Never lack willpower

let's all do it together unless you have health problems if you if you are willing to take this challenge we are 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 dateless flash back 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 is a little bit of a restraint challenge um some of you perhaps you need to hold your breath for two twinkles to feel it but i didn't want anyone passing out so would you believe that this capability to hold your breath is one of the stylish predictors of people's capability to succeed at delicate pretensions psychologists call this torture forbearance the capability to stay put when effects get uncomfortable so i want to tell you now about a small intervention exactly how to principally ride out physical discomfort that gets in the way of making a delicate change i am going to tell you about two different studies that are principally using the same fashion so you can kind of pick your restraint challenge then the first i call the the torture chamber this was a study of smokers who wanted to quit but had been unfit to and the experimenters asked the smokers to hesitate from smoking for 24 hours sort of a first challenge and also to come into the laboratory with a fresh unopened pack of their favorite brand of cigarettes so all the smokers show up they have got their pack they're carbon monoxide tested them to make sure they had not smoked so they had all they were really they were ready for cigarette and asked to put down all distractions except for a lighter or a match and stop that teaches people how to sort of hold their breath but not hopeless for a bank and they indeed like they all get um they seated at a long table their cigarettes so you got a bunch of smokers now they are ready and also the researcher through actually a microphone like that you hear this voice that says is about to begin the process of allowing them to bomb and she says take out your pack of cigarettes and everyone does they are each agitated stop okay they've to stay two twinkles now and they are not allowed to do anything except look at their pack of cigarettes pull off the cellophane okay two twinkles they've to stay pack it oh there is paxy i do not bomb i forget some of these way they had to pack the pack too uh and they got the cellophane open okay take out a cigarette eventually stop they've to stay two twinkles and this goes on and every two twinkles they they are writing down how violent their jones
are and how important they want to bomb but other than that they are not allowed to do anything take a cigarette out stop two twinkles look at the cigarette stop two twinkles smell the cigarette stop two twinkles put the cigarette in your mouth stop two twinkles take out a lighter look at it stop two twinkles this went on for over an hour nothing was actually allowed to light the cigarette okay so then is what i did not tell you what the factual intervention was yet partial of them before this happed had been tutored a fashion called probing the appetite in which you learn to pay attention to the physical discomfort of wanting commodity you give it your full attention and you trust that you can tolerate those physical sensations and if you just stay with tolerance they will go down that any pining any emotion will ultimately pass if you can just breathe and stay stay it out that you do not have to act on every impulse or emotion so that is the fashion they were tutored they were probing the appetite they were imagining those jones
as a surge that they were getting on and they were just going to breathe and they knew that it would ultimately end just like a surge before i tell you the results of the study let me just give you the food one the food went a little bit different they took people who had problems with tone- control around food especially sweets gave them a clear vessel of hershey's kisses transparent vessel and they had to carry that box of hershey's kisses around with them for 48 hours and weren't allowed to eat a single one and they were all precisely marked little leg scrape so that the experimenters would know if they ate them and restocked it which would not be cool and they were tutored the same fashion about how to handle jones
how to suds the appetite allow yourself to feel the pining and yet flash back you slip ' t need to act on it and the pining will go down ultimately okay so the results in this study the smokers who had been tutored how to suds the appetite in that that one hour torture test they ended up reducing their cigarette bank by 40 in the veritably coming week indeed though the experimenters hadn't asked them to the control group didn't reduce their cigarettes at each and interestingly in the the people who had learned to suds the appetite there was now no longer a connection between cerebral stress and smoking which is actually that is the main connection for a lot of people who are trying to quit they are stressed out they are anxious and so they need a cigarette and in this particular group with this intervention.

it cut that link between stress and giving in presumably because they had a tool for dealing with delicate passions and feelings in this study the people who had trouble with tone- control around food if they were tutored to suds the appetite xero had a single hershey's kiss over the entire 48 hours whereas those who'd 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 exemplifications of how probing the appetite can give us a lot of restraint for the effects where we need restraint you know a lot of times i hear people talk about how important it's to make good habits but the reality is occasionally you need strength to do commodity delicate and there is 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 perhaps you want to avoid commodity because you are 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 stylish strategy for dealing with these delicate feelings these delicate studies and these delicate jones
and any attempt to kind of push them down or get relieve of them backfires but being suitable to ride them out and imagine them as passing gests that you do not need to act on has been shown to help a lot of different restraint challenges including the kind of anxiety that leads us to not do effects we know we should do protrusive studies you know that is a real restraint challenge occasionally our mind goes places we do not want it to go to recollections or to effects we are imagining or to negative studies about ourselves and others and exploration shows you can apply the same fashion to a negative study without having to act on it it's been shown to ameliorate weight loss uh it actually this this fashion of learning how to accept your own jones
tripled the long- term one- time weight loss success rate among people who are in a really standard weight loss program if you want to apply this fashion to any restraint challenge yourself then's what that small intervention would look like for yourself then is what people were tutored in uh in both of those studies and the first is this awareness to allow yourself to feel what you are feeling or suppose what you're thinking and to actually attend to the experience rather than incontinently try to escape it so if you are empty 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 also to actually just breathe breathe it out use the takes like 30 seconds and uh and it can help with any kind of restraint challenge five restraint rules and i would just invite you to suppose if you heard anything moment that might be applicable to your restraint challenge to give yourself this short cure the small cure intervention and and see how it works so those five strategies one is to train your restraint physiology by planning by sleeping by exercising or by eating a diet that is going to sustain your energy forgive yourself the coming time you have a restraint reversal make musketeers with your future tone kind of suppose about the future in a way that feels real prognosticate your failure indeed though it's really nice to imagine success really get interested in the process of how you feel and also eventually suppose about probing the appetite when you're facing temptation.