CHAPTER 7

Self-Control

It’s around 11:00 p.m. The house is quiet. The kids are in bed, and all the things that happen with them in the evening—dinner, homework, together time—are over. Matt’s reading or has gone to bed. The cat, dog, and even Blinky my chatty cockatiel are snoozing. I put on my favorite pale blue fleece hoodie PJs. Pad out to my study. Sit down at my desk and tap a key. The computer screen lights up.

I have night owl tendencies, so after a full day at the office, followed by home and family activities, I use the late-night hours to catch up on e-mails, review reports, prep for meetings, edit drafts of student papers or grant applications—and, for quite a while now, write this book.

It’s been a long day of decisions, there’s a lot of budget pressure around getting the grants we’re applying for, and the manuscript deadline for the book is approaching. It all has to get done. I work steadily for a while. Then, suddenly, a thought about chocolate flashes through my mind. Specifically, Cadbury chocolate. More specifically, a Boost bar. I picture the dark blue and purple foil wrapper. My taste buds tingle at the memory of the crunchy biscuit pieces and caramel. I could really use some chocolate.

No. You don’t need chocolate. You need to work.

Chocolate . . .

Work.

Cho-co-laaaaate!!!

WORK!!!!!

The tug-of-war between goal and impulse finally proves too distracting. I go out to the kitchen, to the cabinet where I’ve “hidden” the beckoning bar. It’s way up at the top, in the back. I stretch on tiptoe, feeling around for the smooth, flat object of my desire.

It’s not there.

Puzzlement. Then disappointment. Even a flash of childish rage. Grrrrrrr! Who took my chocolate?

Then I remember. I ate it last week during another late-night work session.

We’ve all lost battles with our impulses, though your irresistible impulse will likely be different from mine. Over the past seven years while building the Centre for Positive Psychology and becoming its first director, I’ve probably kept the Cadbury chocolate factory alive and kicking. But seriously, I’ve noticed that on the days when I work from home without the constant decisions and stressors of a typical day at the office, or when I’m not tired from trying to cram in another day’s work at night after already putting in a full day at the center, those chocolate cravings don’t overwhelm me. I still have impulses and distractions, but I’m better at staying on task and saying, “Later. Right now, it’s time to work.” My self-control is stronger.

So what’s the difference between the times when an enticing impulse wins and when it doesn’t? I used to think my chocolate cravings were the result of the need for comfort. But research indicates that the real cause is probably the erosion of self-control from making decisions all day long.

Making decisions is only one of several self-control sappers we’ll talk about in this chapter. It’s important to become aware of these factors as we seek to help our children call upon and maximize their strengths and work productively on their weaknesses. It’s also important in helping us stay on track as strength-based parents.

Strength-based parenting actually helps kids build and maintain self-control. If you’ve been reading the previous chapters and helping your child build her capacities for attention and mindfulness, you’re already priming your child to grow her capacity for self-control. In this chapter, we’ll go a step further.

Self-Control Defined

Self-control is a key ingredient that allows human beings to single-mindedly manifest their potential in the world through ups and downs, thick and thin, slings and arrows, curve balls, s**t hitting the fan, or whatever else you want to call the rock and roll of daily life in human-land.

Minute by minute, hour by hour, every day of our lives, self-control helps us overcome internal conflict when we’re confronted with choices.¹ Work or play? Hit the gym or take a nap? Fix a healthy dinner or veg out with a movie and a bag of chips? Put attention on strengths or on weaknesses? Self-control helps us make judicious choices.

But what is self-control, exactly? Where does it arise in the brain? Why is it sometimes so strong, other times lamentably absent?

Before we answer these questions, take a few moments now to assess your level of self-control:

EXERCISE: | Assess Your Self-Control

Read each statement in Table 1 below and select how much the statement applies to you on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being “Not at all like me” and 5 being “Very much like me.”²

It is easy for me to break bad habits.

1	2	3	4	5
NOT AT ALL LIKE ME	A LITTLE LIKE ME	SOMEWHAT LIKE ME	MOSTLY LIKE ME	VERY MUCH LIKE ME

I don’t get distracted easily.

