The Brain That Works Against You

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Hello listeners, and welcome back to The Science of South, where you change your life from the inside out. Today is Thursday, January 4th. Buckle up today, because we're diving deep into the secrets of harnessing your willpower and reaching your wildest goals. Today's episode comes from Peter Holland's book, The Power of Self-Discipline, available, of course, on Audible and Amazon. Also check out the author's website at bit.ly slash peterhollands. Thanks for being with us today. Almost nobody will argue against the importance of self-discipline, even if they know they fall short in practicing it on a daily basis. Anyone with some life experience under their belt knows that they can accomplish more with a healthy sense of constraint and willpower. If they haven’t always exhibited self-control themselves, at least they’ve seen examples of successful people who have—and they’ll readily admit that such people at least appear to get more done than those without self-control.

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Why do we fight against our own self-interests when it comes to instilling discipline into our own lives? Is it just that we don’t want to eat our vegetables? Not quite. Unfortunately, a major reason—a more general reason that directly or indirectly causes each of the five mental hindrances—is the brain itself. The brain is a network. It’s fundamentally composed of nerve cells, or neurons. These neurons communicate to each other through chemical reactions—an impulse in one nerve fiber gets activated, then is converted into a chemical that flies across the gap and is received by another nerve fiber. This act, multiplied by about a trillion times a day, basically controls everything we do, say, or think. That chemical that’s flying across the gap is called a neurotransmitter, and different neurotransmitters are responsible for different communications to the brain.

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It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that our thoughts and reactions are determined by these chemicals. Self-discipline is especially tied to a specific neurotransmitter: dopamine. Dopamine is one of the agents that work on the brain’s pleasure and reward centers. In other words, when we experience pleasure or reward of some type, dopamine is usually at the root of it—the greater the amount of dopamine released, the greater the pleasure we feel. It happens during and after a pleasurable event—you feel it while you are eating a dozen donuts and also after you finish a great workout at the gym. However, dopamine is also released in anticipation of pleasure or reward, which ties it directly to self-discipline. It sabotages it. The reality of the matter is that we are all dopamine junkies. We want it right now and as soon as possible.

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Our brains crave it, and it plays a big part in telling us when to act or stop. This trait makes it difficult for us to ignore something that gives us instant dopamine in favor of delayed dopamine, even if it will be substantially greater at a later point. Why go to the gym when you can eat a pie right now, even if you know what’s better for you? Dopamine is what we seek, and this causes us to be ruled by one of the most well-known theories concerning human behavior—the pleasure principle. The reason it’s so renowned is because it’s also the easiest to understand. The pleasure principle was first raised in public consciousness by the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, though researchers as far back as Aristotle in ancient Greece noted how easily we could be manipulated by pleasure and pain. The pleasure principle asserts that the human mind does everything it can to seek out pleasure and avoid pain. It doesn’t think; it doesn’t analyze; it just acts like a blind animal urgently moving in the direction that it feels more pleasure and less pain. It doesn’t have any sense of restraint.

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It is primal and unfiltered. It doesn’t get simpler than that. An apt comparison, in fact, is a drug addict who will stop at nothing to get another taste of narcotics. There are a few rules that govern the pleasure principle: Every decision we make is based on gaining pleasure or avoiding pain in some way. You may have heard about the debate that there is no truly altruistic and selfless act in the world. According to this principle, there definitely isn’t. Even giving to charity would in some way bring pleasure or avoid pain. No matter what we do in the course of our day, it all gets down to the pleasure principle. You get a haircut because you think it will make you more attractive to someone else, which will make you happy, which is pleasure.

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Conversely, you wear a protective mask while you’re using a blowtorch because you want to avoid sparks flying into your face and eyes, because that will be painful. If you trace all of our decisions back, whether short-term or long-term, you’ll find that they all stem from a small set of pleasures or pains. Self-discipline corollary: doing what we need to do is often painful and devoid of pleasure, so we don’t do it. People work harder to avoid pain than to get pleasure. Your behaviors will skew toward pain avoidance more than pleasure-seeking. The instinct to survive a threatening situation is more immediate than eating your favorite candy bar, for instance. You would rather avoid getting punched in the face than drink your favorite whiskey. Self-discipline corollary: giving up is often less painful than persevering. So we give up.

