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Summary written by: John Petrone
"We are born to be tempted, and born to resist.
Self-control is a matter of understanding these different parts of ourselves,
not fundamentally changing who we are."
- The Willpower Instinct1, page 237
A
conflict between two competing goals is the ultimate willpower challenge. We make
countless decisions and trade-offs every day between immediate gratification
and the pursuit of long-term goals.
Kelly
McGonigal’s The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works provides
a solid look at self-discipline and ways to enhance it when we need it the
most. Her book is based on a ten-week course that the award-winning psychology
instructor teaches at Stanford. She includes simple exercises that the reader
can do to gain insight on specific situations or circumstances that could
derail willpower. She believes “the best way to improve self-control is to
understand how you lose control.”3
The
first step to understanding the inner workings of willpower is boosting our
attentiveness and mindfulness.
The Golden Egg
Meditate to enhance self-control
"If
there is a secret to greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the
power of paying attention. It’s training the mind to recognize when you are
making a choice, rather than running on autopilot. It’s noticing how you give
yourself permission to procrastinate, or how you use good behavior to justify
self-indulgence."- The Willpower Instinct, page 237
“How
can you control yourself if you aren’t even aware that there is something to
control?” Before we can take charge of our determination, we need to
recognize when we’re making a choice requiring willpower.
One of
the most effective ways to boost self-awareness is through meditation.
McGonigal points to a study demonstrating improved self-control after only
three hours of meditating. Meditation boosts willpower because it trains the
brain to pause before acting. This pause or break helps boost our attentiveness
as we make decisions throughout the day. “It’s the habit of noticing what you
are about to do, and choosing to do the more difficult thing instead of the
easiest.”
Once
you’ve increased your awareness, watch out for your future self.
Gem #1
Don’t over-commit your future self
"We
think about our future selves like different people. We often idealize them,
expecting our future selves to do what our present selves cannot manage."-
The Willpower Instinct, page 172
The
author makes the distinction between our present and future selves. Since the
brain has a tendency to take the path of least resistance, the Present
Self is interested in immediate gratification. Future
Self has more time, energy, and motivation than present self and
always has your long-term interests in mind. But the problem is that when the
future arrives, we keep postponing it to our future selves again.
“We
put off what we need to do because we are waiting for someone else to show up
who will find the change effortless.” We tell ourselves that we’ll skip our
workouts today but will go tomorrow when we’ll have more energy. The reason we
defer the tough choices to our future selves rather than act on our commitments
is because our future selves don’t feel as real and pressing as our present
self.
One of
her recommendations to alleviate this is to “make choices in advance and from a
clear distance, before your future self is blinded by temptation.” Basically,
make it easier for your future self to act on your rational preferences and
more difficult for your present self to give in to your immediate
gratification.
An
example would be to pre-commit or schedule and prepay for personal training
sessions in advance. Eliminate temptations, such as bringing credit cards in
your wallet when you’re out shopping and only bring a predetermined amount of
cash you plan on spending. Find a way to make immediate gratification
inconvenient and difficult.
An
additional strategy is to use visualization and imagine your future self in
lively detail, enjoying the benefits of the choices or commitments you want to
make. One of the studies she refers to involved non-exercisers imagining a
healthier future version of themselves. Two months later, the people who
visualized were more frequent exercisers compared to the non-visualizers.
“The
more real and vivid the future feels, the more likely you are to make a
decision that your future self won’t regret.”
Gem #2
Be more compassionate
"Giving
in makes you feel bad about yourself, which motivates you to do something to
feel better. And what’s the cheapest, fastest strategy for feeling better?
Often the very thing you feel bad about."- The Willpower Instinct, page
145
Our
brains are programmed to use the promise of reward to alleviate feeling bad.
Why does stress lead to cravings? It stems from the brain’s fight or flight
response and its inclination to protect our body and mind. Stress alters our
brain into a reward-seeking condition. We end up “craving whatever substance or
activity that our brain associates with a promise of reward.”
How do
we avoid this? When faced with stress and failure, increase self-compassion to
boost motivation and self-control. Realize that setbacks are part of being
human and don’t use it as an excuse to indulge further.
Forgiveness
(and not guilt) increases accountability, giving a boost to our self-control.
“Researchers have found that taking a self-compassionate point of view on a
personal failure makes people more likely to take personal responsibility for
their failure than when they take a self-critical point of view.”
Use
effective stress relief strategies, such as exercise and meditation, to feel
better. These stress relievers “boost mood-enhancing brain chemicals like
serotonin,” and help reduce the stress response.
The
exercises and thought-provoking questions posed throughout this book are well
worth the price. Take time to reflect on your choices to gain a better
understanding of your self-control. Pay attention to how you handle willpower
failures. After all, “The motivations we understand are always easier to change
than the influences we cannot see.”
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