1	2	3	4	5
NOT AT ALL LIKE ME	A LITTLE LIKE ME	SOMEWHAT LIKE ME	MOSTLY LIKE ME	VERY MUCH LIKE ME

I don’t say inappropriate things.

1	2	3	4	5
NOT AT ALL LIKE ME	A LITTLE LIKE ME	SOMEWHAT LIKE ME	MOSTLY LIKE ME	VERY MUCH LIKE ME

I refuse things that are bad for me, even if they are fun.

1	2	3	4	5
NOT AT ALL LIKE ME	A LITTLE LIKE ME	SOMEWHAT LIKE ME	MOSTLY LIKE ME	VERY MUCH LIKE ME

I’m good at resisting temptation.

1	2	3	4	5
NOT AT ALL LIKE ME	A LITTLE LIKE ME	SOMEWHAT LIKE ME	MOSTLY LIKE ME	VERY MUCH LIKE ME

People would say that I have very strong self-discipline.

1	2	3	4	5
NOT AT ALL LIKE ME	A LITTLE LIKE ME	SOMEWHAT LIKE ME	MOSTLY LIKE ME	VERY MUCH LIKE ME

Most of the time I put work before pleasure.

1	2	3	4	5
NOT AT ALL LIKE ME	A LITTLE LIKE ME	SOMEWHAT LIKE ME	MOSTLY LIKE ME	VERY MUCH LIKE ME

I never do things that feel good in the moment if I know I will regret them later on.

1	2	3	4	5
NOT AT ALL LIKE ME	A LITTLE LIKE ME	SOMEWHAT LIKE ME	MOSTLY LIKE ME	VERY MUCH LIKE ME

I rarely act without thinking through all the alternatives.

1	2	3	4	5
NOT AT ALL LIKE ME	A LITTLE LIKE ME	SOMEWHAT LIKE ME	MOSTLY LIKE ME	VERY MUCH LIKE ME

I can usually stop myself from doing things that I know are wrong.

1	2	3	4	5
NOT AT ALL LIKE ME	A LITTLE LIKE ME	SOMEWHAT LIKE ME	MOSTLY LIKE ME	VERY MUCH LIKE ME

John Wiley and Sons.

Visit http://bit.ly/2rpF0bh for a printable version of this worksheet.

Table 1: Self-Control Scale

SCORING: Add your score for each item to arrive at a total score. The maximum score is 50, which indicates extreme levels of self-control. A mid-point score of 25 suggests moderate levels of self-control, and lower scores reflect lower levels of self-control.

Don’t worry if you scored low. Research shows that self-control, despite being such an important quality, is often low.³ More on that later.

A quick review of the statements in the self-assessment makes it clear that self-control, in essence, is about impulse control. It’s the capacity we draw on when an inner conflict arises between an impulse and a goal. It’s what allows us to rise above our needs and drives, exert our higher brain capacities, and control our emotions, thoughts, and actions in the service of a desired outcome. In lofty terms, it’s the exercise of free will.

We have these moments of inner conflict constantly during a normal day. It may be about saying no to something we want to do (No chocolate, Lea). Or it might be saying yes to something we don’t want to do (Finish that report, Lea).

The Connection Between Self-Control and Attention

Self-control isn’t the same as attention (discussed in Chapter 5), although the two are interrelated. Attention is our capacity for vigilance, to stay focused on one particular thing. Self-control is our ability to stick to our plans and not be derailed by our impulses. Attention is needed for self-control: You have to be aware of something to control it. But self-control is useful in steering our attention toward one thing and away from another. The two go hand in hand.

Some psychologists here in Australia demonstrated this interconnection in a series of very cool studies in which participants went through one of three programs to build their self-control.⁴ Individuals in the first study were tasked with setting the goal of becoming fit: joining a gym, constructing a plan for getting in shape, and sticking to it. In a second study, each participant had to devise and carry out a study plan. The third study had people set a goal to save money, which involved establishing and adhering to a budget. The ostensible object of these studies was to assess participants’ success at meeting their assigned goals, but actually they were about assessing the workings of self-control.