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Our perceptions of pleasure and pain are more powerful drivers than the actual things. When our brain is judging between what will be a pleasant or painful experience, it’s working from scenarios that we think could result if we took a course of action. And sometimes those scenarios can be flawed. In fact, they are mostly flawed. For instance, you might be deathly afraid of heights. Skydiving would naturally be your worst nightmare. It is for me, anyway. You might have no idea how it feels. You have probably never gone bungee-jumping or even ridden a roller-coaster.

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Perhaps the most you’ve tested your fear of heights is standing on the balcony of your two-story house. But the thought of jumping out of a plane makes you physically nauseous. You imagine how the feeling of weightlessness is a precursor to death. You imagine that you will indeed die. But you haven’t actually tried it. All you have are perceptions and assumptions, and that’s enough to magnify the pain of skydiving to extremes. Incidentally, skydiving has an incredibly low rate of accidents and is over within a series of minutes. Your brain deals in the business of worst-case scenarios. Self-discipline corollary: unfamiliarity breeds fear, which breeds avoidance.

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So you avoid acting. Pleasure and pain are changed by time. In general, we focus on the here and now: what can I get very soon that will bring me happiness? Also, what is coming up very soon that could be painful and I’ll have to avoid? Immediacy is king. One dollar right now is far more attractive than five dollars in one month’s time. The pleasure and pain that might happen months or years from now don’t really register with us—what’s most important is whatever’s right at our doorstep. This certainly doesn’t help our sense of planning for the future if we are stuck in the present moment. Self-discipline corollary: the rewards we seek are rarely immediate, and often, the longer-term they are, the greater they are.

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But we’re stuck in the now, so we avoid action. Emotion beats logic. When it comes to the pleasure principle, your feelings tend to overshadow rational thought. You might know that doing something will be good or bad for you. You’ll understand all the reasons why it will be good or bad. You get all that. But then an emotional impulse rears its head and screams, “So what?!" There’s nothing you can do to control the power of a volcano, even if you know it’s within your control. Losing a dollar might be bad on its own, but when you insert emotion into this loss, it stops becoming about the dollar, and more about everything the dollar could possibly represent, and then you’re headed down a slippery slope.

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Self-discipline corollary: logic doesn’t control our behavior nearly as much as we would like to believe it does. At this point, you should see the writing on the wall that the pleasure principle is one of the main saboteurs of self-discipline. We’ve always been biologically wired to not think ahead and care most about the present moment—essentially the opposite of what self-discipline focuses on. This is the same reason that delaying gratification is difficult. However, we can skirt around this by changing the way we think about pleasure and pain. In the pursuit of self-discipline, we want to increase the pleasure in every long-term duty or obligation we have and lessen the pain. There are a series of steps we can use to do this strategically. 1. Decide what you want. What is your goal that requires self-discipline?

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It can be as simple as working out more. 2. Take inventory of your pain and pleasure. This is where you take aspects of the pleasure principle and start massaging them to your benefit. Here’s what you do: •Take two sheets of paper. Draw a line down the middle of each page. •At the top of the left column on both pages, write down “PAIN AVOIDED." •At the top of the right column on both pages, write down “PLEASURE GAINED." •Now, at the top-center of one of the pages, write down “BEING DISCIPLINED." •At the top-center of the other pages, write down “NOT BEING DISCIPLINED."

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By now you probably know what we’re up to. You’re going to list the pain and pleasure you expect you’ll experience when you take a step toward accomplishing your goal or when you decide not to. To motivate yourself psychologically, you’re going to ramp up the pain associated with not being disciplined, and the pleasure associated with being disciplined. This may seem elementary, but it’s a level of perspective and insight that you can use to combat your impulses. Just taking stock of what happens in reality can help quell your impulses. For example, let’s take that goal of working out more. Let’s go with the “NOT BEING DISCIPLINED” bit first. It might look something like this: NOT BEING DISCIPLINED to work out more PAIN AVOIDED PLEASURE GAINED Embarrassment, shame at gym More television time No sore muscles More free time in general Paying gym fees Now let’s make one up for “BEING DISCIPLINED”: BEING DISCIPLINED to work out more PAIN AVOIDED PLEASURE GAINED Feeling lazy Confidence Lack of dates Attractiveness High blood pressure Real-world strength List as many pain and pleasure points as you can for each scenario. Be honest with yourself and try to think the potential through as much as you can.

