:00 This podcast episode discusses the scientific studies in psychology and neuroscience that explain tenacity and willpower. It emphasizes the importance of building up these qualities over time and how they can enhance our enjoyment of life and potentially extend our lifespan. The host encourages listeners to subscribe to their YouTube channel and podcast, leave reviews, and check out the mentioned sponsors. They also mention the availability of supplements and provide information on their social media presence and newsletter.
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools
for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford
School of Medicine.
Today we are discussing how to build tenacity and willpower.
Previous episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast have focused on the topic of motivation.
And while motivation and willpower are linked thematically and mechanistically, today we
are going to discuss tenacity, that is, the willingness to persist under pressure and resistance
of different kinds, and willpower, which has to do with both the motivation to do things
and the motivation to resist certain things.
Today you will learn about the psychology and neuroscience of tenacity and willpower.
And I must tell you, this is a fascinating literature.
In fact, you will learn about a brain structure that, at least to my knowledge, most neuroscientists
are not even aware of.
And yet, in researching this episode, I absolutely fell in love with this brain structure because
of its incredible ability to integrate the very sorts of information from within and
from outside of you to harness and build tenacity and willpower.
And indeed, today you will learn research-supported tools for how to enhance your level of tenacity
and willpower in any circumstance.
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching
and research roles at Stanford.
It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information
about science and science-related tools to the general public.
In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Okay, let's talk about tenacity and willpower and how to enhance your level of tenacity
and willpower.
I will also mention certain cases where having too much tenacity and willpower can be problematic
for mental health and physical health.
But for most people, I believe that enhancing one's level of tenacity and willpower would
be advantageous.
Now you'll be relieved to know that while there are a near infinite number of different
circumstances where one would need to draw on tenacity and willpower in order to succeed,
there is one major mechanism within the brain, indeed one major mechanism by which tenacity
and willpower are generated.
And it arrives through the activation of a particular brain center that is a hub.
That is, it lies at the interface of many other neural circuits and has input from all the
critical neural circuits that one would need in order to generate tenacity and willpower.
We are going to return to that particular neural circuit a little bit later after we
talk about the psychology of willpower.
Because in talking about the psychology of willpower, it will frame up as to why understanding
this one particular brain center or hub of inputs and outputs from different neural structures
in the brain and body will indeed allow you to get the most out of the tools that have
been shown in scientific research to enhance your level of tenacity and willpower.
In other words, understanding the psychology of tenacity and willpower while valuable.
If it's coupled with an understanding of the underlying neural mechanism, and notice I
use the singular neural mechanism, not mechanisms for generating tenacity and willpower, will
allow you to use and to tailor the specific protocols for enhancing tenacity and willpower
to your unique circumstances.
So this is yet another case where certainly life circumstances vary from one person to
the next.
The need for tenacity and willpower varies tremendously.
For instance, some people may need more tenacity and willpower in order to engage in certain
behaviors.
Others of us might need more tenacity and willpower in order to resist certain types
of behaviors.
Today, you will learn about the brain center that governs all of that.
And then you can frame it within the psychological understanding of tenacity and willpower so
that you can get the most out of the protocols that we will discuss.
Let's start by talking about what tenacity and willpower clearly are, and separating
tenacity and willpower from some other psychological constructs that they often get confused with.
Because this will be important in understanding exactly what we are trying to build when we
say we want to build tenacity and willpower.
So tenacity and willpower can be distinguished from habit execution.
Habit execution is what you do anytime you wake up in the morning, maybe you lie there
for a bit, maybe you get out of bed immediately, hopefully you get outside and get some sunlight
in your eyes, especially on cloudy days, go brush your teeth, use the restroom, engage
with others in your home if you live with others, etc.
All of those sorts of behaviors, while on some days can be a bit more challenging, especially
the get out of bed part, maybe you didn't get a great night's sleep the night before,
for instance.
But all of those sorts of behaviors are behaviors that you have the neural circuits to generate
and that typically you can generate without a lot of willpower required.
Now willpower, sometimes also referred to as tenacity, grit, or persistence, is a distinctly
different phenomenon than habit execution.
Because willpower and tenacity require that we intervene in our own default neural processes,
such as habits or particular patterns of thinking, and essentially govern ourselves to do or
not do some particular thing.
And that process requires effort.
It requires energy.
And I think all of us are familiar with that feeling of effort or energy that's required
in order to engage in a behavior that we really don't feel like engaging in, or avoiding
a behavior or a thought that by default we would naturally just engage in.
And when I talk about energy in this context, I'm mainly talking about neural energy.
Remember that neurons, nerve cells in your brain and body use chemical and electrical
signaling to communicate with one another.
That's what allows you and all of us to do all the things that we do, think, feel, move,
et cetera.
Now, of course, that chemical and electrical communication requires fuel sources that indeed
come from things like glucose, ketones, the creatine phosphate system, multiple fuel systems
feed the energetics of the brain.
But ultimately, when I talk about energy in today's discussion, I'm talking about the
energy required to engage in or to resist in a particular behavior.
And that level of energy can be quite high, depending on how much resistance we are feeling
internally or externally, right?
Somebody can be telling us, you're not going to be able to do this.
You can't do it and you can say, no, I have a ton of resolve.
I have a ton of tenacity, willpower, and I'm going to push past all the barriers that you
are setting up for me on the outside, oftentimes, all too often, I should say, we experience
resistance from the inside, where we are feeling like we don't want to do something or we really
want to do something and we are having trouble either engaging in the thing that we don't
want to do or that we know we should do, but we just don't feel that level of motivation
for or we are having a hard time resisting the thing that's pulling us toward it.
So in that context, it's important for us not to just distinguish tenacity and willpower
from habit execution, but also draw out a continuum with tenacity and willpower at their
most extreme on one end of that continuum and apathy and, yes, depression on the other
end of that continuum.
And we will return to the topic of depression a little bit later, but I can just cue it
up right now by saying that one of the hallmark features of major depression is a lack of
positive anticipation about the future that leads to, this is important, there's a verb
tense here, that leads to a much lower tendency to engage in the specific types of behavior
that would allow one to arrive at a particular new, different and positive future.
So I'm deliberately putting apathy and depression next to one another at one end of the continuum
and I'm putting grit, persistence, tenacity and willpower at the other end of the continuum.
And a little bit later, it will become very clear to you why I put those particular items
on the continuum as opposed to other psychological constructs such as motivation, because it
turns out that motivation is what allows you to move up and down that continuum, but
motivation itself as a verb is distinct from what we call tenacity and willpower.
And motivation itself is distinct from what we call apathy and depression.
But motivation is the engine or the motor, the verb that allows you to move up and down
that continuum.
And today you will learn multiple tools that will allow you to move toward the tenacity
and willpower end of that continuum by engaging a very specific neural circuit.
Before we get into the discussion of neural circuits, I'd like to talk about the psychology
of willpower.
And this is something that really has been considered by psychologists for well over
a hundred years.
William James wrote about this, the ancient Greeks wrote about this.
The topic of willpower is certainly not a new one.
And yet the formal study of willpower in the laboratory context, that is bringing human
subjects into the laboratory and examining what sorts of conditions allow them to engage
their willpower and tenacity.
What sorts of conditions really sap or drain their willpower and tenacity.
And of course, parallel experiments done in what we call preclinical models, which are
animal studies, have revealed to us a lot about the sorts of conditions that allow us
to generate willpower and the sorts of conditions that drain our willpower.
Now, if we are to throw our arms around that entire literature, there is a big batch of
that literature, not the whole batch, but there's a big batch of that literature that
believed and still believes that willpower is a limited resource, much like fuel in the
body or fuel in a car.
Now the idea of willpower as a limited resource is certainly not a new idea.
But again, the formal study of willpower and willpower as a limited resource really dates
back a little over 20, 25 years when Roy Baumeister and colleagues started to explore
the idea that, of course, had been kicked around for years, that with each additional
decision that we have to engage across the day and with each additional bout of willpower
that we have to draw on as a resource, that we would drain this reservoir of willpower
that we all have within us.
Now Baumeister and colleagues referred to that process as ego depletion.
Now when people hear the word ego, some people think Freud, ego, super ego, it and so forth.
Most people think ego, like somebody having a big personality where they think a lot of
themselves.
When Baumeister referred to ego depletion, he was defining ego depletion as a concept
of oneself and a concept of outside challenges and the degree of effort required to bridge
one's concept of self and those challenges.
And so ego depletion is really a operational construct within the field of psychology.
So we don't want to get too distracted by that word ego.
There's a tendency anytime people hear ego, they hear narcissism or if they hear gaslighting
to immediately assume that they know what that means when in fact the formal definitions
of those quite often differ from the way that they're kicked around on social media, the
internet, and even in a lot of popular writing about psychology.
So let's just note that ego depletion is the term that Baumeister used to describe
the ability for our willpower to be depleted with each successive attempt to engage willpower
and by extension, our ability to replenish our degree of willpower if we take a break
from making decisions and engaging our willpower.
But ego depletion itself isn't the focus right now.
The focus right now is whether or not indeed willpower is a limited resource and whether
or not with each decision that we make and each effort to either engage in an activity
that we prefer not to at least in that moment and with each attempt to resist a behavior,
thought, etc. that is pulling on us or that we feel that we want to engage in by default
either eating the cookie or thinking the thought or engaging in a particular type of behavior
of any kind and we need to resist that, that it is draining that willpower resource.
Now before I go any further, I know that some of you out there are probably aware that ego
depletion and the Baumeister theory of willpower as a limited resource has been very contentious,
especially in recent years.
And so today what I'm going to do is I'm going to first present the Baumeister and colleagues
work about willpower as a limited resource.
And then I'm going to present some of the conflicting evidence that Carol Dweck, my
colleague at Stanford School of Medicine and researchers elsewhere have carried out
meta-analyses and entirely new experiments, which indeed in some cases contradict the findings
of Baumeister, but more often than not contradict the conclusions that Baumeister drew about
willpower.
So if we are to understand the psychology of willpower and tenacity, it's important that
we understand the concepts of ego depletion and willpower as a limited resource, even
if after hearing all the evidence, you decide that willpower is not a limited resource.
And in fact, I'm quite confident that once you hear about the Baumeister work and then
you hear about the work of Dweck and others, which in some ways counters the conclusions
of Baumeister, that you'll have a much firmer and certainly a much more complete understanding
about what tenacity and willpower are.
And perhaps, and here I'm revealing my own leanings when having examined the totality
of the data, that tenacity and willpower in some cases is a limited resource that can
be replenished by engaging particular processes within the body.
That's right, within the body, but that willpower and tenacity, and most importantly, how to
engage tenacity and willpower, especially when you have a lot of challenges in front of you,
not just one challenge, but multiple challenges that need to be carried out throughout the
day, over weeks, over months, et cetera, that tenacity and willpower can be drawn upon repeatedly
without them being depleted.
If you are clear on your beliefs about tenacity and willpower, so I realized that what I just
brought up was a controversy about something that I haven't even discussed yet, so it might
seem like a bit of a swirl of information for which there's really no context.
But the reason I bring up the controversy at this stage of our conversation is that
the moment that the words ego depletion or willpower is a limited resource falls out
of my mouth, I can hear those voices out there saying, wait a second, I thought that was all
debunked.
And I want to make very clear.
Willpower is a limited resource, and ego depletion have not been debunked.
It's simply a controversial area of psychological research.
And more importantly, for today's discussion, we have to understand the theory of willpower
as a limited resource.
If we are to understand the controversy, that is the counter argument of what willpower
really is that comes from other groups.
So I really want to give you both sides of the story so that when we get to the underlying
neural mechanisms for tenacity and willpower, and we get to the tools and protocols for
increasing your level of tenacity and willpower, and your flexibility of willpower in different
contexts, that you'll be able to get the most out of those tools and protocols.
Okay, so let's take a look at the evidence that willpower is a limited resource.
I think most of us are familiar with what willpower feels like, that is, what it feels
like to be tenacious.
And again, there are two sides to this coin.
There's willpower and tenacity of the sort of trying to engage in a behavior when we
really don't want to, or when our impulse is not to engage in that behavior.
And I say when our impulse is not to engage in that behavior, because oftentimes we want
to engage in the behavior, we want to study, we want to learn the instrument, we want to
perform well, we want to exercise, we want the benefits of all those things.
So it's not that we don't want the outcomes or the rewards of those things.
