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A review by morgan_blackledge
The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal
4.0
Lately, it has become very fashionable (particularly for neuro-sceensters) to bash the the outdated notion of free will. And for good reason. That shit is a fairy tale. It just plain doesn't exist. At least the hokey ol' folk psychology notion of "uncaused" behavior a.k.a. contra-causal free will. a.k.a. classical dualistic free will i.e. the belief that there is a component (call it a soul or what ever) to human behavior that is something more than the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature..............
Every event (including human behavior) has a natural cause (of some sort or another), and there's no such thing as ghosts, so please get over it, it's 2013 for fux sake.
That being said, it is pretty clear that people make choices, and the choices they make, make a difference. It's gonna take people smarter than myself to sort out all of the apparent contradictions and tangles inherent in this particular philosophical puzzle. So I'm not even going to try. And frankly, neither did the author of The Willpower Instinct (Kelly McGonigal), and I for one, think that's a very good thing.
McGonigle does a decent job of revitalizing this decidedly uncool and very unfashionable topic, due in part to the fact that she kept that shit simple! Simple language, simple ideas, simple simple simple. I loved that about this book.
Many people erroneously think that the answer to their problems will come from learning some complex theory or idea, and once they have the magical information, than their life will "fall in to place" with little to no effort.
In my experience, the opposite is true. The information needed to understand most of life's challenges is typically quite simple and readily available. But the actual solutions are usually difficult and typically take some real effort.
Willpower is one of those things. If you lack willpower, the explanation is not complex, McGonigal explains the issue quite easily, in very simple language. But actually changing that situation for yourself will require effort i.e. practice. Willpower is like any other psychological skill. It's like a muscle, it gets stronger with practice. It's not hard to understand, you just have to actually do it.
McGonigle didnt exactly get creative with the format though (for better or worse). It's a standard formula for popular psychology books to (a) identify a problem that nearly everyone suffers from, (b) Identify all the ways that commonsense notions about the issue are wrong, (c) summarize the what the "new" science of ______ says about the subject, (d) bombard you with a litany of interventions and exercises, followed by (e) case study examples of dubious authenticity, and (f) copious research findings. Again, McGonigle doesn't even try to do it differently. She pretty much just did one of those. And it works pretty good. Cha Chunk - one pretty decent pop psych book, made to order, nothin fancy.
WHERE THIS BOOK SHINES!
McGonigle does do a particularly good job of describing how negative self evaluation can be deleterious to our willpower. According to McGonigle, self criticism and self castigation is counterproductive to adaptive behavioral change. Many people think they need to be "hard on themselves" in order to "keep them selves in line". But negative self talk (and the feelings and beliefs that accompany it) can actually keep people trapped in cycles of maladaptive, out of control behavior. For example: people who over eat to manage negative feelings may harshly self castigate, leading to enhanced negative feelings, which trigger more of the unwanted impulsive over eating behavior -and so on -and so on -and so on...
I am currently working as a clinician in a addiction recovery program. Our clients come to us FULL of shame and self criticism. It's normal, it's natural, but it doesn't help them change the behavior. If shame worked for that, they wouldn't be addicts. Shame actually makes the problem worse because it makes them feel worse (see above) and it diverts attention from the real problem, making arriving at a reasonable solution pretty dang hard.
One component of this phenomena is the Ironic Rebound Effect:
This refers to when attempts at cognitive control/suppression backfire and result in increased incidents of the undesired cognitive content e.g. feelings, mental images, self talk etc. For example: after individuals attempt to disregard doubts about themselves, their self esteem actually declines and their anxiety rises (Borton, Markovitz, & Dieterich, 2005). Likewise, when individuals feel compelled to condemn some activity, such as a risky act, they are actually more likely to undertake that activity in the future (Maio & Olson, 1998).
According to McGonigle, the intervention for ironic rebound effects is, simply put, to "give up". Let go of the agenda of cognitive control. Surf The Urge! In other words, allow yourself to have the problematic feelings or thoughts (or what ever), with equanimity, i.e. without resistance or self judgment, and (most importantly) without reflexively acting on them. From this platform of self acceptance, the individual can begin to gain insight into the actual triggers and mechanisms of the behavior, and make the needed adjustments necessary to retrain the maladaptive behavior.
Self acceptance, however counterintuitive, can be the critical first step to exiting these kinds of behavioral traps. So there you go. The secret to willpower is giving up. Wait, what?
Not so fast! There are plenty of instances where the agenda of cognitive change (cognitive restructuring) is effective. In my opinion, acceptance and mindfulness based approaches are best when offered in concert with traditional CBT. I like to say, you can change the cognitive content (traditional CBT) or you can change your relationship to the cognitive content (Mindfulness Based CBT). What ever works for you. It's just that most people are oversold on the agenda of cognitive change and under trained/educated on the agenda of acceptance. For me, it's all about embracing the dialectic of Acceptance and Change.