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You should get some clarity about what your aspirations and ambitions are—not to mention your hopes and fears. 3. Tip the scales in your favor. This is a part where you get creative. Take the “NOT BEING DISCIPLINED” sheet and minimize the pains. They are minor; they are trivial. Convince yourself that these small things shouldn’t have such power over you. Tip the scales in your favor, so to speak. Now, for the “BEING DISCIPLINED” sheet, amplify the pleasures. Picture how utterly fantastic each of these situations could turn out.

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Think about the best-case scenarios that could result with each of these items. Take the positive possibilities and run with them. Don’t be surprised if you get a minor dopamine rush from this alone. This sheet is more than just an inventory: it’s a checklist for reinforcing your self-discipline. What you have just done is created a very tangible cost-benefit analysis that gets to the heart of what makes you act. Instead of waiting for our prehistoric brain to sabotage our efforts because of the lack of pie or television, we can tip the scales a bit in our favor when it comes to dopamine and make our brain work for us rather than against us. Time Orientation Another influence on the level of self-discipline we have in our lives involves our relationship with time—not in the sense of scheduling or “making time,” but how we reflect, act, and react with the notions of past, present, and future. With time orientation, in Stanford Professor Phil Zimbardo’s (the professor best known for the Stanford prison experiment) book The Time Paradox, it is theorized that each of us can view time in one of three ways: past, present, and future. Our psyches tend to frame our experience using whatever orientation we’re most acclimated to.

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Put simply, there are actual differences between those of us who are mired in nostalgia, versus those who are continually looking for the next step in life. Whatever time orientation our mindset reflects relates to how we expect and plan for rewards, which feeds into how self-disciplined we may be. More specifically, our attitudes toward the present and future come squarely into play. The past-oriented person makes all their decisions from historical information or recall, and by definition they are generally separated from current situations or events. People stuck in the past don’t have much use for the new and different, regarding them with suspicion, disdain, or even prejudice. Their thinking is almost inactive—which is not conducive to self-discipline. They will say, “Well, this is what I did in the past, so I’ll just keep doing that." However, this type of thought is extremely rare, and we will spend more time on future- and present-oriented people. Someone who focuses on the present lives primarily in “the now."

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They react most powerfully to what their senses are showing them at the moment. They tend to be very concrete in their thinking, choosing to orient themselves toward “what is” rather than what happened in the past or what could happen in the future. The “present” mindset can be broken down even further into two distinct camps: those who embrace the possibilities of the present (we’ll call them “hedonists”) and those who don’t like the present but feel they have no other choice but to live in it (we’ll call them “fatalists”). The present-hedonistic person finds opportunities in the current time and is happy to indulge in what’s happening around them now. They’re the ones who go to parties, embrace adventures in unfamiliar places, or interact with society on an ongoing basis. They’re happy to take risks and don’t necessarily care too much about the consequences (or have plans to mitigate the results if they have to). The present-fatalist person doesn’t really want to be focused on the present, but they don’t feel the future holds anything for them. They sense that somebody or something else—whether it’s their social circle, financial realities, religion, or “luck”—is in control of their lives and consider the whole game of existence to be “rigged." Their expectations and hopes have been dashed, and they don’t feel any need to work for the future because they don’t believe they have one.

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What both of the present mindsets have in common is their attitude toward gratification. Since the past and the future don’t come to mind, all that matters is momentary and fleeting pleasure. Both hedonists and fatalists are oriented toward the notion of instant gratification. Which one of these present mindsets is more suited to the process of building self-discipline? Neither of them. Self-discipline and instant gratification are opposing ideas. Self-discipline confers what instant gratification can never bring about: patience, restraint, full understanding, planning, responsibility. When you’re oriented toward immediate reward, none of those other things matter. This is an appropriate time to invoke the fable of the ant and the grasshopper.

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Briefly speaking, the ant worked long and hard all year and never faltered from storing food and preparing for winter. The ant always knew what would matter in the long-term. The grasshopper, however, only did enough to get by day to day and didn’t think about the winter. He only thought about maximizing his pleasure in the moment. When winter came, the ants fared just fine, if not annoyed at eating the same thing for months on end. The grasshopper starved from a lack of preparation. Present-oriented people are the grasshopper, while future-oriented people are ants. And you can guess which time orientation is more conducive to self-discipline. Those with future mindsets frame their lives differently.

