Self-Control, 8 ways to boost willpower

In this newsletter:
- Self-Control
- The Power of Habit
- Three Willpower Studies
- What is Self-Control?
- 8 ways to boost Self-Control

Self-Control

My friend
My friend recently told me he’s a sex addict. He was serious. I’ll spare you the details.

We've been close friends for over 50 years, ever since we grew up together in California. 

Just over a year ago, his ex-wife was horrifically murdered. He’s doing his best as a single parent raising his two young children who no longer have a mother (he had kids late in life). He also has to work full time. 

After the murder, he gained a lot of weight. Self-control can be hard even in the best of times. And it can become near impossible in the worst of times.

Over the past year, he went from weighing over 300 pounds to around 270 pounds now. He’s been walking regularly and lifting weights. I enjoyed pumping iron with him at Muscle Beach near my house here last weekend. I pray he stays on this path.

Self-control
Self-control is a complicated topic. I'm not an expert but I've certainly thought about it for many years.

The seeds of the idea were planted in my head beginning around 40 years ago when I noticed my older brother’s incessant drug and alcohol use that eventually killed him at 61 years old, and then comparing that to my father’s amazingly strong self-restraint. Why the difference? 

We can go through life and then, without warning, hit a bad spot, a rough patch, and get completely derailed.

Self-control scares me because of the destructive flip side of the coin – self-indulgence.

Self-indulgence, or lack of self-control, is deadly. It kills people every day. I know you know what I’m talking about.

Drinking, pigging out, candy, sex, worry, drugs, avoiding our work, blame…the self-indulgence list is endless.

One of the hardest things, if not the hardest, we face in daily life is exercising self-control.

The topic of self-control, willpower, and habits fascinates me. If we get this part right, life is better. 

If we practice self-control, it's easier to build our 9 Pillars of Well-Being.

It’s a lifelong practice.

The conversation with my friend made me think about willpower, which then made me think about three research studies from the book, The Power of Habit (2014) by Charles Duhigg. 

The following three willpower studies are mentioned on pages 132-141.

1. The Marshmallow Test
Summary: Children who had the willpower to delay instant gratification had better life outcomes.

You might already be familiar with this frequently cited test.

The Marshmallow Test refers to a well-known experiment at Stanford University in 1970 in which researchers tested the willpower of a group of children. In the study, each child was offered a choice: They could eat one marshmallow immediately, or if they waited for about 15 minutes, they could have two marshmallows. The researchers then left the room.

Some kids could not resist the temptation and ate the marshmallow right away. Other kids waited and received two marshmallows when the researchers returned to the room. Watching from behind a two-way mirror, scientists kept track of which kids exercised self-control for the reward of two marshmallows.

After around 10 years, the researchers followed up with the experiment participants when they were in high school. They found that the children who could delay gratification and wait for the second marshmallow had higher grades, better SAT scores, were more popular, and were better at resisting peer pressure.

The researchers found that children who had better self-regulatory skills tended to have better life outcomes.

Later studies, with larger sample sizes, suggested that socio-economic status, in addition to willpower, contributed to the ability to delay gratification. 

By the 1990s, after many follow-on studies, it became a generally accepted theory that willpower is a skill that can be learned.

See Stanford marshmallow experiment

2. The Cookies and Radishes Test
Summary: Willpower is a muscle that gets tired the more we use it.

Researchers at Case Western University tested undergraduates’ willpower in a lab containing a bowl of freshly baked cookies and a bowl of radishes. Half the students were told to eat the cookies and ignore the radishes. The other half were told to eat the radishes and ignore the cookies.

The theory was that ignoring the cookies requires a lot of willpower, while ignoring the radishes required less effort. “The cookie eaters were in heaven. The radish eaters were in agony.” The hypothesis was that the radish eaters’ willpower would become depleted, while the cookie eaters used up very little willpower.

Then the researchers tested the participants by having them complete a puzzle that, as it turns out, was impossible to solve. They found that, on average, the cookie eaters spent around 19 minutes trying to solve the puzzle before giving up. The radish eaters, however, got frustrated and gave up, on average, after around 8 minutes.

“By making people use a little bit of their willpower to ignore cookies, we put them into a state where they were willing to quit much faster. There’s been more than two hundred studies on this idea since then, and they’ve all found the same thing. Willpower isn’t just a skill. It’s a muscle, like the muscles in your arms or legs, and it gets tired as it works harder, so there’s less power left over for other things.”

3. Willpower spillover Tests
Summary: Building willpower in one part of life spills over to other areas of life. There are spillover effects. 

In later studies, beginning in 2006, Australian researchers created various programs around physical exercise, money management, and academic improvement. They found that as people strengthened their willpower in one part of their lives (fitness, money, or academics), that strength spilled over to other areas of their lives.

Building willpower in physical fitness, money matters, or academics, led to improvements in other areas. They smoked less, drank less alcohol, ate less junk food, were more productive at work and school, watched less TV, and were less depressed. As their willpower became stronger in one part of their life, good habits spilled over into other parts of their lives. 

What is Self-Control?

- The ability to regulate our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors

- It’s critical to accomplish our goals

- It’s essential for adhering to our standards or values

- Demands we delay instant gratification and resist impulses

- The capacity to make conscious decisions

- The instinct to exert restraint in the face of tempting or challenging situations

- It's fundamental to personal development

- A requirement for Well-Being

- We can build it with practice and effort

Eight ways to boost Self-Control

- Purpose – If we are clear about our Purpose, distractions matter less. If we are enthusiastic about a project (a business, nonprofit, teaching, etc.) temptations are less interesting.

- Willpower – Understand that it’s a limited resource, like fuel in the tank. 

- Habits – Small changes to our daily habits lead to broader habit changes.

- Routine – Our daily rituals and routines keep us on the right track. Scheduling time for productivity, minimizes directionless activity (e.g., social media)

- Environment – Supportive surroundings are critical. Unhealthy workplaces are poisonous.

- Relationships – “Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.”

- Family – We need our families, spouses, partners on our team.

- Spillover - Remember that building willpower in one area of our life spills over to other areas of our life.

Self-Control is our Responsibility

Nobody will do the work for us. It's self-help or no-help.

If we can build our self-control, it's easier to do our work.

Practicing self-control is a lifelong practice. 

Most guys I talk to agree that the 9 Pillars are essential for Well-Being. They're kind of obvious if you think about them.

But the problem isn't knowing what to do. The problem is doing what we know we should do.

And for that, we need self-control.

As one guy said to me, "Peter, these 9 Pillars are great. But how do you get me to actually do these things."

Well, he hit the nail on the head.

If I have one raison d'être in life, that is it. Helping guys do what they know they should do.

And I'm still working on that. To be continued....

Thank you for reading! 

Be well,

Peter Pavlina