The Willpower Instinct

This chapter mainly talked about how the stress and guilty feeling result in the give in to the willpower challenge. When u are facing those bad feeling, there is a increase in the dopamine and let u want to release this kind of feeling the fastest way is the doing the same bad thing. Thus u create a circle for yourself called what the hell effect. Moreover, the author found that self-forgiveness is more powerful that self-punishment in getting u back on track since u will not feel u have indulged yourself and there is no need to change. Resolution can provide u the energy to break the what the hell effect. But the first feed back can create similar discourage effect on u if u set a too high resolution. So the first thing we may need to remember is to set a resolution we can achieve. Secondly, optimistic pessimism - the thinking that we may fail to meet our expectation- may also help to erase the side effect of too high resolution while taking advantage of the high resolution, more energetic motivation.

has your thinking about willpower and self-control changed? which willpower experiment was the most helpful? what was your big a-ha moment? what are you going to take with you? --- as you move forward, keep the mind set of a scientist. try new things, collect your own data, and listen to the evidence. Stay open to surprising ideas, and learn from both your failures and your successes. Keep what works, and share what you know with others. With all our human quirks and modern temptations, this is the best we can do- but when we do it with an attitude of curiosity and self-compassion, it is more than enough. One ting i want to do most after this reading: find the kind of person i want to be and build the image in mind.

The key point: the stronger your will that want to resist some temptation, the easier that you fool into the opposite behavior. U could not resist the coming up of your feelings and thoughts, but you can choose to act them or not. Thus, the author launched the thinking that you accept your negative emotions and feel the change of your physical and emotional movement when those negative emotions come up(for example: when she felt the impulse rising, she paused and felt the tension in her body). Ironic Effects: ( white bear story. Wegner is required to not think about white bear. However, the harder he tried, the less likely he can get rid of it.) work in the way of operator( help u to control yourself to do or not to do something) and monitor( remind you the existence of the temptations). When you are in fatigue, the operator stops working while the monitor keeps going. observe and accept their thoughts and feelings: 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. (surf the urge)

INTRODUCTION Within each chapter, you'll find two kinds of assignments to help you become a willpower scientist. The first I call “Under the Microscope.” These prompts ask you to pay attention to how an idea is already operating in your life. Before you can change something, you need to see it as it is. You'll also find “Willpower Experiments” throughout each chapter. These are practical strategies for improving self-control based on a scientific study or theory. You can apply these willpower boosts immediately to real-life challenges. I encourage you to have an open mind about each strategy, even the ones that seem counterintuitive (and there will be plenty). They've been pilot-tested by students in my course, and while not every strategy works for everyone, these are the ones that earned the highest praise. ONE I Will, I Won't, I Want: What Willpower Is, and Why It Matters The Idea Willpower is actually three powers—I will, I won't, and I want—that help us to be a better version of ourselves. Under the Microscope • What is the harder thing? Imagine yourself facing your willpower challenge, and doing the harder thing. What makes it hard? Meet your two minds. For your willpower challenge, describe your two competing selves. What does the impulsive version of you want? What does the wiser version of you want? Willpower Experiments • Track your willpower choices. How can you control yourself if you aren't even aware that there is something to control? When your mind is preoccupied, your impulses—not your long-term goals—will guide your choices. To have more self-control, you first need to develop more self-awareness. A good first step is to notice when you are making choices related to your willpower challenge. For at least one day, try to notice every decision you make related to your willpower challenge. At the end of the day, look back and try to analyze when decisions were made that either supported or undermined your goals. Trying to keep track of your choices will also reduce the number of decisions you make while distracted—a guaranteed way to boost your willpower. • Five-minute brain-training meditation. Neuroscientists have discovered that when you ask the brain to meditate, it gets better not just at meditating, but at a wide range of self-control skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control, and self-awareness. Also regular meditators have more gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, as well as regions of the brain that support self-awareness. 1. Sit still and stay put . If you notice the instinct to scratch an itch, adjust your arms, or cross and uncross your legs, see if you can feel the urge but not follow it. This simple act of staying still is part of what makes meditation willpower training effective. 2. Turn your attention to the breath. Silently say in your mind “inhale” as you breathe in and “exhale” as you breathe out. This practice of coming back to the breath, again and again, kicks the prefrontal cortex into high gear and quiets the stress and craving centers of your brain . 