77self-Control Quotes from Willpower:Rediscovering Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister
We CANNOT become successful without self-control.It plays a huge role in anyone's success.Improvement in any area of life can never be done without some self-control.The more self control you have,the more chances of success.But it's not easy to control ourselves.Actually this is one of the hardest things in life.
Willpower:Rediscovering Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister is a must read.This book is very interesting.I love the author's writing style and sense of humor. The book teaches you clever tricks and strategies so that it becomes easier to perform the life's hardest task,which is controlling yourself.
Everyone can benefit from reading this book: writers,athletes,students,people trying to give up bad habits,addicts,women suffering from PMS,people desperately trying to increase their productivity. I strongly recommend this book.
Here are the quotes I Love:
''The students who’d been allowed
to eat chocolate chip cookies and candy typically worked on the puzzles for
about twenty minutes, as did a control group of students who were also hungry
but hadn’t been offered food of any kind. The sorely tempted radish eaters,
though, gave up in just eight minutes—a huge difference by the standards of
laboratory experiments. They’d successfully resisted the temptation of the
cookies and the chocolates, but the effort left them with less energy to tackle
the puzzles. The old folk wisdom about willpower appeared to be correct after
all, unlike the newer and fancier psychological theories of the self. Willpower
looked like much more than a metaphor. It seemed to be like a muscle that could
be fatigued through use.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use
it.''
''Don Baucom, a veteran marital therapist…saw
why marriages were going bad just when stress at work was at its worst.[The reason he discovered was] people
were using up all their willpower on the job.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
We like to think we control our thoughts.but we don't.First-time meditators are
typically shocked at how their minds wander over and over, despite earnest
attempts to focus and concentrate. At
best, we have partial control over our streams of thought.
Picking the right color proved to
be especially difficult for the people in the Toronto experiment who had
already depleted their willpower during the sad animal movie. They took longer
to respond and made more mistakes.
''It turns out that there are
signals of ego depletion [people’s diminished capacity to regulate their thoughts,
feelings, and actions], thanks to some new experiments….In these experiments,
while [ego] depleted persons…didn’t show any single telltale emotion, they did
react more strongly to all kinds of things. A sad movie made them extra sad.
Joyous pictures made them happier, and disturbing pictures made them more
frightened and upset. Ice-cold water felt more painful to them than it did to
people who were not ego-depleted. Desires intensified along with feelings.
After eating a cookie, the people reported a stronger craving to eat another cookie—and
they did in fact eat more cookies when given a chance….So if you’d like some
advance warning of trouble, look not for a single symptom but rather for a
change in the overall intensity of your feelings. If you find yourself
especially bothered by frustrating events, or saddened by unpleasant thoughts,
or even happier about some good news—then maybe it’s because your brain’s
circuits aren’t controlling emotions as well as usual. Now, intense feelings
can be quite pleasurable and are an essential part of life, and we’re not
suggesting that you strive for emotional monotony... But be aware of what these
feelings can mean. If you’re trying to resist temptation, you may find yourself
feeling the forbidden desires more strongly just when your ability to resist
them is down. Ego depletion thus creates a double whammy: Your willpower is
diminished and your cravings feel stronger than ever.''
''Researchers have long noticed
that cravings [in people struggling with addictions] are especially strong
during withdrawal. More recently they’ve noticed that lots of other feelings
intensify during withdrawal. During withdrawal, the recovering addict is using
so much willpower to break the habit that it’s likely to be a time of intense,
prolonged ego depletion, and that very state will make the person feel the
desire for the drug all the more strongly. Moreover, other events will also
have an unusually strong impact, causing extra distress and creating further
yearnings for the cigarette or drink or drug. It’s no wonder relapses are so
common and addicts feel so weird when they quit.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
What stress really does,…is deplete willpower, which diminishes your ability
to control…emotions.
‘’You use the same supply of willpower to deal with frustrating
traffic, tempting food, annoying colleagues, demanding bosses, pouting
children. Resisting dessert at lunch leaves you with less willpower to praise
your boss’s awful haircut. The old line about the frustrated worker going home
and kicking the dog jibes with the ego-depletion experiments, although modern
workers generally aren’t so mean to their pets. They’re more likely to say
something nasty to the humans in the household.’’
