Tagged: willpower
How to deal with failure effectively: Should you punish or forgive yourself?
The Problem: When we fail, we often punish ourselves for our slacking. But is this effective?
What Science Says: Actually, forgiving ourselves might be the strategy that leads into better results in the future.
Take-Home Message: The 3 key elements for dealing effectively with failure.
When we fail at something, the natural reaction for most of us is to punish ourselves for our slacking. When we drink too many beers, when we smoke that cigar we shouldn’t have smoked, when we eat that greasy pizza or fail to meet that deadline, we get angry at ourselves: You lazy slacker, again you failed! You will never succeed at anything! These accusations fill our minds, and often we start designing some punishments for ourselves, in order to learn a lesson.
The question to ask: Is this really an effective way to deal with failure? Does punishing ourselves contribute to us not making the same mistake in the future?
Ask professor Michael Wohl from Carleton University, and he can tell you that forgiving might actually be a more successful strategy to deal with many self-regulation failures.
For example, procrastinating before the exam – followed by last night’s cramming – is an all too common phenomenon among college students. But let’s say that you procrastinated before the mid-term exam and you are not happy with the results. The final exam is in a few months: How to make sure that the same thing doesn’t happen there?
The research team led by Wohl got into contact with students in this situation and found out that some students were more forgiving towards themselves for slacking, while others were more strict and punishing. A few months went by and it was time for the final exam. Guess which group got better results, self-forgiving or self-punishing students?
It turned out that the self-punishing group procrastinated as much in the final exam as they did in the mid-term, and this was reflected in their final results. Critical self-punishing thus failed as a method for improving their future performance. However, self-forgiving students were not only more studious before the exam, they also got better grades. So unlike common wisdom has it, self-forgiving might be a more effective strategy than self-criticism for making sure that in the future you win your willpower battles.
However, don’t take this as a license to forgive yourself for everything. Too much forgiving is not good, either. Especially when it comes to chronic harmful behavior, like smoking or gambling addictions, being too permissive toward oneself might actually lead oneself to be less prone to solve the problem. Smokers trying to quit might use self-forgiveness to justify their smoking, in order to be able to smoke one more cigar – again.
More important than forgiving or punishing might be that one accepts responsibility for what has happened. Self-accusation often puts one in a defensive and negative mood, where one is unable to reflect on the situation and thus fails to learn from it. This is probably the reason why self-critical students made the same mistake in the final exam that they did in the mid-term. By focusing on the punishment, they forgot to have a general look at what were the factors that actually contributed to procrastination happening in the first place. On the other hand, a chronic smoker might use forgiveness to allow oneself not to think about what happened and why, and thus forgiveness might contribute to the continuation of the problem.
So when you face a self-control failure, the most important thing is to accept responsibility for what happened, and have a realistic look at the situation that caused it. What situational factors were at play? What could I have done differently? It is this reflection and a commitment to change that are the real drivers of change for the better. By focusing on self-punishment, you easily fail to have this essential reflection. But self-forgiveness alone is not enough, either. However, when
(1) forgiveness is combined with
(2) a commitment to change and
(3) a plan for change,
this trio might work magic in making you less prone to repeat your mistake.
This post was originally published in Fulfillment Daily.
Willpower: The Owner’s Manual
Why is Barack Obama only wearing gray or blue suits? Why did Stanley, while searching for Doctor Livingstone in the darkest Africa and haunted by malaria, mosquitoes, diseases, and beasts, still insist on shaving every single morning? Both of them had intuitively taken into use one of the tools to improve willpower that the latest science has confirmed.
I’ve written a book. The name is Willpower: The Owner’s Manual – 12 Tools for Doing the Right Thing. The book has two functions.
First, based on the recent advances in the science of willpower, it will tell you what willpower is. This is essential because our current mistaken assumptions about willpower are often the biggest obstacles for its effective utilization.
Second, the book will offer twelve tools that will make sure that you are able to get the most out of this resource and be able to do the right thing, in the face of any challenge. The book will teach you how to increase your willpower, how to have the most supporting attitudes, how to train your habitual self into doing the right thing automatically, and how to design your environment so that it gives you optimal support in reaching your targets.
The book combines the latest scientific findings with stories and personal experiences of the author to provide a highly accessible, yet scientifically accurate, take on willpower – the most important tool you have for doing the right thing.
For more info, check out the site for the book.
Get the book directly from Amazon.
”I highly recommend that you not only read this book but study it and keep it handy for follow ups and reminders to keep striving forward to a more successful life and better choices.” – John Wilder, marriage coach
Self-control through greater cause: Martin Luther’s solution for not eating the marshmallow
”Here stand I, I cannot otherwise!” Threatened with excommunication Martin Luther stood in front of the Emperor Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire and was asked to take back his interpretation of scriptures because they defied the power of the pope. Martin requested some time to think, prayed, consulted a few friends and gave his response the next day: ”I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen!”
