Interview: The Willpower Instinct with Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Kelly McGonigal, who's written a couple of my favorite books, the Willpower Instinct and the Upside of Stress. We're actually going to do two separate shows in this episode. We're going to focus on the Willpower Instinct subtitle, how self control works, why it matters, and what you can do to get more of it, among many things. Kelly is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University. She's a leader in the field of science help, which I just love that phrase. And she's passionate about translating cutting edge research from psychology, neuroscience, and medicine into practical strategies for health, happiness, and personal success. These are literally two of my favorite books. Kelly, I appreciate you and all the work you've done and I appreciate you taking the time time to chat today.

I'm looking forward to this.

All right, so willpower Instinct. Let's just start at the very top and tell us what is willpower, and then we'll get into why it matters and what we can do to get more of it. But just from the highest level, what is willpower?

My definition of willpower is very different than what most people think of when they think of the word willpower. Most people, in my experience, you hear the word willpower, their first reaction is, I don't have any of that. And they think that what it means is the ability to force yourself to do something that you do not want to do. And that's the complete opposite of how I define willpower. I think of willpower as the ability to make choices that are consistent with your highest goals and values, even when it's difficult, even when it's uncomfortable, even when you're exhausted, even when some part of you doesn't want to. And it really is about knowing what you care about and being willing to tolerate discomfort, being willing to take good risks, being willing to control certain urges or other instincts in the service of what you care about most.

Much more empowering perspective on it than the grit your teeth and just try to get yourself to do something you don't want to do. Right?

Right.

Well, why does that matter? Obviously, the book articulates this so well, but tell us why we should concern ourselves with building our willpower.

In part, I think it's because when we think about the different strengths that we need to survive in life, that we know that throughout the day we are confronted with challenges in which one part of us wants something that maybe is inconsistent with our long term well being or our biggest goals. So we might want to get a project done, but we get distracted by text or distracted by something on the Internet. We might want to create health, but we get tempted by something that is not healthy. We might want to make a change in our personal lives, but we become overwhelmed with anxiety or dread or fear about whether we can make that change or what will happen if we change a relationship. And we're just constantly given these challenges, in which part of us wants to choose what's easiest, what's the sort of default, what's most comfortable, and to create a life that we really want that is consistent with, I think, the vision that most people have for themselves in their lives throughout the day. We have to make so many choices in which we are willing to choose the slightly harder thing or the slightly more uncomfortable thing, because we know that it will get us closer to our values and to our dreams, to the relationships that we want and what we want to offer the world. And I think that it's really important to think about willpower in that way, because these same choices, when we are confronted with them, if we think about willpower in a different way, we think about it as sort of depriving ourselves. No, you can't have what you really want. You can't eat that donut. You can't enjoy this distraction. You can't whatever it is that sort of is pulling us in the opposite direction. If we think of it in those terms, we literally don't have the energy that we need to make the more difficult choice or to go after what we really want. There's something incredibly draining and disempowering about turning our goals into what we really care about, into shoulds or have to's. And then we can go through life confronted by all these decisions feeling like to be good to ourselves, we should give in to temptation, right? Or to be kind to ourselves, we really should indulge or we really should let ourselves choose the more comfortable or easier thing. And I really that this is what we're talking about is a major mindset change that is about deciding what you care about and not listening to all the messages we get from the media, from advertisers, from people who want our attention. Because there are lots of people who would love to control our choices. And they often do not have our best interests at heart. And it's very easy to let them tell us what it means to be good to ourselves or how we should spend our time and energy and attention. And willpower is fundamentally about do you get to choose the focus of your attention and do you get to choose what is going to be the recipient of your best energy?

In the phrase self control, how self control works. So a synonym of willpower essentially is self control. Right. And just that, that juxtaposition of media control or other control and just the freedom that exists when we cultivate this. And one of the things that really inspired me about how you articulated the power of willpower was the predictive value of self control and that it's kind of rocket fuel for all the things we want to get more of in our life. Right. Can you talk to us about that a little bit?