3. Notice how it feels to breathe, and notice how the mind wanders. After a few minutes, drop the labels “inhale/exhale.” Try focusing on just the feeling of breathing. Just as before, when you notice yourself thinking about something else, bring your attention back to the breath. Meditation is not about getting rid of all your thoughts; it's learning not to get so lost in them that you forget what your goal is. What one is doing in meditation is exactly what one needs to do in real life: catch oneself moving away from a goal and then point oneself back at the goal (in this case, focusing on the breath). Start with five minutes a day. A short practice that you do every day is better than a long practice you keep putting off to tomorrow. TWO The Willpower Instinct: Your Body Was Born to Resist Cheesecake The Idea Willpower is a capacity and an instinct that everyone has—a careful calibration of what's happening in your brain and body. It evolved to help us protect ourselves from ourselves. Under the Microscope • What is the threat? We're used to seeing temptation and trouble outside of ourselves: the dangerous doughnut, the sinful cigarette, the enticing Internet. But self-control points the mirror back at ourselves, and our inner worlds of thoughts, desires, emotions, and impulses. Therefore, for your willpower challenge, identify the inner impulse that needs to be restrained. • Stress and self-control. So often we believe that stress is the only way to get things done, but in the long term, nothing drains willpower faster than stress. The biology of stress and the biology of self-control are simply incompatible. Both the fight-or-flight and pause-and-plan responses are about energy management, but they redirect your energy and attention in very different ways. Therefore, when our willpower challenges overwhelm us, although it's tempting to assign the blame to who we are: weak, lazy, willpowerless wimps, more often than not, our brains and bodies are simply in the wrong state for self-control: When we're in a state of chronic stress, it's our most impulsive selves who face our willpower challenges. So notice when stress strikes throughout the day or week, and watch what happens to your self-control. Do you experience cravings? Lose your temper? Put off things you know you should do? Willpower Experiments • Breathe your way to self-control. Self-control has a biological signature. The need for self-control sets into motion a coordinated set of changes in the brain and body that help you resist temptation and override self-destructive urges, changes called the pause-and-plan response. The single best physiological measurement of the pause-and-plan response is something called heart rate variability. When people successfully exert self-control, the parasympathetic nervous system steps in to calm stress and control impulsive action. Heart rate goes down, but variability goes up. When this happens, it contributes to a sense of focus and calm. Many factors influence your willpower reserve, from what you eat (plant-based, unprocessed foods help; junk food doesn't) to where you live (poor air quality decreases heart rate variability). Anything that puts a stress on your mind or body can interfere with the physiology of self-control, and by extension, sabotage your willpower. Anxiety, anger, depression, and loneliness are all associated with lower heart rate variability and less self-control. Chronic pain and illness can also drain your body and brain's willpower reserve. However, slowing the breath down activates the prefrontal cortex and increases heart rate variability, which helps shift the brain and body from a state of stress to self-control mode. Slow down your breathing to four to six breaths per minute to shift into the physiological state of self-control. • The five-minute green willpower fill-up. Working out enhances the biology of self-control by increasing baseline heart rate variability and training the brain. The biggest mood-boosting, stress-busting effects came from five-minute doses of exercise, not hour-long sessions. Gardening, walking, dancing, yoga, team sports, swimming, playing with your kids or pets—even enthusiastic housecleaning and window-shopping qualify as exercise. Get active outdoors—even just a walk around the block—to reduce stress, improve your mood, and boost motivation. • Zzzzzzzzzz. Poor sleep saps willpower. When you're tired, your cells have trouble absorbing glucose from the bloodstream. Your prefrontal cortex, that energy-hungry area of the brain, bears the brunt of this personal energy crisis. When your prefrontal cortex is impaired, it loses control over other regions of the brain. Ordinarily, it can quiet the alarm system of the brain to help you manage stress and cravings. But a single night of sleep deprivation creates a disconnect between these two regions of your brain. Unchecked, the alarm system overreacts to ordinary, everyday stress. The body gets stuck in a physiological fight-or-flight state, with the accompanying high levels of stress hormones and decreased heart rate variability. The result: more stress and less self-control. Undo the effects of sleep deprivation with a nap or one good night's sleep. • Relax to restore your willpower reserve. Self-control, like the stress response, evolved as a nifty strategy for responding to specific challenges. But just as with stress, we run into trouble when self-control becomes chronic and unrelenting. To preserve both your health and happiness, you need to give up the pursuit of willpower perfection: Trying to control every aspect of your thoughts, emotions, and behavior is a toxic strategy. You will have to choose your willpower battles wisely. Self-control doesn't come cheap. All of these mental tasks—focusing your attention, weighing competing goals, and quieting stress and cravings—require energy, real physical energy from your body, in the same way that your muscles require energy to fight or flee in an emergency. We need time to recover from the exertion of self-control, and we sometimes need to spend our mental and physical resources elsewhere. Lie down, close your eyes and breathe deeply. If you feel any tension in your body, you can intentionally squeeze or contract that muscle, then let go of the effort. Stay here for five to ten minutes and let the physiological relaxation response help you recover from the demands of self-control and daily stress. THREE Too Tired to Resist: Why Self-Control Is Like a Muscle The Idea Self-control is like a muscle. It gets tired from use, but regular exercise makes it stronger. Under the Microscope • The highs and lows of willpower. The muscle model of willpower predicts that self-control drains throughout the day. Keep track of your self-control strength this week, with special interest in when you have the most willpower, and when you are most likely to give in or give up. You can use this self-knowledge to plan your schedule wisely, and limit temptations when you know you'll be the most depleted. • Is your exhaustion real? Most of us interpret exhaustion as an objective indicator that we cannot continue. But a little-known theory put forth in 1924 by Nobel Prize–winning physiologist Archibald Hill says it is just a feeling generated by the brain to motivate us to stop, in much the same way that the feeling of anxiety can stop us from doing something dangerous, and the feeling of disgust can stop us from eating something that will make us sick. The Stanford psychologists have proposed an idea jarring to the field of self-control research: The widely observed scientific finding that self-control is limited may reflect people's beliefs about willpower, not their true physical and mental limits. The research on this idea is just beginning, and no one is claiming that humans have