And in many cases, it's not that we don't enjoy those activities, but that for whatever
reason, we are feeling a lack of motivation.
We're drifting down that continuum toward the more apathetic end of things, hopefully
not all the way to deep depression and apathy, but we're drifting that way or we're not far
enough up the continuum, and we're not engaging enough motivation to feel like the desire
to do something, either for its own sake or for the rewards and outcomes of that thing
are sufficient to allow us to just do that thing, hence the Nike slogan, just do it,
which is a wonderful slogan, except that in the absence of any understanding about the
mechanisms of how we can get ourselves to just do something, oftentimes it falls short.
And to be honest, anytime I hear about people saying, well, just eliminate the thinking
and just do it, that is valuable advice until it doesn't work.
Because when it doesn't work, it simply doesn't work.
And then you need to rely on other tools and mechanisms, which are the sort that we will
talk about today.
So while I have great respect for the just do it mantra, when it doesn't work, it doesn't
offer any alternative solutions to engage tenacity and willpower.
And I do not know anyone on this planet.
I don't care if you're David Goggins or Courtney Dewalter, there will be days when telling yourself,
just do this or just don't do that is not going to be sufficient for you to engage in
the behaviors or resist the behaviors or thoughts that you need to engage in or resist.
And we should ask ourselves, why is that reality?
And this is a very important point and in fact, really illustrates the first bucket of tools
and protocols for increasing tenacity and willpower.
And these are the tools and protocols that I would categorize under the rubric of modulators.
I've talked before on this podcast about the important distinction between mediators
and modulators.
Mediators are things either psychological or biological, etc. that are directly in the
mechanisms that generate some sort of action or emotion.
This could be neurochemicals like dopamine or serotonin and so on.
Modulators are things that can modulate that is can change our probability of doing something
or not doing something, but they do so indirectly.
And in the context of tools and protocols to increase our level of tenacity and willpower,
I will be completely remiss if one of the sets of tools that is the protocols for increasing
the probability that we can access high levels of tenacity and willpower didn't include at
least some of these modulators.
So I'm just going to spend about three minutes on these modulators because what we know for
certain is that the regions of the brain that generate tenacity and again, there is literally
a brain hub for generating willpower and tenacity gets strong input from the so-called autonomic
nervous system.
The autonomic nervous system has two major components they are referred to as the sympathetic
nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
Keep in mind because when most people hear the word sympathetic, they think sympathy,
they think emotion.
It has nothing to do with that simple means together and the sympathetic arm of the autonomic
nervous system.
I know that's a mouthful is responsible for generating states of alertness in our brain
and body.
Everything from panic to being alert and calm, our tendency to move or our likelihood of
moving under pressure.
It is also responsible for our ability to resist movement when we need to resist movement
and therefore it's an active process.
So the sympathetic nervous system is all the things of action and when it is involved in
generating inaction, those are cases where inaction requires energy.
Okay.
I want to be very clear about this.
The sympathetic nervous system isn't just about moving our body, although it has a lot
to do with that.
It is also responsible for our ability to resist movement or thought or emotion when
we need to do that clamp down on ourselves.
The parasympathetic aspect of our autonomic nervous system is the one that sometimes referred
to as the rest and digest neural circuits and chemicals.
And that's true, but there's a lot more to the parasympathetic component of the autonomic
nervous system.
It's also responsible for falling asleep.
It's responsible for us feeling relaxed.
It is responsible for most of the states of mind and body in which we are quiescent,
where we don't feel an impulse to move or when we have a difficult time getting into
action.
So the sympathetic and the parasympathetic aspect of the autonomic nervous system are
always in a push pull with one another.
Think of them more or less on a teeter totter when one end goes up, the other end goes down.
They're really in competition with one another and it's their balance that reflects how alert
or how sleepy we happen to be.
Now the reason I'm giving you this rather geeky nerd speak nomenclature filled discussion
about the autonomic nervous system in the context of willpower is that regardless of
whether or not you believe willpower is a limited or an unlimited resource, we know
one thing for sure.
And that's that willpower and tenacity ride on our current autonomic function.
We can translate that to everyday language by saying that when we are well rested, for
instance when we've been getting great sleep of sufficient duration, the previous night
and the night before that, our level of tenacity and willpower to engage in things that we
would not ordinarily engage in by default and our ability to resist behaviors and thought
patterns that would otherwise be our default behaviors and thought patterns is much higher.
Conversely, when we are not getting enough quality sleep on a regular basis, our ability
to call on tenacity and willpower is diminished.
Now that series of statements I just made is clearly going to be a duh for most people,
but it is very important to understand that when we are sleep deprived, when we are in
physical pain, when we are in emotional pain and or when we are distracted, when we are
thinking about something else, aside from what we are trying to engage tenacity and willpower
in order to do or not do, tenacity and willpower will be diminished.
Now all of those things together are just a bigger duh.
We all know this.
If you've got a splinter in your foot, it's really hard to think about not thinking about
something else.
If you are extremely hungry or if you had an argument with somebody that you really care
about and they said something that was particularly vexing to you and it's looping around in your
head, it's going to be very hard to engage in something else that you need to do because
you're going to be distracted.
Likewise, if you're sleep deprived, likewise, if you are a bit sick or run down or if you're
in any kind of physical or emotional pain, your ability to draw on tenacity and willpower
will be diminished.
So it's an absolute truth that your ability to generate tenacity and willpower rides on
a reservoir of autonomic function.
And today we don't really have a way of quantifying the level of autonomic function or dysfunction
in a very simple way.
It's not like resting heart rate, although resting heart rate is involved.
For instance, if you haven't slept well for a few nights or if you're particularly stressed
over trained, you'll wake up in the morning with a significantly elevated heart rate.
However, there is no simple metric like heart rate or blood pressure or even cortisol level
that can tell you whether or not your autonomic function is imbalanced.
That is the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems of your autonomic nervous system are
in the best possible balance to generate tenacity and willpower.
We don't yet have such a metric, although there are companies that are starting to develop
devices that hopefully will give us indices of autonomic function or dysfunction.
But it is important that we acknowledge that if you're not taking care of the foundational
modulators of tenacity and willpower, none of the subsequent tools and protocols that
we will discuss are going to help you that much over time.
You might get tenacity and willpower to engage one day when you're very sleep deprived, but
it's going to be very difficult to consistently engage tenacity and willpower.
For that reason, if you have any struggles with sleep that is getting enough quality
sleep on a regular basis, please see the zero cost toolkit for sleep that we've put at
hubermanlab.com.
Please also see the perfect your sleep, master your sleep episodes also at hubermanlab.com.
Please also see the episode with expert guest Dr. Matthew Walker, professor of sleep neuroscience
and psychology at University of California, Berkeley.
We just revamped the hubermanlab website.
So if you go to hubermanlab.com and you put something like sleep into the search function,
it will take you not just to the toolkit for sleep, but to the exact timestamps that will
queue up particular topics and protocols around sleep.
So if you were to put sleep and light, it would take you to those particular protocols.
If you were to put sleep and magnesium three and eight, it would take you to those particular
protocols and so on and so forth.
Yeah, I don't want to get too far off topic here during today's discussion, but if you're
not sleeping well, and if you're not managing your stress levels well, it's going to be
much harder for you to engage tenacity and willpower regardless of the tools you happen
to use.
And those tools could be everything from behavioral tools to supplements to prescription drugs.
You need to get those foundational modulators in check and there are a lot of zero cost
ways to do that that are all spelled out very clearly at the resources I just described.
Likewise for stress, if you're experiencing challenges with stress, both short term, medium
term or long term stress, if you think you have elevated cortisol levels, which by the
way may not be the case.
There are a lot of tools for modulating stress in real time, increasing your stress threshold
etc.
Simply go to the hubermanlab.com website and put in stress threshold tools or stress real
time tools and you'll get a bunch of zero cost tools that will allow you to do that.
It's also worth mentioning that when we get to our discussion about the neuroscience of
tenacity and willpower, that you will understand why autonomic health and autonomic function
is so important for our ability to engage tenacity and willpower.
I'll just tell you right now, it's because the neural circuits of the autonomic nervous
system provide direct and robust input to this hub in the brain, this brain location
that governs our ability to allocate our mind and body toward particular activities
or to resist particular activities.
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Okay, so let's think about the Baumeister data on willpower as a limited resource.
I'm going to briefly describe one of the first studies that really said to the field willpower
is a limited resource, but I want to be clear that there are other studies like it and they
all generally follow the same contour and that general contour is as follows.
Baumeister and colleagues and now many other laboratories have done experiments where they
bring human subjects into the laboratory and those human subjects have to do something
that requires mental effort or energy, aka willpower.
The classic example of this is you bring people into the laboratory, some of them might actually
be dieting or fasted, although not always, and there are two platters set out for them.
One platter contains radishes, just plain radishes, by the way, I hate radishes unless
they're pickled radishes.
I don't know why that is.
So these experiments picked my least favorite vegetable.
I love many other vegetables.
I disdain the radish.
That was just a personal editorial.
In any case, the radishes are set out and next to them are freshly baked cookies.
And in the room is the wafting aromas of freshly baked cookies.
So I think it's fair to say that most people, because of a hardwired tendency to like sugar
and fat, especially when they are combined, would prefer to eat the cookies versus the
radishes.
I know that there are some mutants out there.
They're saying I like radishes more than cookies.
But look, most people like cookies more than radishes.
The subjects in these studies are divided into two groups.
One group is told you have to resist eating the radishes.
The other group is told you have to resist eating the cookies.
And then the subjects are observed during this time, typically.
But this is really not what the experiment is about, per se.
This stage of the experiment is really designed to get people to resist a certain kind of
behavior and the assumption, again, this is an assumption because there's no brain recordings
here.
No one's in an MRI machine looking at what brain areas are activated or not activated.
There's no cortisol being measured, at least not in these early experiments.
These people are either resisting something that's pretty easy to resist, radishes.
Or they are being asked to resist something that, for most people, is going to be harder
to resist than resisting radishes, which is resisting freshly baked cookies.
And that challenge has been made even more difficult by the wafting aromas of freshly
baked cookies in the room.
And in some cases has been made even more difficult because these people are dieting.
And keep in mind that when you calorie restrict or when you put yourself on a diet of any
kind, there is a well-established mechanism in the brain by which the neurons that engage
hunger, especially hunger for fat and sugar, and that respond to things like aromas and
taste are heightened, that is, their activity levels are heightened, which means that things
that smell really good smell really, really good when you're hungry.
Things that ordinarily would taste really good, taste really, really, really good when
you finally eat them.
So the key component of this stage of the experiment is to engage people's willpower.
The second part of the experiment has all of the subjects separately engage in another
challenging task.
And the challenging task that they are asked to engage in is to solve a particular puzzle.
And again, different experiments use different puzzles, different experiments use different
contexts, but the original experiments that Balmeister and colleagues did had people try
and solve a puzzle that could not be solved.
So it's very, very difficult.
In fact, it's impossible, but the subjects weren't aware of that.
And then what was measured was how long subjects persisted in trying to solve this impossible
to solve puzzle, depending on whether or not previously they had to resist the radishes,
which is pretty easy to resist, or resist the cookies, which is at least harder to resist.
And for some people would be very, very hard to resist.
Now you can probably already guess what the outcome of this and similar studies was, because
it birthed this entire belief camp within the field of psychology, that willpower is
a limited resource.
The outcome was that if people had to resist the cookies, which is harder to do than resisting
the radishes, that they would persist for less time when they had to try and solve a
puzzle that unbeknownst to them could not be solved.
Conversely, if people had to resist something that was pretty easy to resist, such as resisting
eating radishes, something that for me would be very, very easy to resist.
Well, when they were subsequently faced with trying to solve a very difficult, indeed impossible
to solve puzzle, they persisted much longer.
Okay.
So put very simply, the study concluded that if you have to resist one thing and it's
a hard thing to resist, well, then you have less air quotes here, resistance in you willpower
to engage in another difficult task subsequently.
Whereas if you had an easy challenge just prior or no challenge just prior to being faced
with a challenge such as a very difficult puzzle, well, then you had more resource, more willpower
to apply to the solving of that puzzle.
So the conclusion that Baumeister and colleagues drew from those results was that willpower
is a limited resource, but it didn't specify nor did they specify exactly what that limited
resource is.
And this was quite an attractive theory because it jived well with most people's perception
of what willpower and tenacity was for them.
