Self Control is The Secret to Success
Self-control is the ability to delay gratification in order to prioritise a long-term goal over a short-term one. But not only. In fact, it appears that self control could actually be the key for long term success in life. In this article we will go through evidences that demonstrate the importance of self-control in our everyday life, as well as some techniques to increase this skill.
In the 1970s, a psychologist named Walter Mischel carried out an experiment known as the "Stanford Marshmallow Experiment". In the study, four to five years old children were put alone in a room with a special treat: a marshmallow.
Miscel told each of them he'd leave the room and that when he'd come back, they would all receive an extra marshmallow as long as they refrained from eating the first for fifteen minutes. He observed that only 1 in 3 children managed to abstain from eating the marshmallow. Fourteen years later, Mischel and his colleagues did a follow-up study and the results were astonishing: 100% (yes, 100%) of the children who desisted from eating the marshmallow were doing great in life: they were successful, had good grades, maintained healthy relationships, and doing great on the whole. on the other hand a significant percentage of those who couldn't resist the temptation were not doing so great. Some of them were struggling with substance misuse and some others dropped out of school or didn't have good grades, for example. This experiment was then replicated by Joaquin De Posada in Colombia, who found similar results. This is very important as it indicates that the results are generalisable cross-culturally. The key take-away of this experiment is that self-control represents a significant skill to ensure long-term success in life.
But Mischel and De Posada were not the only ones investigating self-control. Moffit et al (2011) carried out a huge experiment in New Zeland. They took a sample of over 1000 children and measured their self-control at the ages of 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11. They then kept observing the children until they were 32 years old. The results showed a couple of things. First, the degree of self-control seemed to remain stable throughout the children's life. Secondly, and perhaps even more interestingly, the degree of self-control seems associated to success in life in various areas of life, including but not limited to physical health, substance dependence, educational attainment, personal finances, and even criminal offences.
The effect of self-control also seemed to be disentangled from factors such as intelligence, IQ or social class. In another cohort of 500 siblings, scientists found that those with higher self-control had better outcomes in life than their brothers or sisters who displayed lower self-control, despite being raised in the same family and under the same circumstances. In other words self-control seems to be all one needs to succeed in life independently from the starting hand.
Walter Mischel explained self-control by describing the brain as being divided into an hot and cool system. The hot system represents the impulsive, emotional side, urging us to act upon our immediate desires. The cool system, on the other hand, represents our rational willpower whereby we regulate our impulses. Which side takes over depends on how we manage the interplay between them. Paying attention to what matters while trying to distract us from our own unnecessary urges is a way to cope with these immediate - and yet harmful in the long-term - urges.
The question comes spontaneous: can we increase our self-control? The good news is that it's never too late. Different studies in fact show we can always take stept to strenghten our capacity for self-control, no matter the age or circumstances.
One way to increase your overall degree of self-control is to avoid temptation. Exactly as the saying goes: out of sight, out of mind. Distracting yourself or simply keeping the temptation away somehow was found to oftentimes constitute a way around that some children in Mischel’s study used to distract themselves from the marshmallow.
Another way is to implement "if... then" statements in our lives. Let's say you are invited to a party in a period of your life where you are trying to quit alcohol. Instead of avoiding the issue by missing the party, you could decide to attend it but only at one condition: "if I am offered alcohol, then I will drink a soda instead".
Another effective method consists of nurturing motivation. A study shows that people's self-control increases if either their actions are rewarded or they themselves thought these actions were impacting other people positively. You can therefore ask yourself: does this action impact yourself and those around you positively? Rewards are an excellent mean to trick your brain into doing something you struggle to, especially when paired with the aforementioned "if... then" statements, for example: "if I avoid smoking this week then I can have my favourite take-away meal at the end of the week". To know more about this, read my article "breaking bad habits" or watch my Youtube video about it.
In a way, we can imagine self-control as a muscle. Muscles can be trained, and so can self-control. For example, a study found that people who practiced self-control regularly by, for instance, avoid sweets, were more successful in refraining from another similar behaviour, such as smoking, compared to people who performed tasks that did not require any kind of self-control. This also instantiates a vicious circles whereby the less we train our capacity for self-control the less we'll be able to practice self-control when we need to.
Studies have also found that self-control correlates significantly to blood sugar. Our brain is powered by glucose (basically blood sugar), and researchers found that brain cells that work hard to maintain self-control consume glucose faster. Studies also show that people who drink sugary drinks are more likely to exhibit self-control in other lab tasks. Therefore, maintaining glucose levels high might help us in the process of strenghtening our self-control. Be careful, however, not to let the word "sugar" trick you. Healthy meals not containing any refined sugars, are way better than sweets and pastries and all that wonderful stuff at maintaining blood sugar levels steady throughout the day.
In conclusion, self-control could be the key for success in life. If you think that you would have failed the marshmellow test, don't be too worried. You can try one of the above techniques to pull yourself away from rationally undesired urges and embrace a more long-term approach to more and more areas in your life.
References:
• Don't eat the marshmallow! | Joachim ...
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/...
https://www.apa.org/topics/personalit...
https://www.apa.org/topics/willpower-...