an unlimited capacity for self-control. But it is appealing to think that we often have more willpower than we believe we do. The next time you find yourself “too tired” to exert self-control, examine whether you can go beyond that first feeling of fatigue to take one more step. (Keep in mind that it's also possible to overtrain—and if you find yourself constantly feeling drained, you may need to consider whether you have been running yourself to real exhaustion.) Willpower Experiments • The willpower diet. Self-control is draining the body of energy, and this energy loss is weakening self-control. But University of Pennsylvania psychologist Robert Kurzban has argued that the actual amount of energy your brain needs to exert self-control is less than half a Tic Tac per minute. Why, then, does the brain's increased energy consumption during self-control seem to deplete willpower so quickly? The human brain has, at any given time, a very small supply of energy. It can store some energy in its cells, but it is mostly dependent on a steady stream of glucose circulating in the body's bloodstream. Special glucose-detecting brain cells are constantly monitoring the availability of energy. When the brain detects a drop in available energy, it gets a little nervous. The first expense to be cut? Self-control, one of the most energy-expensive tasks the brain performs. Another reason may be that, way back when the human brain was taking shape, what appears in our modern world as a loss of control may actually be a vestige of the brain's instinct for strategic risk-taking. In times of food scarcity, early humans who followed their appetites and impulses had a better chance of survival. If you hadn't eaten in a while, your blood sugar was low. To an energy-monitoring brain, your blood sugar level was an indicator of how likely you were to starve in the near future if you didn't find something to eat, quick. Those who were slower to listen to their hunger, or too polite to fight for their share, may have found the last bone already scraped clean. Make sure that your body is well fueled with food that gives you lasting energy. Most psychologists and nutritionists recommend a low-glycemic diet—that is, one that helps you keep your blood sugar steady. Low-glycemic foods include lean proteins, nuts and beans, high-fiber grains and cereals, and most fruits and vegetables—basically, food that looks like its natural state and doesn't have a ton of added sugar, fat, and chemicals. • A willpower workout. If self-control is a muscle (even a metaphorical muscle), it should be possible to train it, too. Studies have found that committing to any small, consistent act of self-control can increase overall willpower. 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. Exercise your self-control muscle by picking one thing to do (I will power) or not do (I won't power) this week, or keeping track of something you aren't used to paying close attention to. You could choose something related to your main willpower challenge. For example, if your goal is to save money, you might keep track of what you spend. If your goal is to exercise more often, you might decide to do ten sit-ups or push-ups before your morning shower. • Find your “want” power. When you 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. Sometimes our strongest motivation is not what we think 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. FOUR License to Sin: Why Being Good Gives Us Permission to Be Bad The Idea When we turn willpower challenges into measures of moral worth, being good gives us permission to be bad. For better self-control, forget virtue, and focus on goals and values. Under the Microscope • Virtue and vice. When you do something good, you feel good about yourself. This means you're more likely to trust your impulses—which often means giving yourself permission to do something bad. Moral licensing doesn't just give us permission to do something bad; it also lets us off the hook when we're asked to do something good. Importantly, this is not just a matter of running out of blood sugar or willpower. When psychologists ask people about their licensed indulgences, the indulgers report feeling in control of their choices, not out of control. They also don't feel guilty. Instead, they report feeling proud of themselves for earning a reward. Do you tell yourself you've been “good” when you succeed at a willpower challenge, then give yourself permission to do something “bad”? • Are you borrowing credit from tomorrow? Do you tell yourself you will make up for today's behavior tomorrow—and if so, do you follow through? • Halo effects. This form of moral licensing looks for any reason to say “yes” to temptation. When we want permission to indulge, we'll take any hint of virtue as a justification to give in. Do you justify a vice because of one virtuous aspect (e.g., discount savings, fat-free, protects the environment)? Do you have any magic words that give you permission to indulge, like “Buy 1 Get 1 Free,” “All Natural,” “Light,” “Fair Trade,” “Organic,” or “For a Good Cause”? • Who do you think you are? We only reward ourselves for good behavior if we believe that who we really are is the self that wants to be bad. From this point of view, every act of self-control is a punishment, and only self-indulgence is a reward. Anything that lets us feel like we have done our part—so we can stop thinking about the problem—we will jump at. And once our guilt and anxiety are gone, we will feel free to resume our usual wasteful ways. So a reusable shopping bag can become license to buy more, planting a tree can become license to travel more, and changing your lightbulbs can become license to live in a bigger, energy-hungry house. 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. When this happens, we will no longer view the impulsive, lazy, or easily tempted self as the “real” us. When you think about your willpower challenge, which part of you feels like the “real” you—the part of you who wants to pursue the goal, or the part of you who needs to be controlled? Willpower Experiments • To revoke your license, remember the why. The next time you find yourself using past good behavior to justify indulging, pause and think about why you were “good,” not whether you deserve a reward. Remembering the “why” works because it changes how you feel about the reward of self-indulgence. That so-called treat will start to look more like the threat to your goals than it is, and giving in won't look so good. • A tomorrow just like today. Behavioral economist Howard Rachlin has shown that smokers asked to try to smoke the same number of cigarettes every day gradually decrease their overall smoking—even when they are explicitly told not to try to smoke less. Rachlin argues that this works because the smokers are deprived of the usual cognitive crutch of pretending that tomorrow will be different. Every cigarette becomes not just one more smoked today, but one more smoked tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. This adds new weight to every cigarette, and makes it much harder to deny the health consequences of a single smoke. For your willpower challenge, aim to reduce the variability of your behavior day to day. View every choice you make as a commitment to all future choices. 