‘’Chronic physical pain leaves people with a perpetual shortage of
willpower because their minds are so depleted by the struggle to ignore the
pain.’’
''Emotional control is uniquely difficult because you generally can’t
alter your mood by an act of will. You can change what you think about or how
you behave, but you can’t force yourself to be happy. You can treat your
in-laws politely, but you can’t make yourself rejoice over their month-long
visit. To ward off sadness and anger, people use indirect strategies, like
trying to distract themselves with other thoughts, or working out at the gym,
or meditating. They lose themselves in TV shows and treat themselves to
chocolate binges and shopping sprees. Or they get drunk.''
‘’Strictly speaking, ‘impulse
control’ is a misnomer. You don’t really control the impulses. Even someone as preternaturally
disciplined as Barack Obama can’t avoid stray impulses to smoke a cigarette.
What he can control is how he reacts: Does he ignore the impulse, or chew a
Nicorette, or sneak out for a smoke? (He has usually avoided lighting up, according
to the White House, but there have been slips.)’’
''Focus on one project at a time.
If you set more than one self-improvement goal, you may succeed for a while by
drawing on reserves to power through, but that just leaves you more depleted
and more prone to serious mistakes later.When
people have to make a big change in their lives, their efforts are undermined
if they are trying to make other changes as well. People who are trying to quit smoking, for example, will have their
best shot at succeeding if they aren’t changing other behaviors at the same
time. Those who try to quit smoking while also restricting their eating or
cutting back on alcohol tend to fail at all three—probably because they have
too many simultaneous demands on their willpower.''
''Don’t make a list of New Year’s
resolutions. Each January 1,millions of people drag themselves out of bed, full
of hope or hangover, resolved to eat less, exercise more, spend less money,
work harder at the office, keep the home cleaner, and still miraculously have
more time for romantic dinners and long walks on the beach.By February 1,
they’re embarrassed to even look at the list. But instead of lamenting their
lack of willpower, they should put the blame where it belongs: on the list. No
one has enough willpower for that list. If you’re going to start a new physical
exercise program, don’t try to overhaul your finances at the same time….
Because you have only one supply of willpower, the different New Year’s
resolutions all compete with one another. Each time you try to follow one, you
reduce your capacity for all the others. A better plan is to make one
resolution and stick to it. That’s challenge enough.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''The food gets converted into
glucose, but the glucose in the bloodstream doesn’t get absorbed as it
circulates. The result is often a surplus of glucose in the bloodstream, which
might sound beneficial, but it’s like having plenty of firewood and no matches.
The glucose remains there uselessly, rather than being converted into brain and
muscle activity. If the excess glucose reaches a sufficiently high level, the
condition is labeled diabetes.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Researchers testing personality
have found that diabetics tend to be more impulsive and have more explosive
temperaments than other people their age. They’re more likely to get distracted
while working on a time-consuming task. They have more problems with alcohol
abuse, anxiety, and depression. In hospitals and other institutions, diabetics
throw more tantrums than other patients. In everyday life, stressful conditions
seem to be harder on diabetics. Coping with stress typically takes
self-control, and that’s difficult if your body isn’t providing your brain with
enough fuel.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''No glucose, no willpower: The pattern showed up time and again as
researchers tested more people in more situations. They even tested dogs.
While self-control is a distinctively human trait, in the sense that we’ve
developed it so extensively in the process of becoming cultural animals, it’s
not unique to our species.''
