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By adopting the knowledge of how our brain works, you can lose weight and quit bad habits by simply changing your way of thinking. (To be honest, it will not be easy at all - but effective).
Speaking of willpower from the point of view of psychology, they often recall the famous marshmallow test at Stanford University, in which researchers left children from four to six years old alone with marshmallows, promising them that if they could endure 15 minutes and not eat the sweetness, then after the end of the term will receive two marshmallows as a reward. Needless to say, faced with a choice whether to get one marshmallow now, or two, but later, many children could not hold out for the appointed time.
The experiment, which was first carried out in the 60s, was continued. Walter Michel, who conducted it, studied how the life of the children who took part in the study developed in the future. According to his findings, those who coped (there were about a third of strong-willed kids) also studied better, received a good education and became generally more successful, and even less inclined to take large loans and demonstrate socially dangerous behavior.
The marshmallow experiment is a good reason to start a conversation about how willpower works, and why some people are able to resist temptations, while others continue to devour a conventional marshmallow throughout their lives, breaking their own promises and tormented by guilt. (Here you can watch a parody of the Stanford experiment, where instead of children and marshmallows - college students and beer. The video is choreographed, but there is a lot of cruel truth in the joke: this is how many alcoholics around the world are tormented.)
Sometimes our inability to resist momentary temptations destroys long-term plans and prevents us from becoming who we dream to be. Willpower can be developed, but it can be useful to understand how self-control works and how to help your brain save its own neurons, our money, time and good name. We tried to clarify the issue, relying on Irina Yakutenko's book "Will and Self-Control" , published by the publishing house "Alpina", as well as the work of Kelly McGonical and other authors researching willpower.
"Low Nature": Religious Myth or Harsh Truth?
Thinkers of past centuries found definitions suitable for their time of what happens to a person who is drawn to do something immoral and forbidden.
In the mythologeme created by Plato, the charioteer, personifying the human mind, drives a chariot harnessed by two horses - a noble and a low birth. A good horse pulls the chariot of the soul upward, and an insidious bastard horse seeks to turn to symposium all the time.
Christian ideas for a long time connected weakness with the idea of sin: the source of human intemperance, like the suffering that it brings, was the breaking of a promise, when people were tempted by the forbidden fruit and received all the hardships of earthly life as punishment. The desire for base pleasures was associated with the intrigues of demons, who throw bad ideas to a person.
The simple satisfaction of desire in such a situation turns into depravity, mixing with the sweetness of breaking the prohibition. Guilt and shame for carnal needs are so deeply rooted in the European consciousness that to this day they prevent people from controlling impulsive urges, spinning a carousel of repression, breakdowns and self-flagellation.
Unsurprisingly, Rousseau's idea of natural virtue emerged in response to the Christian concept of morality. Proponents of the theory of the "noble savage" looked for inspiration in idealized ideas about the paradise life of distant ancestors or wild tribes not disfigured by civilization. This fantasy is the reverse side of the legend of the Fall and its anti-scenario, because it boils down to the desire to find a paradise of innocence, in which people could live without internal conflicts, simply following their desires.
It is important that using mythologemes and religious images, thinkers of the past tried to answer questions that are still relevant.
Is it possible to eliminate the contradiction between the biological and the social? Why do people make decisions they regret? How to lead a more correct life?
The primitive man, who was idealized by the supporters of "naturalism", switched to violence and murder of his own kind in situations that today we prefer to solve peacefully, did not care about the principle of consent and could well die of gluttony if resources allowed it. The more complex society became, the more social conventions and mechanisms of restraint were required. Feeling aggression, sexual attraction or hunger, modern man is in no hurry to immediately gratify desires - and is not even always aware of hidden motives if they conflict with personal and social morality.
Today's world has given a record number of people the ability to easily meet basic needs. If a few centuries ago, a simple European city dweller could eat meat with a fresh bun and fatty sauces only on a holiday and boasted when he managed to gorge himself, today it is customary to refrain from uncontrolled eating hamburgers. Meanwhile, the structures of our brain are not yet accustomed to such a fabulous abundance, and when they see simple pleasures they react with impulses: eat it immediately, who knows if there will be food tomorrow!