A lot of people have heard of the classic marshmallow study, and that's one example, and I'll revisit that. But there are other versions of classic marshmallow studies where basically, if you know whether or not people can tolerate discomfort, you can predict their long term success and happiness. The classic marshmallow experiment that most people have heard about was done very close to me at Stanford, at Bing Nursery School, where they took three and four year olds. They asked them if they wanted one treat or two treats. And because they're three and four and they're not yet on diets, they always want double the treats. And they're told, well, you can have double the treats, but you just have to wait until I come back into the room. And they looked at whether kids could wait just 15 minutes in order to double their rewards, sort of invest in their future self and get what they really want. And what kids did at age 3 and 4 predicted all sorts of interesting things like how well they did in school, how much their peers liked them, how much their teachers liked them, their SAT scores. And these kids have been tracked now into midlife. It's predicting their brain function in late middle age. So there's something very interesting about that ability to say, okay, I'll choose to be uncomfortable for 15 minutes because it's going to get me closer to what I really want. But there are other examples of that too. One of my favorite measures of whether or not people are able to make a very difficult change in their lives is you just ask people to hold their breath and see how long they can last. And it's a perfect measure of what do you do when you feel trapped, what do you do when you feel stuck, what do you do when you feel anxious, when you're feeling something that you don't like can you tolerate that or do you immediately choose whatever will relieve that discomfort? And I think that that's another version of the marshmallow test. When we think about what predicts people's ability to really achieve difficult goals or make difficult changes, it is this ability to both know what you want. Like those 3 year olds knew they knew they wanted double the treats. And in everyday life sometimes what we need to do is make sure we know what we really want too. Because it's not going to always be as easy as knowing we want twice as many marshmallows. And then we also need to be willing to be uncomfortable and pay really careful attention to what we do when that anxiety hits or the anger and frustration hits, or we have a setback. And that's what really seems to predict long term success and well being. It's the ability to tolerate discomfort in the service of a goal that you fully endorse. And again, that's also different than the ability to tolerate discomfort, you know, just out of masochism, holding your breath. That is sort of the basic willpower training regime that in and of itself is not going to solve the problem. You also need to have that well what do you really care about piece.

Can you just as a matter of curiosity, what's is there like a general threshold for that breath holding test in terms of number of seconds that you know?

That's a quick question. Now I'm afraid people are going to be listening and then there's going to be like liability issues where they're like I'm going to beat the record of four minutes. I don't know. I'm glad I don't know so that I can't give an answer to that. There are other versions too, like being able to keep your hand in a bucket of ice water where I know the safety threshold is five minutes before you start to damaged tissue severely. There are all sorts of versions. That's what yoga class is, right? I'm also a yoga instructor all the time when I'm practicing yoga or teaching yoga, I'm thinking what we're doing right now is we are practicing staying put in the middle of discomfort in the service of our own self care and well being.

And to be clear, I was asking for the threshold of what predicts rather than the maximum. Let's go pop our consciousness.

I did not have that data, but I wouldn't even tell you if I did.

That's really funny. The ability to tolerate discomfort in service to a goal you endorse. That is awesome. I love to go through with the experts that I have these chats with, kind of my favorite big ideas. But today I want to start with what's your favorite big idea in terms of what we can do to get more self control and willpower?

Well, so let me tell you, my favorite big idea is period. Because something jumped into my mind when you asked that. And then talk a little bit about what that has to do with willpower. I think the idea that underlies all of my work. I've worked with people who want to make behavior changes, the whole willpower thing, people dealing with very difficult life situations. And for a long time I worked with people with chronic pain or people recovering from surgeries and illnesses and rehab. And the thread that runs across all of that that you see again and again in the science as well as in what actually helps people thrive, is that you have to accept the inner experiences that you most want to get rid of. And for some people, it's going to be pain. People with chronic pain cannot control their pain. Meds don't control their pain. Distraction doesn't control the pain. Nothing seems to really get rid of this one thing that seems to be destroying the quality of your life. And the best predictor of people's ability to thrive with chronic pain is their ability to actually accept pain and, and make choices that are consistent with their values and how they want to engage in life, rather than spend all their energy and attention trying to get rid of the pain. And the same is true with willpower, that the more we try to fight cravings, the more we think that we'll only be able to act with courage once we've gotten rid of fear, that we'll be able to be a different kind of parent or partner once other people no longer make us angry. Anything we do where we think that I have to control my inner experience first and then I'll be able to change, that gets it completely backwards. And again, whether you're looking at research on people's ability to make small changes in their lives, or really major changes like overcoming addiction or other forms of anxiety disorders like obsessive compulsive disorder or post traumatic stress disorder, the ability to accept those intrusive thoughts, those intrusive memories, those intrusive emotions, is the best predictor of whether or not people are able to thrive and go on to create lives that they really value. And again, I see this over and over again with any sort of inner experience. And I think that that is probably the biggest idea that informs all of my Work, and in my personal experience, too, and my ability to thrive in difficult situations.