A four-year old girl is left alone in the room with one marshmallow on the table. The child is told that she can eat the marshmallow whenever she wants. But if she is able to hold off until the experimenter returns, she will get a second marshmallow.
According to Roy Baumeister, one of the most distinguished social psychologist alive, willpower is the ”greatest human strength”. It is also the one thing that most of us think we have too little of. In fact, when people are asked about their failings, lack of self-control is on the top of the list. Yet its importance is tremendous as the famous marshmallow experience has showed. The children who were able to hold out the entire 15 minutes the researcher was away at the age of four outperformed those who couldn’t in all possible fields of life when they were adults. They scored 210 points higher on SAT, became more educated, earned higher salaries, put on less weight, were more popular among their peers, used less drugs and so forth. Willpower seems to be the single factor that explains future success better than almost any other measure, including IQ.
But where to get willpower?
Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the most influential American thinker of all time, was highly impressed by Martin Luther’s words. In his essay Fate he ponders on the strong hold that fate has in how our lives turn out. ”Nature is no sentimentalist, — does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust.” Nevertheless, we humans are equipped with something special – thought and will. With them we can carve our own destiny if they are deep and strong enough.
For Emerson, the source of strong will lies in surrendering oneself to a greater cause:
”Alaric and Bonaparte must believe they rest on a truth, or their will can be bought or bent. There is a bribe possible for any finite will. But the pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. Whoever has had experience of the moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in unlimited power.”
In other words, when we have principles and values that we believe in, our will is unbent. When we discover a cause that is greater than ourselves, it becomes a motivational mainstay that sharpens our will: ”When a strong will appears, it usually results from a certain unity of organization, as if the whole energy of body and minds flowed in one direction.” We are so empowered by our cause that we are able to stand any pressure.
Here I stand, upon these principles. If they lead me into excommunication, then so be it. For these principles are stronger than me. Failing them would be to fail what is worthwhile in life. Therefore I stand by them, whatever it takes. I have no choice. The fate of these principles is the fate of myself.
Success in life is about willpower. And willpower is ultimately about finding a cause for oneself that is so great and capturing that it molds one’s whole being to flow towards this one, noble goal. The best way for getting things done is to connect one’s things to something that is larger than oneself. When one has found a true mission for one’s life, the necessary self-control emerges from within.
”Here stand I, I cannot otherwise!” Threatened with excommunication Martin Luther stood in front of the Emperor Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire and was asked to take back his interpretation of scriptures because they defied the power of the pope. Martin requested some time to think, prayed, consulted a few friends and gave his response the next day: ”I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen!”
A four-year old girl is left alone in the room with one marshmallow on the table. The child is told that she can eat the marshmallow whenever she wants. But if she is able to hold off until the experimenter returns, she will get a second marshmallow.
According to Roy Baumeister, one of the most distinguished social psychologist alive, willpower is the ”greatest human strength”. It is also the one thing that most of us think we have too little of. In fact, when people are asked about their failings, lack of self-control is on the top of the list. Yet its importance is tremendous as the famous marshmallow experience has showed. The children who were able to hold out the entire 15 minutes the researcher was away at the age of four outperformed those who couldn’t in all possible fields of life when they were adults. They scored 210 points higher on SAT, became more educated, earned higher salaries, put on less weight, were more popular among their peers, used less drugs and so forth. Willpower seems to be the single factor that explains future success better than almost any other measure, including IQ.
But where to get willpower?
Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the most influential American thinker of all time, was highly impressed by Martin Luther’s words. In his essay Fate he ponders on the strong hold that fate has in how our lives turn out. ”Nature is no sentimentalist, — does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust.” Nevertheless, we humans are equipped with something special – thought and will. With them we can carve our own destiny if they are deep and strong enough.
For Emerson, the source of strong will lies in surrendering oneself to a greater cause:
”Alaric and Bonaparte must believe they rest on a truth, or their will can be bought or bent. There is a bribe possible for any finite will. But the pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. Whoever has had experience of the moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in unlimited power.”
In other words, when we have principles and values that we believe in, our will is unbent. When we discover a cause that is greater than ourselves, it becomes a motivational mainstay that sharpens our will: ”When a strong will appears, it usually results from a certain unity of organization, as if the whole energy of body and minds flowed in one direction.” We are so empowered by our cause that we are able to stand any pressure.
Here I stand, upon these principles. If they lead me into excommunication, then so be it. For these principles are stronger than me. Failing them would be to fail what is worthwhile in life. Therefore I stand by them, whatever it takes. I have no choice. The fate of these principles is the fate of myself.
Success in life is about willpower. And willpower is ultimately about finding a cause for oneself that is so great and capturing that it molds one’s whole being to flow towards this one, noble goal. They best way for getting things done is to connect one’s things to something that is larger than oneself. When one has found a true mission for one’s life, the necessary willpower emerges from within.
Frank Martela 