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?” Or if you've been putting something off that you know you should do, instead of asking “Would I rather do this today or tomorrow?” ask yourself, “Do I really want the consequences of always putting this off?” FIVE The Brain's Big Lie: Why We Mistake Wanting for Happiness The Idea Our brains mistake the promise of reward for a guarantee of happiness, so we chase satisfaction from things that do not deliver. Under the Microscope • What gets your dopamine neurons firing? The reward system is part of the brain's most primitive motivational system, one that evolved to propel us toward action and consumption. Anything we think is going to make us feel good will trigger this system. When the brain recognizes an opportunity for reward, it releases a neurotransmitter called dopamine. When dopamine hijacks your attention, the mind becomes fixated on obtaining or repeating whatever triggered it. This is nature's trick to make sure you don't starve because you can't be bothered to pick a berry, and that you don't hasten human extinction because seducing a potential mate seems like too much of a hassle. A dopamine rush doesn't create happiness itself—the feeling is more like arousal. Neuroscientists have given the effect of dopamine release many names, including seeking, wanting, craving, and desire. But one thing is clear: It is not the experience of liking, satisfaction, pleasure, or actual reward. 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. Dopamine uses the promise of happiness to keep us struggling to stay alive, but as with many of our primitive instincts, we find ourselves in a very different environment now than the one the human brain evolved in. Consider the effects of sexually graphic images on our reward system. For much of human history, you weren't going to see a naked person posing seductively for you unless the opportunity for mating was real. Certainly a little motivation to act in this scenario would be smart if you wanted to keep your DNA in the gene pool. Fast-forward a few hundred thousand years, and we find ourselves in a world where Internet porn is always available, not to mention constant exposure to sexual images in advertisements and entertainment. The instinct to pursue every one of these sexual “opportunities” is how people end up addicted to X-rated websites—and victims of advertising campaigns that use sex to sell everything from deodorant to designer jeans. When we add the instant gratification of modern technology to this primitive motivation system, we end up with dopamine-delivery devices that are damn near impossible to put down. Because we know there's a chance we'll have a new message, or because the very next You Tube video may be the one that makes us laugh, we keep hitting refresh, clicking the next link, and checking our devices compulsively. It's as if our cell phones, BlackBerrys, and laptops have a direct line into our brains, giving us constant jolts of dopamine. Do you know what your own dopamine triggers are? What unleashes that promise of reward that compels you to seek satisfaction? This week, pay attention to what captures your attention. • Neuromarketing and environmental triggers. When dopamine is released by one promise of reward, it also makes you more susceptible to any other kind of temptation. For example, erotic images make men more likely to take financial risks, and fantasizing about winning the lottery leads people to overeat. Many aspects of our retail environment have been designed to keep us always wanting more, from big food companies packing their recipes with just the right combination of sugar, salt, and fat to drive your dopamine neurons crazy to lotto commercials that encourage you to imagine what you would do with a million dollars if you hit the jackpot. 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. Why? Because samples combine two of the biggest promises of reward: Free and Food. (If there's an attractive spokesperson handing out the samples, you can throw in a third F, and then you're really in trouble.) The reward system of the brain also responds to novelty and variety. Your dopamine neurons eventually become less responsive to familiar rewards, even ones you really enjoy. It's not a coincidence that places like Starbucks and Jack in the Box are constantly introducing new variations of the standard fare, and clothing retailers roll out new color choices for their wardrobe basics. Then there are the price tricks guaranteed to make the primitive part of your brain want to hoard scarce resources. Anything that makes you feel like you're getting a bargain is going to open the dopamine floodgates, from “Buy 1 Get 1 Free!” deals to signs that shout “60 Percent Off!” Especially potent are the price tags at discount retailers that list some ridiculously high “suggested retail price” next to the retailer's lower price. Businesses also use smells to manufacture desire where none existed. An appetizing odor is one of the fastest ways to trigger the promise of reward, and as soon as the scented molecules land on your olfactory receptors, the brain will begin searching for the source. The website of Scent Air, a leader in the field of scent marketing, brags about how it lured visitors into an ice cream parlor on the lower level of a hotel. With a strategically placed aroma-delivery system, they released the scent of sugar cookies to the top of the stairs and waffle cones to the bottom. The average passerby will think she is inhaling the authentic smell of the sweet treats. Instead, she is breathing in enhanced chemicals designed to maximize the firing of her dopamine neurons and lead her—and her wallet—straight down the stairs. Look for how retailers and marketers try to trigger the promise of reward. Knowing that cues have been carefully chosen to tempt you can help you see them for what they are and resist them. • The stress of desire. To motivate you to seek the object of your craving, the reward system actually has two weapons: a carrot and a stick. The first weapon is, of course, the promise of reward. Dopamine-releasing neurons create this feeling by talking to the areas of your brain that anticipate pleasure and plan action. When these areas are bathed in dopamine, the result is desire—the carrot that