And hello to you and welcome to the Richard Nichols podcast, the Personal Development

Podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate and motivate you to be the best you can be.

I'm psychotherapist Richard Nichols, and today you'll learn a little bit about willpower.

And if you're ready, we'll start the show.

Hey, hey, hey, happy new year. How are you doing? The first week back to work after a bit of time off

at Christmas is often a tough week for people I've found over the years.

I've seen it in clients and I've certainly seen it in myself, to be honest.

And a lot of people are going to be going back to work on Monday and then by Friday, probably you're really going to be feeling the strain.

And if that's you, I hope this weekend

refreshes you and you can feel a bit more determined and ready to go next week, rather than

feeling the pull of social media every 10 minutes or some leftover Christmas chocolate every 30 seconds.

A lot of people messaged me throughout last year asking for an

episode about willpower and self-control. And I thought I'd done more episodes on it before than

I have, because I've done quite a few bits on Patreon about it, but I couldn't find very much

for the public when I had a little search. I think I did something back in 2020. But I thought I'd go into it

a little bit more today because this is a good time of year to try and improve our self-control

and also a good time to notice just how hard it is. If your house is anything like mine,

it's still full of leftover Christmas chocolate.

And I'm constantly being reminded of those old marshmallow experiments that pop up in self-help

books a lot that Walter Mitchell at Stunford University did with kids to test their self-control.

This was a while ago, and not surprisingly, when you think about it,

they don't have quite the same effect as they used to when they're replicated, which is interesting.

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