cheat yourself
A friend recently linked to an article on metacognition. The article argues that the crucial quality for resisting temptation is not willpower, but metacognitive skills. For example, children tempted by candy resisted better when taught to pretend the candy was a picture.
Extrapolation: given an understanding of how your mind works, you can manipulate yourself to surpass the limitations of your willpower.
This has been bouncing around in my head, not always in a pleasant (or coherent, much to saebel's irritation) way.
The first thing that troubles me is that I've failed to figure this out on my own, on a conscious/rigorous level. I sometimes use such techniques, but reflexively, not as part of a deliberate life strategy. I've focused on willpower, and when that failed, I've generally left things to be revisited later. I can think of several ways in which this other trickery approach could help me. But that's fine - now that I've grokked it, I can use it.
More bothersome is that this notion fits poorly with my broader philosophy.
Roughly, I believe that 'happiness' is defined as the thing you want, and 'want' is defined as the thing that impels you to action. So it doesn't make sense to say "I want to quit smoking" without doing it, because wanting is defined as the thing that makes you do it.
I suppose this is a redefinition of want as the aggregate of your (frequently conflicting) desires. In this case, you may desire to quit, but your desire to smoke wins over it, so your overall want is not to quit.
But, as saebel is fond of pointing out, this ignores capability. Just because you want something doesn't mean you can achieve it. This is made more clear by the notion of trickery. A nicotine patch can assist in quitting. Here, willpower alone is insufficient, so a tool is used to achieve a desired goal. The problem for me is, now "I want to quit smoking," is not a lie, even though nothing internal about the person has changed.
This makes it difficult to cleanly define want in terms of action. Capacity doesn't have a good home in that definition, but if it's ignored, then the same person can want the same thing with different consequences. That doesn't make sense.
So I may have to rethink my philosophy.
Troubling, but not a bad way to start a new decade.
Extrapolation: given an understanding of how your mind works, you can manipulate yourself to surpass the limitations of your willpower.
This has been bouncing around in my head, not always in a pleasant (or coherent, much to saebel's irritation) way.
The first thing that troubles me is that I've failed to figure this out on my own, on a conscious/rigorous level. I sometimes use such techniques, but reflexively, not as part of a deliberate life strategy. I've focused on willpower, and when that failed, I've generally left things to be revisited later. I can think of several ways in which this other trickery approach could help me. But that's fine - now that I've grokked it, I can use it.
More bothersome is that this notion fits poorly with my broader philosophy.
Roughly, I believe that 'happiness' is defined as the thing you want, and 'want' is defined as the thing that impels you to action. So it doesn't make sense to say "I want to quit smoking" without doing it, because wanting is defined as the thing that makes you do it.
I suppose this is a redefinition of want as the aggregate of your (frequently conflicting) desires. In this case, you may desire to quit, but your desire to smoke wins over it, so your overall want is not to quit.
But, as saebel is fond of pointing out, this ignores capability. Just because you want something doesn't mean you can achieve it. This is made more clear by the notion of trickery. A nicotine patch can assist in quitting. Here, willpower alone is insufficient, so a tool is used to achieve a desired goal. The problem for me is, now "I want to quit smoking," is not a lie, even though nothing internal about the person has changed.
This makes it difficult to cleanly define want in terms of action. Capacity doesn't have a good home in that definition, but if it's ignored, then the same person can want the same thing with different consequences. That doesn't make sense.
So I may have to rethink my philosophy.
Troubling, but not a bad way to start a new decade.