''As the body uses glucose during
self-control, it starts to crave sweet things to eat—which is bad news for
people hoping to use their self-control to avoid sweets. When people have more demands for self-control in their daily lives,
their hunger for sweets increases. It’s not a simple matter of wanting all food
more—they seem to be specifically hungry for sweets. In the lab, students
who have just performed a self-control task eat more sweet snacks but not other
(salty) snacks. Even just expecting to have to exert self-control seems to make
people hungry for sweet foods.All these results don’t offer a rationale for
providing sugar fixes to anyone,human or canine, outside the laboratory. The body may crave sweets as the quickest
way to get energy, but low-sugar, highprotein foods and other nutritious fare
work just as well (albeit more slowly). Still, the discovery of the glucose
effect does point to some useful techniques for self-control.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''There’s now a solid physiological
explanation for PMS that doesn’t involve any mysterious alien impulses. During this premenstrual part of the cycle,
which is called the luteal phase, the female body starts channeling a high
amount of its energy to the ovaries and to related activities, like producing
extra quantities of female hormones. As more energy and glucose are diverted to
the reproductive system, there’s less available for the rest of the body, which
responds by craving more fuel. Chocolate and other sweets are immediately
appealing because they provide instant glucose, but any kind of food can help, which
is why women report more food cravings and tend to eat more.''
''The typical woman in a modern
thin-conscious society like America does not take in enough extra food to
supply the body’s increased demands for glucose during these few days [premenstrual
part of the cycle or luteal phase] each month. When there isn’t enough energy
to go around, the body has to ration it, and the reproductive system takes
priority, leaving less glucose available for willpower. As a general rule,
women are less likely than men to suffer from lapses of self-control, but their
self-control problems do worsen during the luteal phase, as studies have
repeatedly shown.During this phase, women spend more money and make more
impulsive purchases than at other times. They smoke more cigarettes. They drink
more alcohol, and not just because they enjoy drinks more. The increase is
especially likely for women who have a drinking problem or a family history of alcoholism.
During this luteal phase, women are more liable to go on drinking binges or
abuse cocaine and other drugs. PMS is
not a matter of one specific behavior problem cropping up. Instead,
self-control seems to fail across the board, letting all sorts of problems
increase.''
''Glucose depletion can turn the most charming companion into a monster.
The old advice about eating a good breakfast applies all day long, particularly
on days when you’re physically or mentally stressed. If you have a test, an
important meeting, or a vital project,don’t take it on without glucose.
Don’t get into an argument with your boss four hours after lunch. Don’t thrash
out serious problems with your partner just before dinner. When you’re
on a romantic trip across Europe, don’t drive into a walled medieval town at
seven P.M. and try to navigate to your hotel on an empty stomach. Your car can
probably survive the cobblestone maze, but your relationship might not.''
When you eat, go for the slow
burn. The body converts just about all sorts of food into glucose, but at
different rates. Foods that are converted quickly are said to have a high
glycemic index. These include starchy carbohydrates like white bread, potatoes,
white rice, and plenty of offerings on snack racks and fast-food counters.
Eating them produces boom-and-bust cycles, leaving you short on glucose and
self-control—and too often unable to resist the body’s craving for quick hits
of starch and sugar from doughnuts and candy.
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
To maintain steady self-control, you’re better off eating foods with a
low glycemic index: most vegetables, nuts (like peanuts and cashews), many raw
fruits (like apples, blueberries, and pears), cheese, fish, meat, olive oil,
and other ‘good’ fats. (These low-glycemic foods may also help keep you slim.)
The benefits of the right diet have shown up in studies of women with PMS, who
report fewer symptoms when they’re eating healthier food.
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''When you’re sick, save your
glucose for your immune system. The next time you’re preparing to drag your
aching body to work, here’s something to consider: Driving a car with a bad
cold has been found to be even more dangerous than driving when mildly
intoxicated. That’s because your immune system is using so much of your glucose
to fight the cold that there’s not enough left for the brain.If you’re too
glucose-deprived to do something as simple as driving a car, how much use are
you going to be in the office (assuming you make it there safely)? Sometimes
the job has to be muddled through, but don’t trust the glucose deprived brain
for anything important. If you simply can’t miss a meeting at work, try to
avoid any topics that will strain your self-control.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''When you’re tired, sleep. We shouldn’t need to be told something
so obvious, but cranky toddlers aren’t the only ones who resist much needed
naps. Adults routinely shortchange themselves on sleep, and the result is less
self-control. By resting, we reduce the body’s demands for glucose, and we also
improve its overall ability to make use of the glucose in the bloodstream.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''People with high incomes tended to look further into the future than
people with low incomes. That difference is partly due to necessity: If you’re
scrambling to pay the rent, you don’t have the luxury of comparing 401(k)
retirement plans. Yet being unable to pay the rent can also be a consequence of
short-term thinking. As in Aesop’s fable, the farsighted ant is better
prepared for the winter than the live-for-the-moment grasshopper.''