makes the horse run forward. But the reward system has a second weapon that functions more like the proverbial stick. When your reward center releases dopamine, it also sends a message to the brain's stress center. In this area of the brain, dopamine triggers the release of stress hormones. The result: You feel anxious as you anticipate your object of desire. The need to get what you want starts to feel like a life-or-death emergency, a matter of survival. Most of us pay far more attention to the promise of feeling good than the actual feeling bad that accompanies dopamine-drive desire. This week, see if you can notice when wanting triggers stress and anxiety. If you give in to temptation, do you feel like you are responding to the promise of reward? Or are you trying to relieve the anxiety? Willpower Experiments • Dopaminize your “I will” power challenge. If there's something you've been putting off, motivate yourself by linking it with something that gets your dopamine neurons firing. • Test the promise of reward. Because the pursuit of reward is dopamine's main goal, it is never going to give you a “stop” signal—even when the experience does not live up to the promise. So mindfully indulge in something your brain tells you will make you happy. Notice what the promise of reward feels like: the anticipation, the hope, the excitement, the anxiety, the salivation—whatever is going on in your brain and body. Then give yourself permission to give in. How does the experience compare with the expectation? Does the feeling of the promise of reward ever go away—or does it continue to drive you to eat more, spend more, or stay longer? When, if ever, do you become satisfied? Or do you simply reach the point of being unable to continue, because you're stuffed, exhausted, frustrated, out of time, or out of the “reward”? People who try this exercise commonly have one of two results. Some people find that when they really pay attention to the experience of indulging, they need far less than they thought they would to feel satisfied. Others find that the experience is completely unsatisfying, revealing a huge gap between the promise of reward and the reality of their experience. Both observations can give you greater control over what has felt like an out-of-control behavior. While we get into trouble when we mistake wanting for happiness, the solution is not to eliminate wanting. A life without wants may not require as much self-control—but it's also not a life worth living. People with anhedonia describe life as a series of habits with no expectation of satisfaction. They may eat, shop, socialize, and have sex, but they don't anticipate pleasure from these activities. Without the possibility of pleasure, they lose motivation. This complete disconnect from desire drains hope and, for many, the will to live. When our reward system is quiet, the result isn't so much total contentment as it is apathy. In fact, neuroscientists now suspect that an underactive reward system contributes to the biological basis of depression. The promise of reward doesn't guarantee happiness, but no promise of reward guarantees unhappiness. Listen to the promise of reward, and we give in to temptation. Without the promise of reward, we have no motivation. To this dilemma, there's no easy answer. If we are to have any self-control, we need to separate the real rewards that give our lives meaning from the false rewards that keep us distracted and addicted. Learning to make this distinction may be the best we can do. SIX What the Hell: How Feeling Bad Leads to Giving In The Idea Feeling bad leads to giving in, and dropping guilt makes you stronger. Under the Microscope • The promise of relief. Wanting to feel better is a healthy survival mechanism, as built into our human nature as the instinct to flee danger. But where we turn for relief matters. More often, the things we turn to for relief end up turning on us. The brain, it turns out, is especially susceptible to temptation when we're feeling bad. It's part of the brain's rescue mission. Your brain isn't just motivated to protect your life—it wants to protect your mood, too. So whenever you are under stress, including negative emotions like anger, sadness, self-doubt, and anxiety, your brain is going to point you toward whatever it thinks will make you happy. What do you turn to when you're feeling stressed, anxious, or down? Are you more susceptible to temptation when you are upset? Are you more easily distracted, or more likely to procrastinate? • What's terrifying you? According to terror-management theory, human beings are—naturally—terrified when we think about our own deaths. Whenever we are reminded of our mortality, it triggers a panic response in the brain. We aren't always aware of it—the anxiety may be just below the surface, creating a free-floating sense of discomfort, without our knowing why. When it's outside our conscious awareness, this terror creates an immediate need to do something to counter our feelings of powerlessness. We will reach for our security blankets, whatever makes us feel safe, powerful, or comforted. Terror management strategies may take our minds off our inevitable demise, but when we turn to temptation for comfort, we may inadvertently be quickening our race to the grave. Case in point: Warnings on cigarette packages can increase a smoker's urge to light up. A 2009 study found that death warnings trigger stress and fear in smokers—exactly what public health officials hope for. Unfortunately, this anxiety then triggers smokers' default stress-relief strategy: smoking. Oops. It isn't logical, but it makes sense based on what we know about how stress influences the brain. Pay attention to what might be triggering terror management in your own mind. For extra credit, check out what products are advertised in between or alongside the fright tactics. Sometimes terror management leads us not into temptation, but procrastination. If there's something you've been putting off or keep “forgetting” to do, is it possible that you are trying to avoid facing your vulnerability? • When setbacks happen. The what-the-hell effect describes a cycle of indulgence, regret, and greater indulgence. Whatever the willpower challenge, the pattern is the same. Giving in makes you feel bad about yourself, which motivates you to do something to feel better. And what's the cheapest, fastest strategy for feeling better? Often the very thing you feel bad about. Do you respond to a willpower failure with guilt and self-criticism? Do you use the setback as an excuse to indulge further? • Resolving to feel good. University of Toronto psychologists Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman—the researchers who first identified the what-the-hell effect—have discovered that we are most likely to decide