SUMMARY: the ABC's of willpower are A: self care, B: self awareness and C: connecting with what matters most in life (i.e. values). The rest is simply a matter of practice.
Every event (including human behavior) has a natural cause (of some sort or another), and there's no such thing as ghosts, so please get over it, it's 2013 for fux sake.
That being said, it is pretty clear that people make choices, and the choices they make, make a difference. It's gonna take people smarter than myself to sort out all of the apparent contradictions and tangles inherent in this particular philosophical puzzle. So I'm not even going to try. And frankly, neither did the author of The Willpower Instinct (Kelly McGonigal), and I for one, think that's a very good thing.
McGonigle does a decent job of revitalizing this decidedly uncool and very unfashionable topic, due in part to the fact that she kept that shit simple! Simple language, simple ideas, simple simple simple. I loved that about this book.
Many people erroneously think that the answer to their problems will come from learning some complex theory or idea, and once they have the magical information, than their life will "fall in to place" with little to no effort.
In my experience, the opposite is true. The information needed to understand most of life's challenges is typically quite simple and readily available. But the actual solutions are usually difficult and typically take some real effort.
Willpower is one of those things. If you lack willpower, the explanation is not complex, McGonigal explains the issue quite easily, in very simple language. But actually changing that situation for yourself will require effort i.e. practice. Willpower is like any other psychological skill. It's like a muscle, it gets stronger with practice. It's not hard to understand, you just have to actually do it.
McGonigle didnt exactly get creative with the format though (for better or worse). It's a standard formula for popular psychology books to (a) identify a problem that nearly everyone suffers from, (b) Identify all the ways that commonsense notions about the issue are wrong, (c) summarize the what the "new" science of ______ says about the subject, (d) bombard you with a litany of interventions and exercises, followed by (e) case study examples of dubious authenticity, and (f) copious research findings. Again, McGonigle doesn't even try to do it differently. She pretty much just did one of those. And it works pretty good. Cha Chunk - one pretty decent pop psych book, made to order, nothin fancy.
WHERE THIS BOOK SHINES!
McGonigle does do a particularly good job of describing how negative self evaluation can be deleterious to our willpower. According to McGonigle, self criticism and self castigation is counterproductive to adaptive behavioral change. Many people think they need to be "hard on themselves" in order to "keep them selves in line". But negative self talk (and the feelings and beliefs that accompany it) can actually keep people trapped in cycles of maladaptive, out of control behavior. For example: people who over eat to manage negative feelings may harshly self castigate, leading to enhanced negative feelings, which trigger more of the unwanted impulsive over eating behavior -and so on -and so on -and so on...
I am currently working as a clinician in a addiction recovery program. Our clients come to us FULL of shame and self criticism. It's normal, it's natural, but it doesn't help them change the behavior. If shame worked for that, they wouldn't be addicts. Shame actually makes the problem worse because it makes them feel worse (see above) and it diverts attention from the real problem, making arriving at a reasonable solution pretty dang hard.
One component of this phenomena is the Ironic Rebound Effect:
This refers to when attempts at cognitive control/suppression backfire and result in increased incidents of the undesired cognitive content e.g. feelings, mental images, self talk etc. For example: after individuals attempt to disregard doubts about themselves, their self esteem actually declines and their anxiety rises (Borton, Markovitz, & Dieterich, 2005). Likewise, when individuals feel compelled to condemn some activity, such as a risky act, they are actually more likely to undertake that activity in the future (Maio & Olson, 1998).
According to McGonigle, the intervention for ironic rebound effects is, simply put, to "give up". Let go of the agenda of cognitive control. Surf The Urge! In other words, allow yourself to have the problematic feelings or thoughts (or what ever), with equanimity, i.e. without resistance or self judgment, and (most importantly) without reflexively acting on them. From this platform of self acceptance, the individual can begin to gain insight into the actual triggers and mechanisms of the behavior, and make the needed adjustments necessary to retrain the maladaptive behavior.
Self acceptance, however counterintuitive, can be the critical first step to exiting these kinds of behavioral traps. So there you go. The secret to willpower is giving up. Wait, what?
Not so fast! There are plenty of instances where the agenda of cognitive change (cognitive restructuring) is effective. In my opinion, acceptance and mindfulness based approaches are best when offered in concert with traditional CBT. I like to say, you can change the cognitive content (traditional CBT) or you can change your relationship to the cognitive content (Mindfulness Based CBT). What ever works for you. It's just that most people are oversold on the agenda of cognitive change and under trained/educated on the agenda of acceptance. For me, it's all about embracing the dialectic of Acceptance and Change.
SUMMARY: the ABC's of willpower are A: self care, B: self awareness and C: connecting with what matters most in life (i.e. values). The rest is simply a matter of practice.