This idea that, yes, there are things that challenge us both to do and to resist, but
that we can do that.
But when we are asked to do that again and again and again, while we may build up some
capacity to engage our willpower and tenacity, and of course, there are those rare individuals
that we've heard about and some of us know that seem to have just a kind of bottomless
reservoir of willpower and tenacity.
Most of us have an intuitive understanding of how hard it is to constantly be in friction
with life, to constantly have to push ourselves to do things and to resist things.
And that while that capacity can expand and grow and we can get better at it, that there
does seem to be something here, just subjectively speaking, there does seem to be something about
engaging tenacity and willpower that, yeah, it can feel good, but it also requires effort,
this neural energy that we were talking about.
So that raised the question of, okay, if willpower is a limited resource, what exactly
is that resource at a physiological level?
So Balmeister and colleagues subsequently went on to explore what I think is a really
interesting and clever idea.
Frankly, I can't confess that I would have thought of this, but they did.
We said, okay, you know, in some cases, people are eating the cookie and then they're engaging
in this very difficult puzzle.
In other cases, they're eating the radish and engaging in this difficult puzzle.
And of course, other experiments used non-food challenging choices, but they came up with
an idea, which was the brain as one of the most metabolically active organs in our entire
body, if not the most metabolically active organ in our entire body, requires a lot of
fuel.
It requires a lot of glucose.
Now, of course the brain mainly runs on glucose, but if you're following a ketogenic diet,
your brain will mainly run on ketones.
But for most people who are omnivores or eating carbohydrates, glucose is the main and preferred
fuel source for neurons, for nerve cells in your brain and body for that matter.
Balmeister and colleagues raised the hypothesis that perhaps glucose availability itself is
the resource that's limiting willpower.
And in a whole set of experiments, they really showed that if people are asked to do a difficult
task to engage their willpower, and this could be done by resisting a particular behavior
or by engaging in a particular behavior, I'll just give you an example of engaging in a
particular behavior that requires willpower or at least focus and mental energy to contrast
it with the resisting radishes versus resisting cookies example that I gave earlier.
One common practice within experiments like this is to give people a very long passage
of words.
So it's a story.
And then to give them some sort of rule about how to edit that passage, maybe they have
to cross out every third E or the E's that arrive in the middle of sentences next to
consonants, but not other vowels, you know, stuff that takes a lot of energy.
So these are dues as opposed to resisting behaviors, like we were talking about earlier,
resisting the radish, resisting the cookies, although in many of these experiments, there's
a command to do something, you know, cross out certain letter E's in this passage, but
also to resist the reflex to cross out other E's.
And of course, all this is under time pressure.
And oftentimes it's being rewarded or scored.
This is the way that psychology researchers get people to engage in particular experiments
and behaviors and resist certain things in the context of a laboratory environment when
those things, frankly, are kind of boring and meaningless, they'll pay you more if you
do well at the task, they'll give you money and then subtract the money that you're going
to get at the end of the experiment.
If you make errors and things like that, and they'll do it under time constraint, as I
mentioned earlier.
So there were lots of different conditions for, again, here air quotes, draining people's
willpower and tenacity and certainly draining their mental attention.
And then they would have them do another subsequent task.
So in many ways, this just mirrors the first cookie radish experiment done by Bowmeister
and colleagues.
But there was an important intervention put between the first and the second hard task.
And that intervention was to give one group a glucose beverage of about 150 calories or
so.
So they would drink a glucose beverage to increase levels of blood glucose, the preferred fuel
source for the brain, versus giving them an artificially flavored drink or just water
or something that was, of course, matched for flavor, but that did not contain any glucose
or calories.
Now, this is a clever experimental design, if you think about it, because at least at
a first glance, the only thing that really seems to be different is the availability
of glucose for the brain.
And you can probably guess what the outcome of these studies was.
The outcome of these studies was that when subjects are given glucose in between a first
hard task that required willpower and a second hard task that required willpower.
And in some experiments, a third hard task that required willpower, that their levels
of willpower were maintained consistently from one task to the next.
And in some cases, increased from one task to the next if they had more glucose available
because they drank this glucose drink.
So what's really interesting and frankly, really nice about these studies is that they
attempted to bridge a psychological construct like tenacity and willpower.
And to test the argument that willpower is an expendable resource.
And yet it's an expendable resource that is replenishable by linking that to a
physiological variable.
And the physiological variable they linked it to was glucose availability in the brain.
Now, this set the field of psychology and in fact, the field of pop psychology, that
is the discussion about formal findings in the field of formal psychological research
ablaze. People were so excited about this.
I mean, this set of findings really pointed to the argument that if you could just keep
levels of brain glucose elevated across your day, or at least stable across the day, that
you would have more willpower and tenacity, this thing that humans have been seeking more
of since the beginning of time.
Now, all of that seemed fine and good.
And in fact, a lot of products and courses were born out of that literature.
People were arguing that you should sip on a glucose drink while doing any kind of
hard task, that you should sip on glucose drinks between tasks, that you should be
thinking about literally fuel that you ingest into your body as fuel for psychological
processes within your brain that would allow you to perform better in work and school and
athletics and relationships and all of the domains of life.
But of course, any time there is a prominence or a real excitement about a particular finding
in any field of science, but in particular in psychology, where it feels so applicable,
as did the Balmeister results, you are going to get other groups that are going to try
and replicate those findings and that are going to dig into the findings themselves
and look at the statistics, look at how well or poorly powered those studies were.
We don't want to get into a full discussion about powering studies right now, but
powering studies has a lot to do with addressing the question of whether or not there were
enough subjects in the study to really draw the conclusion that one drew or whether or
not the statistics fell out as, yes, there was a significant effect of glucose ingestion
on willpower and tenacity.
But if there weren't enough subjects, well, then there are other variables that could
potentially explain those results.
So there were a lot of meta-analyses and other studies trying to replicate the work of
Balmeister, and that's where things got controversial.
Now, we can take a step back from all of that controversy.
After all, we don't want to spend too much time on the controversy itself.
Rather, we want to know what the counter interpretation of the Balmeister results was.
And I want to be very clear, there was no real dispute as to whether or not
Balmeister got the results that he and his colleague claimed to have obtained.
They did get those results.
The question really was about the interpretation.
Is willpower a limited resource?
And if it is, is the physiological resource itself glucose availability to the brain?
So in 2013, a colleague of mine at Stanford, Dr.
Carol Dweck, our Department of Psychology, did a study in which she examined this idea
that willpower is a limited resource.
And the idea that the resource that's limited is glucose availability for the brain.
So Dweck and colleagues did an experiment that in many ways mirrored the overall
organization of the experiments done by Balmeister and colleagues.
There was a difficult task, in some cases, the difficult task was that crossing out
a particular ease within a passage task, followed by another difficult task.
And the difficult task that came second was the Stroop task.
This is a task I've talked about before on this podcast, although some episodes ago.
So for those of you that are not familiar with the Stroop task,
the Stroop task is where subjects are presented with words in different colors.
And they are instructed to either read the word.
So to pay attention to the content of the word or to the color in which the font
of the word is written, this might seem pretty easy to most of you.
Right.
If I put up a card that says Apple on it and Apple is written in green,
you probably wouldn't have a hard time if you had been instructed to tell me what
color is the word written in for you to just say green.
Okay.
But if I were to hold up a card that said red, but the font is actually in the
color green, it's a little bit harder.
And if I were to then do that for a hundred cards or 300 cards and put you under time
pressure where you're losing money that you're sure to get, if you make mistakes or
you will earn money at the end of the experiment, if you get answers correctly,
well, then you start making more mistakes.
That's just the way these experiments work.
So they did a variation on the Stroop task that isn't exactly the way I just described it.
And the Stroop task, by the way, is one that's used to probe prefrontal cortex function.
This area of our brain, right behind our foreheads, that is responsible for many
things, but in part is responsible for context and strategy setting, given a
particular set of rules.
So if you get onto the bus or get onto the subway versus walk into a black tie dinner,
the context and rules are very, very different as to what you would say or not
say, how you behave, how you address your prefrontal cortex is largely, although
not entirely, is largely responsible for a lot of the context setting and rule
setting from one situation to the next.
And if you think about the Stroop task, it's really just a context dependent
strategy task.
You either have to pay attention to the meaning of the words or the colors in
which those words are written.
And the number of mistakes that you'll make depends on how much time pressure you're
under, what sorts of neurologic or psychiatric challenges you might be facing
or not facing, so on and so forth.
But it's a very robust task that's existed in the scientific literature for a long
period of time.
So the Dweck experiment.
And by the way, there were actually three experiments in this paper.
I won't go through all of them in detail for sake of time, but I will provide a
link to the paper in the show note captions.
But the major focus of the study was to have people engage in one hard task and
then in another hard task, both of which drawn willpower testing the idea that
willpower is a limited resource and then providing some of those subjects with a
glucose rich drink or other subjects with a drink that was artificially sweetened.
So it had no glucose, no calories, but tasted.
Yes, they match them for taste.
I know some of you who don't like artificial sweeteners are saying those
don't taste exactly like real sugar, but they manage to match these drinks for
taste.
But in one case, the drink would clearly increase blood glucose.
In the other case, the drink would not raise blood glucose.
So the results of this study are really spectacular in my mind, because what
the study found was that, yes, indeed ingesting glucose can improve performance
on these multiple challenging willpower requiring tasks.
However, the degree to which the glucose containing drink could improve
performance depended on whether or not you believed that willpower was a limited
resource and whether or not you believe that resource was glucose.
In other words, if you hear and believe that willpower is a limited resource,
well, then indeed with each subsequent task that you engage in or life event of
any kind that you engage in that requires willpower and tenacity, you will have
less willpower and tenacity to draw on.
Whereas if you believe that willpower and tenacity are unlimited and in fact are
divorced from blood glucose as the physiological source of willpower and
tenacity, well, then you can engage in one challenging task and another
challenging task and another challenging task without any diminishment in
performance.
Now that, of course, leaves us all in a very tough position because how are we
to decide what to believe if we know that willpower can be a limited resource
or willpower cannot be a limited resource?
Ah, well, the results of the Dweck study.
And by the way, I should share with you the title of the study.
The title of the study, not surprisingly, is beliefs about willpower determine
the impact of glucose on self control.
And this was a study published in the proscenes of the National Academy
of Sciences.
Again, I'll provide a link to this study in the show note captions.
There are three major experiments in this study.
As I mentioned before, I just gave you the major conclusion of all of them sort
of woven together.
And if it wasn't clear already, the major conclusions are that, yes,
ingesting glucose can improve your ability to engage tenacity and willpower,
AKA self control from one task to the next, provided that you believe that
glucose is the limiting resource for engaging tenacity and willpower.
If you don't believe that, well, then you can engage tenacity and willpower
without ingesting glucose.
And that's where the artificially flavored drink comes in.
I'll leave it to you to kind of unpack what that means experimentally.
But it's a very clever experimental design that Dweck and colleagues came up
with because it argues that, yes, indeed, it's hard to do a challenging thing
right after another challenging thing.
But there's no reason to think that you can't do both of those things
while engaging the utmost tenacity and willpower.
If you believe that tenacity and willpower exist within you as a single
mechanism that can be harnessed and that it's not a single mechanism
that has a reservoir that runs down as you engage in one hard thing to the next.
Now, this is very important because we are about to transition into our
discussion of the physiological.
That is the neural underpinnings of tenacity and willpower,
which as it turns out is one major set of brain circuits.
There could be others that are yet to be discovered, but we know that
there is one major set of brain circuits in particular one brain area,
believe it or not, that an entire collection of more than two dozen studies
really points to as the seat, the origin of what we call tenacity and willpower.
But before we transition to that and the tools and protocols that
that physiological neural understanding set forth for us to all use and apply,
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Baumeister wasn't about to
hear these results from Dweck and colleagues and just say, OK, willpower
is not a limited resource.
It's not blood glucose.
It's all what you believe about willpower.
It's all what you believe about blood glucose.
Rather, Baumeister himself went back to the lab and did subsequent experiments
that in some ways not all counter the Dweck results.
So I'm not trying to confuse anybody, but I wouldn't be doing my job
if I didn't give you both sides of the story.
Now, the good news is that the tools and protocols that we are going to arrive at
work regardless of which psychological camp you happen to be in the Baumeister
camp or the Dweck camp.
