The Science of Willpower: An Interview with Kelly McGonigal

well I define willpower as the ability to make choices that are consistent with your biggest goals and your highest values even when some part of you doesn't want to I think the things that really challenge willpower are the things where part of us gets distracted by immediate gratification or maybe gets overwhelmed by anxiety or stress and we find it difficult to remember in those moments what matters most to us and so willpower is the ability both to remember what matters most and the willingness to do things that support those goals even when self-doubt is present or even when Cravings or physical pain or anxiety are present um and to be able to hold those difficult inner experiences or other impulses and still direct your energy and attention to the things that matter most I like to think of willpower as having three powers I will I won't and I want um and we tend to think you know we think about willpower we think of this classic example of resisting a Temptation you know I I won't eat that chocolate or I won't buy that thing that's out of my budget I won't smoke that cigarette or I won't say that thing that will get me into trouble trouble and that's just one aspect of willpower it really is the ability to recognize when you're about to do something that is inconsistent with your goals or values and literally put on the break so that's I won't power um but we also need the ability to take action in the direction of our goals and values the ability to say yes to things that maybe are boring or uncomfortable you know an example of that which I call I willpower would be something like being willing to stay on the treadmill for another 5 minutes even though your legs are saying they're tired or your brain is telling you this is boring and I'd rather do something else do you have the motivation and the energy to keep going even in the face of fatigue or boredom and the thing that supports both of those strengths is this last power that I call I want power and that is the ability to actually walk around in the world with a sense of what your core goals and values are um rather than allowing sort of the universe to impose on you its own agenda you know so much about daily life is we get interrupted on our devices somebody wants this and it's an emergency go do that and so our our schedule and our agenda can get hijacked in that way we go into a store we go to a restaurant and people want to sell us things that are not healthy for us or go beyond our budget and we have to really be able to interact with the world uh with a a key sense of what it is we care about and what matters most to us and that is a skill that can be strengthened as much as the I won't power of resisting impulses and the IE willpower of taking positive action there's this really interesting area of willpower science that talks about willpower is a limited resource and there's a whole bunch of research behind this and the basic take-home point is that we have a limited amount of willpower strength and when we use it we run out of it and so you know if we're spending all of our willpower doing one thing like counting calories we may not have any willpower left over for paying full attention to our kids when we get home from work but I have to say so I'm a little skep of This research um and I will say that when you take a really close look at the data behind it what seems to be limited is our ability to force ourselves to do things that we don't really want to do and that does seem to be a limited resource you know most of the research that is looking at this question has asked people to do things that are difficult and boring and not important and not connected to any actual personal goal you know things like keeping your arm in a bucket of ice water or doing really challenging but boring computer that require heightened attention and focus and in those laboratory experiments this is what you see that people basically run out of willpower uh in the real world it seems like if you can Define the things that take willpower as being what you truly want that willpower is a much less limited resource and it's one of the reasons why I talk about want power as being such a key foundation for willpower because when you view say making the Healthy Choice as something that is consistent with what you care about you know then it's exciting when you see something healthy on the menu like oh there's something I can order that supports this goal I have of creating health and it doesn't feel like oh I have to force myself to eat a vegetable and all that deprivation mentality I think too often we believe that who we really are is the one who wants Indulgence the one you know who we really are is the one who will only be satisfied with immediate gratification and if you're totally identified with that small part of you then yeah your willpower is going to run out because every choice you make that is for your long-term good is going to feel like deprivation or feel like you're forcing yourself to so one of the findings from willpower research that I found Most Fascinating is the fact that most people view their future self as a stranger that when they think about themselves 10 years or 20 years in the future it feels like somehow it's not really them and so when you ask people to think about say saving money for retirement or quitting smoking now to benefit the future self people will say things like well it seems like a waste like like I'm giving my money to a stranger instead of being able to actually have my money that I earned and one of the ways that I found working with people that really helps people connect to their future self is to try to find what researchers call a self-defining future memory and if you look back over the course of your life there may have been moments that were really meaningful to you the birth of a child or maybe getting your college uh diploma at graduation ceremony research has shown that people have a much easier time Looking Backward than looking forward for those self-defining moments and to the degree that you can look into your future and imagine a real Vivid future memory of something that's going to feel important that's going to reflect enduring theme and value in your life and you can imagine it like a memory that has already happened that greatly increases motivation and willpower and really support people making important changes so I think that you know we're thinking for ourselves about how to change our Behavior there are all sorts of exercises you can do to to take this more hopeful and optimistic sense of Imagining the the life that you would like to have and who you would like to be in the future and the future memory is one of them I often in my classes have people write letters from their future self expressing gratitude to their present self for the courage or the willingness to do really difficult things now whether it's quitting smoking or beginning an exercise program or beginning to save money and really like imagine yourself as that future self Looking Backward with this great gratitude and compassion to