Your Happiness Project: Abandon Your Self-Control.

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in -- no need to catch up, just jump in right now. Each Friday’s post will help you think about your own happiness project.

One challenge about keeping my happiness-project resolutions is that it takes a lot of self-control. “No nagging,” “No fake food,” “Exercise better,” “Sing in the morning”…so many of my resolutions require me to control myself.

Relying on will power is very hard – so whenever possible, I abandon it. Instead of resisting temptation, I avoid it entirely.

Studies indicate that we have a limited amount of self-control, and it can be depleted. If you use a lot of self-control at work to resist the urge to yell at a co-worker, it might be harder to push yourself to go for a run when you get home.

So, because self-control is a precious resource, try to use it as little as possible. Look for ways to engineer situations so they don’t test your will power at all.

If you don’t want to get into the ice cream, don’t buy ice cream. If your family insists on having dessert, buy a dessert you don’t like much. If you have to buy ice cream, tie it up in a bag so it’s a pain to open and so you don’t see the enticing tub when you open the freezer. Maybe you’ll even forget it’s in there.

If you don’t want to spend money, don’t go into stores. If you don’t want to add to your credit card debt, leave your credit card in your sock drawer. If you have to shop, take a list and go by yourself. If you don’t want to get drunk, don’t meet your friends in a bar. If you don’t want to spend your Sunday morning sleeping, put your alarm clock across the room so you have to get out of bed to turn it off.

Sometimes the easiest way to abandon self-control is to give something up altogether. Like Samuel Johnson, who said, “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult,” I find it much easier to abstain rather than to indulge moderately. When you NEVER do something, it doesn’t take self-control; when you do something SOMETIMES, it takes huge self-control.

Examine the occasions for your self-control. Maybe you need to re-think them entirely. For example, my weight-training instructor told me about a client who was trying to lose weight, who said, “Can’t I have a single-serving bag of potato chips each day? After all, what am I going to eat when my kids are having their potato chips after school?” Her answer: “Your kids should be eating something else, too!” Instead of trying to resist ordering fries with your burger, maybe you should stop eating at McDonald’s.

Another reason to abandon self-control is that – at least in my case – just thinking about self-control tends to weaken it. If I think, “Congratulations, Gretchen, what good self-control with not buying Tasti D-Lite!” the next thing I know, I’m buying three mini Tootsie-Rolls. This happens to a lot of people when they try to economize: they’re so pleased with themselves for looking for the best buy on tuna fish that they splurge by buying a DVD. Not an efficient outcome!

Try to avoid situations that test your self-control. Instead of exercising will-power, forget about it.

Have you found any good strategies for maximizing your self-control? Self-discipline, I think, is one of the KEYS to happiness; it shows up in many different ways, and not always in the way that you'd expect.

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Several thoughtful readers sent me the link to the interesting New York Times article, What Happy People Don't Do. In a nutshell: happy people don't watch as much TV as unhappy people. However, as the article points out, the study doesn't show that correlation is causation (especially given the fact that TV-watching depends a lot on whether a person has a job, and unemployment is a major happiness challenge). I think the relationship between TV and happiness is a bit more complicated than most people say...

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Interested in starting your own Happiness Project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. No need to write anything more than “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.

Comments

[cv]

This is incredibly true for me. When I was trying to achieve a vague goal of eating less meat, I was thinking and worrying about it all the time - was this the time to make an exception? Now that I'm a vegetarian, I think about it very rarely. It's just my rule, and I skip over that section of the menu or grocery store.

Same with exercise. I had a (brief) period a couple of years ago where I managed to do yoga pretty much every day. I didn't give myself the chance to think of an excuse to put it off until tomorrow the way I do when I'm aiming to exercise 2 or 3 times a week, so it took much less self-discipline. Maybe I should try to get back to that...

[Ruth]

I've started turning off my DSL modem when I need to concentrate on working on my writing. I generally don't last long and turn it back on after half an hour or so, but for that half an hour, I get a lot of work done, and then I go goof off online for a while, and then turn it off and do some work again. It's much easier to avoid reloading my LiveJournal friends page when I know it's not going to do anything because my DSL is off.

[Fitness Surfer]

I’m going to abstain from sleeping in. It is the one think I can directly link to my mood and energy. The alarm clock will go in the bathroom if It has to. Either way if it’s not ever an option then I’ll no longer yearn for it.

[Kristin]

YES. This is such a truth! I'm allergic to wheat, but I /love/ it. I eventually learned to simply not buy anything wheat-based at the grocery store. Oh, I'd love to keep a box of mac'n'cheese for when I deserve a really big treat -- but that turns into "I've had a bad day and I'm feeling sorry for myself" or "nothing else in the pantry looks good." Not healthy! Not keeping it in the apartment means I don't have to worry about it.

I need to work on this in other aspects of my life, though. I go through phases of denying myself things (sleeping in, eating out) but then something happens, I fall off the wagon, and I'm lost for weeks or months. Eventually I get fed up and pull myself back on -- for a while. It's a cycle that I'd really rather break (on the good side)!

[Bridget]

Great points...I love this!

[Heli]

Wow! Exactly what I've been thinking! I don't have extra self-control to go around, so if I don't want to eat too much candy, I just don't buy any candy. Sometimes I've thought that a well adjusted person should be able to have things in moderation... Does not work for me. It's all or nothing.

[Alex Fayle]

I'm a bit of an extremist (*serious understatement*), so tend to splurge one way or the other. I splurge on abstinence (re wheat and sugar), then splurge eating it.

I can't ever seem to find the middle ground - perhaps because when I splurge on abstinence I use up my supply of self-control, so then I go through a period without any self-control whatsoever.

Thanks for bringing up the topic. Definitely something to ponder on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

[HP van Duuren]

Well, I do think that I usually have discipline and self-control in a lot of areas, but I think sometimes being a little 'Out of Control' can have it's benefits :)

For example look at my 'Happiness Project' I now have several Happy Blogspots.

I presume you already bookmarkt my main Blogspot :)

( http://hpshappy.blogspot.com )

All the Best,
To your Happy Inspiration,
HP

[Helen]

The advice to give up something altogether is very true for me. This year, I decided I wanted to be the sort of person who rides her bike to work, so I started riding. I rode and got wet when it rained, I rode with lights when it was dark in the morning, and I rode slowly and gently when I didn't feel well, because I knew that if I started to make excuses when it was hard, I would eventually make more and more excuses until I stopped riding altogether.

(The habit of riding my bike has turned out to be a great happiness booster - not only in that I get exercise and fresh air every weekday, but also in that it takes away my nagging guilt about not having made the effort to exercise. However, I suspect that having become the sort of person who would do something like riding a bike everywhere has made me equally as happy as the physical act of riding itself!)

[Ivan]

Happy people are good for teams. People like being around happier people much more than less-happy people. Happy people are perceived to be more friendly, warm, and even more physically attractive.

[Rhonda]

I just heard about this idea yesterday, that willpower is a resource that can be depleted. I am not sure how I am going to use this yet, but it makes great sense!

[adora]

I find it hard to save money after spending. So I make an automatic routing, in which portions of my pay check goes to other accounts. I only spend from the checking, so I don't have to think about it every month. It is like I'm on allowance. It takes a while to set it up at first, but it is all worth it.

[spandan jansari]

I totally agree with your opinion. Will power / self-control is a limited albeit renewable resource. Spend wisely. You cannot borrow or buy will power.

To build on this idea, I recently read on ScienceDaily.com that
"Glucose Affects Our Ability To Resist Temptation" LINK: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071203121430.htm. Studies are quite convincing.