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They aren’t bound strictly to what the present has to offer (or deny) them. They are able to disconnect from it; concrete and empirical reality doesn’t bind them. They focus on the future with all its distant possibilities and consequences. The future-oriented first think about the outcome they want, then work backward to how their actions create it. They do so without the distractions of the present. And even though they frequently work with abstract ideas and no guarantee of positive results, they still organize their thoughts and actions toward fulfillment of some future goal. In other words, the future-oriented have no problem with delayed gratification. They don’t need instant affirmation or reward for their efforts. They understand that what’s most important to them might take a little time to develop.

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Sometimes that means working in something that feels like a vacuum (or might seem like a vacuum to someone living in the present). But all it means is that the futurist is willing to forsake immediate satisfaction now for a more fulfilling and meaningful satisfaction later—possibly. That mindset is perfectly suited to someone with strong self-discipline. The futurist develops patience as a plank of their long-range planning. They keep the greater goal in mind rather than the annoyances that eventually get them there. This meshes well with other research on the matter showing that thinking about a literal future version of you is helpful in adhering to habits and accomplishing goals. Let’s talk about this in terms of baseball. Most, if not all, baseball teams are under immense pressure from owners and fans to win now, which leads them to trade away some of their minor-league prospects for proven players who might be able to lead them to the promised land for a season or two. Sometimes it works, and the team makes the playoffs or might even win a championship.

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cover story on the Astros in: 2014

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This means that we end up with two distinct selves that we have to attend to and keep satisfied. They are quite aptly summed up with the hedonist grasshopper (present) and blue-collar ant (future) from earlier. If you compromise the two equally, it results in an ant that takes breaks while diligently working toward a goal and the grasshopper that realizes that discomfort is required in life. That’s really the best we can expect in everyday life. The concept of time orientations should force you to consider and skew your view toward the future. Future you is trying to build a foundation for their success. He’s the one that has your best interests in mind. Self-discipline is an irreplaceable part of that foundation. It’s Up to You The obstacles to self-discipline as we’ve outlined them so far might seem like a big load to handle.

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And they are; most people never break through any of them and it reflects in their lives. You yourself might be wondering if it’s beyond your reach or capabilities: “Am I really capable of breaking through and developing the willpower I need to do what I need to do?" As the saying goes, “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right." When it comes to developing willpower, the most important factor might not be your mental or physical abilities or the range of what you can accomplish. Rather, it may simply be your belief that you can develop willpower. A study by researcher Veronika Job examined university students over a single scholastic term. Job asked the students to evaluate themselves on their ability to maintain willpower over the course of a given task—whether they need to take a break after a run of tough work or whether their endurance “fueled itself” and allowed them to keep going. Across the board, the students who believed that their willpower was unlimited did better in several measures. They regulated their activities better, kept procrastination at bay, got better grades, and were even better at eating right and maintaining physical health.

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On the other side, students who said they needed to recharge themselves from time to time were especially beset by procrastination, often made poor dietary decisions, and found themselves easily distracted. They even spent more money—theoretically while they were distracting themselves with online destinations. Job’s results indicated that those students who were convinced of their own abilities and really believed they had more willpower actually did. Their self-messaging turned out to be a crucial element in their superior performance, to the point where it couldn’t simply be coincidence. Score another point for the placebo effect. This is great news because it implies that although building willpower is a challenge, a huge part of the solution is simply believing that you can do it. We have exactly as much willpower as we think we do. Building self-discipline is your choice and yours alone—it’s all up to you. Nobody and nothing else have as much influence in the attainment of your goals.

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It doesn’t matter how your brain is wired or where you are oriented with regards to time. What overrides those is your belief in yourself. Ultimately, this ends up being a good thing because it places the power in your hands. Whether you can or cannot be disciplined is up to you. For some, this is a freeing thought to determine one’s behavior and actions. By producing your own incentive and making self-discipline its own reward, you’ll see positive effects unveil themselves on a daily, gradual basis. These benefits include the following, which you can also feel free to factor into your pleasure principle cost-benefit analysis. Avoiding temptation. The self-disciplined mind knows that fighting temptation is a Herculean task.