‘’The Zeigarnik effect:
Uncompleted tasks and unmet goals tend to pop into one’s mind. Once the task is
completed and the goal reached, however, this stream of reminders comes to a
stop.’’
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
‘’That’s how Allen’s system deals
with the problem that he calls monkey mind. If, like his typical client, you’ve
got at least 150 items on your to-do list, the Zeigarnik effect could leave you
leaping from task to task, and it won’t be sedated by vague good intentions. If
you’ve got a memo that has to be read before a meeting Thursday morning, the
unconscious wants to know exactly what needs to be done next, and under what
circumstances. But once you make that plan—once you put the meeting memo in the
tickler file for Wednesday, once you specify the very next action to be taken
on the project—you can relax.You don’t have to finish the job right away.
You’ve still got 150 things on the todo list, but for the moment the monkey is
still, and the water is calm.’’
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
'' ‘Whether you’re trying to
garden or take a picture or write a book,’ Allen says, ‘your ability to make a
creative mess is your most productive state. You want to be able to throw ideas
all over the place, but you need to be able to start with a clear deck. One
mess at a time is all you can handle. Two messes at a time, you’re screwed.You
may want to find God, but if you’re running low on cat food, you damn well better
make a plan for dealing with it. Otherwise the cat food is going to take a
whole lot more attention and keep you from finding God.’ ”
‘’The problem of decision fatigue
affects everything from the careers of CEOs to the prison sentences of felons
appearing before weary judges. It influences the behavior of everyone,
executive and nonexecutive, every day. Yet few people are even aware of it.
When asked whether making decisions would deplete their willpower and make them
vulnerable to temptation, most people say no. They don’t realize that decision fatigue
helps explain why ordinarily sensible people get angry at their colleagues and
families, splurge on clothes, buy junk food at the supermarket, and can’t resist
the car dealer’s offer to rustproof their new sedan.’’
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''As the ultimate real-world test
of their theory, researchers went into that great modern arena of decision
making: the mall. Shoppers in a suburban mall were interviewed about their
experiences in the stores that day and then asked to solve some simple
arithmetic problems. The researchers politely asked them to do as many as
possible but said they could quit at any time. Sure enough, the shoppers who’d
already made the most decisions in the stores gave up the quickest on the math
problems. When you shop till you drop, your willpower drops, too. On a practical
level, the experiment demonstrated the perils of marathon shopping. On a
theoretical level, the results of all these experiments raised a new question: What kinds of decisions deplete the
most willpower? Which choices are the hardest?''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''[In a]bridal-registry experiment,
the subjects included people with widely assorted attitudes toward the task.
Some of the young men and women were much more enthusiastic…at the prospect of
choosing wedding gifts for themselves. They said they looked forward to making
the choices, and afterward they reported that they enjoyed the
experience.Meanwhile, other subjects in the same experiment utterly detested
the wholeprocess of picking china and silverware and appliances.As you might
expect, the process wasn’t as depleting for the ones who enjoyed it—but only up
to a point. If the participants were given a short list of choices to be made
in four minutes, then the ones who liked picking gifts could zip through without
depleting any of their willpower, whereas the registry dreading group was
predictably depleted even by that short exercise. But when the list was longer
and the process went on for twelve minutes, both groups were equally depleted
(meaning that they exhibited less self-control on tests than did a control
group that hadn’t made any choices about wedding gifts). A few pleasant decisions are apparently not all that depleting, but
in the long run, there seems to be no such thing as a free choice, at least
when it comes to making it for yourself.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''When people were not depleted of
willpower, most of them said they would make the investment. Depleted people,
in contrast, said to leave the money where it was. Their decision didn’t make
sense financially, because they were essentially losing money by leaving it in
the lowyield savings account, but it was easier than making a decision.This
form of procrastination helps explain why so many people put off the biggest
choice of their lives: picking a mate.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
“ ‘Closing a door on an option is
experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the
emotion of loss,’ Ariely says. Sometimes that makes sense, but too often we’re