the person who was willing to make that change when it was difficult it gives you the sense of both connection to a future self and the sense that it's possible and you know believing that change is possible is um is part of what actually drives our willingness to do things when it's still quite difficult self-compassion is a hugely important part for any sort of difficult Behavior change or health change um and it's funny when I first started teaching the science of willpower it was the thing I got the most push back on now I would say research shows that it's really important to forgive your mistakes or your setbacks that you know you need to be less self-critical and less hard on yourselves and I would have you know people in my class raise their hands and these are you know grown adults uh say no you don't understand I need to be more hard on myself right I'm so screwed up you know I have so many bad habits I I know I should change and I haven't you got you've got it completely wrong when actually the reality is when you forgive yourself for a setback it actually allows you to connect to the part of you who wants to make the change and when you Heap on the self-criticism the guilt and the shame it actually primarily motivates people to try to escape the feeling of shame or guilt uh Often by going back to the very thing that they would use to numb negative feelings in the first place like getting drunk or buying something or comfort food part of self-compassion is is making the time to actually allow yourself to feel the desire to change even though right now the Gap feels large and it's a very sort of tender and vulnerable place to be in that's important to to be willing to go into to actually feel with your heart and your mind that this you want this change for yourself even as you maybe are un sure of how that change is going to unfold even if there is self-doubt about your ability to do it and that's one of the ways that self-compassion can really support us is in those moments of setbacks or self-doubt you make contact with your goal and you think about how not alone you are you know that that every person struggles with some sort of willpower challenge or you know everyone knows what it's like to feel stuck and wonder if it's possible to change and to recognize that this process doesn't say anything about how like uniquely screwed up you are it says that you're human and you're just in the middle of it right now and your future self at some point will be able to look back with gratitude from the other end of the experience so I Define mindfulness as uh sort of a three-step process often it gets reduced sort of in in Western psychology to just paying attention in the present moment but if you really think about mindfulness as a process and the rich tradition it comes from um it starts with intention right that you have to have a connection to something you care about there's a a commitment to some intention and so part of mindfulness is really what we talked about is this kind of want Power like do you know what you want to orient toward in life do you know what matters most to you or how it is you want to show up in the world what is your core intention and then it mindfulness includes attention really paying attention in an open and curious way and a self-compassionate way to how your own thoughts and words and actions are either in line with that intention or not are there things in your environment that support that intention or not are there relationships that support that intention or not being really curious about the process of how you either choose your intention or move away from your intention and then the third part of mindfulness is action the willingness to take action based on what You observe sometimes referred to as skillful action and so when you train that process getting very clear on what your intention is willingness to pay attention to how you yourself move towards it or away from it and the things in your environment that can support you or sabotage you and then you take committed action small steps every day well I don't know how I'm going to make this change completely but I'm going to wait five minutes when I wake up in the morning I'm going to wait five minutes before I check my email for example you know then I'm going to be making a small action a choice that is consistent with my intention and trust that that process eventually supports a much bigger change so when it comes to technology there I could give like sort of a three-step guide to how I think about breaking addiction to it one is to recognize that there is nuring ways of relating to technology and destructive ways and there are actually things you can do online and with phones that will make you happier they'll make you more connected to other people and that aren't inherently addicting you know things like targeted response to other people on Facebook has been shown to make other people like you more and care about you more when you go online and you respond to a friends photo and it strengthens the relationship and it also tends not to be as addictive when you're not just scrolling through but you're actually using it to strengthen real world connections like that sort of thing you should make time in your life to do it I mean forget about trying to control it uh in the same way that you would look for nourishing foods things that would actually sustain you at the same time to recognize that there are all these destructive ways of getting lost online and to really begin to recognize the cost that it takes on your life like to really ask yourself what is this getting in the way of and then to start experimenting with small changes that are consistent with your intention to change like like I was saying you know it's a big thing for a lot of people to get out of bed in the morning before they check their phone and if you're sleeping with your phone and you're used to getting up in the morning by scrolling and checking email then yeah that's going to be a really good first starting point or maybe you said a rule for yourself that you know the first hour that you you're at home the cell phone goes in a drawer so you get at least 60 Minutes of whoever is in the house with you kids you know spouse they get your undistracted attention and then after that hour you can pull your phone back out and do whatever you want for many people it's you know they're spending an hour or two hours at night before they go to sleep on their phones or on their computers and they're not going to sleep on time and then they're also having difficulty falling asleep because the way that technology ology and blue screens interfere with sleep biology so for another person it might be forget what you're doing during the day that's fine but the phone you have to hide it for at least an hour before you think you want to go to sleep again it's all about paying attention to what it is that matters for you

Channel: UMNCSH

Views: 176,461

Keywords: willpower, taking charge of your health, kelly mcgonigal, mindfulness, self-compassioin

Id: NzVoQkPswRk

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 05 2014