Can you tell us how. What's the big idea or biggest tip on how to cultivate the ability to accept that which we most want to kind of reject?

Yes. Well, so there are a couple of ways in. So I'll describe a couple of ways into the process of acceptance, but one that seems to be very powerful is when you notice that you're having an inner experience you don't like. Could be anger, loneliness, craving for a cigarette, whatever it is, to notice what it feels like in your body, to actually think, okay, what is the experience I'm feeling right now? What do I sense? And maybe it's a pounding heart. Maybe it's heat and the sense that your skin is crawling. Maybe it's a sense of paralysis. Like you feel locked in. Different emotional experiences, different inner experiences. They have these different qualities, sensory qualities. And when people pay attention to what emotions feel like or what pain feels like or what a craving feels like, it actually begins. Begins to change what's happening in your brain in a way that's pretty profound. You start to engage areas of the brain that pay attention to your experience, but don't necessarily evaluate the experience in a way that sort of adds suffering on top of suffering. And you create this kind of. It's a little bit of more breathing room around the experience you're having. So you engage areas of the brain that give you more behavioral flexibility, a greater awareness of what you're thinking and feeling, a better ability to predict the consequences of making different choices. So that's sort of one thing that seems to really help. And again, it's some kind of interesting trick where you pay attention not to the story in your head, but the direct present moment experience. This is what a craving feels like, and I'm sensing it in my body. And that quality of attention begins to actually change the biology of that craving in a way that gives you more control and more freedom. And again, I found this very powerful myself with the experience of physical pain. Sort of those inner experiences, one that I know best, where it's this funny kind of jujitsu. It's like you just somehow, by turning all of your energy and attention to the thing you would normally resist or push away, that somehow that quality of accepting it changes it in a way that gives you more control over it. And that's very, very different than what most people do, which is they try to distract themselves. And people often think, well, isn't that just better? Like, why wouldn't I just try to distract myself because then I wouldn't feel the pain, I wouldn't have to accept it, or then I wouldn't feel the craving, and then I wouldn't be tempted. And yet research shows that when people try to distract themselves from really strong inner experiences, what it actually kind of motivates the brain or body to do is, is just amp up the intensity of that emotion or that feeling to get your attention, and you end up in these sort of escalation cycles where it gets more and more intense and you're less able to distract yourself and you end up giving in or feeling defeated. So that's one way in going through the body. I can give you some other ways in, but I should probably pause and see how that lands with you.

So you're basically describing in many ways mindfulness and kind of that clear awareness of being able to observe the sensation as you described, rather than the story that we create around it. Is that a fair reflection?

It is. And as you probably know, I'm a mindfulness researcher and teacher too. And that is. That was sort of an accident to find out that mindfulness would end up informing all of the work that I do around psychological science. When I first started as a psychologist at Stanford, as a graduate student, I still remember a lab meeting where we were talking about what to do with difficult emotions. That's what the lab I was working in studied. And there were basically just a few categories. This was the theory of what people do with emotions. You can suppress it, like, I'm not feeling it and I'm not going to show it to you. Just suppress it. You can reappraise it, change the way you're thinking about it so you have a different experience, like, oh, it's not really so bad because blah, blah, blah. Or you can situation select, which basically means get yourself out of the situation, right? You don't like how you feel. Here I'm going to leave sort of an escape behavior. And I remember just being like, guys, there's this other thing you can do with difficult emotions. You can, like, allow yourself to have them and you can notice what they feel like. And you're not escaping, you're not suppressing, but you're also not making up stories to tell yourself that are different than reality. And I still remember one of the postdocs being like you talking about that Buddhist stuff. And I was like, yes. And it took years before that same lab went on to actually end up doing some of the very first neuroscience of mindfulness research. But, yeah, it was sort of. It's been an interesting journey to see how things that I were learning sort of in my personal life to try to help me deal with chronic pain ended up becoming kind of the key theme of all of the work that I do around psychological science.