Now, I don't want to give the impression that these are warring camps.
And I also don't want to give the impression that these are the only two
camps of thought and experimentation within the field of tenacity and willpower.
There are many groups working on these subjects.
Indeed, there have been meta-analyses that have confirmed the major theories
of Baumeister and there are meta-analyses that have refuted the major findings
of Baumeister.
I will provide links in the show note captions to a couple examples of each
so that you have those to peruse if you like.
But let's discuss for a moment what Baumeister found when they went back
and re-researched, I think that's a word, re-researched the idea that willpower
is a limited resource and that glucose is that limiting resource.
Baumeister and colleagues looked at the Dweck data and said, OK, fine,
the data looked great, except for the fact that in real life and in many
previous experiments that they and others had done, it wasn't just two
hard challenges back to back, but often two or three or four.
And what Baumeister and others found was that when subjects are presented,
not with just two challenges back to back, but three or more challenges.
So back to back to back to back.
Challenges that have to engage a lot of neural energy, a lot of willpower,
tenacity, resistance to do certain things and effort to engage in certain
kinds of behaviors and cognitive processes that when subjects had
glucose available to them in the brain by way of ingesting these glucose
drinks, sipping those in between the tasks or sometimes even during the
tasks, that their performance, that is their willpower and tenacity to
engage in challenges was maintained across those multiple challenges.
And they conceded that one's belief about willpower could indeed dictate
whether or not willpower was or was not a limited resource and whether glucose
would or would not enhance one's ability to engage willpower.
But they argued that if one confronts multiple challenging
circumstances, as is very naturalistic, as we say, it's very typical of every
day real life, then the availability of glucose during and between tasks,
the ability for the brain to engage in its external environment and take
reads of its internal environment, how we feel inside relative to what's
expected of us was very valuable in allowing people to engage this thing
that psychologically we describe as tenacity and willpower.
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And that's because a lot of people, especially people who are following
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oftentimes are excreting a lot of water and electrolytes along with it and
simply by increasing their electrolyte intake using element, they just feel
better and function better.
I typically drink element first thing in the morning when I wake up in order
to hydrate my body and make sure I have enough electrolytes.
And while I do any kind of physical training and certainly I drink element
in my water when I'm in the sauna and after going in the sauna because that
causes quite a lot of sweating.
If you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element.
That's lmnt.com slash huberman to claim a free element sample pack with your
purchase. Again, that's drink element lmnt.com slash huberman.
Let's talk about the physiology of tenacity and willpower.
And I assure you that the conversation where you are about to have is not going
to be just a bunch of nomenclature and mechanistic understanding of the origins
of tenacity and willpower.
Rather, it argues that tenacity and willpower have a unified source.
That is a specific set of brain areas that when active, engage that feeling
of tenacity and willpower, regardless of what we are confronted with,
regardless of whether or not we are trying to engage in something that reflexively
we wouldn't otherwise want to engage in.
And regardless of whether or not we are confronted with something that we have
to resist. And to me, that's extremely reassuring.
Because whether or not you believe that blood glucose is the limiting resource
for willpower, whether or not you believe that your beliefs about willpower
and blood glucose impact your level of willpower.
What we know for sure is that there's a single set of brain circuits.
Indeed, there's a single brain area that seems to be able to largely,
if not entirely, explain this phenomenon that we call tenacity and willpower.
And that should be reassuring because what it means is that tenacity and willpower
is the reflection of a neural circuit function that is a skill.
It's an expression of something that we all have within us.
We all have this particular brain area.
And quite excitingly, this is the third point,
this brain area is highly subject to plasticity.
There are specific things that we can do and there are specific mindsets
that we can adopt that allow us to increase the activity of this particular brain area.
Indeed, to increase the size of this particular brain area
so that we can call on tenacity and willpower,
not just in one circumstance like school or musical learning
or athletic endeavors or relationship endeavors,
but rather that we can call on this brain area in the context of any and all circumstances
where willpower and tenacity are required.
Now, we talk about neuroscience a lot on this podcast,
but it's not often that I point to a particular brain area
and can confidently say this particular brain area
has an absolutely integral role in something as kind of high level,
psychological as tenacity and willpower.
But today we can do that.
And that's because there's a collection of more than two dozen studies
that point to one particular brain area.
And of course, it's connections with other brain areas
because no single brain area operates in isolation.
Every brain area is operating in the context of neural circuits,
other brain areas that it receives inputs from and gives inputs to and so on.
But this one particular brain area really does seem
to underlie what we call tenacity and willpower.
And we know that through several lines of evidence.
First of all, I'll tell you the name of the brain area,
although the name itself isn't going to tell you much
unless you're a neuroscientist or anatomist.
So I'll give a little bit of background about it.
The name of the brain area is the anterior mid-singulate cortex.
The anterior mid-singulate cortex is part of a larger brain area
called the singulate cortex.
And in humans versus animals, it goes by slightly different names.
Unfortunately, it's just one of the consequences of different researchers
in different labs, calling the same thing different things.
It'd be really frustrating, but we'll make it very simple
because today we were referred to this area as the anterior mid-singulate cortex,
which is a subdivision of a larger brain area simply called the singulate cortex.
The anterior mid-singulate cortex resides in the frontal lobes.
So it's behind your forehead, although that doesn't tell you anything
because all of your brain is behind your forehead if you think about it.
And it's about a third of the way back toward the back of your head.
And you actually have two of these structures, two anterior mid-singulate cortices,
one on each side of the brain, and they receive a lot of inputs
from a lot of different areas.
And we'll talk about what those areas are because this is extremely important
when thinking about the different psychological and physiological resources
that you can draw upon to engage tenacity and willpower.
But for the time being, let me just go through the evidence
and kind of list format of why we feel so confident
that the anterior mid-singulate cortex is such a vital hub
for engaging tenacity and willpower.
For each of these points that I'm about to make,
there is indeed at least one, if not several, quality peer-reviewed studies in humans.
So there's a lot of data from animals,
both rodents and primate models, et cetera,
that we're not talking about today,
but I should mention all of which supports the human data and vice versa.
The data I'm going to describe now come from humans
and from a variety of different types of studies.
So there are a lot of different ways that one can consider
if a brain area is implicated in a given psychological or physiological phenomenon
like motivation or sadness or visual perception.
And those include, for instance,
if a brain area is active during a given phenomenon.
So one way to explore this is to put literally wire electrodes down below the skull,
record the electric activity of neurons,
and assess whether or not the electrical activity of those neurons changes
when a person is, say, viewing faces or feeling a particular way,
like feeling tenacious or feeling bored or feeling aggressive and so on.
Another way of assessing a particular brain area's role
in a given physiological or psychological phenomenon
is in individuals where that particular brain area is injured.
You might expect that a particular phenomenon like willpower,
like the ability to perceive faces,
is present or absent, whether or not it's exacerbated
or whether or not it's diminished.
Other ways of assessing whether or not a given brain area
is involved in a given phenomenon
is whether or not that brain area literally changes size,
whether or not it changes in volume over the course of some sort of training.
So for instance, if somebody is not able to play a musical instrument,
such as myself, and then I or a subject in one of these experiments
learns a musical instrument and the volume, the size of that particular brain area
is assessed across the learning or simply before and after that musical learning
and it grows, or perhaps even if it shrinks or changes shape,
one might determine that it is somehow, somehow involved
in the process of learning a musical instrument.
You couldn't unequivocally conclude that,
but along with other types of evidence, one could perhaps conclude that.
So that's just a partial list of ways to assess brain area function,
other ways include assessing what other areas a given brain area gets input from.
So for instance, in the case of the anterior mid-singulate cortex,
we will soon discuss the fact that it gets robust input
from the autonomic nervous system, which you already learned about.
It gets robust input from reward systems of the brain,
such as the dopamine and serotonin based reward systems of the brain,
and it gets robust input from the context and strategy setting areas of the brain as well,
and many other different brain areas.
So there's a structural logic as to why the anterior mid-singulate cortex
would be involved in tenacity and willpower,
but no single anatomical or physiological or lesion based finding
is as compelling as when we consider all of the results
about the anterior mid-singulate cortex together and side by side.
So for instance, recordings by neural imaging of the anterior mid-singulate cortex
in an unbiased way, meaning people are put into a brain scanner
and brain activity is examined en masse, all of the brain areas are looked at,
and people are presented with either a hard task or an easy task,
revealed that the anterior mid-singulate cortex shows elevated levels of activity
in the hard versus the easy task.
And again, I want to point out that the researchers were not looking for that result,
they simply observed that result.
In addition, if people who exhibit high levels of academic performance
across many different subjects are put into a brain scanner
that evaluates so-called resting state connectivity, so no task,
but simply levels of activity in different brain areas that occur spontaneously,
so they're just sitting in the scanner looking at a blank screen,
the resting or spontaneous levels of activity in the anterior mid-singulate cortex
of high achieving individuals is higher relative to those of lower achieving individuals.
In addition, people that have lesions or disruptions
of anterior mid-singulate cortical function show increased apathy and depression
and reduced levels of tenacity and motivation across the board,
regardless of what domain of life one is asking about,
whether or not it's athletic or academic, etc.
Indeed, successful dieters show elevated spontaneous
and what's called evoked levels of activity in the anterior mid-singulate cortex.
So spontaneous, again, just at rest, they have higher levels of activity
in the anterior mid-singulate cortex and for those that are presented with food
and they have to resist that food and they have to resist the smell of that food
and the potential taste of that food,
the activity of the anterior mid-singulate cortex goes up even further,
especially in those individuals who can resist,
that is, who can engage willpower to not eat the delicious food item.
Conversely, individuals that have failed to exert sufficient willpower
to lose their desired weight, and this was for medical reasons
related to trying to achieve medical health,
as well as people who are obese seem to have diminished levels of activity
in the anterior mid-singulate cortex.
In addition, people who are depressed, who express a lot of apathy,
and here we're talking about clinically diagnosed major depression,
show reduced levels of activity in the anterior mid-singulate cortex.
Humans that express a lot of what's called learned helplessness,
that is, they've adopted the belief and the actions associated with the belief
that no matter what they do, the outcomes are not going to be what they desire,
express lower levels of neural activity in the anterior mid-singulate cortex.
So you can see this list goes on and on, but it in fact gets even more interesting.
Remember earlier, I mentioned that successful dieters
have elevated levels of neural activity in the anterior mid-singulate cortex.
Now that might seem like a good thing, and indeed it can be a good thing,
but there's a pathologic condition associated with dieting and one's ability
to engage willpower and resist food, and that's in the case of eating disorders
such as anorexia nervosa.
Now I've done a Huberman Lab podcast solo episode about anorexia nervosa,
and on that podcast I made the point that I'll make again now,
which is that anorexia nervosa is the most deadly of all the psychiatric conditions,
leading to death in a very large percentage of people that have it.
Now fortunately there are treatments and more emerging all the time,
but it's a very serious psychological and physiological condition that is extremely deadly.
Individuals with anorexia nervosa exhibit heightened levels of activity
in their anterior mid-singulate cortex, both at rest and when presented with food.
And I don't want to go on a full tangent about anorexia because we covered
anorexia on the previous podcast episode about anorexia,
which by the way you can find at Huberman Lab.com, simply search anorexia
or eating disorders within the search function.
But one of the clear symptoms of anorexia nervosa is that the reward pathways of the brain,
which we know feed into, that is send direct connections to the anterior mid-singulate cortex,
seem to be activated under conditions in which people with anorexia
avoid food as opposed to eat food.
And then there's a very interesting and positive literature about so-called super-agers.
So what we know for sure is that as people age, in particular between the ages of 60 and 90,
there's a reduction in the size of many brain areas,
but the anterior mid-singulate cortex in particular,
unless certain things are done to offset that,
we are going to talk about what those particular things are in just a few minutes.
But there's a particular category of humans that's alive now and that live a very long time.
These are the people that stand the greatest chance of becoming centenarians,
and many of them are centenarians, so-called super-agers.
But also within the category of super-agers are people who are 60 years old or more,
because not all of them have reached 80, 90 yet,
and have the cognition of 40-year-olds, 30-year-olds,
and often even of people in their mid-20s.
Now, there are a lot of things that are different about these super-agers,
super-agers in the sense that they are maintaining very youthful levels of cognition.
But one of the things that's become very apparent from the neuroimaging data
is that super-agers maintain a volume, a size,
of the anterior mid-singulate cortex that is significantly greater than their age-matched cohorts.