Every couple of weeks, the participants came to the lab and took an attention test. In the test, they were shown a computer screen displaying a series of squares with one square of a particular color. When the squares jumbled around on-screen into a different order, the participants had to pay attention to that square as it moved and say where it ended up.

Now here’s the twist. In the middle of the attention test, the researchers started playing an Eddie Murphy comedy movie on another screen. This was a test of self-control. Would the participants follow their impulse to watch Eddie Murphy and have a laugh? The moment they lost self-control, their attention would wander and they’d lose track of where the square went. The researchers found that, over time, participants in the three programs became more fit, adhered to the study program, or saved money, and they also got much better at not looking at Eddie Murphy and just paying attention to the square. In other words, their self-control improved, and so did their attention.

These researchers showed us that we can build self-control and attention by setting goals and sticking to them. They also showed that self-control and attention are mutually reinforcing. As you build one, you build the other. On the flip side, as you deplete one, you deplete the other.

Marketers know this relationship well: People are much more likely to engage in impulse spending when their attention is distracted.⁵ That’s why in many stores there’s loud music, bright lights, screens with moving images, colorful displays, announcements, events, salespeople offering samples and special promotions, and so on. You may go in looking for one item and come out with that item plus a few more you didn’t set out to buy.

The Roots and the Reach of Self-Control

In the Victorian era, self-control was seen as a psychological state. Being weak-willed was viewed as a mental failing at best, a character flaw at worst. More recently, we’ve learned that self-control isn’t just in your mind. It’s also in your body. In fact, it’s a physiological capacity wired into our nervous systems.⁶ A failure of self-control doesn’t always mean you’re weak-willed; it could mean your nervous system is overtaxed. That’s why so many of us reach for junk food when we’re stressed but can resist temptation in calmer moments. While some people have more innate self-control⁷ than others, we all experience failures of self-control. Luckily it turns out that, like so many capacities, self-control can be strengthened.

Neuroscientists have located the brain area responsible for self-monitoring.⁸ It’s called the anterior cingulate cortex. In my parent workshops, I just refer to it as our self-monitoring system. Basically, its job is to detect when there’s a mismatch between our intention (what we’d planned to do) and the action we’re about to undertake (act on impulse or stick to our plan).

Suppose you’re trying to lose five pounds and you’re invited to brunch at a restaurant known for its incredible buffet. En route and even as you walk to the buffet table, you’re thinking, I’m going to go straight to the fruit display and have a bowl of fresh fruit. But hang on. Are those hot waffles over there? Yep, with all the trimmings. You catch a delicious whiff. Your resolve wavers.

It’s the anterior cingulate cortex that detects the dissonance: Uh-oh! Intention in danger! It sends out warning signals, in effect opening the door to the prefrontal cortex—our large, highly developed system of conscious choice, rational thinking, and future-oriented planning—which wedges in a foot and says, Hey, I know you love waffles, but eating them won’t get the scale to show the number you want. Remember how energized you felt yesterday after you ate fresh fruit and yogurt for breakfast? You can feel that again right now. And you’ll feel great when you get on the scale next week without those waffles weighing you down.

If our brain is designed to help us have self-control, why is it so hard to smack down our impulses?

It’s because our impulses come from an ancient, powerful part of the brain called the limbic system. In the eons before we developed higher-level capacities, this was the original system that kept us safe, well fed instead of fed upon, and able to live to procreate another day. It still plays a vital role in keeping us in touch with core sensations of safety and comfort. It won’t go away, so neither will our impulses. Research shows that we spend about 50 percent of our life having desires and impulses and three to four hours a day resisting temptations. It’s hard to do this, and we cave to our impulses about 60 percent of the time.⁹

Those statistics might seem depressing. But from an evolutionary standpoint, in a comparatively short time, we’ve gone from being organisms largely governed by impulse to having a brain that actively helps us exert self-control. According to Suzanne Segerstrom, PhD, our central nervous system has evolved a self-control mechanism that she calls the “pause and plan response.”¹⁰

