Kelly McGonigal

speaker

787 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 24 Jul

Kelly McGonigal’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The School of Greatness · The Real Reason Stress Is Hurting You | Kelly McGonigal · 24 Jul 2026 podcast

I'm not even going to fill it in because I don't want to go there.

A lot of people define willpower as don't do this, don't do that, always do this, always do that.

It's like there's a tablet somewhere that said the commandments of being a good human being, and that's it.

That's what willpower is.

You must never eat gluten.

I don't know, whatever it is.

No.

Willpower is about being...

Being in control of your choices that reflects who and what you care about.

So absolutely, part of willpower is you have to get clear about your values and your goals, the roles and relationships that matter.

I don't consider it willpower if you're able to suppress every desire or you're able to force yourself to do stuff you don't really want to do because you think that you should.

That's something completely different.

And then once you're clear about what you care about, then you get to play with all of these sort of psychological tricks and tools to support you, like lowering your standards.

So too often people think if I'm going to, let's say you want to change what you eat in a certain way that you believe will make you healthier or give you more energy or prevent the recurrence of cancer, let's say, and you've got some data and you've got some ideas and it's really hard.

You don't have to change everything tomorrow.

You make one choice today that is consistent with your overall vision.

And it is amazing the upward spiral you can create when that's the standard you set for yourself, that you look for opportunities to make any choice that's consistent with your goal or your value.

And then you start to experience the benefits of it, the actual payoff.

You feel a sense of pride or gratitude to yourself.

It changes how other people see you and they start creating situations and environments that support your goals.

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