*This is a compensated review for the BlogHer book club. All opinions expressed are my own.
I'm that person that's always pushing my local book club to read more non-fiction. I also enjoy a little light neuroscience reading from time to time. However, I have to admit, I wasn't really enthused about reading The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal, PhD. I mean, a self-help book that's probably all about dieting? Sounded a little boring.
My opinion completely changed by the time I was through the first chapter though. This books manages to mix humor and science without sounding forced or giving up ground on facts. It really feels like you're discussing this topic with over dinner with a very well educated, but down to earth and funny friend.
While there is a fair bit of diet talk, there are also a lot of examples about other types of willpower struggles. Things like, oh, I don't know, shutting down facebook and going to bed at a reasonable hour? Handling anxiety rather than feeding it? Instead of giving advice strictly on avoiding or overpowering your challenge, there are explanations of seemingly unrelated factors that decrease or increase your willpower and the science behind why they have an impact on your ability to say "I will..." or "I won't...." The focus is on understanding how your brain works and making it work for you rather than fighting it.
The icing on the cake is the organization of the book. Throughout the chapters, there are "under the microscope" boxes that encourage you to think about how what you just read applies to your own personal willpower challenge. Specific questions lead you to think about what the real causes and solutions are. Each chapter also ends with a chapter summary that gives you a wrap up of the information in the chapter, reminds you of those under the microscope questions to think about and gives you a few willpower experiments to improve your progress on your own challenge. The beginning of the book suggests that you only read one chapter a week so you have time to apply what you've learned and see what works for you and what doesn't. I didn't have time to take that long with the book, but I think it would be very helpful to take the suggestion and go through the book slowly while working on one specific challenge.
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2 comments:
I've been contemplating lately how my brain has been rewired by constant clicking of links, barely scanning a headline or article, and of course, visiting and revisiting Facebook and TexAgs faster than new content is posted. Surely this behavior poses a threat to one's ability to think in a slower and more global context.
Does the author offer any advice for strengthening one's willpower to correct unhealthy cognitive behaviors? I'm assuming there are other suggestions than the obvious one of "stop acting on impulses to browse the internet randomly throughout the day."
Yes! That is what a lot of the book is about. There is a chapter entitled, "The Brain's Big Lie" that lays out why we want to keep refreshing facebook. She explains experiments that have shown we are strongly driven by the promise of reward. The possibility that there might be a new message gives us a jolt of dopamine that we find hard to ignore. It doesn't matter whether we're actually rewarded or not, we're addicted to the brain chemistry that happens when we *might* be rewarded. We mistake this possibility of reward for happiness, and it can be helpful to focus on how you actually feel when you click that "refresh" button. Was it really rewarding at all? Becoming conscious of whether that "promise of reward" actually worked out or not can help break the cycle. Many times, the dopamine drive doesn't make us happy at all, it causes stress and anxiety..."I NEED to click one more time", or "I NEED a cigarette"...the dopamine is actually making you uncomfortable and driving you to do something. Knowing that and focusing on how you feel throughout the situation can help you develop a reward for yourself that is actually rewarding (so you're not always searching, with the next click or next cigarette, or next throw of the dice). She also explains how to use this to your advantage by "dopaminizing" an activity you're putting off.
More to the point you bring up, she also talks about the effects of constant media consumption. Namely that it's stressful to be inundated with bad news all day long. It doesn't even have to be stuff that seems all that bad to us, but the constant input pushes our panic buttons and makes us much more susceptible to those dopamine messages that are driving us toward the things we just can't say no to.
Overall, different solutions would work for different people. She gives a lot of options and questions to guide you towards which one will work for you and your willpower challenge.
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