Most of us know about the “fight or flight response,” which happens when one part of our nervous system, known as the sympathetic nervous system, goes on high alert in response to a perceived threat. It’s all about revving up the body for action as our heart pounds and blood pours into our muscles in preparation for self-defense. The pause-and-plan response is a complementary response that occurs in a different part of the nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system. In contrast, it triggers a sequence of coordinated changes to help us override that high-alert impulse. Blood goes to the prefrontal cortex to bring its rational powers on board. It’s all about slowing the body down. About taking a moment, a step back, a deep breath, a pause in which clear thought can emerge to plan a more rational response.¹¹

We start to develop self-control even as infants.¹² By around eighteen months, babies start to be more cooperative when limits are set: They don’t touch the trinket, even though they want to, if they are told “no” (some of the time, anyway). This shows the beginnings of impulse control and the ability to regulate desires/temptations. With toddlers, you start to see that they can resist the impulse to run across the road, begin to share their toys, and do a better job of waiting until everyone’s seated before they start eating or ripping open their birthday gifts. Here again, self-control is spotty, but you can see it developing. Between four and six years of age, roughly a third of children show the capacity for delayed gratification.¹³ They will use their self-control to forsake a treat now in order to get a bigger treat later on. For most kids, self-control comes online in a more stable way between the ages of seven and nine. Somewhere between nine and twelve, there’s another small developmental spurt in our self-control capacity.¹⁴

Then in the teenage years, we backslide as the impulse and desire centers in the limbic system have a growth surge, temporarily outstripping the prefrontal cortex.¹⁵ That accounts for the impulsivity and risk-taking behavior associated with teenagers. Here again, there may be evolutionary good reasons: We didn’t live much longer than our teens in primeval times, and we likely needed what today we would consider foolhardy levels of courage to face off with predators, hunt down beasts for sustenance, head into uncharted territory for new food sources, and compete for the best mate in the tribe. Sow your wild oats, our ancient genes urge us. You might die tomorrow. Actually, you probably will. PS: So have the waffles.

Fortunately, as I mentioned in Chapter 4, the prefrontal cortex catches up and the connections between the two develop, with a particular spurt around the age of seventeen, so they can more effectively “talk” to each other and the cortex can put the brakes on some of that impulsivity.¹⁶

With such complexity wired deeply into us, rather than getting down on ourselves for our lack of self-control, I believe we should feel reassured to know that we have all of these internal regulating processes available to help us find our equilibrium as human beings and as parents. As we mature, then, self-control happens on two levels:

1. Impulse control in the moment. Examples: working on taxes despite wanting to watch TV, or your child practicing piano even though he’d love to have computer time instead.
2. Longer-term self-control. This entails the ability to both see and set patterns of attention over time. Examples: Noticing that you’re procrastinating on your taxes (seeing a pattern of inattention) and making a plan to work on them for a half hour every night before the deadline (setting a pattern), or noticing that your child isn’t getting around to practicing piano because he’s getting sucked into computer games (seeing a pattern of impulsivity) and making a plan with your child that he’ll practice the piano for a half hour (setting a pattern) followed by a half hour of computer games.

Our kids are learning how to operate on both levels as their brain develops. It’s intense and important. Self-control helps with many significant outcomes in a child’s life. In research with middle school and university students, self-control is more important than IQ in predicting grade point average.¹⁷ It builds confidence and caring behavior and reduces depression and risky behavior.¹⁸

Research shows that children with high self-control grow into adults with greater physical and mental health, greater education attainment, fewer substance-abuse problems, fewer criminal convictions, better savings behavior, and greater financial security.¹⁹

For all of these reasons, a big part of our role as parents and CEOs of our children’s lives is to help them learn how to be aware of their impulses, access their pause-and-plan mode, and set up productive ways to manage their impulses, until they can internalize and perform these processes on their own.

Strength-based parenting primes your child to exercise self-control. Each time your child overcomes the urge to meet a short-term impulse and invests that energy into growing strengths instead (e.g., going to swimming practice instead of sleeping in), she’s inching closer to realizing her full potential. Each time she remembers to draw on her patience and helpfulness in a team assignment at school even though the kids are being snarky, she’s using her self-control to build positive personality traits. The impact of each small triumph of self-control compounds over time to take a child’s strengths from the level of potential to forming the foundation of significant achievement.

