The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

by Kelly McGonigal

There is always a difference between what is difficult and what is impossible

Physical exhaustion is a trick played on the body by the mind.

It's just human nature. We resist rules imposed by others for our own good. If you try to impose those rules on yourself...

Even if you aren’t turning your willpower challenges into measures of your moral worth, it’s still possible to fall into the trap of moral licensing. That’s because there’s one thing all Americans instinctively moralize. No, not sex. Progress!

Ayelet Fishbach, professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and Ravi Dhar, professor at the Yale School of Management, have shown that making progress on a goal motivates people to engage in goal-sabotaging behavior.

Eighty-five percent of the self-congratulating dieters chose the chocolate bar over the apple, compared with only 58 percent of dieters who were not reminded of their progress.

In the moment of temptation, you need your higher self to argue more loudly than the voice of self-indulgence.

Getting your files organized may satisfy the part of you that wants to work, liberating the part of you that wants to watch the game on TV.

Because it’s such a relief to make that list, we mistake the satisfaction of identifying what needs to be done with actual effort toward our goals.

(Or, as one of my students said, he loves productivity seminars because they make him feel so productive—never

Quote: Loving productivity seminars!

Progress can be motivating, and even inspire future self-control, but only if you view your actions as evidence that you are committed to your goal.

In other words, you need to look at what you have done and conclude that you must really care about your goal, so much so that you want to do even more to reach it.

A simple shift in focus leads to a very different interpretation of their own actions—“I did that because I wanted to,” not “I did that, great, now I can do what I really want!”

This relates completely or I should say correlates completely with my recommended change in mindset from “what do I have to do,” or “God I have to”… To… "What do I want to create?"

But would you believe that the healthy items on the menu actually made you more likely to order the cheeseburger and fries?

How can this be? Sometimes the mind gets so excited about the opportunity to act on a goal, it mistakes that opportunity with the satisfaction of having actually accomplished the goal.