to change when we are at a low point. Setting a resolution offers an immediate sense of relief and control. We don't have to believe that we are the person who made that mistake; we can become a completely different person. Unfortunately, the promise of change—like the promise of reward and the promise of relief—rarely delivers what we're expecting. Unrealistic optimism may make us feel good in the moment, but it sets us up to feel much worse later on. The challenge of actually making a change can be a rude awakening, and the initial rewards are rarely as transformative as our most hopeful fantasies. As we face our first setbacks, the initial feel-good rush of deciding to change is replaced with disappointment and frustration. Failing to meet our expectations triggers the same old guilt, depression, and self-doubt, and the emotional payoff of vowing to change is gone. At this point, most people will abandon their efforts altogether. It's only when we are feeling out of control and in need of another hit of hope that we'll once again vow to change—and start the cycle all over. As a strategy for change, it fails. But that's because it was never meant to be a strategy for change. It's a strategy for feeling good. It's not only easier, but also much more fun, to milk the promise of change for all it's worth, without the messy business of following through. That is why so many people are happier giving up and starting again, over and over, rather than finding a way to make a change for good. Think about your own motivations and expectations for change. Do you only feel motivated to change when you are feeling bad? Is the best part of setting goals the pleasure of imagining how succeeding will change your life? Do you use fantasies of your future self to fix your feelings now, more than you take concrete steps to fix your behavior? Willpower Experiments • Stress-relief strategies that work. The next time you're stressed out, try one of the stress-relief strategies that really work, such as 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 or doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby. The least effective strategies are gambling, shopping, smoking, drinking, eating, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and watching TV or movies for more than two hours. The main difference between the strategies that work and the strategies that don't? Rather than releasing dopamine and relying on the promise of reward, the real stress relievers boost mood-enhancing brain chemicals like serotonin and GABA, as well as the feel-good hormone oxytocin. They also help shut down the brain's stress response, reduce stress hormones in the body, and induce the healing relaxation response. Because they aren't exciting like the dopamine releasers, we tend to underestimate how good they will make us feel. • Forgiveness when you fail. Study after study shows that self-compassion—being supportive and kind to yourself, especially in the face of stress and failure—is associated with more motivation and better self-control. Researchers have found that taking a self-compassionate point of view on a personal failure makes people more likely to take personal responsibility for the failure than when they take a self-critical point of view. They also are more willing to receive feedback and advice from others, and more likely to learn from the experience. One reason is that forgiveness takes away the shame and pain of thinking about what happened. The what-the-hell effect is an attempt to escape the bad feelings that follow a setback. Without the guilt and self-criticism, there's nothing to escape. This means it's easier to reflect on how the failure happened, and less tempting to repeat it. On the other hand, if you view your setbacks as evidence that you are a hopeless loser who screws everything up, thinking about your failure is a miserable exercise in self-hate. Your most urgent goal will be to soothe those feelings, not learn from your experience. This is why self-criticism backfires as a strategy for self-control. Research shows that taking the three points of view below reduces guilt but increases personal accountability. 1. What are you feeling? As you think about this failure, take a moment to notice and describe how you are feeling. Notice if self-criticism comes up. 2. You're only human. Everyone sometimes loses control. This is just a part of the human condition, and your setback does not mean there is something wrong with you. 3. What would you say to a friend? Consider how you would comfort a close friend who experienced the same setback. This perspective will point the way to getting back on track. • Optimistic pessimism for successful resolutions. Research shows that predicting how and when you might be tempted to break your vow increases the chances that you will keep a resolution. When you have such a scenario in mind, imagine yourself in that situation, what it will feel like, and what you might be thinking. Then consider what specific actions you could take to stick to your resolution. When you have a specific strategy in mind, imagine yourself doing it. Visualize what it will feel like. See yourself succeed. Planning for failure in this way is an act of self-compassion, not self-doubt. When that moment of possible willpower failure hits, you will be ready to put your plan into action. SEVEN Putting the Future on Sale: The Economics of Instant Gratification The Idea Our inability to clearly see the future clearly leads us into temptation and procrastination. Under the Microscope • How are you discounting future rewards? All too often, we use our fancy brains not to make the most strategic decisions, but to give ourselves permission to act more irrationally. That's because a big prefrontal cortex is good at more than self-control. It can also rationalize bad decisions and promise we'll be better tomorrow. Economists call this delay discounting—the longer you have to wait for a reward, the less it is worth to you. Even small delays can dramatically lower the perceived value. For your willpower challenge, ask yourself what future rewards you put on sale each time you give in to temptation or procrastination. What are you thinking and feeling that lets you put the future on sale? • Are you waiting for future you? It is one of the most puzzling but predictable mental errors humans make: We think about our future selves like different people. We often idealize them, expecting our future selves to do what our present selves cannot manage. 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. Is there an important change or task you're putting off, hoping that a future you with more willpower will show up? • Are you too farsighted for your own good? 