The experiment was simple: Subjects walked into a room that smelled like baking cookies. There was a table in the room with a bowl of radishes and a plate of cookies.
Some subjects were asked to eat radishes, some were asked to eat cookies. Then they were all told to try to do a difficult puzzle. The researchers timed how long it took people to give up trying to solve the puzzle.
Those who resisted eating the cookies gave up after EIGHT minutes. Those who didn't resist (who ate the cookies) persisted for NINETEEN minutes.
Resisting a temptation depleted some kind of perseverance energy.
So to whatever degree you can, try to make your environment less tempting. Don't keep candy in your house, for example, because if you eat the candy, you lose. But if you resist eating the candy, you also lose.
Look around in your life for sources of temptation and see if you can remove them. This can give you more energy and perseverance to accomplish what you want in your life.
Read more about this: What you need to know about willpower: The psychological science of self-control.
Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Subscribe to his blog here. You can email him here.
