Another great article on stick-to-it-iveness vs/ natural talent. This one gave me a giggle because I found a lot of my own personality quirks in it.
Yet another study finds that it is the person with the self discipline – and not the naturally gifted – who is most likely to succeed in life. The kid who works harder goes farther. The naturally talented are often the naturally lazy.
But let’s take things a step further and consider willpower as a kind of mental muscle. It is a muscle that needs to be built up gradually. You won’t suddenly develop it overnight, any more than you can wake up Monday with a six pac on your abs after years of guzzling beer and doughnuts. You have to work at it and it takes time.
Willpower, like a muscle, can also be overtaxed. Those who exercise too much willpower too fast in too many areas may not find themselves better off, they may find themselves breaking down from the strain of trying to be…well, full of willpower all the time.
While the original article to which this blog post linked is no longer online, I have changed the link to another article which discussed the same material.
Here are two more articles on the same subject at The New York Times and at Inner Idea. I’ve left the original quotes from The Australian below.
What, then, can we do about this unfortunate tendency of the moral muscle to become fatigued with use? One option is to build it up and make it strong. Evidence is starting to accumulate that the moral muscle, like its physical counterpart, can become taut and bulging from regular exercise. People asked by experimenters to be self-disciplined about their posture for two weeks were afterwards stronger willed when it came to a test of physical endurance, compared with other people allowed to slouch about in their usual comfortable way during the fortnight.
By regularly exercising self-restraint and virtue in all areas of life (moral muscle cross-training, we may call it), we will come to resist temptations with the same casual ease with which a world-class athlete sprints to catch a train. That, at least, is the idea.
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