The physiology and nature of basic human desires have changed little since ancient times. The question today is not whether we experience "base" desires, but how we control and sublimate them. And sometimes we are talking about much less innocent things than an extra bun.
What is going on in the brain when we are tempted?
To survive in a world of abundance, both material and informational, you have to try. Modern data on how the brain works allows anyone who wants to learn to analyze their motives and recognize the moments when they are close to failure.
Making decisions, even when it comes to whether to watch another episode at three in the morning, is a process that can seem almost magical. Sometimes we ourselves do not know what made us do one way or another.
When it is required to make a decision that requires reflection, each of us has a whole symposium of brain structures in our heads, which consult among themselves.
The limbic system requires the satisfaction of the simplest desires. We may consider ourselves above "basic instincts" for moral or intellectual reasons, but it is physically impossible not to feel the signals of the limbic system: evolution itself speaks on its behalf. The task of the system is to ensure that the representatives of the species satisfy the needs necessary for existence: they eat, reproduce, and avoid obvious troubles like hungry predators.
As soon as an attractive stimulus appears in a person's field of vision, the motor cortex responsible for movement is ready to take actions that will provide access to what we want. But if it were that simple, people would touch all the cute strangers right on the street. This does not happen, because there are "more conscious" parts of the brain that prevent you from following the first impulse.
The anterior cingulate cortex notices a conflict between a momentary goal and long-term goals and values (to be slim, not to become an alcoholic, to be a decent person, not to be accused of harassment).
The dorsal frontomedial cortex stops impulse if it does not align with long-term goals. It is the dorsal part that is capable of inhibiting an action that has already begun - for example, it helps to leave an already bitten piece on the plate.
The anterior insular lobe makes it difficult to "roll back" the impulse back. She makes sure that we do not give up what brings pleasure before we really start. Nevertheless, it can also do a disservice: it is rather difficult to return to a previous version of reality, in which we have not yet imagined how pleasant the world will soften after a glass or two. The front of the islet evokes a keen sense of frustration, which we experience in giving up what we have already decided to do.
An islet is a small structure in the center, divided by a furrow into two parts, anterior and posterior.
Long-term life goals are formed in the prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobes. Here both rationality and motivation are born, including those associated with emotions. The more complex the experiences, the more difficult it is to talk about their localization.
If in the past it was believed that the parts of the brain were strictly specialized, today's practice of studying it shows that the activity in response to different stimuli is ambiguous, and different parts of the brain interact and exchange information. The areas associated with motivation and decision-making include the ventral striatum, hypothalamus, tonsils and other parts of the senior divisions.
Why do some have willpower while others do not?
The way the listed structures are arranged in a particular person affects the ability to resist temptations. The inability to resist temptation can be caused by various physiological reasons.
Someone has a poor seizure of serotonin and dopamine, which affect pleasure, so you have to look for it "on the side". For example, in a cookie at work or in a glass after dinner. In others, the anterior cingulate cortex is slow to respond, and then it is difficult for a person to slow down before realizing the impulse. In still others, there are hiccups in the work of the posterior part of the frontomedial cortex, therefore they are poorly given the correlation of their momentary desires with plans. And in the fourth, the insular lobe is too active ("where there is one glass, there are two, so you have to finish the whole bottle, don't leave it, really?").
This means that people with different brain settings will have to make different efforts to perform or not perform the same actions.
How exactly the parts of the brain work depends on genetics (weaknesses can be inherited, even if your relative drank, and you are a teetotaler, but sit at the computer every night until the morning), upbringing and the influence of society.
In addition, it matters how much the configuration corresponds to the currently existing ideas about how to act in order not to be an immoral weak-willed lazy person. For example, some societies value reasonable moderation in wine, as the ancient Greeks did , while others, following the example of the Macedonians, consider violent libations to be an encouraged sign of masculinity and courage.
- Pine cone, why are you drinking? - To forget.
What weakens the will?
Stanford Professor Kelly McGonical's "Willpower: How to Develop and Strengthen" lists the main problems that can become sticks in the wheels of self-control. This is a lack of attentiveness, a lack of glucose, too intense efforts (self-control is like a muscle, it can be pumped up, but it gets tired), a mixture of what is desired and what is real (having bought a book about a healthy lifestyle, many begin to practice unhealthy even more actively, because the book is already doing the work), as well as stress and fear.