Let's drill into that. So if we can maybe use you as a case study and how. And help people make the connection between the concept and the practice of how to go about doing that. Can you share some stories with us? Maybe that might help?

Yeah, and I think so. One of the biggest willpower challenges that I've overcome in the last decade is, was actually a fear of flying that was. I mean, it was really debilitating. There are different levels of fear of flying, but when you refuse to see your family members because you won't get in on an airplane and you have nightmares about flying and panic attacks when you think about flying, that's pretty serious impediment to quality of life. Right. So it was not just your casual, oh, I need to get drunk if I'm on an airplane, and then I'm fine. Which, by the way, is not a good strategy. And. And actually it was during one of the. I've been teaching this class at Stanford, the Science of Willpower, for a long time, and I decided I was going to make dealing with that fear. Every time I teach the course, I choose something in my own life that I want to work with. And so this was, I think it was 2008 or 2009. I decided, okay, I'm going to deal with this now. And one of the things that I had to do in order to make this change, it was bigger than the ability to just book a ticket and get on an airplane. And I had to think about, what is the feeling that I'm trying to avoid? What's that inner experience I'm trying to avoid? And I thought about what it felt like both to have a panic attack or to be on an airplane. You're in the middle of turbulence and feeling out of control, trapped, can't breathe, can't escape, don't want to be here, can't move. All the things I didn't like about the worst case scenario, being on an airplane. I thought to myself, where else have I ever felt that way? Where else do I ever feel that way? Because I was not ready to get on an airplane. And I thought, that's kind of what spinning class used to feel like for me. Like years ago, I tried going to spinning class and I hated it so much. There wasn't good air circulation. Two minutes into this indoor cycling class, I was like, I'm trapped. When do I get to leave? I have to get off this bike. This teacher is forcing me to be someplace I don't want to be. I can't breathe. My heart is pounding, I'm sweating. And I thought, well, maybe I'm going to start going back to spinning classes and work on accepting that feeling and sort of set the goal of I'm going to get through an indoor cycling class. And while I'm getting through it, I'm going to pay attention to what I feel like, the sensations in my body, my pounding heart. I'm going to notice the thoughts that say, I can't stay here. It's not never going to end. Which is what I think on airplanes, too. This flight is never going to end. And in the moment, while I'm staying on the airplane, staying on the bicycle, to imagine myself on an airplane. And that was sort of a mindfulness exercise that I used. And it's kind of making a long story a little bit shorter. I actually practiced that whole idea of mindful acceptance of inner experience, thinking about why I cared about, sort of regularly checking in with why I wanted to deal with this phobia, why I wanted to be able to see my family freely, why I wanted to be able to take professional opportunities places in the world. I wanted to see that I would never be able to see if I couldn't start getting on airplanes again. And the process of doing that actually was able to get through flights literally by just thinking, this is just like being on a bicycle. And I started putting together plans, playlists that were like indoor cycling playlists that I would listen to while I was on my first flight. Actually still listen to this type of music when we hit turbulence. And I just think, okay, I know what this is like. I know what this inner experience is like. I can tolerate it in service of being able to see my family, of being able to travel the world. And I'm choosing this. I'm choosing to be here. And that's an example. And it's still, you know, it's ongoing. I fly now several times a week. I still don't like it, but it's a world of a difference from when my husband had to pull me out of the shower, where I was crouched down having a panic attack, thinking about a flight that was two months in the future. That's an example of what it might mean to use mindfulness as a way of cultivating what I consider to be Willpower, which is really not just about being able to stay on that bike because it's uncomfortable, but it's choosing to tolerate that discomfort in the service of greater vision.

Great story. And again, that phrase of tolerating discomfort and service to a goal you endorse or are excited about is awesome. And you talk in the book about kind of self control tests and you did that in some ways, right? You had this huge thing that you wanted to conquer and you went to a significantly smaller goal and kind of built the willpower muscle.

By the way, I have to tell you the craziest thing. I'm now a certified spinning instructor, which is the other thing that is so crazy about it. Because when you are endorsing something difficult and you understand the meaning behind becomes part of your identity. And I just think that's sort of the craziest footnote of the study because of the story. Because it started out as like the one thing in the world that I hated the most. Anyways, that's not it.

