I had a busy, fun- and food-filled weekend visiting family in New England. Being away from my regular schedule and environment had a detrimental effect on my discipline. The habits I had cultivated over the past year were becoming unsteady even before this trip, but last weekend, the scales tipped far over toward disorder.

This week in the New Yorker, Jerome Groopman wrote about the science of building good habits. Very little of the process is based on willpower. The secret to keeping promises to yourself for maintaining good habits is to manipulate your environment, to make it easier to do the right thing.

Copyright Irina Kryvasheina

In the article, Dr. Groopman described a modification of the famous marshmallow study which tested the capacity for delayed gratification in children. In 1972 at Stanford, Dr. Walter Mischel tested 4- and 5-year-old children. The children were each given a marshmallow and left alone in a room.

They were told that if they could wait to eat it until the researcher returned (about 15 minutes later), they could get two marshmallows. In follow up research, the capacity for delayed gratification, i.e. the ability to wait to eat a marshmallow, was linked to a higher success level in life: higher SAT scores, less substance use, and less obesity.

In the modified study, being able to see the marshmallow made a difference. When the marshmallow was hidden from sight, the children who couldn’t wait were able to hold off for about 10 minutes before giving in to temptation. The conclusion? Manipulating the environment by putting the marshmallow out of sight increased the kids’ willpower.

Changing My Environment

I’m thinking about how changing my environment can make it easier for me to do the right thing. For the first six months of this year, I was good. I meditated, did yoga, went to the gym, took walks, kept a food diary, read and wrote regularly. Now, my human nature is causing my habits to fall apart.

Now, I have compassion for my patients that relapse to drug use. I’ve seen my disciplines begin to fall away. One huge stress on my system was added when I set a goal of finishing the first draft of a book by the end of the year.

Resistance is hard. As Steven Pressfield says in The War of Art, “The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel towards pursuing it.” So, I am thinking about how to manipulate my environment for success.

Overcoming Resistance

I am working on clearing out my son’s old room so I can have that room for writing. That will create space in my bedroom for an in-home exercise area. Self-awareness has taught me that even the short drive to the gym is a barrier.

Self-observation has taught me that I like companionship, but solitude is essential, and I haven’t gotten enough recently. The other important lesson, as always, is self-forgiveness. Having failed to keep a perfect string of habits doesn’t mean I should just give up and quit. Quietly and humbly, I get back on the path and begin taking one step at a time.

Resources:

James Clear, Atomic Habits
Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit
Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Wendy Wood, Good Habits, Bad Habits

Question: What insights have you gained about cultivating good habits? Have you figured out how not to depend on willpower? Try one of the resources above, then leave a comment and let me know how it went.