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

by Kelly McGonigal

The brain’s habit of treating the future self like another person has major consequences for self-control. Studies show that the less active your brain’s self-reflection system is when you contemplate your future self, the more likely you are to say “screw you” to future you, and “yes” to immediate gratification.

Kivetz calls this condition hyperopia—a fancy way of saying farsighted. Most people, as we’ve seen, are perpetually nearsighted. When the promise of reward is in front of their eyes, they cannot see past it to the value of delaying gratification. People who suffer from hyperopia are chronically farsighted—they cannot see the value of giving in today. This is as big a problem as being nearsighted; both lead to disappointment and unhappiness in the long run.

Over time, the least-fit cadet in a squadron gradually brought down the fitness levels of the other cadets. In fact, once a cadet arrived at the academy, the fitness level of the least-fit cadet in his squadron was a better predictor of his fitness performance than that cadet’s own pre-academy fitness level.

When Christakis and Fowler looked at participants’ weight over time, they saw what looked like a real epidemic. Obesity was infectious, spreading within families and from friend to friend. When a friend became obese, a person’s own future risk of becoming obese increased by 171 percent.

Both bad habits and positive change can spread from person to person like germs, and nobody is completely immune.

But if the reports were honest, this study suggests a new strategy for discouraging unhealthy behavior: Just convince people it’s the habit of a group they would never want to be a member of.

If we want people to have more willpower, we need to make them believe that self-control is the norm.

The more we hear these kinds of statistics, the more firmly we start to believe that this is what people do, and it’s OK if I do it too. When you are like 86 percent of other Americans, why would you need to change?

Learning that we are “normal” can even change our perception of ourselves. For example, as a nation, the fatter we get, the thinner we feel.

Marketing researchers have found that people are much more likely to buy green products in public than in the privacy of online shopping. Buying green is a way to show others how altruistic and thoughtful we are, and we want the social credit for our high-minded purchases. Without the anticipated status boost, most people will skip the opportunity to save a tree.

As Deb Lemire, president of the Association for Size Diversity and Health, says, “If shame worked, there’d be no fat people.”

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.

Each time, the mere act of trying not to think about something triggered a paradoxical effect: People thought about it more than when they weren’t trying to control their thoughts, and even more than when they were intentionally trying to think about it.

And just as trying to suppress sad and self-critical thoughts makes depression worse, studies show that thought suppression increases the symptoms of serious anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Traditional therapy for social anxiety disorder focuses on challenging thoughts like “There’s something wrong with me” to get rid of the anxiety. This only makes sense if you believe that trying not to think something works. Goldin takes a very different approach. He teaches social anxiety sufferers to observe and accept their thoughts and feelings—even the scary ones. 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. When a worry comes up, he instructs the anxiety sufferers to notice what they are thinking, feel the anxiety in their body, and then turn their attention to their breathing. If the anxiety persists, he encourages them to imagine their thoughts and emotions dissolving with the breath. He teaches them that if they don’t fight the anxiety, it will naturally run its course.

Erskine suspects that the process of ironic rebound is behind all of our self-sabotaging behavior, from breaking a diet to smoking, drinking, gambling, and having sex (presumably, with someone you’re not supposed to be swapping DNA with).

The vast majority of dieters not only regain the weight they lose while dieting, but gain more. In fact, dieting is a better way to gain weight than to lose it. People who go on diets gain more weight over time than people who start at the same weight but never diet.

(And, if you recall, dieting also increases your chances of cheating on your spouse—though you won’t see any of these side effects listed on your Jenny Craig contract.)

Because it is possible to temporarily push away a thought, we assume that the strategy is itself fundamentally sound. Our eventual failure to control our thoughts and behavior is interpreted as evidence that we didn’t try hard enough to suppress—not that suppression doesn’t work. This leads us to try harder, setting ourselves up for an even stronger rebound.

As you begin to experiment with the power of acceptance, it’s important to remember that the opposite of suppression is not self-indulgence. All of the successful interventions we’ve seen in this chapter—accepting anxiety and cravings, ending restrictive dieting, and surfing the urge—teach people to give up a rigid attempt to control their inner experiences.

Trying to control our thoughts and feelings has the opposite effect of what most people expect. And yet rather than catch on to this, most of us respond to our failures with more commitment to this misguided strategy. We try even harder to push away thoughts and feelings we don’t want to have in a vain attempt to keep our minds safe from danger. If we truly want peace of mind and better self-control, we need to accept that it is impossible to control what comes into our mind. All we can do is choose what we believe and what we act on.

Self-control is a matter of understanding these different parts of ourselves, not fundamentally changing who we are. In the quest for self-control, the usual weapons we wield against ourselves—guilt, stress, and shame—don’t work. People who have the greatest self-control aren’t waging self-war. They have learned to accept and integrate these competing selves.

If there is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention. It’s training the mind to recognize when you’re 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. It’s realizing that the promise of reward doesn’t always deliver, and that your future self is not a superhero or a stranger. It’s seeing what in your world—from sales gimmicks to social proof—is shaping your behavior. It’s staying put and sensing a craving when you’d rather distract yourself or give in. It’s remembering what you really want, and knowing what really makes you feel better. Self-awareness is the one “self ” you can always count on to help you do what is difficult, and what matters most. And that is the best definition of willpower I can think of.