So, yesterday I described my lifelong lack of self-discipline. I also rattled off a few things I’ve done or am planning to do, things that some would argue are impossible without a great deal of such discipline. After all, everyone knows how hard it is to choose to eat healthier, exercise more, or spend less. I promised an explanation; bear with me for a bit and you’ll get one today.
An important insight here is that there are two reasons why an action can be considered “difficult”. Some things are just intrinsically hard to accomplish. For example, imagine you’re a pitcher in a baseball game. You will obviously choose to try to strike out the batter in front of you, but even if you make all the right choices you can’t be sure you’ll succeed. Other things are simple to do, but are still difficult because they are hard to choose to do. Say you want to eat healthier, so you decide to order a light salad at a restaurant. Once you’ve made that choice, you aren’t going to mispronounce your order so badly that you get steak and potatoes instead. It turns out that, in my situation at least, a lot of those “self-discipline” related goals fall into the latter category: they’re things that aren’t actually hard to do; the real challenge is to choose to do them.
That may not be news to anyone, but it is important to keep in mind, because it means that the critical moments are when those choices are made about what to actually, physically do. You’ve all seen those moments depicted on television: a character pauses and has to listen as little angelic and demonic versions of himself appear to debate the issue; he eventually sides with one or the other. And in fact, when I face genuinely difficult choices, it typically means that I do have conflicting emotional inclinations, and have to decide among them. If I fail to decide, whichever inclination is stronger wins. Usually, that’s the more immediately gratifying choice and rarely is it the one I want to be in the habit of choosing.
The problem is that I can only “vote” in so many of these conflicts before I run out of steam for awhile. In fact, while I’ve known many who can improve on my track record, I’ve never met anyone who can resist a genuine temptation every time. The key to improving my success rate is buried in that last paragraph, though. You see, I only need to spend my very limited supply of willpower when I am internally conflicted about a decision. If I know what I want, and all the different parts of my psyche are lined up behind that desire, then there’s no inclination to do anything else.
Furthermore, we don’t actually have little devils in our heads who only want to trip us up, or tiny cherubs with only our best interests at heart. All we really have is a collection of little emotional engines pulling on us; whether they pull us in healthy or unhealthy directions often boils down to how we think about our choices as we make them. When they all pull in the same direction, it’s almost impossible to act any other way, for good or ill — such choices are often made before we know they’re there.
I try and get as many of those engines as possible aimed at the kinds of choices I want to make; at best I end up doing the right thing without thinking about it, and even if I don’t get that far I tip the scales in my favor and avoid automatic bad decisions. To go back to an example from yesterday, getting out of a warm bed on a cold day is a difficult thing for me to decide to do. Going to the kitchen to make a tasty breakfast is often a much easier choice to make. The results of those choices are precisely the same — I get out of bed and go make breakfast. One takes a lot of willpower and starts my day off with less to spend later; the other happens almost automatically once the mental picture of the food awaiting me is built in my head.
That’s an easy example, but the same principle applies to many kinds of “difficult” choices: if you can imagine some appealing real result that you are aiming for, and feel and see and smell that outcome, then you can often convert a terribly difficult and unpleasant choice into something trivial or even fun. The parts of you that drive your feelings are strong motivators, but you get to pick what it is they are feeling *about*. A little bit of mental imagery is often enough to get them to change gears in a big way.
Over the next few posts, I am going to talk about some other techniques I’ve found helpful. I will also discuss some of the books on decision-making and neuropsychology I’ve read recently, and how they have helped me develop my understanding. Lastly, I’ll bring up some trials and setbacks I’ve encountered, and discuss how I am approaching them. It is my fond hope that some of this will be of use to others out there who have struggled in vain with self-discipline as I have in the past.
[Disclaimer: Many people are not in my situation. Spending less when one already lives under the poverty threshold is possible but is actually tricky, and often involves taking calculated risks that can fail in a big way. Losing weight can be stymied by any number of legitimate physical conditions that no amount of mental gymnastics will conquer. I’m very lucky to have as many positive choices available as I do. I hope to help other people who have lots of choices to make good ones; perhaps in the end some of those choices will involve non-judgementally aiding and accepting those who weren’t dealt such a good hand in life.]
