Lack self-control? Join the club!

‘I say no to alcohol but it just doesn’t listen’ said someone who tried quitting the habit.

Are you one too? Do you think you lack self-control?

Don’t be harsh on yourself. Apparently, our self-control is much like our muscles. Just like our muscles get tired doing physical work, our self-control gets tired while doing daily things leaving us with little power to change ourselves. Here’s proof. Courtesy an interesting experiment done by psychologists.

Some college students were called for a food perception study. Or, at least, that’s what they were told. They were specifically asked to come hungry for the experiment.

They were made to sit in a room with two bowls on the table in front of them. One was filled with freshly-baked yummy chocolate-chip cookies. The other had a bunch of radishes – the ones we don’t find appetizing but rabbits love to munch.

Half of the students were asked to eat the cookies but not the radishes. The other half were asked to eat radishes but not the cookies. After instructing, the researchers left the room.

Needless to say, those who were asked to eat the cookies obliged by gorging on them with glee. The poor souls who were asked to eat radishes nibbled on them while looking longingly at the bowl of cookies and cursing their bad luck.

The researchers came back and collected the bowls and said the taste study was over. Another set of researchers entered the room for a second supposedly unrelated study. They told the students that they were studying human behaviour solving problems.

The students were presented with a series of puzzles and were asked to a complete a geometric shape without retracing any lines and without lifting their pencils from the paper. Truth be told, the puzzles were designed to be virtually unsolvable.

The researchers wanted to see how long the students would persist in a difficult, frustrating task before they finally gave up.

The students who were asked to eat chocolate cookies spent an average of 19 minutes on the problem. Remember, these were the un-tempted ones who didn’t need to resist the cookies.

But the radish eaters gave up after just 8 minutes. Why did they quit so easily?

Psychologists say they ran out of self-control. Self-control is an exhaustible resource. The radish eaters had drained their self-control by resisting the cookies!

The cookie eaters, on the other hand, had a fresh untaxed mind and were able to persevere for 19 minutes.

It’s almost like doing push-ups. The first few times is easy since our muscles are fresh. As we do push-ups, we burn our strength and after a point of time we just can’t any more.

Just like physical muscles get tired when we exercise, we also exhaust the mental muscles while trying to exercise self-control.

When do we burn self-control? This is where it gets interesting.

Research shows that we burn up self-control in a wide variety of everyday life’s situations. Like while managing the impression we are making on others, coping with fears, controlling our spending, talking to someone, trying to focus on what we are doing and many such ordinary things.

This is why we find it hard to change ourselves. We are not lazy or resistant to change. Change is hard coz we wear ourselves out. What looks like laziness is actually exhaustion!

In another study, some people were asked to restrain their emotions while watching a sad movie. Later, they exhibited less physical endurance than others who had let the tears flow freely while watching the same movie.

So, stop blaming yourself next time you find it hard to say no to alcohol. Just raise a toast to your exhaustion and gulp another round.

Cheers!