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November 29, 2017 - January 23, 2018
To say no when you need to say no, and yes when you need to say yes, you need a third power: the ability to remember what you really want.
عجب جملهی ناموسیه این خداوکیلی.
Saeed Kamranfar and 2 other people liked this
Back to modern-day life (you can keep your opposable thumbs, of course, though you may want to put on a little more clothing). Willpower has gone from being the thing that distinguishes us humans from other animals to the thing that distinguishes us from each other. We may all have been born with the capacity for willpower, but some of us use it more than others. People who have better control of their attention, emotions, and actions are better off almost any way you look at it. They are happier and healthier. Their relationships are more satisfying and last longer. They make more money and
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For at least one day, track your choices.
meditate.
Anxiety, anger, depression, and loneliness are all associated with lower heart rate variability and less self-control.
If we are serious about tackling the biggest challenges that face us, we need to take more seriously the tasks of managing stress and taking better care of ourselves.
When our willpower challenges overwhelm us, it’s tempting to assign the blame to who we are: weak, lazy, willpowerless wimps. But more often than not, our brains and bodies are simply in the wrong state for self-control.
To succeed at our willpower challenges, we need to find the state of mind and body that puts our energy toward self-control, not self-defense.
People who use their willpower seem to run out of it.
Researchers have found that self-control is highest in the morning and steadily deteriorates over the course of the day.
If you never seem to have the time and energy for your “I will” challenge, schedule it for when you have the most
Importantly, it wasn’t the absolute level of blood sugar that predicted a participant’s choices—it was the direction of change.
yet, people who are free to choose anything most often choose against their long-term interests.
If we want to strengthen self-control, we may need to think about how we can best support the most exhausted version of ourselves—and not count on an ideal version of ourselves to show up and save the day.
این جمله زیباست.
Most people don’t question their impulses when they’re feeling virtuous, and some people’s positions permanently remind them of their virtue.
Why are we suddenly talking about discrimination and sex scandals instead of dieting and procrastination? Because what is a willpower challenge if not a battle between virtue and vice? Anything you moralize becomes fair game for the effect of moral licensing. If you tell yourself that you’re “good” when you exercise and “bad” when you don’t, then you’re more likely to skip the gym tomorrow if you work out today. Tell yourself you’re “good” for working on an important project and “bad” for procrastinating, and you’re more likely to slack off in the afternoon if you made progress in the morning.
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Anything that makes us feel warm and fuzzy about our virtue—even just thinking about doing something good—can license us to follow our impulses.
Most generously, we even give ourselves credit for what we could have done, but didn’t.
want and avoiding what we don’t want. Moralizing a behavior makes us more, not less, likely to feel ambivalent about it.
when you tell yourself that exercising, saving money, or giving up smoking is the right thing to do—not something that will help you meet your goals—you’re less likely to do it consistently.
بسیار عالی :)
To get out of this licensing trap, she needed to see exercise as a necessary step to achieving her goal, and healthier eating as a second, independent step she also had to take.
Don’t mistake a goal-supportive action for the goal itself.
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.
Progress can cause us to abandon the goal we’ve worked so hard on because it shifts the power of balance between our two competing selves.
Psychologists call this goal liberation. The goal you’ve been suppressing with your self-control is going to become stronger, and any temptation will become more tempting.
the feeling instead of sticking to our goals. 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.
When people who have taken a positive step toward meeting a goal—for example, exercising, studying, or saving money—are asked, “How much progress do you feel you have made on your goal?” they are more likely to then do something that conflicts with that goal, like skip the gym the next day, hang out with friends instead of studying, or buy something expensive. In contrast, people who are asked, “How committed do you feel to your goal?” are not tempted by the conflicting behavior.
REMEMBER THE WHY
How do you focus on commitment instead of progress? A study by researchers at Hong Kong University of Science and the University of Chicago provides one strategy. When they asked students to remember a time they turned down a temptation, moral licensing ensued, and 70 percent took the next opportunity to indulge. But when they also asked the participants to remember why they had resisted, the licensing effect disappeared—69 percent resisted temptation. Like magic, the researchers had discovered a simple way to boost self-control and help the students make a choice consistent with their overall
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The next time you find yourself using past good behavior to justify indulging, pa...
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When the salad was an option, the percentage of participants choosing the least healthy and most fattening item on the menu increased.
they asked a whole bunch of people to predict, “How many times per week (on average) will you exercise in the next month?” Then they asked another group of people the same question, with one important preface: “In an ideal world, how many times per week will you exercise in the next month?” The two groups showed no differences in their estimates—people
When you want to change a behavior, aim to reduce the variability in your behavior, not the behavior itself.
The more we care about a particular virtue, the more vulnerable we are to ignoring how a “virtuous” indulgence might threaten our long-term goals.
going green doesn’t always lead to virtuous action. The study found that people who actually chose to purchase an eco-friendly product were more likely to then cheat on a test that paid them for each correct answer. They were also more likely to steal extra money out of the envelope they were told to collect their payout from. Somehow the virtue of green shopping justified the sins of lying and stealing.
Moving beyond the traps of moral licensing requires knowing that who we are is the self that wants the best for us—and the self that wants to live in line with our core values.
Thinking in terms of “right” and “wrong” instead of remembering what we really want will trigger competing impulses and license self-sabotaging behavior.
the promise of happiness—not the direct experience of happiness—is the brain’s strategy to keep you hunting, gathering, working, and wooing.
One study found that playing a video game led to dopamine increases equivalent to amphetamine use—and it’s this dopamine rush that makes both so addictive.
Importantly, even if the reward never arrives, the promise of reward—combined with a growing sense of anxiety when we think about stopping—is enough to keep us hooked.
When dopamine is released by one promise of reward, it also makes you more susceptible to any other kind of temptation.
Marketing researchers at Stanford University have shown that food and drink samples make shoppers hungrier and thirstier, and put shoppers in a reward-seeking state of mind.
Amazingly, the fish bowl technique works even better than paying patients for passing their drug tests—despite the fact that patients end up with far less “reward” from the fish bowl than they would from guaranteed payments.
We mistake the experience of wanting for a guarantee of happiness.
the most commonly used strategies for dealing with stress are those that activate the brain’s reward system: eating, drinking, shopping, watching television, surfing the Web, and playing video games.
We’ll also need to give up the self-control strategies—like guilt and self-criticism—that only make us feel worse.
negative emotions like anger, sadness, self-doubt, and anxiety—shifts the brain into a reward-seeking state.
even people who had said they did not like chocolate cake at all suddenly expected that the cake would make them happy.
women worried about their finances shop to cope with their anxiety and depression.
the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside for a walk, meditating