Anyways, that's so cool. We're going to talk more about that particular mindset shift in our next chat with the upside of stress. I'm really excited to hear your thoughts on that as it relates to the stress that we feel in those situations. And yeah, so much more there. I'd love to hear your thoughts just briefly on the power of a few core practices to help us cultivate the ability to tolerate discomfort and kind of that pause and plan idea that you talk about in the book. Can you tell us about meditation? And we all know in different context that it's powerful, but can you talk to us about how that translates into willpower and why you so strongly recommend it?

Yeah. So part of it starts from understanding the neuroscience of willpower. There are lots of great studies where people try to tempt dieters or tempt people with things that they're trying to resist or ask them to make choices where they can sort of get a better payoff if they're willing to wait for it. You can actually see what's happening in people's brains and bodies when they make choices that are consistent with their long term well being or their biggest goals. And you see this sort of it's like a process that happens in the brain and the body. And one of the things that I became most astonished by was when the neuroscience of meditation, the process models and the images, they looked exactly like what you see when you look at studies of dieters choosing healthy food or people being tempted with short term rewards. But choosing to invest in their long term future, what was happening in their brains looked identical, which is that first you need to recognize that you are being tempted in some way, there's some sort of goal conflict and you need to bring awareness to that. And then you need to remember what your actual goal or intention is. And you need to exert some kind of attentional control, some kind of top down control on the part of you who's moving you away from your intention or your goals. And you see that sort of, you know, different brain systems battle each other out when dieters are making choices. And you see that when you look at what's happening in people's brains when they do breath focus meditation. And breath focused meditation is the meditation I often encourage people to do if they're interested in training this basic process of willpower or mindfulness. And it's basically you sit down and say, okay, I'm going to focus my attention on the breath. And maybe you do that by noticing how it feels to breathe, the flow of the breath in and out of your nose, maybe you count the breaths or you label the breaths. And then importantly you notice when your mind wanders. And it's that key moment that seems to be really critical in terms of how meditation helps us or helps us gain more self control and willpower. You have to notice when you're moving away from your intention or your goal. And you can see there's particular systems of the brain that kick into high gear, the systems that help us pay attention to what we're thinking and feeling. And then you remember your intention and you see this, the part of the brain that actually holds your long term goals and values, that becomes more activated. And then the parts of your prefrontal cortex, the front of your brain that actually control your attention and control your choices, that kicks in and it brings your attention back to the breath and you see the cycle play itself out. Whether you're looking at monks who've dedicated their lives to meditating, or you look at brand new meditators who feel like they are terrible meditators because their minds keep wandering. Doesn't matter, same process, the monks minds wander also, they just notice it faster. And this is a meditation practice that seems to train the brain to basically have clear intentions, notice when we are in conflict, remember what we really care about and control our attention and our choices. So we come back to that. And studies have shown that when people train in this basic breath focus meditation, it changes the brain in ways that help you do this sort of more easily and more naturally in everyday life. And it's very supportive for people who are making difficult willpower changes in their lives, like overcoming an addiction or losing weight or trying to make any sort of important change in your life. So that's the practice I most recommend to people. And again, if people are first time meditators, you pretty much already know now everything you need to do, you sit down, you focus on your breath, you notice when your mind wanders and you don't beat yourself up about it, you have an attitude of, oh, isn't that interesting? I was thinking about my business meeting tomorrow or I was thinking about my girlfriend and now I'm going to come back and think about my breath and just notice what it feels like to breathe. That that is the success of this particular practice. And I often tell people, sort of often, the worse they think they are at it, the better they're doing. Because the real sort of failure of both willpower and of that meditation practice is to never notice how you move away from your goals. I mean, that's the real sort of the sad thing is people don't even realize how they're making choices that are pulling them further and further away from what they really care about.

That's such a cool description of meditation and connecting it. It's really a willpower workout. Right as we train, as you said, the attentional control of noticing, wow. I'm now off of my very mundane goal of maintaining a focus on my breath, yet that's lighting up the same parts of my brain that I want lit up to actually endure in pursuit of things that really matter to me on a higher level. So cool. Is there a minimum, recommended number of minutes and frequency that the research recommends and that you recommend we do this training?