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. Do you find it more difficult to indulge than to resist temptation? Willpower Experiments • Wait ten minutes. We will be perfectly rational when everything is in theory, but when the temptation is real, the brain shifts into reward-seeking mode to make sure we don't miss out. Most people, deep down, want to resist temptation. We want to make the choice that will lead to long-term happiness. We only prefer the short-term, immediate reward when it is right there staring us in the face, and the want becomes overwhelming. One reason we're so susceptible to immediate gratification is that our brain's reward system did not evolve to respond to future rewards. When dopamine was first perfecting its effects in the human brain, a reward that was far off—whether by sixty miles or sixty days—was irrelevant to daily survival. The system we needed was the one that ensured that we snapped up rewards when they were available. When our modern selves contemplate immediate versus future rewards, the brain processes these two options very differently. The immediate reward triggers the older, more primitive reward system and its dopamine-induced desire. Future rewards don't interest this reward system so much. Their value is encoded by the more recently evolved prefrontal cortex. To delay gratification, the prefrontal cortex has to cool off the promise of reward. It's not an impossible feat. But it's not easy. Neuroscientists have discovered that a ten-minute delay makes a big difference in how the brain processes a reward. When immediate gratification comes with a mandatory ten-minute delay, the brain treats it like a future reward. The promise-of-reward system is less activated, taking away the powerful biological impulse to choose immediate gratification. Institute a mandatory ten-minute wait for any temptation. Before the time is up, bring to mind the competing long-term reward of resisting temptation. If possible, create some physical (or visual) distance as well. If your willpower challenge requires “I will” power, you can still use the ten-minute rule to help you overcome the temptation to procrastinate. Flip the rule to “Do ten minutes, then you can quit.” • Lower your discount rate. People with higher future-reward discount rates are more susceptible to a wide range of self-control problems. Fortunately, a person's discount rate is not an immutable law of physics. It can be lowered just by changing how you think about your choices. Most people are loss-averse—that is, we really don't like to lose something we already have. When you think about a larger, future reward first and consider trading it in for a smaller, immediate reward, it registers as a loss. But when you start with the immediate reward and consider the benefits of delaying gratification for a larger reward, it also feels like a loss. So future-reward discounting drops dramatically when people think about the future reward first. When you are tempted to act against your long-term interests, imagine that long-term reward as already yours. Imagine your future self enjoying the fruits of your self-control. Then ask yourself: Are you willing to give that up in exchange for whatever fleeting pleasure is tempting you now? • Precommit your future self. Schelling believed that to reach our goals, we must limit our options. He called this precommitment. Pick one of the following strategies and apply it to your willpower challenge. 1. For your willpower challenge, what can you do to make it easier for your future self to act on your rational preferences? Make choices in advance and from a clear distance, before your future self is blinded by temptation. 2. What can you do that would put a delay or roadblock between your feelings of temptation and your ability to act on them? Make it more difficult to reverse your preferences. 3. There is no shame in using a carrot or a stick to nudge yourself toward long-term health and happiness. Motivate your future self. • Meet your future self. Why do we treat our future selves like different people? Part of the problem lies in our inability to access our future selves' thoughts and feelings. When we think of our future selves, our future needs and emotions don't feel as real and pressing as our present desires. Brain-imaging studies show that we even use different regions of the brain to think about our present selves and our future selves. When people imagine enjoying a future experience, the brain areas associated with thinking about oneself are surprisingly unengaged. When reflecting on the future self, the brain's activation is identical to when it is considering the traits of another person. 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. 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. Create a future memory. The more real and vivid the future feels, the more likely you are to make a decision that your future won't regret. Write a letter to your future self, or just imagine yourself in the future. Studies show that imagining your future self can increase your present self's willpower. EIGHT Infected! Why Willpower Is Contagious The Idea Self-control is influenced by social proof, making both willpower and temptation contagious. Under the Microscope • Your social network. Both bad habits and positive change can spread from person to person like germs, and nobody is completely immune. Do other people in your social circle share your willpower challenge? Looking back, did you pick up the habit from a friend or family member? • Who are you mirroring? We've seen three ways our social brains can catch willpower failures. The first is unintentional mimicry. The mirror neurons that detect another person's movement prime that very same movement in your own body. Our instinct to mimic other people's actions means that when you see someone else reach for a snack, a drink, or a credit card, you may find yourself unconsciously mirroring their behavior—and losing your willpower. The second way our social brains can lead us astray is the contagion of emotion. How can this lead to a willpower failure? When we catch a bad feeling, we're going to turn to our usual strategies for fixing it—and this may mean a shopping spree or chocolate bar is in your near future. Finally, our brains can even catch temptation when we see others give in. Keep your eyes open for any evidence that you are mirroring other people's behavior. • Who are you most likely to catch something from? The social epidemics spread through networks of mutual respect and liking. Why are behaviors so contagious within close relationships? To stretch the immune system analogy a little further, we could say that our immune system only rejects the goals and behavior of other people if it recognizes those other people as “not us.” It turns out that when we think about people we love, respect, and feel similar