The Top Four Self-Control Sappers

Roy Baumeister, PhD, and Mark Muraven, PhD, liken self-control to a muscle:²⁰ Like a muscle, it becomes fatigued with use. There are four major factors that deplete it:

• resisting impulses
• making decisions
• suppressing emotions
• stress

You can see how all of these can pile up over a day. Even when we start with strong self-control, as we repeatedly call upon it, our ability to apply it diminishes.²¹ By the end of a typical day of work or school, we can expect self-control to be pretty low. No wonder tempers can get short by evening when the family’s finally together—but there’s dinner to make, homework to do, and myriad temptations to resist such as TV, computer games, movies, music, and talking and texting with friends.

Simply recognizing this can go a long way toward helping us hold on to our compassion for ourselves and for our kids when life overtaxes our brain and nervous system and self-control becomes an issue.

But the good news is that, like a muscle, self-control can be strengthened through the right kind of use. And SBP primes us and our kids to do just that.

How Strength Focus Helps the Development of Self-Control . . . and Vice Versa

In Chapter 3, we talked about the three key characteristics of a strength: high performance, high energy, and high use (also known as effort or practice). Self-control is critical to strength building because it’s needed for the “effort” part of the equation: repeated practice, experimentation, trial and error, rehearsals, run-throughs, revisions, rewrites, retakes, and more. Our role as strength-based parents is to help our kids build the self-control they need to put in the effort required to develop their strengths.

SBP is less likely to cause the self-control sappers just listed above. My own research has found that children of strength-based parents experience less stress when making decisions.²² And although children may work hard to develop their strengths, because they love what they’re doing, they can push their self-control muscle harder for the sweet rewards of high performance and high energy.

Even when our children must deal with their weaknesses or with life’s inevitable challenges (and we’ll look at this in more detail in Chapter 9), they can apply their well-developed muscle of self-control and self-awareness gained from working mindfully through their strengths and anticipate better outcomes as a result.

It’s also far less stressful for our children to operate from their core strengths than to slog forward using learned behavior and weaknesses. We all have to tap into our learned behaviors periodically, but when kids don’t know the difference between learned behavior and core strengths, it can lead to study and career choices that put them at risk of dissatisfaction and burnout, draining them of the self-control needed to turn their lives around.

Five Strength-Based Strategies for Building and Sustaining Self-Control

Strategy #1: Assess the Structure of Your Child’s Day (Yours, Too)

One defense against self-control depletion in our kids is to help them structure their day. Here are tips I suggest to parents to use at home:

