The other day I found myself staring at a package of cookies in the kitchen closet at eight at night. He knew perfectly perfectly that eating that was not ideal, much less necessary. Still, I wouldn’t hurt, I thought. But why is the rays so hard simply to close the closet and move on?
Who answers this question is Roy Baumeister and his colleagues in a study of desire and self -control. For a week, more than two hundred people carried a device that randomly asked several times a day if they were feeling any desire at that moment or in the last thirty minutes. If they were, they needed to report the intensity of this desire (on a scale that went slightly to “irresistible”). They also needed to report whether they conflicted with their personal goals, if they had made any conscious effort to resist and, finally, if they gave in to temptation or not.
Participants reported feeling desires in about half of the time they were approached by the device – not just, but also for, rest, impulsive purchases or that beer after the work. Almost half of these wishes went into direct shock with their personal goals, creating an internal conflict.
But here comes the crucial point of the study: resisting is not only possible, but also quite frequent. At most occasions they tried to resist, people have been able to avoid temptation successfully. Even when they classified the desire as “irresistible”, they could still say no in approximately 75% of attempts. This disassembles that old excuse that certain desires are simply “uncontrollable”.
In another study, Baumeister and his colleagues showed that people with greater self -control have, better interpersonal relationships, less impulsive behaviors, and less incidence of psychological problems, such as. They also found that there is no “excess” of self -control – as much better.
In addition, participants with greater self -control not only resisted more easily at temptation, but they also had more effective strategies to avoid difficult situations from the beginning, showing that preventing conflicts is an essential part of the equation.
Of course not everything is flowers. Resisting requires conscious effort, especially in times of emotional or physical vulnerability. The study also revealed specific situations that drastically reduce our self -control, such as the – higher the level of intoxication, the lower the efficacy of self -control. Another aggravation is the social environment: being surrounded by people who are already surrendering to desire greatly increases the likelihood of giving in as well.
But then, if you resist is possible, why do we fail so much? People with high self -control are not necessarily those who bravely resist intense desires all the time. They are, in fact, those that avoid creating or entering conflict situations from the beginning. They manage the environment, anticipate risk situations and thus minimize the need to constantly fight impulses.
The secret, therefore, is not only in bravely resisting when temptation arises. It is mainly to know well enough to not fall into the traps themselves. Perhaps the first step is simply to keep the cookies a little further from the kitchen-even better, not buying them first.
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