Irina Yakutenko calls impulsiveness as one of the main problems, the manifestations of which are haste in actions, a tendency to insufficiently thinking them over, a lack of perseverance and a constant search for new thrills. "Impulsivity is a person's predisposition to quick, not planned in advance reactions to external or internal stimuli without taking into account the negative consequences of such reactions."
Many people constantly overestimate their willpower and self-control, as if deliberately seeking the sources of temptation (or secretly hoping to succumb to them): they go to the store, ostensibly to “just look with one eye” and come to a company where they drink alcohol in a fun and abundant manner.
There is also an interesting but controversial concept of "ego depletion" by researcher Roy Baumeister. He called it a situation when, after exhausting emotionally loaded situations (if you need to hide your emotions, which always takes a lot of resources; if there was a nervous breakdown), willpower and self-control work worse. This seems logical - many, against a background of stress, turn to their favorite compulsion or break out on other people. However, on the topic of whether there is such a mechanism, scientists have not come to a single conclusion. In 2016, two dozen laboratories conducted additional research without ever realizing that "ego depletion" was some kind of general rule.
How to give up fast marshmallows?
In fact, the mechanisms to resist excesses are already built into our body, like predatory instincts, but we find excuses and ways to turn off the internal limiter: “One more time and that's all”, “I don't want for ideological reasons ”(This may be true, but it is important to understand whether the implicit desire corresponds to the explicit one)," Today is a holiday - the day of worship of ancestors on Easter Island "," Pig, turn into a crucian carp."
Learning to recognize your own pitfalls and honestly undo your bad decisions takes a certain amount of courage. However, the reward will not be slow to follow, because the satisfaction of success is a legal drug.
We can control our own thoughts if we are not ashamed to do so. In one version of the marshmallow dough, scientists advised one group of children to think about how sweet and airy it is, and the other to concentrate on abstract qualities (color, size) or even imagine marshmallows in the form of white clouds. In the second case, the limbic system was in no hurry to get excited, and the children stayed in the room for the prescribed amount of time, managing not to eat sweets.
Some children, passing the test, began to distract themselves with compensatory actions - they sang, dangled their legs, talked to themselves. The adult canon of behavior requires the containment of such direct manifestations. This is especially true for people with developed critical thinking and well-mastered social norms. They are able to articulate arguments for fatalism or explain why naive defenses are ridiculous. At the same time, restraint depletes the will, which is already at the limit.
Meanwhile, it is quite possible to learn substitutional actions from children, having previously thought over the form that is acceptable to you: maybe it will be automatic writing, meditation, jogging or an anti-stress toy.
Rethinking "The Temptation of St. Anthony": when instead of work you watch cats.
Here are some practical tips for self-management related to the principles of how the brain works. Irina Yakutenko cites them in her book.
With point 3, we'd advise you to be careful: for some, negative motivation is a powerful source of stress, which in turn leads to an immediate marshmallow. If you have problems with self-esteem or depressive moods, you should consult with a psychologist before such thought experiments.
Also in the book you can find recommendations on how to provide the brain with glucose necessary for mental balance, and how to eat right in order to lose weight (the main thing here is to be full, not exhausted).
Faust and Mephistopheles.
“Some people think that habits are genetically programmed and they have no choice but to indulge them. Every habit, in its fundamental nature, is a neurological circuit, ” notes Brann Amy in Putting Your Brain to Work. How to maximize your efficiency."
Brain structures do differ from person to person, but we can train our brains and change well-trodden neural pathways, allowing some to overgrow and others to become wide streets. Willpower is not magical. To use it successfully, it is enough to learn how to concentrate. Then at every moment in time you will be able to make the right choice, consciously analyzing your real desires, as well as the possible consequences of your actions.
Speaking of willpower from the point of view of psychology, they often recall the famous marshmallow test at Stanford University, in which researchers left children from four to six years old alone with marshmallows, promising them that if they could endure 15 minutes and not eat the sweetness, then after the end of the term will receive two marshmallows as a reward. Needless to say, faced with a choice whether to get one marshmallow now, or two, but later, many children could not hold out for the appointed time.