• Remember, they’re kids. If you think it’s hard to put in a full day’s work and then do more work at home at night, imagine how your child, whose brain is still developing self-control, may feel trying to manage a day at school, after-school lessons, tutoring, athletics, chores, and homework. That’s a lot of decision making, stress, and impulse control. They’re as depleted as you are, if not more.
• Expect that your child will have less self-control at the end of the day. Talk about what would help her rest and refresh her self-control muscle after school. A nap? A snack? Sports? A favorite “good goofing off” activity such as reading, making or building something, taking a walk or run or being outdoors, listening to or making music, or cuddling with the family pet?
• Especially with young children, understand “toxic time.” This is what Matt and I used to call the hours between 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., when Nick and Emily were younger and it seemed they turned into tantrum monsters. I used to think they were tired—and they were—but now I understand that their self-control muscle was also depleted by day’s end. They had less mental energy and their nervous systems were strung out. There was no physiological reserve for them to draw on to stop the tantrum. Tiredness and self-control depletion are a double whammy.
• Boost your child’s positive mood through strength-based routines. Make sure your child’s routine regularly includes opportunities for her to flex her strengths. When we use our strengths, we feel positive. That alone is self-control enhancing. In a series of four studies conducted by Dr. Baumeister and his team at Florida State University, people in positive moods experienced less self-control depletion than people in neutral or sad moods.²³ In the first study, university students were primed to experience positive emotions either through receiving a gift of candy from the researcher or not. In the other three studies, students were primed to experience positive emotions by watching a funny video, primed into a neutral mood by watching a video of dolphin communication patterns, or primed into a sad mood by watching a movie of a dying mother saying good-bye to her son (talk about a tearjerker!). Then they were asked to engage in a task requiring impulse control, whether it was drinking a bad-tasting though healthy drink, persisting at a frustrating but achievable task, persevering in an attempt to solve an unsolvable puzzle, or continually squeezing a handgrip exercise tool until they gave up. In all four studies, the students primed into a positive mood persisted longer. They had more self-control as a result of feeling positive.
• So talk with your child about how his strengths can come out during the school day. It might happen while hanging out with his friends during lunch, finding a quiet spot to read, taking some photos, playing chess, joining a club, listening to music, working on a long-term project, or exercising.
• Approach homework through an understanding of your child’s core and growth strengths, learned behaviors, and weaknesses. Different approaches may work on different days, so don’t be afraid to mix it up. You might have your child start with a strength subject that energizes her so she can bring those positive feelings to a subject she finds more difficult or draining. Or do the draining work first so that working on the energizing homework feels like a reward. Try breaking a challenging subject into timed increments that your child may be more likely to handle without succumbing to distractions, punctuated by working on strength subjects.
• With older children, talk it over and agree on an approach to try. It’s a great way to exercise your child’s mindfulness about how she is feeling and how she might handle subjects that aren’t strengths for her. Another option: Sit down together and strategically map out a homework routine for the week based on upcoming tests, deadlines, and projects in process. You’re setting your child up for success and getting her in the habit of tuning into her strengths, her self-control level, and her attention level as part of planning out her days.
• Build in breaks. Remember, attention is sustainable for only about twenty minutes on average. So when you see your child getting antsy or increasingly distracted, suggest a power break of about ten minutes²⁴ to do something appealing to his strengths—perhaps watch some funny videos, shoot baskets, read part of a chapter in a book, put on some music and dance, play with the family pet, do a crossword puzzle—basically, anything that allows your child to goof off.
• Tap the restorative power of flow activities. These are activities that use your child’s core strength(s), often signaled by her joyfully losing track of time when she does them. Flow activities rest and refresh the brain.
• Pare down busyness before big events. If your child has a significant intense commitment on a given day—exams, rehearsals, intensive training, a major athletic event, a performance, or some other activity that will require strong focused attention—try to provide a less structured day or carve out some periods of “good goofing off” downtime. You want to make sure your child has reserves of self-control so he can learn and perform as effectively as possible during these big opportunities.
• Invoke Dirty Sock Syndrome (or: Cut kids some slack when they’re under extra pressure). A study of college students’ self-control found that during exam week, because all their mental resources were going toward studying, they didn’t do any laundry. Think of it as Dirty Sock Syndrome.²⁵ So, during high-pressure times such as exams, playoff games, the run of a show they’re in, a few days before a big project is due, or amid troubles with friends, give your kids a temporary pass on some of their chores, and go easy if they forget or lose things. This is especially true for teenagers, who, as mentioned, are neurologically growing in a way that can make it challenging for them to hang on to their self-control.
• Be aware of your own ups and downs of self-control. When you’re starting out with strength-based parenting, don’t expect to put it into action when your self-control is sapped by the factors I listed earlier. It takes mental and emotional effort to override our negativity biases and projections. I’d suggest practicing SBP first while doing activities you enjoy with your child. Your self-control will be higher because you’re having a good time. Tell your child the strengths you notice him using during fun things you’re doing together.
• Other tips: Practice the Strength Switch on the weekends, when you’re not distracted or drained by work. Then try it on weekday mornings, when we tend to feel fresher and have more self-control. Expect that it’ll be easier to flip the Strength Switch in low-stakes situations—over minor issues and annoyances—than in high-stakes ones at first. Finally, enjoy the positive-attention exercises of savoring, gratitude, and mindfulness we discussed in previous chapters. You’ll feel happier and more replenished, and your self-control muscle will naturally strengthen—you won’t even know it’s happening!