so eager to keep options open that we don’t see the long-term price that we’re
paying—or that others are paying. When you won’t settle for less than a perfect
mate, you end up with no one. When parents can never say no to projects at the
office, their children suffer at home. When a judge can’t bring himself to make
a hard decision about parole, he’s quite literally closing the door on the prisoner’s
cell.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''To compromise is human. In the
animal kingdom, you don’t see a lot of protracted negotiations between
predators and their victims. The ability
to compromise is a particularly advanced and difficult form of decision
making—and therefore one of the first abilities to decline when our willpower
is depleted, particularly when we take our depleted selves shopping.Shoppers
face continual compromises between quality and price, which don’t always change
in the same proportions at the same time. Often, price goes up much faster than
quality. A wine selling for $100 a bottle is usually better than a $20 wine,
but is it five times better?''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
‘’When your willpower is low,
you’re less able to make…trade-offs. You become what researchers call a
‘cognitive miser,’ hoarding your energy by avoiding compromises. You’re liable
to look at only one dimension, like price: Just give me the cheapest. Or
you indulge yourself by looking at quality: I want the very best (an
especially easy strategy if someone else is paying).Decision fatigue leaves us
vulnerable to marketers who know how to time their sales…’’
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Once decision fatigue set in,
people tended to settle for the recommended option.''
‘’A person might notice a table
and think nothing more than, Oh, there’s a table. But the self was
rarely noticed in such a neutral way. Whenever people focused on themselves,
they seemed to compare what they saw with some sort of idea of what they should
be like. A person who looked in the mirror usually didn’t stop at, Oh,
that’s me. Rather, the person was more likely to think, My hair is a
mess, or This shirt looks good on me, or I should remember to
stand up straight, or, inevitably, Have I gained weight? Self-awareness
always seemed to involve comparing the self to these ideas of what one might,
or should, or could, be.’’
''The link between self-awareness
and self-control was also demonstrated in experiments involving adults and
alcohol. Researchers found that one of the chief effects of drinking was to
reduce people’s ability to monitor their own behavior. As drinkers’
self-awareness declines, they lose self-control, so they get into more fights,
smoke more, eat more, make more sexual blunders, and wake up the next day with
many more regrets. One of the hardest parts of a hangover is the return of
self-awareness, because that’s when we resume that crucial task for a social
animal: comparing our behavior with the standards set by ourselves and our
neighbors.Keeping track is more than just knowing where things are. It means
knowing where things are in relation to where they should be….Changing personal
behavior to meet standards requires willpower, but willpower without
self-awareness is as useless as a cannon commanded by a blind man.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
“ ‘If you cut too hard and too fast, you’ll never stick with it and
you’ll hate yourself,’ Patzer says. ‘If you’re spending $500 a month on
restaurants and you try to set a new budget of $200, you’ll end up saying, ‘Forget
that!’ It’s too hard. But if you reduce to $450 or $400, you can make that
without radically changing your lifestyle. Then the next month you can go
another $50 or $100. Keep the monthly changes to 20 percent until you get
things under control.’ ‘’
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
‘’Once you’ve taken the first two
steps in self-control—setting a goal and monitoring your behavior—you’re
confronted with a perennial question: Should you focus on how far you’ve come
or how much remains to be done?...The ones who wrote about what they had
already achieved had higher satisfaction with their current tasks and projects,
as compared with the ones who reflected on what they had not yet achieved. But
the latter were more motivated to reach their goals and then move on to more
challenging new projects. Those who focused on what they had already done did
not seem eager to move on to more difficult and challenging tasks. They were
reasonably content with where they were and what they were currently doing. For contentment, apparently, it pays to
look at how far you’ve come. To stoke motivation and ambition, focus instead on
the road ahead.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
“ ‘Getting your brain wired into little goals and achieving them, that
helps you achieve the bigger things you shouldn’t be able to do,’ he said.
‘It’s not just practicing the specific thing. It’s always making things more
difficult than they should be, and never falling short, so that you have that
extra reserve, that tank, so you know you can always go further than your goal.
