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April 10 - August 8, 2019
Slow down your breathing to four to six breaths per minute to shift into the physiological state of self-control.
Welcome to one of the most robust, if troubling, findings from the science of self-control:
Researchers have found that self-control is highest in the morning and steadily deteriorates over the course of the day.
The first scientist to systematically observe and test the limits of willpower was Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University with a long-standing reputation for studying puzzling phenomena.
This week, pay attention to when you have the most willpower, and when you are most likely to give in. Do you wake up with willpower and steadily drain it?
If you never seem to have the time and energy for your “I will” challenge, schedule it for when you have the most strength.
Neuroscientists have found that with each use of willpower, the self-control system of the brain becomes less active.
The participants who drank sugar-sweetened lemonade showed improved self-control, while the self-control of those who drank the placebo lemonade continued to deteriorate.
Sugar is your new best friend. Eating a candy bar or drinking soda can be an act of self-control! (Or at least restoring self-control.)
If sugar were truly the secret to more willpower, I’m sure I’d have a runaway bestseller on my hands and a lot of eager corporate sponsors.
Why, then, does the brain’s increased energy consumption during self-control seem to deplete willpower so quickly?
University of South Dakota researchers X. T. Wang, a behavioral economist, and Robert Dvorak, a psychologist, have proposed an “energy budget” model of self-control.
burn. In the long term, blood sugar spikes and crashes can interfere with the body’s and brain’s ability to use sugar—meaning that you could end up with high blood sugar, but low energy (as is the case for the millions of Americans with type 2 diabetes9).
Most psychologists and nutritionists recommend a low-glycemic diet—that is, one that helps you keep your blood sugar steady.
Challenge the self-control muscle by asking people to control one small thing that they aren’t used to controlling.
The second group was told to avoid swearing and to say “yes” instead of “yeah.”
feeling disrespected by their partner,
The important “muscle” action being trained in all these studies isn’t the specific willpower challenge of meeting deadlines, using your left hand to open doors, or keeping the F-word to yourself. It’s the habit of noticing what you are about to do, and choosing to do the more difficult thing instead of the easiest.
• Strengthen “I Won’t” Power: Commit to not swearing (or refraining from any habit of speech), not crossing your legs when you sit, or using your nondominant hand for a daily task like eating or opening doors.
• Strengthen “I Will” Power: Commit to doing something every day (not something you already do) just for the practice of building a habit and not making excuses. It could be calling your mother, meditating for five minutes, or finding one thing in your house that needs to be thrown out or recycled.
Strengthen Self-Monitoring: Formally keep track of something you don’t usually pay close attention to. This could be your spending, what you eat, or how much time you spend online or watching TV. You do...
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When you’re trying to make a big change or transform an old habit, look for a small way to practice self-control that strengthens your willpower, but doesn’t overwhelm it completely.
When your willpower is running low, find renewed strength by tapping into your want power.
1. How will you benefit from succeeding at this challenge? What is the payoff for you personally? Greater health, happiness, freedom, financial security, or success?
2. Who else will benefit if you succeed at this challenge? Surely there are others who depend on you and are affected by your choices. How does your behavior influence your family, friends, coworkers, employees or employer, and community? How would your success help them?
3. Imagine that this challenge will get easier for you over time if you are willing to do what is difficult now. Can you imagine what your life will be like, and how you will feel about yourself, as you make progress on this challenge? Is some discomfort no...
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this week, ask yourself which motivation holds the most power for you in that moment.
Sometimes our strongest motivation is not what we think it is, or think it should be. If you’re trying to change a behavior to please someone else or be the right kind of person, see if there is another “want” that holds more power for you.
The psychologists who ran this study suggest that people who are willpower-depleted cannot be counted on to make good decisions for society.
limits. Like a muscle, our willpower follows the rule of “Use it or lose it.”
Self-control is like a muscle. It gets tired from use, but regular exercise makes it stronger.
Exercise your self-control muscle by picking one thing to do (I will power) or not do (I won’t power)
find your biggest want power—the motivation that gives you strength when you feel weak—bring it to mind whenever you find yourself most tempted to give in or give up.
In some cases, we are the victims of our own self-control success.
By seeing how we give ourselves permission, we can also discover how to keep ourselves on track.
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.
Whenever we have conflicting desires, being good gives us permission to be a little bit bad.
And if the only thing motivating your self-control is the desire to be a good enough person, you’re going to give in whenever you’re already feeling good about yourself.
And so 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.
To avoid the moral licensing trap, it’s important to separate the true moral dilemmas from the merely difficult.
By thinking about exercise as earning food, Cheryl was undermining her goal to lose weight.
“How committed do you feel to your goal?” are not tempted by the conflicting behavior.
The next time you find yourself using past good behavior to justify indulging, pause and remember the why.
would you believe that the healthy items on the menu actually made you more likely to order the cheeseburger and fries?
This illustrates a fundamental mistake we make when thinking about our future choices. We wrongly but persistently expect to make different decisions tomorrow than we do today.
Do you actually do what you said you would, or does the cycle of “indulge today, change tomorrow” begin again?
So instead of asking, “Do I want to eat this candy bar now?” ask yourself, “Do I want the consequences of eating a candy bar every afternoon for the next year?”
This week, see if you can catch yourself in the act of handing out a halo to something that undermines your goals.
When a halo effect is getting in the way of your willpower challenge, look for a the most concrete measure (e.g., calories, cost, time spent or wasted) of whether a choice is consistent with your goals.
We need to feel like the kind of person who wants to do the right thing. Moral licensing turns out to be, at its core, an identity crisis. We only reward ourselves for good behavior if we believe that who we really are is the self that wants to be bad.
