I Define a willpower challenge as something that is basically a competition between two parts of yourself neuroscientists are famous for saying that even though we have one brain we actually have two minds and we are completely different people depending on which mind is active or which systems of the brain are more active and so willpower challenge is anything where those two versions of yourself have competing goals so I thought today that I would share with you five of my favorite experiments from the class and from the book and I chose experiments that I like because
they use tiny interventions really really small interventions to shape people's behavior and they have very large outcomes and I think this is the kind of thing many of us are looking for one small change we can make whether it's a change in how we think or change in the way that we're approaching a willpower challenge that can have huge payoffs down the road making it easier to do what it is we really deep down want even when it's sometimes difficult cult or part of us doesn't want let's all do it together unless you have health
problems and then you know I don't want anyone to pass out or have a stroke so it uh if you if you are willing to take this challenge we're just going to hold our breath for 15 seconds take a deep breath in go to take a deep breath out now exhale exhale exhale exhale it out stop breathing timeless remember you can breathe anytime you want to if you need to I just want you to notice how this feels three two one breathe so holding your breath obviously that's a little bit of a willpower challenge some
of you maybe need to hold your breath for two minutes to feel it but I did not want anyone passing out so would you believe that this ability to hold your breath is one of the best predictors of people's ability to succeed at difficult goals psychologists call this distress tolerance the ability to stay put when things get uncomfortable so I want to tell you now about a small intervention that teaches people how to sort of hold their breath but not exactly how to basically ride out physical discomfort that gets in the way of making a
difficult change and to tell you about two different studies that are basically using the same technique so you can kind of pick your willpower challenge here the first I call the the torture chamber this was a study of smokers who wanted to quit but had been unable to and the researchers asked the smokers to abstain from smoking for 24 hours sort of a first Challenge and then to come into the laboratory with a fresh unopened pack of their favorite brand of cigarettes so all the smokers show up they've got their pack they are desperate for
a smoke and they even like carbon monoxide tested them to make sure they hadn't smoked so they had all they were really they were ready for a cigarette they seated at a long table and asked to put away all distractions except for a lighter or match and their cigarette so we got a bunch of smokers now they're ready and then the experimenter is about to begin the process of allowing them to smoke and she says through actually a microphone like that you hear this voice that says take out your pack of cigarettes and everyone does
they're all excited woo stop okay they have to wait two minutes now and they're not allowed to do anything except look at their pack of cigarettes pull off the cellophane okay great stop two minutes they have to wait pack it oh there's Patsy I don't smoke I forget some of these steps I had to pack the pack too and they got the cellophane open okay take out a cigarette finally stop they have to wait two minutes and this goes on and every two minutes they they're writing down how intense their Cravings are and how much
they want to smoke but other than that they're not allowed to do anything take a cigarette out stop two minutes look at the cigarette stop two minutes smell the cigarette stop two minutes put the cigarette in your mouth stop two minutes take out a lighter look at it stop two minutes this went on for over an hour nobody was actually allowed to light the cigarette okay so here's what the I didn't tell you what the actual intervention was yet half of them before this happened had been taught a technique called surfing the urge in which
you learn to pay attention to the physical discomfort of wanting something you give it your full attention and you trust that you can tolerate those physical Sensations and if you just wait with patience they will go away that any craving any emotion will eventually pass if you can just breathe and wait wait it out that you don't have to act on every impulse or emotion so that's the technique they were taught they were surfing the urge they were imagining those Cravings as a wave that they were getting on and they were just going to breathe
and they knew that it would eventually end just like a wave before I tell you the results of this study let me just give you the food one the food went a little bit different they took people who had problems with self-control around food especially sweets gave them a clear container of Hershey's Kisses transparent container and they had to carry that box of Hershey's Kisses around with them for 48 hours and we're not allowed to eat a single one and they were all carefully marked a little pin scratch so that the researchers would know if
they ate them and restocked it which would not be cool and they were taught the same technique about how to handle Cravings how to surf the urge allow yourself to feel the craving and yet remember you don't need to act on it and the craving will go away eventually okay so the result in this study the smokers who had been taught how to surf the urge in that that one hour torture test they ended up reducing their cigarette smoke by 40 percent in the very next week even though the researchers had not asked them to
the control group did not reduce their cigarettes at all and interestingly in that the people who had learned to surf the urge there was now no longer a connection between psychological stress and smoking which is actually that that's the main connection for a lot of people who are trying to quit they're stressed out they're anxious and so they need a cigarette and in this particular group with this intervention it cut that link between stress and giving in probably because they had a tool for dealing with difficult feelings and emotions in this study the people who
had trouble with self-control around food if they were taught to surf the urge zero had a single Hershey's Kiss over the entire 48 Hours whereas those who've been given other strategies including distraction ended up much more likely to give in and also really stressed out about it so these are just two different examples of how surfing the urge can give us a lot of willpower for the things where we need willpower you know a lot of times I hear people talk about how important it is to build good habits but the reality is sometimes you
need strength to do something difficult and there's no habit in the world that's going to make you not want a cigarette when you see it or want a donut when you see it or make you want to avoid something because you're anxious there's a real impulse and a real feeling that you need to deal with and this power of acceptance seems to be the best strategy for dealing with these difficult emotions these difficult thoughts and these difficult cravings and any attempt to kind of push them away or get rid of them backfires but being able
to ride them out and imagine them as passing experiences that you don't need to act on has been shown to help a lot of different willpower challenges including the kind of anxiety that leads us to not do things we know we should do intrusive thoughts you know that's a real willpower challenge sometimes our mind goes places we don't want it to go to Memories or to things we're imagining or to negative thoughts about ourselves and others and research shows you can apply the same technique to a negative thought without having to act on it it's
been shown to improve weight loss this technique of learning how to accept your own Cravings tripled the long-term one-year weight loss success rate among people who are in a really standard weight loss program if you want to apply this technique to any willpower challenge yourself here's what that small intervention would look like for yourself here's what people were taught in both of those studies and the first is this mindfulness to allow yourself to feel what you're feeling or think what you're thinking and to actually attend to the experience rather than immediately try to escape it
so if you're hungry actually notice like what does hunger feel like in my body where if you're anxious what does anxiety feel like in my body right now and then to actually just breathe breathe it out use the breath as a source of stability you know what you're feeling take a few breaths and then broaden your attention out and look for the first opportunity to recommit to your goal that's what they were taught in both the smoking study and in the Hershey's Kiss study and it's a technique that you can practice it takes like 30
seconds and and it can help with any sort of willpower challenge five willpower rules and I would just invite you to think if you heard anything today that might be relevant to your willpower challenge to give yourself this short dose the small dose intervention and and see how it works so those five strategies one is to train your willpower physiology by meditating by sleeping by exercising or by eating a diet that's going to sustain your energy forgive yourself the next time you have a willpower setback make friends with your future self kind of think about
the future in a way that feels real predict your failure even though it's really nice to imagine success really get interested in the process of how you fail and then finally think about surfing the urge when you are facing temptation [Music]
