Why Willpower Alone Won’t Work
Prefer to listen? Find ep. 111 wherever you get your podcasts.
Imagine this:
It’s Wednesday evening, it’s six o’clock, your boss has been a dick all day, and your colleagues are incompetent to say the least.
The kids are loud, and the house is a mess. Your other half is out, and you’ve got to make sure they do their homework, make dinner, tidy up, and put the ferals to bed.
You look down, and suddenly there’s a large glass of wine in your hand — and you can’t even remember deciding to pour it.
47% of Low No Drinkers replied to a 2025 poll to say that the hardest part about moderating in midlife was breaking decades of habit.
It’s been 20, 30 or even 40 years since you started experimenting with alcohol.
You’ve tried wines, whiskies and wheat beers. You know your porters from your perries and your liquors from your liqueurs.
And then, at the ripe old age of 42, you suddenly decide that you want to start making different choices, but two weeks in, it just doesn’t seem to be sticking.
Of course not!
You spent decades building the habits that brought you here today; it’s going to take more than a fortnight to start making meaningful change.
What Is A Habit?
Habits are simply learned behaviours. In the most basic terms, you’ve learned that when a trigger occurs, you take a specific action and that leads to a desired reward.
In (slightly) more detail:
Habits occur in three parts:
Trigger – From our earlier example, it could have been any one of the many stressors on the list, but for ease, let’s go with a bad day at work.
Action – The bit you’re familiar with, having a drink.
Reward – The outcome you desire, a reward of some sort, in this instance, relaxation.
The problem with habits is that they’re actually a super-efficient, energy-saving service provided to you by your brain.
The average adult makes something like 35,000 decisions a day. If every one of those were to be a conscious thought process weighing up all possible pros and cons, you’d likely never make it out of the house in the morning.
When it comes to your decades-old drinking patterns, your brain is just trying to be efficient. It knows:
- When I’m feeling stressed (trigger)
- Have wine (action)
- Feel better (reward)
And what makes this efficient cycle so hard to break is that two parts out of three aren’t wrong.
We will always have triggers – and unfortunately, the older we get, the more responsibilities we have, the more stressors we have to choose from.
And we will always need the reward. Damn right you want to relax. You’ve most certainly earned some downtime after dealing with ‘those people’ all day.
So that leaves you with only one area that you can control: the action.
And after 20+ years of the same pattern, it’s basically running on autopilot.
Want to tackle those stress triggers we just talked about head-on? The 4 Week Mindful Drinking Reset has an entire week dedicated to stress management and habit change—exactly what you need to break that automatic wine-pouring cycle. lownodrinker.com/4weekreset
So what can you do?
It’s time to put some effort in – yep, whether you’re a fan of RuPaul, Rihanna or Dolly – they all want you to do one thing: work!
And I know you don’t want to. You’re tired. You just want to sit down and get some peace.
But you also want a better quality of life, fewer hangovers, and a healthier environment (both inside and out) and just like you tell your kids, if you want something, you’ve got to put the effort in.
The hard part is that stress makes everything more difficult.
When you’re stressed after a crappy day at work, you’re more likely to default to automatic behaviours.
Your cortisol levels rise, which affects both your decision-making and impulse control, leading you to prioritise immediate reward over long-term benefits.
But if you’re ready to make some real change, practice this 3-step method for effective habit change:
How to Step Out of Autopilot
Step One. However you can, reduce the quantity or intensity of the life circumstances that cause you stress (easier said than done, I know, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t include it).
You can’t make your kids behave perfectly, no matter how large your ‘Mum/Dad of the Year’ trophy is. They are uncontrollable human beings who’ll frequently do annoying things that stress you out.
You can’t stop your boss from being a dick, even if you’ve done brilliant work. They’ve got their own stress to deal with, and you know which way down the hill it rolls.
And you can’t help that you’ve got ageing parents who need more support than they used to.
All these things are just going to happen. There’s nothing you can do about them.
The only thing you have control over is how you react to them.
When I say reduce the intensity of stressors, I really mean: how you choose to react to these situations.
Getting angry, overwhelmed, frustrated, and panicking doesn’t actually help you achieve anything… ever. Think about it, you know I’m right.
So focus on what does help instead. What you can do. What is still in your control? The first thing on that list is how you choose to react.
Step Two. It’s well documented that as we age, brain plasticity – the ability to learn and adapt to newness – decreases (yay ageing!).
But thanks to modern science, it has now been proven that lifelong neuroplasticity is possible – in other words:
You can teach an old dog new tricks.
So step two is all about identifying a new action that kicks in once your trigger has been set in motion.
Movement is the body’s natural stress reliever.
You don’t have to get match fit. A simple walk around the block, dancing to your favourite songs (which also triggers positive neural connections) or a lively HIIT session can all help to naturally alleviate stress.
Or maybe movement really isn’t your thing, fine, try something completely different:
- Learn to speak Klingon
- Start a 1000-piece jigsaw of a sandy beach
- Try those weird alcohol-free drinks you got last month when you were feeling empowered, and start a ‘good, bad and downright awful’ catalogue of them
- Organise your photo album (come on, we’re old, I know you still have one)
- I hear War & Peace is supposed to be a good read…
The trick here is trial and error; some things will work, most won’t. Sorry. Like I said earlier, you’ve got to put the work in to figure out what works for you.
But I promise it’ll be worth it when it sticks.
Step three. Plan ahead. Although in time they will get weaker, your triggers aren’t likely to disappear. So the best thing you can do is to be prepared.
Once you’ve identified what your new actions are, don’t leave it to chance that you’ll have them to hand when you need them.
If it’s exercise, make sure you’ve always got your favourite sports bra ready to roll (you too chaps).
If it’s low/no drinks, get a few different styles ordered in and keep them cold so there’s no waiting.
If it’s phoning a friend, make sure they know you’ve assigned them designated stress-relief status so they know that when you call they should pick up the phone and get ready with the laughs.
Will all of these work every time? Nope. But as with all things in moderation, it’s about progress, not perfection.
Preparation Beats Willpower
When you’re looking to decrease your alcohol intake rather than eliminate it altogether, there will be times when you drink when really you’d rather you didn’t, but the good news is there’s more room for self-forgiveness.
The real skill here is in the ability to learn from your actions and to iterate on new behaviour for the next time you need it.
Relying on willpower alone at the end of a long day or when you’re emotionally drained is not going to work – especially if you’ve had to put the majority of yours into not telling Gary from accounts exactly what you think of his claims form process when all you want is a bloody biro!
By understanding exactly what’s going on and why those habitual patterns keep arising, you’re well on the way to taking back some of the control that you so rightly deserve.
And one last thing: we’ve focused a lot on stress here, but there are, of course, other triggers that might set you off on a path of habitual behaviour that you’d rather change. But whether it’s stress, boredom, celebration, or just a really hard hump day, the same approach applies. It’s not about willpower; it’s about preparation.
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