More On Willpower

I love the new book, “Willpower” by Roy Baumeister & John Tierney. (I mentioned this book here on September 1^st. ) Now I’m almost at the end but I have to share some more of this new book.

“Willpower” is for a general audience—especially business folks and parents-- who want to learn more about how willpower works, and how to both get more and teach kids to have some. But this is also a terrific book for people in recovery.

Here are a couple more gems from Baumeister and Tierney:

They write about why it’s especially beneficial to have a daily practice of prayer and meditation (as in our Eleventh Step). “A daily practice of prayer and meditation is an anaerobic workout for self control.” Now, we know that a daily prayer practice keeps us connected to a higher power and therefore more able to surrender and let go of things, but the bonus, I’ve learned from “Willpower” is that people who do daily prayer and meditation develop more self-control in other areas of their lives. So isn’t that a win-win for someone resisting temptation of any kind?

Another topic the authors write about that intrigued me is “The Hyperbolic Discount”. This is a psychological phenomenon that all people have to some degree whereby we discount the long-term impact of a short-term decision. This is a human foible where “we can ignore temptations when they are not immediately available but once they are in front of us, we lose perspective and forget our distant goals.” Hence we don’t drink today AND we don’t drink tomorrow. This is also the 2012 psychological explanation for the story from the Big Book about the man who has that glass of milk and just one shot of whiskey. It also explains my completing forgetting my goal to buy fewer cheap clothes and save for better ones when I am standing in Target.

There is more in these sections about Mary Karr—author of “Lit” and her recovery path and poignant stories about Eric Clapton and what helped him to get and stay sober—even when he had to face the death of his young son. Powerful, relevant stuff.

Willpower--The Book

My friend Steve gave me a copy of the new book, “Willpower” –as a “get going” gift as I begin to write my book length manuscript of “Out of the Woods”. “Willpower” was written by the pioneering research psychologist Roy Baumeister with New York Times science writer, John Tierney.

This was a perfect gift for my book-writing marathon and for a writer writing about addiction. I mean, isn’t that what most people think addiction is all about? A lack of willpower? I am so into this book that I am both reading it AND listening to it on CD in the car.

It’s definitely an “out of the woods” book. There are parts of the research and explication that might shake up a newcomer, and maybe some old-timers too.  Not everyone wants to know the science behind our behavior. But I love this stuff.

“Willpower” has lots of answers and insights if you do wonder about the backside of recovery and change. They give the scientific explanation for things we advise in AA—like “no major changes in the first year.” There is some serious chemistry to managing more than one change. They also give the reason for the old-timers advice about eating a piece of candy when you crave a drink. It turns out that willpower runs on glucose and it can become depleted when you are doing something hard –like trying to change a habit like drinking too much.

The take-aways are fabulous. It is a kind of “how it works” book for the bio-neurology of willpower . Baumeister & Tierney write about the cognitive, and biochemical and psycho-neurological processes that operate to create and sustain our habits, and what has to change to weaken or stop a serious habit—or addiction. The habits they write about run the gamut from overeating to worry to exercise to heroin, and the use of alcohol.

There is also there is a chapter on how Eric Clapton and Mary Karr got sober—and how they surrendered. And a chapter called, “The Perfect Storm of Dieting.” This is great stuff.