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Post to Coments
How to Strengthen Will Power
David Blaine — the 38-year-old self-described “endurance artist’’ who
once encased himself for seven days in a plastic coffin with no food
and little water — credits willpower training for his amazing feats.
“Getting your brain wired into little goals and achieving them helps you
achieve the bigger things you shouldn’t be able to do,’’ he told Roy
Baumeister in the Florida State University psychologist’s new book,
“Willpower.’’ “It’s not just practicing the specific thing.’’
In dozens of studies conducted over the past 25 years, Baumeister has
found that taking on specific habits – like brushing your teeth with
the opposite hand you’d normally use – can increase levels of
self-control. In a phone interview, he likened willpower to a muscle:
“If you exercise it, you can make it stronger. There’s nothing magical
about it.’’
He and others have also identified a host of things that can drain
our willpower, including hunger and fatigue, while neuroscientists are
struggling to understand exactly how the brain’s higher reasoning center
– the prefrontal cortex – manages conflicting wants and needs to help
us make the right decisions. The reason for all this interest?
Willpower, it turns out, is one of the most important predictors of
success in life.
While small studies through the years have linked high levels of
self-control to better health, relationships, and finances, a landmark
study published this past January provided the strongest evidence to
date. In the study, Duke University researchers culled data from a group
of more than 1,000 New Zealand young adults followed for three decades
and found that those who scored high on tests for self-control when they
were 3 years old were far more likely to be healthy and financially
successful as adults than those who did poorly on the self-control tests
in preschool.
The researchers took into account differences in childhood
socioeconomic class and IQ scores, and determined that 11 percent of
those with the highest levels of self-control as children had multiple
health problems as adults, such as obesity, gum disease, and sexually
transmitted diseases, compared with 27 percent of those with the lowest
levels of self-control. Thirteen percent of those with high self-control
had been convicted of crimes compared with 43 percent of those with the
lowest levels, and just 10 percent in the high self-control group
earned less than $17,000 a year compared with 32 percent in the lowest
group.
The researchers also found that self-control variations among
siblings pointed to their success decades later. “Differences between
children in self-control predicted their adult outcomes approximately as
well as low intelligence and low social class origins,’’ wrote the
study authors.
Those striving to complete a marathon, a diet, or a doctoral
dissertation can gain the willpower to help reach their goals by doing
little self-control tasks throughout the day, like fixing their posture,
avoiding curse words, or controlling their temper at home, according to
Baumeister. And those who engage regularly in high-willpower activities
like exercise, meditation, or learning a new language or craft tend to
exhibit higher levels of self-control in other areas of their lives.
Neuroscientists believe these acts reinforce neural pathways in the
brain’s prefrontal cortex that help us say “yes’’ to our goals and “no’’
to procrastination and temptation.
Exerting willpower, however, requires the brain to use a lot of
energy in the form of glucose, which it may not have if you are hungry
or not able to metabolize glucose as efficiently due to lack of sleep or
stress. “All of these things cause mild dysfunction in the prefrontal
cortex,’’ said Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal, author
of the forthcoming book “The Willpower Instinct.’’ “It’s as if you have
brain damage in areas you need to have self-control. And that turns you
into the worst version of yourself’’ – the one who snaps at the kids,
misses the work deadline, and attacks the ice cream in the freezer.
Recent brain imaging studies indicate that different regions of the
prefrontal cortex are responsible for different elements of willpower.
The left side revs you up and gets you moving through your to-do list,
while the right side helps you avoid temptations that derail your diet,
work, or exercise regimen. A smaller brain region in the middle – called
the ventromedial prefrontal cortex – helps you weigh the myriad
decisions coursing through your mind minute to minute.
Should you check your Facebook feed or write
Those with high levels of self-control often make better decisions
because they consider long-term goals rather than just the instant
gratification, due possibly to better coordination among all of their
brain regions involved in willpower. When California Institute of
Technology researchers performed functional MRI scans on 37 dieters for a
2009 study published in the journal Science, they found that dieters
with high levels of self-control considered both health and taste when
making food choices and that both their ventromedial prefrontal cortex
and their left prefrontal cortex were highly active when making these
choices. Dieters with low self-control considered only taste when making
food choices and had high activity in their ventromedial prefrontal
cortex, with much lower activity in the other brain region.
“We’re still trying to figure out the basic mechanisms by which the
prefrontal cortex controls willpower,’’ said Earl Miller, a professor of
neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies
the neural circuitry of self-control. “We know that those who have
damage to their prefrontal cortex due to a stroke or other brain injury
often behave in a reflexive, mindless way’’ without any thought of
consequences. But, he adds, researchers still haven’t figured out
exactly how the brain learns appropriate behavior like muting a
cellphone during a concert or whispering in a library.
What is clear is that just like a muscle, willpower can get depleted
when it’s overused. In a 2009 study involving 84 college students,
Baumeister found that those assigned to write an essay without using
words containing common letters – which required a lot of willpower –
were more likely to dishonestly report their scores on a subsequent math
test to earn a small monetary reward than those who were instructed to
write an essay without the same restrictions.
Yes, being honest and avoiding the temptation to cheat both require self-control.
“What I learned is that everything comes out of the same pot,’’
Baumeister said. “There are times when you have to give yourself a break
and realize that when you’re coping with high demands at work, you may
not have much willpower left when you get home.’’
That could mean doing a shorter workout that day, putting off the
bill-paying until tomorrow, or doing an activity that requires minimal
effort from the brain, like a bubble bath – all of which allow your
willpower muscle to rest and grow stronger. During times when you need
to push through a gargantuan set of tasks, research suggests that
ingesting a small amount of sugar, like a half a can of cola or a few
jelly beans, can provide the brain with the extra glucose it needs to
exert more self-control. (Emphasis here is on small amount, according to
Baumeister, who conducted studies on this.)
While we all give in to sinful urges on occasion, berating or shaming
ourselves into getting back on course may actually be
counterproductive, said McGonigal, leading to more slip-ups down the
road. One study found that those who forgave themselves for failing at a
task were more likely to brush themselves off and try again, while
other researchers demonstrated that dieters given a pep talk after
eating a doughnut – emphasizing that one small setback wouldn’t ruin all
their hard efforts – were less likely to indulge later on than doughnut
eaters who didn’t have the talk.
“If we want to have more willpower, we have to learn to be a friend
and mentor to ourselves,’’ said McGonigal, “rather than equating
self-control with self-criticism.’’