So the exciting thing is that there are many, many lines of evidence
pointing to the fact that the anterior mid-singulate cortex
at least has something to do with our ability to generate tenacity and willpower,
and that it, when active, moves us up that continuum away from apathy and depression
toward states of being able to engage in or resist particular types of behaviors.
So what I just described is a bunch of neuroimaging, structural volume data,
blood uptake data, lesion studies, and so on and so forth.
But we can simplify all of that and, in fact, address something that perhaps I should have said earlier,
which is that when we're talking about tenacity and willpower,
we're really talking about one of two things.
We are either talking about that sense within us that has us saying, I will.
No matter what you tell me, no matter what you put in front of me,
no matter what is rolled my way, I will blank.
Now, the other expression of tenacity and willpower is that within us, within you, within me,
when tenacity and willpower are active, we have that sense within us,
that feeling in our body and that thought pattern, aka feeling in our brain,
that no matter what you say, no matter what you do, no matter what you put in front of me,
I won't. So really willpower is either an expression of I will or I absolutely will,
is perhaps a better way to state it, or I absolutely won't.
Now, that might seem like just a simple subjective reordering of a bunch of
physiological data and psychology studies, but it's not.
It's actually far more important for us to understand this I absolutely will and I absolutely won't
aspect of willpower, because if indeed there is a single brain area that can govern willpower,
and willpower is not one, but is at least two things, the sense of I absolutely will,
no matter what you say, do, et cetera, or I absolutely won't, no matter what you say, do,
et cetera. Well, then this brain area can't be a simple switch. It can't be willpower on,
willpower off, willpower on, willpower off. It can't be absolute, as we say. It must be
graded. It must have levels. So it's more like a slider on a light switch than an on versus off
light switch. In addition to that, if there is truly one brain area that plays a critical role
in generating tenacity and willpower, and tenacity and willpower is something that's required from
us in a lot of different contexts where we have to say, I absolutely will. Yes, this. I absolutely
won't know that. I absolutely will. Also, yes, this, et cetera, et cetera, because life is complex,
even just the simple thing of, say, dieting or trying to get a particular degree or trying to
navigate even a simple illness, like I'm going to get through this week, despite feeling lousy,
I'm going to take good care of myself. All of these things in some sense require tenacity and
willpower and the behaviors we need to engage in and avoid engaging in is very dynamic,
depending not just on who we are and what we're trying to do or not do, but also where we are
that day, that moment. Well, that means that the anterior mid-singulate cortex also needs access
to information about context. It needs to understand what's rewarding or non-rewarding in the context
of what we're trying to accomplish, not just what feels good in the moment. Now, fortunately,
there have been a number of studies exploring not just the activity levels of the anterior
mid-singulate cortex or the size of the anterior mid-singulate cortex in the various conditions
we talked about before, depression, obesity, successful dieters, successful students, successful
athletes, et cetera, but a lot of anatomical tracing studies, both from fixed, that is from
dead brain tissue, so postmortem brain tissue in humans, but also nowadays there are certain types
of neuroimaging, particularly something called diffusion tensor imaging that allows one to examine
the flow of information in and out of different brain areas through so-called white matter tracks,
tracks meaning T-R-A-C-T-S tracks. So these are the wires that connect neurons are called axons
and those axons are in sheaths with a fatty substance called myelin and that in sheathment
with myelin allows them to transmit information very quickly. You'll see where I'm going with
all this in just a moment and what we know is that the anterior mid-singulate cortex, again of
which you have one on each side of the brain, about a third of the way back from your forehead
to the back of your brain approximately, right above the so-called corpus callosum, this very robust
collection of white matter tracks that connects the two sides of the brain, well it gets input
and sends input to a number of different brain areas, including but not limited to
the following, autonomic centers that control for instance, cardiovascular function, increases or
decreases in heart rate, respiration, how fast and how deeply you breathe or how shallowly and
slowly you breathe, immune system, inputs and outputs with the spleen, not directly but through
a couple of different stations with the very organs in your body that can release B cells and T cells
and immune molecules that can combat bacterial viral and fungal infections and that can repair
physical wounds and it communicates with the endocrine system with the systems of the brain and body
that release for instance estrogen and testosterone which by the way are present in both males and
females and on a previous episode of the Huberman Lab podcast with Robert Sapolsky as my guest,
we talked about for instance the role of testosterone and many people think oh testosterone
is all about aggression, testosterone is all about attack, testosterone is all about mating,
that is completely false, well it can be involved in those different processes.
What Dr. Sapolsky and I discussed is that one of the major functions of testosterone in the brain
is to make effort feel good and you can see and we'll talk a little bit more about how that links
up very directly with this concept of tenacity and willpower. So the first point is that the
anterior mid-singulate cortex is in direct communication with all of the areas of the brain
and through a couple of other stations the body that modulate our sense of tenacity and willpower
which we talked about earlier, the need for sleep, the need for pain or lack of pain or
emotional comfort or discomfort to modulate our level of tenacity and willpower. The anterior
mid-singulate cortex is also directly linked up with premotor centers, these are the centers of
the brain that organize particular patterns of behavior and indeed that can suppress particular
patterns of behavior. As I tell you that you're probably feeling in the blanks, this is engaging
in a behavior or resisting a behavior. The anterior mid-singulate cortex is also directly wired in
with the reward pathways of the brain, it can trigger the release of dopamine, it can also
respond to the release of dopamine and that dopamine release could be generated behaviorally,
it could be generated through some sort of food reward, it could be pharmacologic,
there are a number of different ways that the dopamine system can communicate with the anterior
mid-singulate cortex. The point here is that it is in direct communication with the anterior
mid-singulate cortex and the anterior mid-singulate cortex is in direct communication with the
dopamine system and what I just gave you is frankly just a partial list of the different
areas of the brain that are communicating robustly with the anterior mid-singulate cortex.
It gets information about interoception, our readout of how we feel in our body,
it also has robust inputs and outputs with the areas of the brain that are associated with
exteroception, our perception of what is out around us. So all of that provides a logical
basis for the neuroimaging data, the lesion data, the volumetric data that we talked about a few
minutes ago in the context of depression, anxiety, high performance, anorexia and so on.
But one of the most important arguments that's ever been made in favor of the anterior mid-singulate
cortex being a major seat for tenacity and willpower comes from Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett,
who is soon to be a guest on the Huberman Lab podcast. We've actually recorded that episode
already and it should be out very soon. Lisa's laboratory is well known for pioneering research
on emotion and affect. I strongly encourage you to listen to that episode once it comes out.
And it was actually Lisa herself that cued me to the importance of the anterior mid-singulate
cortex. And Lisa and colleagues have written several spectacular reviews about the anterior
mid-singulate cortex and its role in tenacity and motivation. I will provide links to a few of
those in the show note captions. The one that I'm particularly excited about, the one that I've
spent now an immense amount of time with is entitled the tenacious brain, how the anterior
mid-singulate cortex contributes to achieving goals. So if you have a background in biology,
even if you don't, I think you'll find that review to be very interesting. And it further
substantiates a lot of the points that I made a few moments ago about the different scenarios and
types of individuals that seem to be able to engage their anterior mid-singulate cortex
under different conditions and to a greater or lesser extent than others. So hats off to
Lisa for cuing me to this incredibly interesting brain structure. I had known that it existed,
after all I teach neuro anatomy to medical students at Stanford and I taught neuro anatomy
for many, many years, but I don't think enough people and indeed very few professional neuroscientists
could tell you what the anterior mid-singulate cortex does, but it has this apparently incredible
function in generating tenacity and motivation. Along those lines, one of the most incredible
and important studies about the anterior mid-singulate cortex and its capacity to generate feelings of
tenacity and willpower comes from one of my colleagues at Stanford, Joe Parvizi, who essentially
went into human beings who needed brain surgery for other reasons and stimulated particular brain
areas with a very high degree of precision. The title of the paper that I'm referring to was
published in 2013 in the journal Neuron Cell Press Journal, excellent journal and it's entitled
the will to persevere induced by electrical stimulation of the human cingulate gyrus. Now
you'll notice the title said human cingulate gyrus, not anterior mid-singulate gyrus, but because they
had electrodes and a stimulation technique that would allow them to stimulate in very small regions,
extending as little as five millimeters, but no more away from the stimulation site. They were
able to march the stimulation around different sub regions of the cingulate gyrus of humans while
those people were awake and then ask those people, how do you feel? What are you experiencing in this
moment? In addition to that, they were recording various autonomic parameters from those people,
so heart rate, breathing, in addition to brain wave activity. So what the subjects report when
their anterior mid-singulate cortex was stimulated is that in their words, something was about to
happen. They felt as if there was some sort of pressure upon them from the outside, not physical
pressure, but that something was about to happen. In fact, one of the subjects described the sensation
as it's as if there's a storm off in the distance, but I know I need to go into the storm and I know
I can make it through the storm. Another subject described the experience of having their anterior
mid-singulate cortex stimulated as something not necessarily good is going to happen, but I know
that I need to marshal resources and resist, and I'm confident that I can push through. Now,
because Parvizian colleagues are excellent scientists, they of course did control experiments
where they would tell the person, okay, we're stimulating that same brain area that a moment
ago you told me created this feeling of some pressure upon you that you have to resist some
sense of fight or urgency to push back. But in reality, during certain control conditions,
they were not stimulating those brain areas. And the subjects then reported, I don't feel like
anything's about to happen. Yeah, I don't feel anything at all. In other words, it was the
stimulation of the anterior mid-singulate cortex and only the anterior mid-singulate cortex that
created the sensation within people that there was something to resist, that there was something
putting pressure on them, again, not physical pressure, but psychological pressure, and that
they were going to have to marshal resources in order to push back upon. In fact, they reported
feeling as if their body was getting ready to do something. One subject said something along the
lines of, yeah, I feel like I'm about to do something. I'm about to go someplace or do something
to resist this foreboding sense that's now coming over me. So this is very interesting and of course
is in line with all of the data that we discussed before about neural activity patterns, both
spontaneous and evoked, about brain volume changes in the anterior mid-singulate cortex,
so on and so forth. And it really points to the idea that the anterior mid-singulate cortex
is a hub, a hub that receives information from a diversity of brain areas that we talked about
a few minutes ago, and that generates a particular sense within us that we are going to be forward
center of mass, that we are going to resist something, and that perhaps we are going to
move or act in some particular way, or as we've been discussing all along, resist action in some
particular way, but that it requires that we marshal resources, which takes us back, of course,
to the studies of Baumeister and indeed of Dweck, where they explored willpower as a limited resource,
perhaps glucose, perhaps as that limited resource, beliefs about willpower and glucose,
probably with a high degree of certainty, are going to be involved there too.
But regardless of that controversy, it's clear that there's an energy required,
there's an activation state of engagement or resistance to a particular behavior or thought
pattern that we all associate with this phenomenon of tenacity and willpower. And in a kind of
miraculous way, as a neuroscientist, we're generally taught nowadays that individual
brain areas don't really trigger individual functions and perceptions of the brain. There
are a few exceptions to that. You have a fusiform face area that really does seem to be involved
in the perception of faces and when lesion, you can't recognize faces. But outside of just a few
limited contexts, it's very rare that one comes across a literature that across all of the studies
involved point to a single brain structure and its networks as giving rise to something as complex
and flexible as tenacity and willpower. But in the case of the inter mid-singulate cortex,
it really does seem to meet those criteria as the brain hub responsible for tenacity and willpower.
Now a key idea that Dr. Feldman Barrett has contributed to studies of the inter mid-singulate
cortex as a structure that helps us generate what we call tenacity and willpower to help
us achieve different types of goals is this idea of allostasis. Most of you have perhaps heard of
homeostasis, which is the idea that all of our cells, all of our organs, indeed our entire body
and psychology are always seeking homeostasis, the perfect balance of sleep and activity,
of food and burning fuels, of oxygen and carbon dioxide and so on and so forth. And while homeostasis
certainly exists and is a valid phenomenon, there's also a concept that we hear far less about,
but that is equally important, which is the concept of allostasis. Allostasis is the idea that much
of what our brain and body need to do, but especially our brain, is to allocate allostasis,
to allocate resources to particular functions depending on our motivational goals and the
challenges upon us. And in every way, what we understand about the structure and function
of the inter mid-singulate cortex is that it is doing just that. It is deciding how much glucose
should a given brain area consume, perhaps a brain area that's involved in visual perception,
because you're involved in a motivational task where in order to succeed, you need to pay careful
visual attention to particular things, or you're involved in a task, we have to listen to particular
things, or perhaps you are involved in a physical foot race where you don't want to allocate a lot
of energy towards thinking about your stride or your step unless that's necessary, and you actually
want to shut down your brain activity as much as possible, except for the brain areas that are
required to get you to continued run. In that sense, the inter mid-singulate cortex, as a
sort of a dial on how much fuel is consumed, not by the brain and body as a whole, but by
individual brain and body parts, meets all the criteria of what you would want for a brain area
that controls things like tenacity and willpower, because even for those individuals who seem to
just have an endless supply of tenacity and willpower, they too have to go into habitual behavior.