The experiment, which was first carried out in the 60s, was continued. Walter Michel, who conducted it, studied how the life of the children who took part in the study developed in the future. According to his findings, those who coped (there were about a third of strong-willed kids) also studied better, received a good education and became generally more successful, and even less inclined to take large loans and demonstrate socially dangerous behavior.
The marshmallow experiment is a good reason to start a conversation about how willpower works, and why some people are able to resist temptations, while others continue to devour a conventional marshmallow throughout their lives, breaking their own promises and tormented by guilt. (Here you can watch a parody of the Stanford experiment, where instead of children and marshmallows - college students and beer. The video is choreographed, but there is a lot of cruel truth in the joke: this is how many alcoholics around the world are tormented.)
Sometimes our inability to resist momentary temptations destroys long-term plans and prevents us from becoming who we dream to be. Willpower can be developed, but it can be useful to understand how self-control works and how to help your brain save its own neurons, our money, time and good name. We tried to clarify the issue, relying on Irina Yakutenko's book "Will and Self-Control" , published by the publishing house "Alpina", as well as the work of Kelly McGonical and other authors researching willpower.
"Low Nature": Religious Myth or Harsh Truth?
Thinkers of past centuries found definitions suitable for their time of what happens to a person who is drawn to do something immoral and forbidden.
In the mythologeme created by Plato, the charioteer, personifying the human mind, drives a chariot harnessed by two horses - a noble and a low birth. A good horse pulls the chariot of the soul upward, and an insidious bastard horse seeks to turn to symposium all the time.
Christian ideas for a long time connected weakness with the idea of sin: the source of human intemperance, like the suffering that it brings, was the breaking of a promise, when people were tempted by the forbidden fruit and received all the hardships of earthly life as punishment. The desire for base pleasures was associated with the intrigues of demons, who throw bad ideas to a person.
The simple satisfaction of desire in such a situation turns into depravity, mixing with the sweetness of breaking the prohibition. Guilt and shame for carnal needs are so deeply rooted in the European consciousness that to this day they prevent people from controlling impulsive urges, spinning a carousel of repression, breakdowns and self-flagellation.
Unsurprisingly, Rousseau's idea of natural virtue emerged in response to the Christian concept of morality. Proponents of the theory of the "noble savage" looked for inspiration in idealized ideas about the paradise life of distant ancestors or wild tribes not disfigured by civilization. This fantasy is the reverse side of the legend of the Fall and its anti-scenario, because it boils down to the desire to find a paradise of innocence, in which people could live without internal conflicts, simply following their desires.
It is important that using mythologemes and religious images, thinkers of the past tried to answer questions that are still relevant.
Is it possible to eliminate the contradiction between the biological and the social? Why do people make decisions they regret? How to lead a more correct life?
The primitive man, who was idealized by the supporters of "naturalism", switched to violence and murder of his own kind in situations that today we prefer to solve peacefully, did not care about the principle of consent and could well die of gluttony if resources allowed it. The more complex society became, the more social conventions and mechanisms of restraint were required. Feeling aggression, sexual attraction or hunger, modern man is in no hurry to immediately gratify desires - and is not even always aware of hidden motives if they conflict with personal and social morality.
Today's world has given a record number of people the ability to easily meet basic needs. If a few centuries ago, a simple European city dweller could eat meat with a fresh bun and fatty sauces only on a holiday and boasted when he managed to gorge himself, today it is customary to refrain from uncontrolled eating hamburgers. Meanwhile, the structures of our brain are not yet accustomed to such a fabulous abundance, and when they see simple pleasures they react with impulses: eat it immediately, who knows if there will be food tomorrow!
The physiology and nature of basic human desires have changed little since ancient times. The question today is not whether we experience "base" desires, but how we control and sublimate them. And sometimes we are talking about much less innocent things than an extra bun.
What is going on in the brain when we are tempted?
To survive in a world of abundance, both material and informational, you have to try. Modern data on how the brain works allows anyone who wants to learn to analyze their motives and recognize the moments when they are close to failure.
Making decisions, even when it comes to whether to watch another episode at three in the morning, is a process that can seem almost magical. Sometimes we ourselves do not know what made us do one way or another.
When it is required to make a decision that requires reflection, each of us has a whole symposium of brain structures in our heads, which consult among themselves.
