How to Have More Self-Control

The ability to manage one’s thoughts, regulate emotions, and restrain impulses is key to a happy and healthy life. People who have good self-control often have higher psychological well-being, more academic and on-the-job achievements, and healthier relationships. Low self-control, in contrast, is a core contributing factor to numerous problems, including substance abuse and impulsive buying.Any of us can succumb to the limits of in-the-moment willpower. We see that box of cookies on the counter and we reach for one, and then two. Most of us can learn how to think before we act and even engage in self-restraint in high-stress situations. But if we aren’t taught to practice self-control early in our lives, it can be harder, though not impossible. Walter Mischel, a psychologist who taught at Stanford and Columbia, conducted some of the most famous studies on delaying gratification in the late 1960s and 1970s. Decades later, he published a book expanding on this research: The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. For those unfamiliar with the original study, in brief, children ages three to five were presented with a marshmallow and given two options. They were told they could eat the marshmallow immediately, or, if they waited for 20 minutes and didn’t eat the marshmallow, they could have two marshmallows. Mischel and colleagues followed those children and continued to study them over time. What they found was remarkable. The preschoolers who had a tough time delaying gratification— who ate the first marshmallow—were less academically and socially skilled, eloquent, attentive, and not as good at managing frustration in adolescence. Over time, large-scale replication and extension studies of the marshmallow test with more diverse socioeconomic and racial samples found more nuanced findings. While similar findings on wait times and outcomes were found, additional analyses showed that children’s ability to delay gratification and wait for a second marshmallow was more strongly related to parents’ education and children’s home environment. This showed that self-control is not a fixed trait, and that circumstances greatly contribute to children’s ability to delay gratification.In addition, when the marshmallow test was administered to adults, it did not predict their functioning. That makes sense. Few of us are going to struggle with not eating a marshmallow. But if it was a more suitable enticement for adults, like a salted caramel cheesecake or immediate access to our social media or news feeds, we might. Angela Narayan, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at the University of Denver, conducts research and works clinically with low-income families to identify resilience processes that protect against the intergenerational transmission of trauma. I asked her how she helps support highly stressed parents to engage in effective emotion regulation, self-control, and distress tolerance.“I encourage adults to try to notice the negative feeling in the moment—pausing and reflecting and then try to sit with it for a moment to notice how, with simple coping skills, the intensity of the feeling passes,” she said. “Even if the feeling itself doesn’t pass, it becomes weaker and less bothersome. If you ride the wave of the negative feeling, as opposed to lashing out at someone, yelling at a loved one, or sending an angry email, the worst of it will pass and you will be able to think more clearly and have better control over what to do next.”In other words, when we recognize that our impulses are temporary, they become less powerful. As I tell my patients, we are never too old to learn new skills, as long as we are open and motivated to learn and then practice the techniques. Most of the people I work with struggle with impulse control because they experienced severe and prolonged trauma experiences and have significant hyperarousal and difficulties managing their emotions.Among other things, I try to teach them that often when they engage impulsively, they, in a sense, give their power away. Their intense emotions get the best of them. They say or do something they deeply regret. I explain that it’s in their best interest to thoughtfully respond rather than react. That way, they have a better chance of keeping their power and self-respect. I am a very visual person, so I like imagery. My patients sometimes laugh at me when I tell them to picture themselves riding a horse and pulling back the reins on their strong emotions. If this or a related visual grounds them from taking negative action, I’ll take their laughter as a good sign. We are all likely to engage in forms of instant gratification from time to time, but if we immediately satiate all our impulses, we miss the bigger rewards. We need to create a little psychological distance from our impulses and stay focused on the prize. We get bigger rewards when we manage our impulses well. We get to look at ourselves in the mirror and like our behavior. To be fair, some of us have a harder time reining ourselves in. We may be risk-seekers who pursue activities that give us an adrenaline rush. We might have inherited, by no fault of our own, genetic factors that contribute to being more impulsive. It’s harder for us to pull ourselves in. But it’s not impossible. Learning, practicing, and engaging in self-control is essential to leading a good life. Why wouldn’t we want that for ourselves?