The Willpower Instinct Quotes

“e-mail addict,”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“what we think other people do matters even more than what they actually do.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“What a relief, I’m just like everyone else.” 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?”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“we include other people in our sense of self, their choices influence our choices.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“when we think about people we love, respect, and feel similar to, our brains treat them more like us than like not us.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“our immune system only rejects the goals and behavior of other people if it recognizes those other people as “not us.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“Social closeness matters more than geographic closeness.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“Social epidemics—like the spread of obesity or smoking—follow a pattern of complex contagion . It is not enough to come into contact with a person who is a “carrier” of the behavior. Your relationship to that person matters.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“Research shows that thinking about someone with good self-control can increase your own willpower. Is there someone who can serve as a willpower role model for your challenge?”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“When we observe evidence of other people ignoring rules and following their impulses, we are more likely to give in to any of our own impulses.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“It is as if feeling disconnected from our future selves gives us permission to ignore the consequences of our actions. In contrast, feeling connected to our future selves protects us from our worst impulses.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“Strengthening your future-self continuity can do more than fatten your savings—it can help you with any willpower challenge. High future-self continuity seems to propel people to be the best version of themselves now.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“future-self continuity”—the degree to which you see your future self as essentially the same person as your current self.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“When it comes to our own self-control, we need to be careful about what we expect from our future selves. But when it comes to getting other people to commit their money, time, or effort, you can take advantage of the future-self bias by asking them to commit far in advance.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“Without the internal cues of disgust and anxiety, we guess wrong about what we will be willing to do in the future.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“By waiting for his future fearless self, he was guaranteeing he’d have something to really be afraid of.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“The future self keeps being pushed into the future, like a deus ex machina 24 that will emerge to save us from our present selves in the very last act. We put off what we need to do because we are waiting for someone else to show up who will find the change effortless.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“Thinking so highly of our future selves would be fine if we could really count on our future selves to behave so nobly. But more typically, when we get to the future, our ideal future self is nowhere to be found, and our same old self is left making the decisions.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“we are more likely to save our present selves from anything too stressful, but burden our future selves like we would a stranger.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“We often idealize them, expecting our future selves to do what our present selves cannot manage. Sometimes we mistreat them, burdening them with the consequences of our present selves’ decisions. Sometimes we simply misunderstand them, failing to realize that they will have the same thoughts and feelings as our present selves.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“most people are loss-averse—that is, we really don’t like to lose something we already have.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“When “never again” seems too overwhelming a willpower challenge to tackle, use the ten-minute delay rule to start strengthening your self-control.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“Do ten minutes, then you can quit.” When your ten minutes are up, give yourself permission to stop—although you may find that once you get started, you’ll want to keep going.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“Not being able to see the immediate reward made it more abstract and less exciting to the reward system. This helped the students make a rational choice based on mental calculations, not primal feelings.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“But we humans have all sorts of mental tricks for convincing ourselves that the time to resist temptation is tomorrow—and so we of the gigantic prefrontal cortices find ourselves giving in again and again to immediate gratification.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“self-criticism backfires as a strategy for self-control. Like other forms of stress, it drives you straight to comfort coping, whether that’s drowning your sorrows at the nearest dive bar, or lifting your spirits with a Visa-sponsored shopping spree.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“The worse a person felt about how much they drank the night before, the more they drank that night and the next. The guilt was driving them back to the bottle.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“the more horrifying the images, the more they will prompt smokers to relieve their anxiety by smoking. However, these images may be quite effective at preventing people from taking up the habit, or strengthening a smoker’s intention to quit.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“as a smoker’s brain encodes the words “WARNING: Cigarettes cause cancer” and grapples with awareness of his own mortality, another part of his brain starts screaming, “Don’t worry, smoking a cigarette will make you feel better!”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It

“Stress triggers cravings and makes dopamine neurons even more excited by any temptation in sight.”
― Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It