Willpower - Start with Self-Awareness

One of the five social and emotional skills

Dec 28, 2009
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Submitted by: Ginny Deerin

New article in the Wall Street Journal by Johah Lehrer about willpower and the wisdom of pacing yourself on your good intentions of changing behavior. The best place to start is self-awareness - one of of the five basic social and emotional skills.

Willpower, like a bicep, can only exert itself so long before it gives out; it's an extremely limited mental resource.

Given its limitations, New Year's resolutions are exactly the wrong way to change our behavior. It makes no sense to try to quit smoking and lose weight at the same time, or to clean the apartment and give up wine in the same month. Instead, we should respect the feebleness of self-control, and spread our resolutions out over the entire year. Human routines are stubborn things, which helps explain why 88% of all resolutions end in failure, according to a 2007 survey of over 3,000 people conducted by the British psychologist Richard Wiseman. Bad habits are hard to break—and they're impossible to break if we try to break them all at once.

Some simple tricks can help. The first step is self-awareness: The only way to fix willpower flaws is to know about them.

WINGS teaches kids social and emotional skills and we begin our comprehensive curriculum with self-awareness. You can find free social and emotional skillbuilding activities here.

What a relief!

On December 30th, 2009 Liz Mester says:

I am completely fascinated by this article! Do you know what a relief it is to read that our brain, specifically the prefontal cortex, is the reason so many of us struggle with will power, discipline and self control?  I, probably like everyone else, thought this was a character flaw of mine.  Phew!  I now know the take goals slow so that they last, get enough sleep, stay fueled - and, when all else fails - blame it on the brain. 

Our lucky WINGS kids - they get to speed past so many adults when it comes to knowing themselves, their strengths and their weaknesses.  Social and emotional skills rule the world.