Developing good habits

Roy Baumeister writes here about how to avoid sin. How to avoid succumbing to temptation.

The shopper covets the expensive item and worries vaguely about the credit card bill. The dieter contemplates the fine dessert. The ex-addict looks longingly at the cigarette, the bottle, or the drug, recalling the sweet feelings but also the problems and promises. The man and woman prepare to kiss, warm with alcohol and new intimacy, but are held back by thoughts of their respective spouses back home. The procrastinator thinks of the tough, worrisome task ahead but notes the deadline is still a week off, so perhaps it is fine to leave it one more day. Such moral and practical dilemmas pervade daily life.

People with good self-control avoid temptations and problem situations, rather than battling with them. Other research confirmed that self-control works most effectively by means of controlling habits, rather than by using willpower for direct control of one’s actions in the heat of the moment.

Most vices and sins involve failures of self-control, and most virtues indicate good self-control. Until recently, it was standard to think of self-control in terms of heroic single feats of willpower, such as for resisting a strong temptation. But much of the new evidence suggests that self-control is most effective when it operates through habits. People use their self-control to break bad habits and establish good ones, and then life can run smoothly and successfully, with low levels of stress, regret, and guilt.

Can you remember your initial struggles with a bicycle, a surfboard, a computer keyboard and mouse, a tennis racquet? Yet after enough repetitions, one uses those same items efficiently and effectively, with hardly a thought or error. The human mind’s ability to convert difficult action into easy deft habit is remarkable.

It is questionable whether resisting a strong temptation or impulse can ever become entirely habitual. Virtuous habits are much more successful at avoiding those temptations and impulses than trying to stifle them once they are felt.

Virtue is not the absence of desire for sin — it is the absence of sin despite the desire to sin!) One can prevent inner inclinations and weaknesses from blossoming into full-blown cravings and desires by avoiding the external circumstances that trigger them. The recovering alcoholic knows to avoid bars. The veteran dieter knows not to keep fattening foods available at home. In such cases, even if the inner drive does occasionally produce a strong, specific desire once in a while, the lack of opportunity saves the day. There may be a moment of weakness, when willpower is low and sweet memories lead to cravings, but if there are no pastries or cigarettes or drinks available, virtue remains intact despite the fact that the person is briefly willing to give in.

People with good self-control achieve virtue in a seemingly easy, undramatic fashion. We may reserve our admiration for the most dramatic cases, in which someone heroically does the right thing despite being strongly tempted to do otherwise. But everyday virtue is best achieved not by such heroic feats of willpower, but rather by avoiding such situations in the first place. By pulling together many small habits, especially for avoiding temptations and problems, one can live a more virtuous life.