Yes, and this is a very serious recommendation. Although it's not going to sound it, it's whatever you'll actually do. I've taught meditation for a long time and I have found as soon as you give people an actual minimum, they say they'll do it. And then the part of your mind that just doesn't like to be told what to do comes up with all sorts of excuses for why you can't possibly do this for a minute a day. The reality is this has to be something that you want to do. And there is pretty much no minimum of what would actually help you. There's probably a ceiling effect where you don't need to do this 24 hours a day, but there does not seem to be a floor effect where you sort of there's like, you just, you know, you aren't doing enough for this to make a difference. So people should experiment with themselves and notice how it's supportive. And if you start with a single breath, you start with a single cycle of say 10 breaths, you are already doing something that's supportive. And whatever is the amount that people will not talk themselves out of, that is the amount to aim for.

What have we not discussed? You want to make sure that we talk about in this context?

I think the other thing that I write about in the book that is a different way of thinking about willpower and is very important when I teach willpower courses or I talk to people who are trying to support change in their communities is to understand that change is a social process. There are a lot of ways that we are influenced by other people, by social norms, by social relationships, and that if we try to always think like willpower is about doing it all myself, I have to control everything. We are failing to take advantage of our nature as social creatures. And there are a lot of things that are sort of social tips. If you're trying to make a change to find a role model, it can be all in your head. And you can imagine a relationship you have with someone who's made that change already, or someone you would view as an ideal mentor. And just imagining having a relationship with them in which they are supporting you, that can give you more strength and more willpower. You can find a real buddy in life who wants to make the same kind of change. And that can have an incredible positive effect on people's ability to make changes or recover from setbacks. And it sort of goes on and on. If you want to encourage other people to make a change, often having them try to help other people make that change is more motivating than trying to convince them that they should make the change for their own well being. And so I feel like it's another conversation. But to start to think about self control as being bigger than self and if we can tap into that bigger than self motivation or tap into a sense of being connected to others who also care about the same thing, who have gone through the same struggle, it gives us a greater sense of truly courage and strength.

It makes me think of your sister's work and super better. And my wife stole our copy before I had a chance to read it. So I haven't read all of it yet. But just that idea of allies and just how engaging that is. And she's already using the Super Better app with her mom who Lives in Chicago, we're in Southern California. And it's just so powerful to be engaged in that process. I love that self control is a social process. What do you do on a daily basis? We talked before we began our chat today. Just about how I'm passionate about the fundamentals and really helping people discover what it is they do that when they do it consistently, they're most kind of on and plugged in. How would you describe your practices?

Yeah, I have a lot of practices, but the one we haven't talked about much yet is exercise. And for people. People have all sorts of different temperaments and there are different willpower strengths which we also didn't talk about. Some people are really good at saying no to temptations or distractions. I call that won't power. And some people are really good at willpower, which is I'm going to take action, I'm going to take risks, I can do this, I have the energy for it. And sometimes people can be really good at one and not so great at the other. And I'm someone who was born with really good won't power. I can resist temptations all day long, but I can get easily overwhelmed when I have to take action. And the biggest practice that has given me greater ability to say yes to things that are difficult, boring, overwhelming, fear inducing is physical exercise. It just changes my biology. Whether it's the flood of dopamine or adrenaline. I need to do high intensity exercise every day if possible, in order to be in a biological and psychological state where I have more of that willpower as opposed to the won't power. And I think again, it's the kind of thing where people often think there's so many practices we could do that would support us in reaching our goals that we actually think of as being the thing we need willpower to do. And so many of these self care practices we've been talking about, meditation, exercise, things like getting enough sleep at night if you can. These acts of self care are also fuel for what we might think of as self control. And that's another thing I really encourage people to do is look in their life for things that you might describe as self care and therefore feel a little bit self indulgent and pay attention to the ones that really do make a difference in your ability to be your best self. And then it's not self indulgent anymore, that's self preservation.

So much more we can talk about. Let's point people to where they can learn more about you and your amazing work. Kellymcgonigal.com is that the best place?

Yep.

So Kelly K E l l y McGonigal m c g o n I g a l.com Kelly love it. Thank you. Appreciate you and your wisdom.

Thank you.

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