to, our brains treat them more like us than like not us. Who are your “close others”? Are there any behaviors that you've picked up from them, or that they have caught from you? • But Ma, everyone else is doing it! When the rest of our tribe does something, we tend to think it's a smart thing to do. This is one of those useful survival instincts that come with having a social brain. Social proof has enormous sway over our everyday behavior. It's why we often check out the “most read stories” box on news websites, and why we're more likely to go to the number-one movie in the country instead of the box-office bomb. Social proof can strengthen self-control when we believe that doing the right thing (or the harder thing) is the norm. When it comes to social proof, what we think other people do matters even more than what they actually do. Look for a new “tribe” you could join. It could be a support group, a class, a local club, an online community, or even subscribing to a magazine that supports your goals. Surrounding yourself with people who share your commitment to your goals will make it feel like the norm. Willpower Experiments • Strengthen your immune system. Sometimes seeing someone else give in to temptation can actually enhance our self-control. When you are firmly committed to a goal (e.g., losing weight), but aware that you have a conflicting goal (e.g., enjoying a deep-dish pizza), seeing someone do something that conflicts with your strongest goal will put your brain on high alert. It will activate your dominant goal even more strongly and start generating strategies to help you stick with it. Psychologists call this counteractive control, but you can think of it as an immune response to anything that threatens your self-control. To avoid catching other people's willpower failures, spend a few minutes at the beginning of your day thinking about your goals. • Catch self-control. Research shows that thinking about someone with good self-control can increase your own willpower. When you need a little extra willpower, bring a role model to mind. Ask yourself: What would this willpower wonder do? • The power of pride. 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. For pride to work, we need to believe that others are watching, or that we will have the opportunity to report our success to others. Go public with your willpower challenges, and imagine how proud you will feel when you succeed at them. • Make it a group project. Research shows that being kicked out of the tribe drains willpower. Rather than shame people for their willpower failures, we would do far better by offering social support for willpower successes. Can you enlist others in a willpower challenge? 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. NINE Don't Read This Chapter: The Limits of “I Won’t” Power The Idea Trying to suppress thoughts, emotions, and cravings backfires and makes you more likely to think, feel, or do the thing you most want to avoid. Under the Microscope • Investigate ironic rebound. Each time, the mere act of trying not to think about something triggered the ironic rebound 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. The effect was strongest when people were already stressed out, tired, or distracted. Why does trying to eliminate a thought or emotion trigger a rebound? Wegner's hunch is that it has something to do with how the brain handles the command not to think about something. It splits the task into two parts, achieved by two different systems of the brain. One part of your mind will take on the job of directing your attention toward anything other than the forbidden thought. Wegner calls this process the operator. The operator relies on the brain's system of self-control and requires a good deal of mental resources and energy. Another part of your mind takes on the job of looking for any evidence that you are thinking, feeling, or doing whatever you don't want to think, feel, or do. Wegner calls this process the monitor. Unlike the operator, the monitor runs automatically and without much mental effort. The monitor is more closely related to the brain's automatic threat-detection system. When the monitor points out possible temptations or troubling thoughts, the operator steps in to steer you toward your goals and out of trouble. But if your mental resources are taxed—whether by distractions, fatigue, stress, alcohol, illness, or other mental drains—the operator cannot do its job. Is there something you try to avoid thinking about? Does suppression work, or does trying to push something out of your mind make it come back stronger? • What's on your Most-Wanted list? The science suggests that when we outlaw a food, we increase desire. Is this true in you experience? Willpower Experiments • Feel what you feel, but don't believe everything you think. How can you find your way out of the ironic rebound? Give up. When you stop trying to control unwanted thoughts and emotions, they stop controlling you. 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. The willingness to think what you think and feel what you feel—without necessarily believing that it is true, and without feeling compelled to act on it—is an effective strategy for treating anxiety, depression, food cravings, and addiction. When an upsetting thought comes to mind, notice it and how it feels in your body. Notice if there is any tension present, or changes to your heart rate or breathing. Then turn your attention to your breathing, and imagine the thought dissolving or passing by like clouds passing through your mind and body. • Accept those cravings—just don't act on them. When a craving hits, notice it and don't try to immediately distract yourself or argue with it. Remind yourself of the white-bear rebound effect, and remember your goal to resist. Step back by realizing that thoughts and feelings aren't always under your control, but you can choose whether to act on them. • Turn your I won't into I will. What could you do instead of the “I won't” behavior that might satisfy the same needs? Can you redefine the “I won't” challenge so that it becomes an “I will” challenge? • Surf the urge. When an urge takes hold, pause for a moment to sense your body. What does the urge feel like? Is it hot or cold? Do you feel tension anywhere in your body? What's happening with your heart rate, your breathing, or your gut? Stay with the sensations for at least one minute. ride them like a wave, neither pushing them away nor acting on them. When you first practice this strategy, you may surf the urge and still give in. Don't use your first few attempts as a final verdict on the value of this approach. Surfing the urge is a skill that builds with time, like any new form of self-control. TEN Final Thoughts 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.