Strategy #2: Have Routines and Make To-Do Lists

From getting school clothes ready the night before to always putting your keys away in the same spot to having a consistent wake-up time, routines are a fantastic way to conserve mental energy. Save your brain’s decision-making resources for bigger and better things.

That’s why making to-do lists is an excellent habit to get your kids into. Research shows that if you offload from your mind all the things you have to do into a list, the self-control that would have been needed to keep mental track of all those to-dos is freed for other purposes.²⁶ There are many apps to help, such as Todoist (en.todoist.com), Any.do (any.do/anydo), and Pocket Lists (pocketlistsapp.com).

Model the behavior by showing your kids how you keep yourself organized. I’m low-tech: I use sticky notes. On any given day I’ll have somewhere between two and five stickies that list the things I have to do. My family knows this so well that if they want to remind me about something, they leave me a sticky note beside the kettle I use to make my tea. We’re teaching Nick how to use a wall planner mounted on the wall over his desk and how to use the calendar on his computer.

Strategy #3: Practice Mindfulness

I mentioned earlier the two levels of self-control: self-control that happens in the moment and longer-term self-control in which we monitor our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors over time; notice patterns both positive and negative; and use that awareness to apply our self-control and attention to meet life goals. The more self-aware we are, the better we can see our patterns and control our behaviors. Self-awareness is fostered and supported by mindfulness.²⁷

We explored mindfulness techniques in Chapter 6. Mindfulness hones the ability to tune in to the subtle signals from the anterior cingulate cortex when our self-control is wavering, which can be hard to hear and heed. Mindfulness provides that pause and prepare moment, when rational thought can step in and separate impulse from action.

Practiced over time, breathing exercises can actually reset the nervous system.²⁸ Often we’re overtaxing our own and our children’s biological reserves of self-control without even realizing it. Life gets busy and there’s so much to do and deal with. It can be exhilarating but also exhausting. If you or your kids are having frequent breakdowns of self-control—maybe snapping at each other, giving in too often to unhealthy eating or lack of exercise, or feeling overwhelmed by too much on your plates—rather than getting down on yourselves, take it as a possible sign that the brain and nervous system need some TLC.

Just a few minutes of deep breathing or slipping into an activity that puts the mind into a restful free-roaming state can activate the calming effects of the parasympathetic nervous system so it starts to slow heart rate and blood pressure, telling our brain to stop the release of cortisol (the stress hormone). All of these physiological changes lead to a relaxation response that reduces stress, inducing a state where the quiet strength of self-control can reemerge.²⁹

Last but not least, there’s a purely practical benefit to mindfulness.³⁰ Every conscious thought requires energy. Imagine how quickly our self-control would be zapped if we attended to all the thoughts constantly bouncing around our brain. In mindfulness we learn that feelings, thoughts, and sensations can arise and pass without requiring our energy to evaluate or act upon them.³¹ Thus mindfulness inoculates us against our impulses.³² Teaching our children mindfulness gives them the power to allow unwanted impulses to pass and direct their mental energy toward their strengths and their goals instead.

I urge you to try mindfulness techniques yourself and, with your child, discover and cultivate reserves of calm, personal attunement, and greater command of the mind’s powers.

Strategy #4: Be an Emotional Coach

Suppressing emotions depletes self-control. This was powerfully demonstrated by researchers at Toronto University who monitored the electrical activity in people’s brains while they watched a video of animals suffering and dying.³³ You may be upset just thinking about this (I know I am), and if you’d been in this study you may have been randomly allocated to the 50 percent of participants who were told to stifle their emotions while watching this distressing video, with the other 50 percent permitted to express their feelings.

The researchers were specifically looking at activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, the “conflict-monitoring” region of the brain that, as I’ve mentioned, plays a big role in impulse control by alerting us to mismatches between our intentions (intending to skip dessert, finish chemistry homework, or see strengths) and our impulses (yearning for pecan pie, wanting to text a friend instead of doing homework, seeing weaknesses instead of strengths).