For me that’s what discipline is. It’s repetition and practice.’ These
exercises certainly appear to work for Blaine.’’
''The students who did the study-discipline program reported doing
physical workouts a bit more often and cutting down on impulsive spending.
Those in the fitness and money-management programs said they studied more
diligently. Exercising self-control in one area seemed to improve all areas of
life.''
''In setting rules for how to behave in the future, you’re often in a
calm, cool state, so you make unrealistic commitments…It’s really easy to agree
to diet when you’re not hungry… And it’s really easy to be sexually abstemious
when you’re not sexually aroused.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Willpower is humans’ greatest
strength, but the best strategy is not to rely on it in all situations. Save it
for emergencies…, there are mental tricks that enable you to conserve willpower
for those moments when it’s indispensable. Paradoxically, these techniques
require willpower to implement, but in the long run they leave you less
depleted for those moments when it takes a strong core to survive.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''A strategy to conserve willpower…with great success: precommitment. The
essence of this strategy is to lock yourself into a virtuous path. You
recognize that you’ll face terrible temptations to stray from the path, and
that your willpower will weaken. So you make it impossible—or somehow unthinkably
disgraceful or sinful—to leave the path. Recommitment is what Odysseus and his
men used to get past the deadly songs of the Sirens. He had himself lashed to
the mast with orders not to be untied no matter how much he pleaded to be freed
to go to the Sirens. His men used a different form of precommitment by plugging
their ears so they couldn’t hear the Sirens’ songs. They prevented themselves from being tempted at all, which is generally
the safer of the two approaches. If you want to be sure you don’t gamble at
a casino, you’re better off staying out of it rather than strolling past the tables
and counting on your friends to stop you from placing a bet. Better yet is to
put your name on the list of people (maintained by casinos in some states) who are
not allowed to collect any money if they place winning bets.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''You might think the energy spent
shaving in the jungle would be better devote to looking for food. Wouldn’t that
exercise of self-control leave you more depleted and less able to exert willpower
for something vital? But orderly habits like that can actually improve
self-control in the long run by triggering automatic mental processes that
don’t require much energy. Stanley’s belief in the link between external order
and inner self-discipline has been confirmed recently in some remarkable
studies.''
‘’…the successful strategy used
by the children in the classic marshmallow experiment. Those who kept looking
at the marshmallow quickly depleted their willpower and gave in to the
temptation to eat it right away; those who distracted themselves by looking
around the room (or sometimes just covering their eyes) managed to hold out.’’
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
‘’Self-control is not selfish.
Willpower enables us to get along with others and override impulses that are
based on personal short-term interests.’’
‘’Even when social scientists
can’t accept supernatural beliefs, they recognize that religion is a profoundly
influential human phenomenon that has been evolving effective self-control mechanisms
for thousands of years. Alcoholics Anonymous couldn’t have attracted millions of
people like Eric Clapton and Mary Karr without doing something right.’’