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Even the strongest-minded person might feel a tinge of enticement when they’re walking past the window of an ice cream shop where there’s a huge color display of a towering sundae hanging in the window. Unless you hate ice cream, you’ll feel a twinge. But what self-discipline helps you do is avoid the temptation—pass the shop by without feeling the need to indulge. This is because self-discipline helps you control and direct yourself when there are clashing internal forces at work. Your mind won’t focus on the deprivation aspect: it’ll concentrate on the good you’re producing. More life satisfaction. Those who practice self-discipline frequently report that they’re happier than people who don’t. This reality flies in the face the idea that self-discipline means not having any fun. What you’re trying to get on the pathway of self-control will be a thousand times more gratifying than the rewards of an immediate thrill—it’s just going to take a little longer.

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Patience can be frustrating. When you live in a society like we do, where instant pleasure is relatively easy to pursue, it can really be hard to walk a line of restraint and control, especially when you have friends who constantly live for the moment. But what you’re after is bigger than that: you want to create a more satisfying and contented lifetime. That’s something that only self-discipline and continued focus will bring. When it does, it’ll be much more meaningful and satisfying than those brief, isolated diversions. You do more of what you want. On a similar note, those who take up a life of self-discipline are often imagined as “not doing” things. They’re not up to date on the current hit TV shows; they’re not hanging out with their bar friends on a nightly basis; they’re not traveling to Fort Lauderdale on spring break. In some way or another, they’re perceived as being left out—but that’s only according to other people’s concept of fun.

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In reality, the self-disciplined person is giving themselves more opportunity to do what they actually want to do. This comes about in two ways. First, you have the ability to position yourself for success and do what needs to be done. This leaves time for the interests you want to pursue, and it can even be just a lazy afternoon of television. Second, you have the discipline to do challenging things that you want. You might want to climb a set of mountains or run a marathon. Self-discipline is how you do them. They’re doing activities that are rewarding and enriching—and they’re doing them because they’ve disciplined themselves to be able to do them and appreciate them. You gain ultimate freedom.

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Actually, you’re MORE in the moment. Taking the road to self-discipline is a constant process that frequently requires you to make choices. You need to be fully aware of the decisions that can help you the most. Sometimes opportunities will arise out of nowhere: a chance to talk with someone who’s been down your path before and can give you some advice or support or an activity like yoga that can help you develop more mental stamina and concentration. These opportunities seem to arise for people who are working on self-discipline, but it’s not magic. It’s because you’re more aware and attuned to things that will help you get to where you want to go. The self-disciplined mind isn’t shut off—far from it. It’s looking for and recognizing those chances all the time. You’re more aware of what’s happening around you.

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You’re not missing anything. You’re just making a different choice. Setting boundaries. Chances are, you have at least one or two good friends or relations who will be thrilled to support you in any way they can. But let’s face it: there will also be a few of them who will try—knowingly or otherwise—to knock you off your path to self-discipline. “C’mon, you can miss a gym session. There’s beer and a game of Call of Duty with your name on it." Self-discipline helps you identify those conflicts before they begin and can make you stand your ground. It can also build your resolve to resist the pleadings and guilt-tripping of others who might not be that understanding of your goal to improve yourself.

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Knowing yourself. Finally, self-discipline is one of the best ways to find out who you really are and what you really value—in a real-world setting. At times, our situations can seem so bothersome or troubling that we can’t imagine any course other than escape. But in those scenarios, you’re not just escaping hardship or the world: you’re also escaping yourself. Self-discipline is a means to reject the traits of reaction and retreat. It gives you something to actively work on every day and forces you to make decisions and take actions based on what you really need. Through that process, you will learn more about yourself than you ever have before. You’ll see why you made certain decisions in the past, and you’ll understand what kind of person you really are. I hope that after that episode you're feeling a little inspired.

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Peter Hollins lays out a potent roadmap for self-mastery in this book, The Power of Self-Discipline. Head over to bit.ly slash Peter Hollins to learn more about the author and to sign up for his free resources. Or check out a copy of The Power of Self-Discipline on Audible, iTunes, and Amazon. Join us next Thursday for the next episode from The Science of Self, where you change your life from the inside out.