The limbic system requires the satisfaction of the simplest desires. We may consider ourselves above "basic instincts" for moral or intellectual reasons, but it is physically impossible not to feel the signals of the limbic system: evolution itself speaks on its behalf. The task of the system is to ensure that the representatives of the species satisfy the needs necessary for existence: they eat, reproduce, and avoid obvious troubles like hungry predators.
As soon as an attractive stimulus appears in a person's field of vision, the motor cortex responsible for movement is ready to take actions that will provide access to what we want. But if it were that simple, people would touch all the cute strangers right on the street. This does not happen, because there are "more conscious" parts of the brain that prevent you from following the first impulse.
The anterior cingulate cortex notices a conflict between a momentary goal and long-term goals and values (to be slim, not to become an alcoholic, to be a decent person, not to be accused of harassment).
The dorsal frontomedial cortex stops impulse if it does not align with long-term goals. It is the dorsal part that is capable of inhibiting an action that has already begun - for example, it helps to leave an already bitten piece on the plate.
The anterior insular lobe makes it difficult to "roll back" the impulse back. She makes sure that we do not give up what brings pleasure before we really start. Nevertheless, it can also do a disservice: it is rather difficult to return to a previous version of reality, in which we have not yet imagined how pleasant the world will soften after a glass or two. The front of the islet evokes a keen sense of frustration, which we experience in giving up what we have already decided to do.
An islet is a small structure in the center, divided by a furrow into two parts, anterior and posterior.
Long-term life goals are formed in the prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobes. Here both rationality and motivation are born, including those associated with emotions. The more complex the experiences, the more difficult it is to talk about their localization.
If in the past it was believed that the parts of the brain were strictly specialized, today's practice of studying it shows that the activity in response to different stimuli is ambiguous, and different parts of the brain interact and exchange information. The areas associated with motivation and decision-making include the ventral striatum, hypothalamus, tonsils and other parts of the senior divisions.
Why do some have willpower while others do not?
The way the listed structures are arranged in a particular person affects the ability to resist temptations. The inability to resist temptation can be caused by various physiological reasons.
Someone has a poor seizure of serotonin and dopamine, which affect pleasure, so you have to look for it "on the side". For example, in a cookie at work or in a glass after dinner. In others, the anterior cingulate cortex is slow to respond, and then it is difficult for a person to slow down before realizing the impulse. In still others, there are hiccups in the work of the posterior part of the frontomedial cortex, therefore they are poorly given the correlation of their momentary desires with plans. And in the fourth, the insular lobe is too active ("where there is one glass, there are two, so you have to finish the whole bottle, don't leave it, really?").
This means that people with different brain settings will have to make different efforts to perform or not perform the same actions.
How exactly the parts of the brain work depends on genetics (weaknesses can be inherited, even if your relative drank, and you are a teetotaler, but sit at the computer every night until the morning), upbringing and the influence of society.
In addition, it matters how much the configuration corresponds to the currently existing ideas about how to act in order not to be an immoral weak-willed lazy person. For example, some societies value reasonable moderation in wine, as the ancient Greeks did , while others, following the example of the Macedonians, consider violent libations to be an encouraged sign of masculinity and courage.
- Pine cone, why are you drinking? - To forget.
What weakens the will?
Stanford Professor Kelly McGonical's "Willpower: How to Develop and Strengthen" lists the main problems that can become sticks in the wheels of self-control. This is a lack of attentiveness, a lack of glucose, too intense efforts (self-control is like a muscle, it can be pumped up, but it gets tired), a mixture of what is desired and what is real (having bought a book about a healthy lifestyle, many begin to practice unhealthy even more actively, because the book is already doing the work), as well as stress and fear.
Irina Yakutenko calls impulsiveness as one of the main problems, the manifestations of which are haste in actions, a tendency to insufficiently thinking them over, a lack of perseverance and a constant search for new thrills. "Impulsivity is a person's predisposition to quick, not planned in advance reactions to external or internal stimuli without taking into account the negative consequences of such reactions."
Many people constantly overestimate their willpower and self-control, as if deliberately seeking the sources of temptation (or secretly hoping to succumb to them): they go to the store, ostensibly to “just look with one eye” and come to a company where they drink alcohol in a fun and abundant manner.
