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

by Kelly McGonigal

Social proof can interfere with change if we believe that everyone else does whatever behavior we are trying to change.

Do you ever tell yourself that your willpower challenge is no big deal, because it’s the norm?

If so, you may want to challenge thi...

Look for a new “tribe” you ...

Surrounding yourself with people who share your commitment to your goals will make it feel like the norm.

People who imagine how proud they will feel when they accomplish a goal—from quitting smoking to donating blood—are more likely to follow through and succeed.

People are more likely to use condoms when they imagine feeling ashamed if others knew that they had unprotected sex.

Survey research of Chicago men who have paid for sex suggests that this policy works.

We’ve seen again and again that feeling bad leads to giving in—especially when feeling bad takes the form of guilt and shame.

As a preventive measure, shame may work. But once the deed is done, shame is more likely to inspire self-sabotage than self-control.

gamblers who feel the most ashamed following a major loss are the most likely to “chase” the lost money by gambling more and borrowin...

Even when shame is anticipatory, it may fail us when...

Anticipatory shame might be able to keep you from walking into the Cheesecake Factory, but when the temptation is in front of you, it has no power over the promise of reward.

Once your dopamine neurons are firing, feeling bad intensifies your desire and makes you more likely to give in.

Pride, on the other hand, pulls through even in the face of temptation.

Forty percent of participants who imagined how proud they’d be for resisting the Cheesecake Factory cake didn’t take a single bite.

Another reason boils down to biology: Laboratory studies reveal that guilt decreases heart rate variability, our physiological reserve of willpower.

Pride, on the other hand, sustains and even increases this reserve.

For pride to work, we need to believe that others are watching, or that we will have the opportunity to...

Go public with your willpower challenges.

how akhe baba?

Put the basic human need for approval to good use by imagining how proud you will feel when you succeed at your willpower challenge.

When you make a choice you’re proud of, share it with your tribe by updating your Facebook status, Tweeting about it, or—for the Luddites among us—sharing the story in person.

“If shame worked, there’d be no fat people.”

Research shows that being kicked out of the tribe drains willpower.

For example, after people are socially rejected,29 they are less likely to resist the temptation of freshly baked cookies, and they give ...

Studies show that the more racial minorities are exposed to prejudice, the less s...

Anytime we feel excluded or disrespected, we are at greater risk for giving i...

Rather than shame people for their willpower failures, we would do far better by offering social sup...

You don’t have to conquer your willpower challenge alone. Is there a friend, family member, or coworker who could join you in your willpower goals? You don’t have to have the same goals; just checking in and encouraging each other can provide a boost of social support to your self-control.

The student who e-mailed me months later said that the sole thing that kept her going that first week after the class ended was knowing she was going to have to tell this stranger whether or not she had kept her word.

To a remarkable degree, our brains incorporate the goals, beliefs, and actions of other people into our decisions. When we are with other people, or simply thinking about them, they become one more “self” in our minds competing for self-control. The flip side is also true: Our own actions influence the actions of countless other people, and each choice we make for ourselves can serve as inspiration or temptation for others.

“I won’t” power fails miserably when it’s applied to the inner world of thoughts and feelings.

Wegner has even shown that suppressing thoughts about a crush while you are awake increases the likelihood of dreaming about them—more

When a thought becomes more frequent and harder to pull yourself away from, you will naturally assume that it is an urgent message that you should pay attention to.

Studies of brain activation confirm that as soon as you give participants permission to express a thought they were trying to suppress, that thought becomes less primed and less likely to intrude into conscious awareness.

Studies show that the more you try to suppress negative thoughts, the more likely you are to become depressed.

The more depressed people try to block out distressing thoughts, the more depressed they get.

People who try to suppress their fear before giving a public speech not only feel more anxious, but also have higher heart rates

He has found that people with social anxiety are worse at controlling their thoughts than the average person,

The goal is not to get rid of the anxiety and self-doubt, but to develop a trust that they can handle these difficult thoughts and feelings.

If they learn that there is no inner experience that they need to protect themselves from, they can find more freedom in the outer world.

He teaches them that if they don’t fight the anxiety, it will naturally run its course.

Even as the anxiety sufferers gave the negative thoughts their full attention, they were less upset by them.

The opposite of thought suppression is accepting the presence of the thought—not believing it.

Trying to avoid unwanted feelings often leads to self-destructive behavior, whether it’s a procrastinator trying to avoid anxiety, or a drinker trying to avoid feeling alone.

the students who gave up thought control had the fewest cravings for chocolate.

The program doesn’t hand out a list of forbidden foods, and it doesn’t focus on cutting calories. Instead, it emphasizes how foods can create health and provide pleasure.

Studies of this approach show that turning “I won’t” into “I will” works. Two-thirds of the participants who have been followed lost weight and maintained that loss at a sixteen-month follow-up. (Compare that with the results of your most recent diet; I believe it takes the average dieter sixteen days to be back where he or she started.)

If you focus on what you want to do, instead of what you don’t want to do, you sidestep the dangers of ironic rebound.

Giving their cravings their full attention helped them take positive steps toward quitting smoking.