''We know that self-control starts with setting standards or goals, and we can see
that AA helps people set a clear and attainable goal: Do not have a drink
today. (AA’s mantra is ‘One day at a time.’) Self-control depends on monitoring,
and AA offers help there, too. Members get chips for remaining sober for
certain numbers of consecutive days, and when they get up to speak, they often
start by saying how many days they have been sober. Members also choose a
sponsor, with whom they are supposed to remain in regular, even daily, contact—and
that, too, is a powerful boost for monitoring.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Having friends may be great for
your mental and physical health. But if your friends are all drinkers and drug
users,they may not be much help in restraining your own impulses. They may
directly or indirectly pressure you to drink as an integral part of
socializing.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''People struggling with an alcohol or drug problem need social support
for not drinking, and that’s where a group like AA can be vitally
helpful. Alcoholics have spent so much of their lives surrounded by drinkers
that they can’t imagine the benefits of a different kind of peer pressure.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''A recent study of people
undergoing cognitive therapy found that resolutions were more likely to be kept
if they were made in the presence of other people, especially a romantic
partner. Apparently, promising your therapist that you will cut down on
drinking is not a powerful boost to self-control, but promising your spouse
makes a big difference. Your spouse, after all, is the one who’s going to smell
your breath.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Smokers who live mainly among nonsmokers tend to have high rates of
quitting, indicating again the power of social influence and social support for
quitting.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''At any given point, a religiously active person was 25 percent more
likely than a nonreligious person to remain alive.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Religious people are less likely than others to develop unhealthy
habits, like getting drunk, engaging in risky sex, taking illicit drugs, and
smoking cigarettes.They’re more likely to wear seat belts, visit a dentist, and
take vitamins…Religion reduces people’s inner conflicts among different goals
and values.As…conflicting goals impede self-regulation, so it appears that religion
reduces such problems by providing believers with clearer priorities.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Religious believers build self-control by regularly forcing themselves
to interrupt their daily routines in order to pray. Some religions, like Islam,
require prayers at fixed times every day. Many religions prescribe periods
of fasting, like the day of Yom Kippur, the month of Ramadan, and the forty
days of Lent.Religions mandate specific patterns of eating, like kosher food or
vegetarianism.Some services and meditations require the believer to adopt and
hold specific poses (like kneeling, or sitting cross-legged in the lotus
position) so long that they become uncomfortable and require discipline to
maintain them.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Believers’ self-control comes not
merely from a fear of God’s wrath but from the system of values they’ve
absorbed, which gives their personal goals an aura of sacredness.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''If you’re someone who can’t control your drinking or your smoking, you
can’t look on that drink or cigarette as an isolated event. You can’t have one
glass of champagne because you’re toasting your best friend’s wedding. You need
to see the one lapse as a precedent that will establish a long-term pattern.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Forget about self-esteem. Work on self-control.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Whether you’re giving a time-out
to a toddler or revoking a teenager’s driving privileges, there are three basic
facets of punishment: severity, speed, and consistency. Many people associate
strict discipline with severe penalties, but that’s actually the least
important facet. Researchers have found
that severity seems to matter remarkably little and can even be
counterproductive: Instead of encouraging virtue, harsh punishments teach the
child that life is cruel and that aggression is appropriate. The speed of the
punishment is much more important,as researchers have found in working with
children as well as with animals. For lab rats to learn from their mistakes,
the punishment generally has to occur almost immediately, preferably within a
second of the misbehavior. Punishment doesn’t have to be that quick with
children, but the longer the delay, the more chance that they’ll have forgotten
the infraction and the mental processes that led to it.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''By far the most important facet of punishment—and the most difficult one for
parents—is consistency. Ideally, a parent should quickly discipline the
child every single time he or she misbehaves, but in a restrained, even mild
manner. A stern word or two is often
enough as long as it’s done carefully and regularly.This approach can initially
be more of a strain on the parents than on the child.They’re tempted to
overlook or forgive some misdeed, if only because they’re tired or because it
may spoil the pleasant time everyone else is having. Parents may rationalize
that they want to be kind; they may even tell each other to be nice and let
this one go. But the more vigilant they are early on, the less effort is required
in the long run. Consistent discipline
tends to produce well-behaved children.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''While [some] parents…find it heartbreaking to start imposing discipline,
children react well when reprimands are delivered briefly, calmly, and
consistently…. When parents are inconsistent, when they let an infraction
slide, they sometimes try to compensate with an extra-strict punishment for the
next one. This requires less self-control on the parents’ part:They can be nice
when they feel like it, and then punish severely if they’re feeling angry or
the misbehavior is egregious. But imagine how this looks from the child’s point
of view. Some days you make a smart remark and the grownups all laugh. Other
days a similar remark brings a smack or the loss of treasured privileges.
