Self Control Secrets

When scientists look at people who seem to have a lot of self-control, they find that they aren't that different from people who are having trouble. People who are "disciplined" are better at setting up their lives so they don't have too much willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in places they could be tempted.

People who have the most self-control usually don't have to use it very often. Self-control is easier to learn if you don't have to use it often. So, perseverance, grit, and willpower are important for success. Still, you can't make yourself more disciplined by wishing you were more disciplined. Instead, you can make your environment more disciplined.

This seems like a strange idea, but it makes even more sense when you think about how habits are formed in the brain. When a habit is ingrained in the mind, it is ready to be used whenever the right time comes. When I started smoking, I often did it while going for drinks with friends. I stopped smoking in the end and didn't start again for years.

I had stopped drinking as well. After many months, I started drinking and wanted a cigarette for the first time in a long time.

Even though I hadn't seen the cues in a long time, I still knew what they meant.

Once a habit is learned, the urge to act comes back whenever the environmental cues come back. This is one reason why techniques to change behaviour can go wrong. Putting overweight people on the spot with weight-loss presentations can make them feel stressed, and many turn back to their favourite way to deal with stress: eating too much. When you show smokers pictures of blackened lungs, their anxiety increases, making many of them reach for a cigarette. If you aren't careful with cues, you can cause the behaviour you want to stop.

Bad habits are self-reinforcing, which means that the process keeps going. They make the feelings worse that they want to avoid. You don't feel good, so you eat unhealthy food. You feel bad because you eat junk food. When you watch TV, you feel tired, so you watch more TV because you have no energy to do anything else. When you worry about your health, you feel anxious, which makes you want to smoke to calm down. But smoking makes your health worse, which makes you feel even more anxious. It's a downward spiral, a train of bad habits that keeps worsening.

Researchers call this "cue-induced wanting," which means that an outside trigger makes a person want to repeat a bad habit repeatedly.

As soon as you see something, you want it. This process is always going on, and we don't even notice most of the time. Scientists have found that showing a cocaine addict a picture of the drug for just 33 milliseconds makes the brain's reward pathway work and makes them want to use. This speed is too fast for the brain to register consciously. The addicts couldn't remember what they saw but still wanted the drug.

Here's the best part: You can stop doing something, but you probably won't forget it. Once the mental grooves of a habit are carved into your brain, it's hard to get rid of them, even if you don't use them for a long time. And that means that just saying "no" to temptation is not a good plan. When life keeps getting in the way, it's hard to keep a Zen attitude. Too much effort is needed. You can choose to fight temptation in the short term. In the long run, we become what we are because of where we live. You will not stick to good habits in a bad environment.

The best way to stop bad habits is to stop them where they start. One of the best ways to eliminate a bad habit is to avoid the trigger that makes it happen.

Leave your phone in another room for a few hours if you can't finish any work.

Stop following social media accounts that make you jealous or envious if you always feel like you're not good enough.

Move it elsewhere if you waste too much time watching TV in your bedroom.

Stop reading reviews of the newest tech gear if you spend too much money on electronics.

If you play too many video games, each time you play, unplug the console and put it in a closet.

The 1st Law of Behaviour Change is broken when this is done.

You can make it hard to see instead of making it clear. Simple changes like these often surprise me by how well they work. When you take away one cue, the habit often goes away.

Self-control is not a long-term plan, but rather a plan for the short term. You might be able to say no to temptation once or twice, but it's unlikely that you'll always be strong enough to say no. Instead of mustering up more willpower every time you want to do the right thing, you would be better off making your environment as good as it can be.

This is the key to being in charge of yourself. Make your good habits easy to notice and bad ones hard to notice.