They can't simply lean into every aspect of life with the kind of resistance from outside and the
resistance against those outside forces or even resistance to internal forces, voices in their
head, et cetera, on a constant basis. They still need to sleep. They still need to be functional
in that expression of tenacity and willpower. They need to be able to strategy switch,
and they need to be able to come off the gas, as we say, not because tenacity and willpower are
necessarily a limited resource, but because for so many aspects of life, engaging tenacity and
willpower is not advantageous. Hence the example I gave earlier about eating disorders, where an
apparently hardwired function of our brain to be able to generate some sort of reward for resisting
a given behavior goes too far and then can actually threaten one's own health or even life.
Concept of allostatic load, allostatic balance, and allostatic function is something that we get
into in a fair amount of detail in the discussion with Dr. Feldman Barrett in that episode, which
is coming out soon. In the meantime, if you were to think about the anterior mid-singulate cortex
as having a single function, the function that Dr. Feldman Barrett has ascribed to it
as controlling how much energy different brain and body areas should get in a given context,
well, that makes a lot of sense to me. I think it's the one that best describes
all of the functional data indeed includes or jibes with all the anatomical data about the
anterior mid-singulate cortex as well. One of the really important twists in all of this is that
the anterior mid-singulate cortex is not just sitting there to allocate and dole out different
amounts of energy and activation to different brain areas. It is also receiving input from
both the brain and body and in sort of a beautiful twist on the whole story of what the anterior
mid-singulate cortex does. We know that when we move our body, we are activating the anterior
mid-singulate cortex and we know that when we move our body, because we in some way forced
ourselves or encouraged ourselves to do it, we activate the anterior mid-singulate cortex more.
Similarly, and because the anterior mid-singulate cortex is so flexible in the different contexts
in which it can be activated, if we are simply reading or we are listening to something that
we are supposed to learn or trying to learn a piece of music or trying to do anything for that
matter, the anterior mid-singulate cortex, yes, will be activated, but that its levels of activation
are far greater when we experience a lot of resistance that we have to overcome. Remember
the earlier result, and by the way, I'll provide a link in the show note captions to this particular
study or set of studies. There are about two, one really spectacular one and a couple of others
that tangentially point to the same finding that when people engage in a hard task,
not an easy task, but a hard task that the anterior mid-singulate cortex activity is elevated.
So the way to think about the anterior mid-singulate cortex is that it's not just sitting there as a
hub that you reach into and activate, it's also receiving inputs that can activate it. And that's
what allows us to now talk about the tools and protocols that don't just allow us to engage
our anterior mid-singulate cortex and access more tenacity and willpower, but that allow us to
exercise, not necessarily in the context of physical exercise, although it could be that too,
but to exercise our anterior mid-singulate cortices ability to engage not just in that
challenging context, but in other challenging contexts as well. In fact, I'll just tell you
right now that studies in non-human primates and to a limited extent in humans, but here we think
there's a strong analog between the non-human primate data and the human data. The anterior
mid-singulate cortex is chock-a-block full of the expression of molecules such as chem kinase 2,
receptors to various neurotrophins, particular types of NMDA and methyl deaspartate receptors,
all of which, if none of those names mean anything to you, just know that all of them
refer to different aspects of and a capacity for synaptic plasticity, which is the ability for
connections in the brain to change. They can get stronger, you can actually grow new connections.
In other words, the anterior mid-singulate cortex can be built up as a structure to engage tenacity
and willpower by activating it through one or a limited number of different types of behaviors,
meaning engagement in behaviors that frankly, we would rather not engage in, as well as not
engaging in behaviors that reflexively we really want to, that were sort of drawn to engage in.
Both of those contexts, I absolutely will, even though frankly, I don't want to or you're telling
me I can't, as well as that I absolutely won't, even though you're tempting me to do that or
that's tempting me to do that or even I'm tempted to do that. That buildup of the anterior mid-singulate
cortex has extensive carryover into other domains of life because it's the same structure that is
then used for other types of behaviors and learning that require tenacity and willpower.
So that's incredibly reassuring. In fact, it's downright exciting because,
as I mentioned earlier, while there are a near infinite number of different circumstances where
we each and all need tenacity and willpower, it seems that there's a very generic mechanism
for generating tenacity and willpower. And that means that if we can build up our capacity for
tenacity and willpower by engaging in particular types of behaviors and resisting particular
types of behaviors, well, then it's going to carry over in a very functional way to the other
aspects of life that we find challenging and that we may find challenging in the future.
Okay, so by now, I like to think that I've convinced you because, frankly, the data are very
convincing that the anterior mid-singulate cortex is a vital hub within your brain for allocating
energy and resources to generating tenacity and willpower. And perhaps it's taken you a lot of
tenacity and willpower to get this far through the episode, waiting with bated breath, presumably,
to learn how exactly you can improve the functioning of your anterior mid-singulate cortex.
Now, fortunately, there are published peer-reviewed data that explain how to do that. In fact,
there's a study that was published in 2006 by Colom and colleagues entitled,
Aerobic Exercise Training Increases Brain Volume in Aging Humans. And before you go run off,
literally, and engage in cardiovascular exercise, I'm just going to describe to you the contour of
this study and what specifically was done so that you can best implement the best protocols for your
particular circumstances. This was a study exploring why and how certain brain areas and brain volume
generally decreases as we age. It's well known, as I mentioned earlier, that individuals aged
really 50 and older, and maybe as early as 30 and older, experience a decrease in brain volume
with particular brain areas shrinking faster than others. But of course, there are other people
that include the superagers that we talked about earlier and many, many other people who are not
superagers who don't experience the same decrease in brain volume. So why is it that they maintain
the same brain size that they did when they were younger or undergo less decrease in brain size?
That's what the researchers for this study were initially interested in understanding.
And they did come to some really interesting conclusions about that, but they also came to
some interesting conclusions that relate to today's discussion on tenacity and willpower.
This study involved having individuals who were 60 to 79 years old divided into one of two groups.
One group did cardiovascular exercise, the other group did more calisthenics slash stretching type
exercise. Both groups did one hour of exercise three times per week. The group that did cardiovascular
training initially started off by doing, and by the way, they just simply called it aerobic training,
but this could be rowing on the rower. This could be running. This could be cycling. I think for
sake of understanding application of tools and protocols, you would want to pick any kind of
activity that you could do consistently without injuring yourself. That's what's really important.
And that gets your heart rate elevated. They started off these individuals with relatively
low intensity cardiovascular exercise for that hour, getting their heart rate up to about 50%
of their maximum heart rate, but very quickly had those individuals increase the intensity of
those cardiovascular training sessions. So they were doing again, three one hour sessions per
week, getting their heart rate up to about 75% of their maximum heart rate, sometimes a little less
60%, sometimes a little bit more, but in that general range. So for those of you that think
about different zones of cardio, this is probably in the area of zone three, not quite zone two
cardio, maybe zone three cardio, so where one can not carry out a conversation very easily,
but where one is not completely gasping for air as one would if they went to their maximum heart rate
or near maximum heart rate. Okay, so three one hour episodes of cardiovascular training per week
at a moderately high intensity. The other group simply doing calisthenics and stretching for the
equivalent amount of time. And they had another group within the study that were much younger
that did similar activities or no activity, simply as a control for the brain imaging data.
Now I'm summarizing the study with a fairly broad brush, both for sake of time. And of course,
I'll provide a link to the study in the show note caption so you can access it and proves
in more detail if you like. But I wouldn't be talking about this study if it were simply a study
about cardiovascular training and brain volume. I'm talking about this study because the specific
brain areas that maintained or in some cases increased in volume as a consequence of doing these
three hours per week of moderate intensity cardiovascular training included, of course,
the anterior mid-singulate cortex, that was actually the primary location in which the
maintenance of brain volume was observed. And in some cases increases in brain volume were
observed, right? This is a group of people who normally would be losing volume size of their
anterior mid-singulate cortex, but for which three hours a week of moderate intensity cardiovascular
training maintained the volume, the size of that anterior mid-singulate cortex. And in some cases
increased the volume, the size of anterior mid-singulate cortex. And they also observed a
maintenance or increase in the size of the anterior white matter tracts. Remember, T-R-A-C-T-S,
I didn't spell that out before just to spell it out for fun, although that is the sort of thing
that I would probably do. Those white matter tracts are the communication routes by which
different brain areas communicate. And this anterior white matter tract that maintained size
in the people that did cardiovascular training, as compared to those that simply did the calisthenics
training and stretching, is the very white matter tracts that connects the two sides of the
brain, the frontal lobes, that allows the anterior mid-singulate cortex on one side of the brain
and the anterior mid-singulate cortex on the other side of the brain, as well as other brain
structures to communicate with one another. So this is really spectacular. I mean, the authors of
the study didn't embark on the study to find or even look for increases or maintenance in the
volume of the anterior mid-singulate cortex and the communication routes in and out of the anterior
mid-singulate cortex. It just so happened that cardiovascular training done three times per
week for an hour at a time at moderate intensity increased the size of the anterior mid-singulate
cortex. And as I mentioned, the white matter tracts, which allow information to go in and
out of the anterior mid-singulate cortex. Now, we should all be asking ourselves,
why would that be the case? I mean, somebody gets on a stationary bike in pedals or goes out on a
road bike or runs. Is there something inherent to running or cycling or rowing or swimming
or an aerobics class dancing, et cetera, that gets the heart rate up that directly feeds into
the anterior mid-singulate cortex? After all, is the anterior mid-singulate cortex responsible
for generating the activity of running or cycling or swimming? No. Rather, the interpretation is that
in order to engage in this one hour, three times per week set of sessions of cardiovascular training,
they had to allocate resources. They had to get up out of a chair. They had to get off the couch.
They had to say no to other potential obligations, social engagements, meals, et cetera, and get to
these exercise classes or sessions that they did with others or alone. Now, an interesting and,
in fact, important aspect of the study is that the compliance with this three hours per week of
cardiovascular training was very high. 85% of individuals engaged in these sessions.
Across the six month period of the study, I should have mentioned that earlier,
the study was carried out over the course of six months. They did not have the opportunity to do
neuroimaging after, say, a week or two weeks. So they imaged these people's brains before and
they imaged these people's brains after the six month period. It's anybody's guess as to whether
or not they would have observed the same or maybe even greater increases at the one month
interval, et cetera. We simply don't know. It was a great cost, both energetic and financial,
to doing these kinds of studies. So they looked at a six month period. But setting all of that aside,
this is a very important study in the context of today's discussion because what it means is that
if we acknowledge that the anterior mid-singulate cortex and the volume of anterior mid-singulate
cortex is related to one's ability to generate tenacity and willpower for any number of different
endeavors, well, then having access to a tool or a protocol that can increase the size of one's
anterior mid-singulate cortex is going to be extremely valuable. So what's the takeaway from
this study? The takeaway from the study is not necessarily that you should be doing three one
hour bouts of cardiovascular training per week for six months to maintain or increase the size of
your anterior mid-singulate cortex. I do think that's the case if you're not already doing
sufficient amounts of cardiovascular training and what constitutes sufficient amounts. Well,
I think there's general agreement now, both between the material that I've covered in our
foundational fitness protocol and in the series on exercise physiology with Dr. Andy Galpin and
in various discussions with Dr. Peter Atia. The general agreement is that everyone should be
getting somewhere between 150 to 200 minutes of so-called zone two low intensity cardiovascular
exercise per week. But the results of this study really point to the idea that we should all be
doing perhaps three hours, but certainly we should all be doing some form of physical exercise.