The researchers found that the energy required to suppress emotions robs us of energy needed for self-control: The people who had to stifle their emotions while watching the distressing film showed less activity in the anterior cingulate cortex compared to activity levels before watching the film, as well as in comparison to participants who were told not to stifle their emotions. In the next phase of the experiment, when participants were asked to solve a puzzle that involved self-control, those who’d been asked to suppress their emotions performed more poorly.

Interestingly, self-control depletion occurs when we stifle positive emotions, too. Todd Heatherton, PhD, a pioneer in social neuroscience at Dartmouth University, and his team looked at what happens inside the brain when people are asked to refrain from laughing at a funny video. Sure enough, the brain areas that assist with impulse control were weaker afterward.³⁴

Along similar lines, Kathleen Vohs, PhD, teamed up with Roy Baumeister and had people watch a nine-minute clip of Robin Williams performing a stand-up comedy routine.³⁵ Half the group was instructed to suppress their emotions and remain completely neutral. To make sure they followed these instructions, they were videotaped for those nine minutes. (I can tell you straight up that I would have failed miserably.) The other half were allowed to respond with whatever emotions arose during the clip. Those people who had to suppress their emotions showed lower self-control at the end of the study. The way self-control was measured is interesting. It was done by looking at how much people disclosed about themselves to a stranger. People who suppressed laughter went on to be more “loose lipped” about themselves, whereas those who could express their emotions didn’t “overshare.”

We and our kids need to know how to feel and express the full range of emotions. For strength-based parents, this can mean voicing frustration and disappointment in our child’s behavior: “I’m disappointed that you’ve been texting your friends for the past half hour instead of getting your chemistry homework done,” but using self-control to flip the Strength Switch and let your child know the strengths she can bring to bear for a better outcome: “I know chemistry isn’t your favorite subject, but you’re organized and persistent. How about we work out a schedule to help you get your assignments done, and build in breaks for texting your friends?” Being strength based isn’t about being artificially happy, ignoring your feelings, or letting your children get away with bad behavior; it’s about using self-control to handle the feelings and bad behavior constructively.

You’ve got a head start on emotional coaching if you’re using the mindfulness techniques in Chapter 6 to build your child’s emotional complexity and to tune in to your own emotions as you practice strength-based parenting and living. Exploring and expressing emotions frees up self-control for better uses.

Strategy #5: Experiment with Habit Change

Working for just two weeks to change a habit can actually enlarge our capacity for self-control.³⁶

One technique researchers have found effective is to spend two weeks reminding yourself to keep good posture. Each time you get the impulse to slump, you override the impulse and sit or stand up straight instead. Every time you succeed, your self-control muscle is strengthened. The habit itself seems a bit trivial, I know, but the point is really to strengthen self-control, which can happen even with this relatively straightforward change.³⁷ Researchers have actually found that study subjects can plunge their hand into a bucket of ice and exert the self-control to keep it there longer after doing just such an exercise.

See if your child feels like trying a habit-change experiment (leaving out the bucket of ice!) with something simple like improving posture, stopping nail-biting, or breaking the habit of saying “ummm,” or some other small but pervasive habit. Better yet, each of you can pick a habit and support each other in changing it. A fun challenge that will probably get both of you laughing is to try using your nondominant hand for routine tasks. From there, you and your child can “graduate” to all kinds of habit-change challenges to build your self-control muscles. And your child can apply her strengthened self-control to any number of important goals she wants to achieve.

Remember the Australian researchers’ experiment I mentioned earlier, where they tested participants’ self-control in attending to a computer task by playing an Eddie Murphy comedy film nearby? Well, those scientists discovered something remarkable quite by accident. You may recall that the participants were divided into groups, each tasked with a specific goal of losing weight, adhering to a study program, or sticking to a budget. The researchers found that not only did each group get better at the task the group was supposed to perform, but they also got better at the other tasks they weren’t supposed to perform! That’s right—the group losing weight also got better at budgeting and studying, and the same was true for the other groups.

Proof positive that the muscle of self-control knows no bounds. The ability to monitor and mobilize thoughts, emotions, and actions toward a goal is transferable and, apparently, can kick in without our even being aware of it. With proper care and management, it can throw its power behind any task. You and your child will be the winners.