Seemingly tiny or even random differences in your own behavior or in the
situation seem to spell the difference between no punishment at all and a highly
upsetting one. Besides resenting the unfairness, you learn that the most important
thing is not how you behave but whether or not you get caught, and whether your
parents are in the mood to punish. You might learn, for instance, that table
manners can be dispensed with at restaurants, because the grown-ups are too
embarrassed to discipline you in public.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Parents find it hard to
administer discipline in public because they feel judged,…They’re afraid people
will think they’re a bad mother.But you have to get that out of your head. I’ve
had people stare at me when I take a child out of a restaurant for being rude,
but you can’t worry about that.You have to do what’s right for the child, and
it really is all about being consistent. They have to grow up knowing what’s
appropriate and inappropriate behavior.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
‘’It’s easy for a parent to say,
‘Go and clean up your room,’ but that doesn’t tell the child anything. You may
as well tell them to stare at the wall. You need the discipline to go in there
with them and model exactly what to do—show them how to fold a piece of
clothing and put it in the closet or the right drawer…Once Mrs. Paul did that a
few times, the children took to doing it on their own, although it still
occasionally required some parental supervision—and the resolve not to
backslide and do the jobs for the children. ‘Sometimes,’ Mrs. Paul said, ‘I
come into the kitchen and their cereal bowls are still sitting there, and I find
myself wanting to grab the bowls and clean up. It’s easier for me to do that than
go find them. But no matter where they are, I have to remember to ask them to
come back and clear their own plates. That’s where I have to exercise
selfcontrol.’ ‘’
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
‘’When your children are still toddlers, establish a system of rewards
and punishments in advance, and when you’re giving either one to a child,
explain exactly why. As they get older,it becomes more useful to ask them what
goals they have for themselves. Once you hear their ambitions, you can help get
there with the right incentives, like making allowance payments contingent on
doing chores, or promising bonuses for doing extra work.’’
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''[To encourage children develop
the money saving habit] parents can help children open savings accounts, keep
track of the bank statements, and set goals and rewards. Research has shown that children who open
bank accounts are more likely than others to grow up to be savers. So are
children who grow up discussing money with their parents.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''If you want to instill
self-control, you need to be consistent in whatever rewards you give. Don’t
haphazardly give the child something from your wallet for a good report card.
Instead, set the goals in advance: how much money for each A, how much for each
B, which subjects count most, etc. For a young child, you may have to set the
payment schedule, but older children can start negotiating bonuses and penalties,
and perhaps even drawing up formal contracts for both sides to sign.The rules
and the rewards will change as the child gets older, but it’s important to keep
a disciplined system in place, no matter how difficult that seems when the
dreaded teenage years arrive.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Until adolescents’ self-control
catches up with their impulses, parents have the thankless task of somehow
providing strict external control while at the same time starting to treat the
child as something closer to a grown-up. Probably the best compromise is to
give the teenager more say in the rule-making process,and to do it when
everyone is in a calm, well-rested state—not when the teenager first comes home
at two in the morning. If teenagers can help draw up the rules, they begin to
see these as personal commitments instead of parental whims. If they negotiate
a curfew, they’re more likely to respect it, or at least to accept the
consequences for breaking it. And the more involved they get in setting goals,
the more likely they are to proceed to the next step of self-control:monitoring
themselves.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Success is conditional—but it’s within your reach as long as you have the
discipline to try, try again.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''If you’re serious about controlling your weight, you need the
discipline to follow these three rules:
1. Never go on a diet.
2. Never vow to give up chocolate or any other food.
3. Whether you’re judging yourself or judging others, never equate
being overweight with having weak willpower.
You may not have kept your
resolution to lose ten pounds this year, but that doesn’t mean you should take
up a diet or swear off sweets. And you certainly shouldn’t lose faith in your
ability to accomplish other feats, because being
overweight is not a telltale sign of weak willpower, even if most people think
so.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''Evolution favored people who could survive famines, so once a body has
gone through the experience of not getting enough to eat, it reacts by fighting
to keep all the pounds it has. When you diet, your body assumes there’s a
famine and hangs on to every fat cell it can. The ability to lose weight
through a drastic change in diet ought to be conserved as a precious, one-time
capability. Perhaps you’ll need it late in life, when your health or your
survival will depend on being able to lose weight.Instead of going for a quick weight loss today, you’re better off using
your self-control to make gradual changes that will produce lasting effects,
and you have to be especially careful in your strategies.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
''When you detest what you see in
the mirror, you need self-control not to start a crash diet. You need to
remind yourself that diets typically work at first but fail miserably in the long
run.''
― Roy F. Baumeister, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
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