But for any of us that are interested in increasing tenacity and willpower across domains,
both for cognitive and physical endeavors, emotional endeavors too, for that matter,
that we should be engaging in some exercise. And again, we're going to talk about cognitive
exercise in a moment, but that we should be engaging in some exercise that we are not already
doing. Now that, of course, will lead many people to think, wait, I'm already doing 200 minutes per
week of zone two cardio. How can I add three hours more of cardio? That's not what I'm saying.
What's important to understand about this whole discussion about tenacity and willpower
is that the ability to engage the enter mid-singulate cortex and to build up its volume literally
and increase its activity relies on one critical feature, which is that you have to be in some
degree of resistance, some lack of desire, or I should say lack of reflexive desire or ability
to engage in that behavior. This is super important if you're thinking about tools and protocols to
increase your level of tenacity and willpower. If, for instance, you love cold showers and ice baths,
well, then it's very unlikely that taking cold showers or getting into an ice bath is going to
increase your level of tenacity and willpower further. It might reinforce the tenacity and willpower
that you've already built, but it's not going to increase it further. You need to add something or
subtract something that makes it harder, not easier to engage in or resist a behavior. I want to be
really clear about this in the study that I just described from Coleman colleagues. They took
individuals that were not exercising prior to the study, and those people had to therefore generate
significant amounts of motivation in order to regularly engage in these three one hour per
week episodes of cardiovascular training. Now, the fact that there was no comparable increase
in the volume of the enter mid-singulate cortex or enter white matter tracts in the group
that did the calisthenics and stretching is also important because it implies that activities
that are easier to carry out that don't get the heart rate elevated as much are not going to
create changes in this brain structure that is associated with tenacity and willpower.
There's a nice confirmation of that in the study, in fact, because they observed,
as one would expect, a significant increase in VO2 max in the individuals that were assigned to
the group that did cardiovascular training, but they did not observe a significant increase in VO2
max in the individuals that did three one hour per week sessions of calisthenics and stretching
across the six month period. The important point here is if you're already doing, let's say,
an hour a week of moderate to high intensity cardiovascular training or resistance training,
for that matter, you're going to need to add something in order to get further activation
of this brain hub for tenacity and willpower. Of course, the idea here, or else we wouldn't be
talking about it, is that that activation and that increase in volume in the anterior midsingulate
cortex would then be applicable to other endeavors, for instance, academics or some aspect of your
professional life or relationship life, that you can build up tenacity and willpower as a capacity
within you, or we should say within your anterior midsingulate cortices, but that the route to
activating and increasing the robustness of your anterior midsingulate cortex requires
that you engage in something that you don't really want to do and certainly not something
that you're regularly engaging in already. Remember way back at the beginning of today's
episode, we compared willpower and tenacity to habit execution. Well, this is a simple case
where if you're already doing something, simply continuing to do it might maintain what you've
already got, but it's not going to further build up your tenacity and willpower. So along those
lines, I don't want you to simply take the three one hour cardiovascular sessions per week protocol
that they use within the study and expect it to increase your levels of tenacity and willpower,
unless of course you're currently only doing one hour of cardiovascular training at moderate to
high intensity per week, in which case increasing to two hours may very well increase your anterior
midsingulate cortex and overall level tenacity and willpower. And certainly doing three hours per
week would be expected to do it even further. And I should mention that we can extrapolate from this
study in a meaningful way, I think in a grounded way that's related to mechanism and say, well,
if you for instance, like me can't play a musical instrument or are not bilingual in language that
taking on the challenge, if indeed it's a challenge and for me it would be a challenge perhaps for
you as well to learn an instrument as an adult or to learn a second or maybe a third language.
If that's challenging and in fact that's something that you're resisting doing,
well, then great. It's going to provide an even greater opportunity to engage the activity of the
anterior midsingulate cortex. Remember that study that showed that hard tasks, hard challenges are
what activate the anterior midsingulate cortex. Easy challenges don't, okay? Habits that are
reflexive simply do not. So you have to pick something hard. You have to pick something that's
either physically and or psychologically hard. And of course we want to highlight the fact that
you never want to engage in anything physical or cognitive, emotional or otherwise that is
psychologically or physically damaging to you, right? Because this is something that you're going
to want to maintain or carry out for some period of time. Now along those lines, we could imagine
a huge number of different protocols that one could engage in. But I think there are a couple
of key things that extend across all of those opportunities. First of all, it's clear now
based on our understanding of the anatomical inputs to the anterior midsingulate cortex
that while exercise is great and certainly movement to the body when we don't want to move our body,
aka running, aka weightlifting, aka learning a new skill like dancing or gymnastics or
something of that sort is going to engage this hub for tenacity and willpower the anterior
midsingulate cortex. But there are a number of other opportunities to do that. And we can think
of those in a kind of playful context, but one is both playful and highly functional and applicable.
So for instance, if you already resistance train and you're doing what we now generally agree as a
field is the minimum of six hard working sets per muscle group per week in order to maintain or
build muscle size and strength. Some of you don't want to build muscle size, but everyone should
be trying to maintain muscle strength. There's a very high correlation. We now know between
muscle strength and cognitive function, especially as one gets past 40 years of age,
but even younger. So maintaining neuromuscular function and strength is very, very important.
Even if you don't want to increase muscle size, you can learn how to do that, by the way. We have
zero cost protocols. They're all listed out by going to hubermanlab.com. Check out the series
I did with Dr. Andy Galpin. Check out the key toolkit takeaways from that series also available
at hubermanlab.com. Just put exercise protocols into the search function. But let's say you're
already resistance training, you're already doing cardiovascular training. What can you do to build
up your tenacity and willpower for application in not just that endeavor, but other endeavors?
Well, pick something that you don't want to do. These are what I call in a very non-scientific way
micro sucks. These things suck, but they suck a little bit and they're safe, right? You have to
pick things that are safe for you. But they suck enough that they require some effort. They require
getting over some friction, engaging in something that you don't reflexively want to do. So for
instance, that might be one extra set at the end of a round of three to five sets of a given exercise.
Or it could be, for instance, 100 jumping jacks at the end of what you consider a hard run.
It could be, for instance, finishing out that language lesson and then deciding to do
five minutes of sitting still thinking about the material that you learned when you so desperately
want to just jump on your phone, right? Pick circumstances where the degree of resistance
is very high, where the degree of impulse to do something else than the thing that you know you
need to do is very high and then start applying those on a regular basis. It could be after every
workout. It could be in the middle of the workout. For instance, some people have a really hard time
not looking at their phone during a workout. I like to listen to podcasts or music during a
workout, but I really try and resist text messaging and reading email and things of that sort while
working out. So the harder that becomes, the more I think about it and the more I resist it,
the more presumably activation of the enter mid-singulate cortex I'm getting and that you
would get as well. So these little micro sucks, like, ah, it sucks not to look at the phone right
now. It sucks to do 100 jumping jacks at the end of a run. Of course, if you're excited to do the
100 jumping jacks at the end of the run, that's not going to be a good avenue into activating
and increasing the volume of your enter mid-singulate cortex. Everything we've talked about up until
now supports the statement I just made. Easy tasks, desirable tasks, don't do it. It's the thing you
don't want to do. So imparting these little micro sucks can be very useful. You'll have to think
about what particular micro sucks you incorporate into your exercise routines, your cognitive routines,
and your daily routines and how often. I don't think you need to go completely berserk on this,
doing them all day long, but keep in mind that these are the sorts of behaviors and
resistance of behaviors because again, certain micro sucks might be, you know,
if you're somebody who practices intermittent fasting, you know, we don't want to send you into
the realm of eating disorder, but you know, maybe you really do wait an extra 15 minutes
before your usual first meal time, which for me would really suck. That might even move from
micro suck into macro suck because I like to eat when I'm hungry, but waiting a few extra minutes
for no other reason than allowing oneself to activate that enter mid-singulate cortex circuitry
would be one way to try and build up one's tenacity and willpower. So at some level,
this should all seem pretty logical. It actually doesn't even require a firm understanding of the
underlying neuroscience for it to make sense, right? You want to do something, you resist doing it,
that's building up tenacity and willpower. You don't really want to do something, you do it,
that's building up tenacity and willpower. Well, I do believe in fact, there's a lot of data to
support the fact that our understanding of the mechanisms underneath things like tenacity and
willpower can be very advantageous when trying to carry out these different types of behaviors
to increase tenacity and willpower. Why? Well, today we learned that there's a huge variety of
contexts in which one can activate the enter mid-singulate cortex, which means that it's not
cardiovascular exercise per se. It's not resisting the cookie per se, right? It's not waiting 15 more
minutes to eat or making sure that you sit still and don't look at your phone at the end of a
learning bout and really think about what you learned a little bit more. You know, it really,
really sucks to do that. It's really hard. It creates a lot of agitation. It's not about any one of
those protocols, if you will, per se. Rather, it's about deliberate engagement in the behaviors
that we least want to do in a given moment. Or if you're trying to build up willpower and tenacity
to not engage into certain types of behaviors, it's about our ability to suppress behavioral
action. Now, I do want to highlight the potential hazards of this type of approach to building up
tenacity and willpower and indeed to life. And we can call on the earlier example of eating
disorders as a very salient one, right? There is a way in which all of this can run amuck
and we can get so heavily into stoicism, we can get so heavily into the idea of building up tenacity
and willpower that it takes us into realms that are unhealthy for us psychologically,
emotionally, and or physically. And that's certainly not the goal here. And I certainly
don't want to motivate that type of behavior or resistance of behavior. We should all be seeking
a relationship with life and with goals, etc. That involves, yes, I believe some degree of
activating tenacity and willpower, really finding that fight within us that Parvizian colleagues
found when they stimulated the anterior midsingulate cortex of people, right? All of a sudden they're
like, yep, I'm driving into a storm or there's something about to happen and I'm going to have
to resist. I'm either going to have to do something or resist doing something, but there's something
activated inside of me. I think it's very important that we are all able to garner those resources
and to activate those states within us voluntarily. But I also know from experience and from observing
others and indeed from the literature on the anterior midsingulate cortex as it relates to
eating disorders and other aspects of neurologic and psychiatric challenges,
is that we also need to learn how to turn that off. With that said, the little micro sucks that
we discussed, you know, the addition of 100 jumping jacks at the end of a cardiovascular
training session when you would much rather just shower up and go home, getting into the cold shower
or cold plunge when you absolutely don't want to do it. Well, provided you can do it safely,
that's going to be the best time to do it. If your goal is to build up tenacity and willpower to
say nothing else of the known benefits of things like deliberate cold exposure and exercise like
jumping jacks, etc. There are also entire landscapes of life and academics and sport
that afford us the opportunity to build up tenacity and willpower. I, for instance, can recall
taking my so called qualifying exams in graduate school where they ask you questions until you
say I don't know until you don't know the answer. It's just like that puzzle in the
Balmeister study. They're taking you to the point where you basically can't win. And that turns
out to be a very important lesson that extends beyond the information that they're asking you
about. And of course, every student at the end of their qualifying exam runs off and figures out
the answer to the question that they couldn't get the right answer to. Sometimes there is a right
answer. Sometimes they're not. If the committee is pretty diabolical, they'll give you an impossible
to answer question because there's no answer. But the point being that whether or not it's in martial
arts, whether or not it's in sports, whether or not it's in music, whether or not it's in academics,
whether or not it's in relating to others, there is some value to getting to that point
where you can't solve the puzzle. And I think that's an important message for us to understand and
maybe to incorporate into our tools and protocols that there are some endeavors that have no end
point, right? There's no winning. There's no finish line. And those type of endeavors are
extremely important, extremely important for continually building up our tenacity and willpower.
So much so that we can even take a somewhat 3000 mile view from the top down onto everything we've
talked about today and think about those superagers, those superagers that somehow are able to maintain
the cognitive function of a much younger person. And if you look at the date on superagers and
people similar to them, you'll find are always engaged in some activity that's hard for them.
They're always trying to learn something and they have a sort of playfulness about it.