There is also an interesting but controversial concept of "ego depletion" by researcher Roy Baumeister. He called it a situation when, after exhausting emotionally loaded situations (if you need to hide your emotions, which always takes a lot of resources; if there was a nervous breakdown), willpower and self-control work worse. This seems logical - many, against a background of stress, turn to their favorite compulsion or break out on other people. However, on the topic of whether there is such a mechanism, scientists have not come to a single conclusion. In 2016, two dozen laboratories conducted additional research without ever realizing that "ego depletion" was some kind of general rule.
How to give up fast marshmallows?
In fact, the mechanisms to resist excesses are already built into our body, like predatory instincts, but we find excuses and ways to turn off the internal limiter: “One more time and that's all”, “I don't want for ideological reasons ”(This may be true, but it is important to understand whether the implicit desire corresponds to the explicit one)," Today is a holiday - the day of worship of ancestors on Easter Island "," Pig, turn into a crucian carp."
Learning to recognize your own pitfalls and honestly undo your bad decisions takes a certain amount of courage. However, the reward will not be slow to follow, because the satisfaction of success is a legal drug.
We can control our own thoughts if we are not ashamed to do so. In one version of the marshmallow dough, scientists advised one group of children to think about how sweet and airy it is, and the other to concentrate on abstract qualities (color, size) or even imagine marshmallows in the form of white clouds. In the second case, the limbic system was in no hurry to get excited, and the children stayed in the room for the prescribed amount of time, managing not to eat sweets.
Some children, passing the test, began to distract themselves with compensatory actions - they sang, dangled their legs, talked to themselves. The adult canon of behavior requires the containment of such direct manifestations. This is especially true for people with developed critical thinking and well-mastered social norms. They are able to articulate arguments for fatalism or explain why naive defenses are ridiculous. At the same time, restraint depletes the will, which is already at the limit.
Meanwhile, it is quite possible to learn substitutional actions from children, having previously thought over the form that is acceptable to you: maybe it will be automatic writing, meditation, jogging or an anti-stress toy.
Rethinking "The Temptation of St. Anthony": when instead of work you watch cats.
Here are some practical tips for self-management related to the principles of how the brain works. Irina Yakutenko cites them in her book.
- Get out of sight anything that might tempt you.
- If the temptation cannot be avoided, focus on the most abstract characteristics of it.
- Make the limbic system work for you: use it to blacken the cause of your temptations. To "interrupt" the automatic response of lust, imagine the most emotionally intense picture of the unpleasant consequences of your action.
- Come up with a clear strategy for dealing with a temptation situation.
- Provide yourself with external compulsion.
- Get yourself a deadline. This will allow you to increase productivity and do more, and in order to accurately fulfill your plans, you can, for example, make an appointment in the evening after work.
- Find reasons for intrinsic motivation.
- Imagine yourself in the future - but not the fact that it will work. (There is evidence that we think of ourselves in the future as other people. Try to imagine that you-from-the-future and you-today are the same.)
- Train your working memory if you want - but don't rely on the effect too much. When choosing, one must not only quickly extract arguments from the depths of memory, but also keep them all in consciousness at the same time so that the prefrontal cortex can compare the arguments.
With point 3, we'd advise you to be careful: for some, negative motivation is a powerful source of stress, which in turn leads to an immediate marshmallow. If you have problems with self-esteem or depressive moods, you should consult with a psychologist before such thought experiments.
Also in the book you can find recommendations on how to provide the brain with glucose necessary for mental balance, and how to eat right in order to lose weight (the main thing here is to be full, not exhausted).
Faust and Mephistopheles.
“Some people think that habits are genetically programmed and they have no choice but to indulge them. Every habit, in its fundamental nature, is a neurological circuit, ” notes Brann Amy in Putting Your Brain to Work. How to maximize your efficiency."
Brain structures do differ from person to person, but we can train our brains and change well-trodden neural pathways, allowing some to overgrow and others to become wide streets. Willpower is not magical. To use it successfully, it is enough to learn how to concentrate. Then at every moment in time you will be able to make the right choice, consciously analyzing your real desires, as well as the possible consequences of your actions.