But they seek out those friction points, both resistance of certain behaviors, right? Trying
to not do certain things, but perhaps more often doing certain things, learning a new skill,
learning pottery, learning music, placing themselves into novel environments that are a little
uncomfortable or a lot uncomfortable, provided that it's safe. So from that standpoint, one
could even entertain the idea that because these people are living much longer than everybody
else, in addition to maintaining the cognitive function of much younger individuals, that perhaps
the inter mid-singulate cortex in its ability to allocate resources to different parts of our
brain and body to meet certain motivational goals is actually associated with this thing that we
call the will to live. Now the concept of the will to live is certainly getting a little bit squishy
for scientists like me who, yes, I'm happy to entertain discussions that relate to psychological
constructs such as tenacity and willpower. But as you've probably noticed, I'm very comfortable
with and very excited about the idea that, okay, maybe it's related somehow to brain energetics
and glucose, maybe not. Certainly I'm on board the idea that beliefs impact our physiology and
physiology impacts our beliefs. I'll Dr. Ali Krum, who was a guest on this podcast previously,
talked about belief and mindset effects, which are very powerful. They change our physiology
literally and the Dweck data that we talked about today. But of course, also that there are brain
areas and circuits that underlie these things that we call tenacity and willpower. So when we get
into a discussion about tenacity and willpower and then find ourselves as we are now talking about
the will to live, I don't think it's going too far to say that when one looks at the data on
longevity, both physical and psychological longevity, it's very clear that they're underlying
physiological explanations, not the least of which is likely to be the maintenance if not growth
over the lifespan of this anterior midsingulate cortex. But also that the people that are achieving
that are continually forging in their environment. They're continually looking for new environments.
They're continually exploring. They are not becoming complacent. They are not becoming sedentary.
They're not existing down at that end of the continuum that we call apathy and depression,
but that they're not existing down there. And they are existing up toward the end of the continuum
that we call tenacity and willpower and engaging motivation to get there. Okay, motivation again
as a verb. But in doing that, that they're reinforcing the very circuits that give rise to
tenacity and willpower. This is what in engineering terms is referred to as a closed loop. It's like
you do a, which leads to B, which leads to C, which feeds back on to a and makes a that much
more likely to occur. It's like turning the little a into a capital A and then turning into a bold
face capital underline a the buildup of neural circuits. So while today we focused a lot on an
individual brain area anterior midsingulate cortex and in many ways I presented it as if it's the
be all end all of tenacity and willpower. It is not the be all end all of tenacity and willpower.
It's our ability to engage the anterior midsingulate cortex that allows us to express tenacity and
willpower. But in this closed loop fashion, it's our ability to express tenacity and willpower that
then feeds back onto that circuit and makes it more robust and more likely to be accessible in the
future when we encounter something that we don't want to do or that we have to resist very strongly
in order to not engage in some sort of behavior or thought pattern. So the big takeaway is that if
you want to increase your tenacity and willpower, you absolutely can. You can do that by triggering
activation of this incredible hub within the brain, the anterior midsingulate cortex for which
there is now a very large amount of evidence is at least central to the whole process of
generating tenacity and willpower. The I absolutely will do that and the no, I absolutely won't do
that. It's the resistance hub. It's the thing that's allocating resources to do the thing that
we don't want to do or that someone's trying to prevent us from doing. It's also the brain area
that's allowing us to resist doing the thing that we want to do or that someone else wants
to do when we decide that's not good for us. We can really be certain based on the psychology
literature, based on the neuroscience literature, and really based on this beautiful literature
that's now emerging that includes the column study, but some other studies as well that perhaps we'll
talk about in a future episode, that we really can build up our capacity for tenacity and willpower.
It's a real thing. And as a final point to this, and indeed as a final protocol, I was very excited
to look into the early release of peer reviewed papers out from Neuron just this last week and
to see that there was a study, albeit in a preclinical model, in an animal model, that explored
what is called stress relief as a natural resilience mechanism. And I won't go into this
study in full detail, especially not now, laid into a slightly long episode, such as this one,
but what the study showed is that when an animal is in a state of despair or a hedonia, a lack of
pleasure, when it's under stress, and then that stress is removed, there's a sense of reward,
there's a sense of well-being that accompanies that release of stress. And that's pretty obvious.
That's something that we've known about for a very long time. But what's interesting about this
study, and they actually talk about this in terms of its applicability, potentially to humans,
is that when we are able to withstand a stress, maybe that stress is school, maybe that stress
is a particular relationship. Again, you never want to do these things in a way that's unhealthy
or dangerous. But when we are able to do that, the relief that we feel afterwards is its own form
of reward that serves to reinforce that whole process of tenacity and willpower that got us
through the stressor. And an interesting thing about this study is that they went on to compound
that reward. They showed that rewarding oneself or having gotten through a stressful episode
actually serves to increase the capacity to get through stressful episodes in the future. In
other words, if you decide to develop certain tools and protocols to increase your levels of
tenacity and willpower, which frankly, I hope that you will at least consider, again, providing you
do it safely, this seems like a very good thing to do for all of us, especially as we age. And
guess what? We're all aging from the time we're born. If you decide to do that, pick something
that's challenging, overcome that challenge. Again, this could be the requirement to engage in a
particular behavior when you don't want to or to resist a particular behavior that you would
otherwise want to engage in. But also, when you've successfully completed that resistance,
when you've engaged that tenacity and willpower and you've activated that anterior mid-singulate
cortex, well, then occasionally, not always, but occasionally providing yourself with a reward
of something that you like. And here it's highly subjective. You'll just have to pick something
that you like, again, something that's hopefully health promoting, not health diminishing,
can serve to further reinforce the behavior that you just engaged in, which was to increase
your tenacity and willpower. And if you listen to the episodes that I've done on dopamine
motivation and drive or on dopamine more generally, you will know that I am not a fan of
rewarding oneself for wins or for engaging to nasty or willpower for that matter on a regular
basis or certainly every time. This is the sort of thing that just randomly every once in a while,
when you've done the hard thing or if you've resisted the thing that was pulling on you,
that you should reward yourself, but of course, reward yourself in healthy and safe ways.
For those of you that are interested in learning more about how to reward
the actions of tenacity and willpower, I'll provide a link to the recently published paper in Neuron
in the show note captions. I will also be doing a toolkit episode that relates to what we covered
today as well as some additional tools gleaned from other papers and resources in the not too
distant future. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion all about tenacity and willpower.
We talked about the idea gleaned from research in the field of psychology
that tenacity and willpower are limited resources and that perhaps again, perhaps
they relate to this concept of ego depletion that relates to this idea that what is depleted
or what's limited in our ability to engage tenacity and willpower somehow relates to
brain energetics and fuel consumption, namely glucose. I also talked about the conflicting
data that argues that if we believe tenacity and willpower are limited and that glucose is
the thing that limits them, well, then that's exactly what happens. So I talked about that
controversy and some of the data that actually reconcile a bit of the differences there.
So in the absence of new data, you'll have to decide for yourself what you believe
about tenacity and willpower. However, it's very important to acknowledge the universal truth,
which is that our tenacity and willpower rides on the tide of autonomic function. That is when
we are sleep deprived, when we are in pain, when we are in emotional pain or when we are distracted,
our tenacity and willpower is diminished, which calls upon all of us to make sure that we're
taking care of our autonomic functions through viewing morning sunlight, getting sufficient
sleep, adequate nutrition, social connections, things that I've covered extensively on previous
episodes. Then we talked about the neural underpinnings of tenacity and willpower and this
absolutely incredible brain structure that we'll call a hub because it's not operating in isolation,
but rather it's getting inputs from lots of different brain areas relate to reward, executive
function, autonomic function, motor planning, goal seeking, et cetera, that we call the
anterior mid-singulate cortex. This phenomenally interesting brain area that seems to be able
to generate this thing that we call tenacity and willpower and that when we engage or express
tenacity and willpower by doing the thing that we least want to do, by not doing the thing that
we most want to do in a given moment, that we actually can build up our anterior mid-singulate
cortex and thereby build up our future capacity to engage the anterior mid-singulate cortex when
we need to call on tenacity and willpower. Then we talked about some of the peer-reviewed data
that shows how that actually can be done where these individuals who were not previously exercising
did a challenging three one-hour sessions per week of cardiovascular training and indeed
their anterior mid-singulate cortex and the connections to and away from it increased in a
way that set them apart from their age-related cohorts. That is, their brains stayed younger,
maybe even got younger, whereas those that did not do the hard thing that didn't engage tenacity
and willpower did not experience the same effect. Then we talked about how those data could be
extended into a number of different realms, such as cognitive learning, learning languages,
learning math, learning art, learning any number of different things or in the physical realm,
engaging in certain types of exercise that one is not already engaging in, adding in a little
bit of additional exercise specifically at a time in which you least want to do that or
extending your fasting period if that's something that you're doing and that you can do healthfully,
simply because it allows you to exercise your anterior mid-singulate cortex,
aka tenacity and willpower. Of course, we highlighted that all of that needs to be done
in the context of psychological and physical safety. We don't want anyone to do things that
are going to be physically damaging to themselves, but if one simply takes the stance of, okay,
what's something that I can do in a moment that will allow me to build up tenacity and willpower?
Well, it's going to be the thing that I least want to do in that moment or the thing that I
least want to resist doing in that moment. To periodically add in those little, what I referred
to as micro-sucks, a very non-scientific, frankly, non-psychological term, but I think we all understand
what it means, little things that we don't want to do, but that if we do them, you can be sure
that you are activating the anterior mid-singulate cortex and thereby increasing the probability,
the likelihood that you can access tenacity and willpower more readily in the future.
So what I've done today is explain the scientific studies in the realm of psychology and neuroscience
that explain what tenacity and willpower are and what allows us to build up our tenacity and willpower
over time. And then it's really up to all of us, to you and to me and everybody else,
to figure out in which particular domains and with which frequency we're going to
decide to build up our tenacity and willpower. So it's clear that tenacity and willpower
are not just resources that we need to call upon from time to time in order to overcome things,
but that indeed calling on our ability and building up our ability for tenacity and willpower
can allow us a much richer enjoyment of life and perhaps can even extend our life by engaging
the will to live. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about the science of tenacity
and willpower and tools and protocols to increase one's ability to access tenacity and willpower.
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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.
Keywords
Anorexia nervosa, Reward pathways, Super-agers, Anterior mid-singulate cortex, Cardiovascular training, Motivation, Neural circuits, Plasticity, Brain activity, Learning, Energy allocation
People
Andrew Huberman, Roy Baumeister, Carol Dweck, David Goggins, Courtney Dewalter, Dr. Feldman Barrett, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, Joe Parvizi
Companies
Organizations and Institutions
National Academy of Sciences, Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford University
References
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In this episode, I discuss neuroscience and psychology studies that address the basis of willpower and tenacity, how they differ from motivation and how we can all increase our levels of willpower and tenacity. I discuss whether willpower is a limited resource, the controversial “ego depletion” theory of willpower and the role that beliefs play in determining our tenacity and willpower. Then, I discuss the neural basis of willpower in the brain and body and how tenacity and willpower relate to sleep, stress, focus, and possibly lifespan. Then, I provide a series of science-supported tools and protocols to increase your level of tenacity and willpower.
For show notes, including referenced articles and additional resources, please visit hubermanlab.com.
Thank you to our sponsors
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Timestamps
(00:00:00) Tenacity & Willpower
(00:01:19) Sponsors: Maui Nui & Helix Sleep
(00:03:49) Tenacity & Willpower vs. Habit Execution; Apathy, Depression & Motivation
(00:10:40) Ego Depletion & Willpower as a Limited Resource; Controversy
(00:19:14) Tool: Autonomic Function, Tenacity & Willpower; Sleep & Stress
(00:28:02) Sponsor: AG1
(00:28:58) Willpower as a Limited Resource (Theory)
(00:35:36) Willpower & Glucose, Brain Energetics
(00:42:44) Beliefs about Willpower & Glucose; Multiple Challenges
(00:52:43) Sponsor: LMNT
(00:54:01) Willpower Brain ‘Hub’; Anorexia Nervosa, Super-Agers
(01:07:15) Anterior Midcingulate Cortex & Brain/Body Communication
(01:14:54) Allostasis, Anterior Midcingulate Cortex Function
(01:25:19) Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex (aMCC), Difficult Tasks & Neuroplasticity
(01:29:30) Tool: Novel Physical Exercise & Brain; Cognitive Exercise
(01:43:43) Tool: “Micro-sucks”, Increase Tenacity/Willpower
(01:50:58) Impossible Tasks, Super-Agers & Learning, Will to Live
(01:57:23) Tool: Rewards & Improving Tenacity/Willpower
(02:01:07) Tenacity & Willpower Recap
(02:05:55) Zero-Cost Support, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Momentous, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter
Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac