How to get better at self-regulating
Self-regulation
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This is the last post in our series on self-regulation. Self-regulation is the act of controlling your thoughts, feelings and behaviours in order to reach your goals. But it’s something we often fail at. So far we have explored the reasons we struggle with it. Today we’ll talk about how we can tackle each one of them so we can get better at self-regulation.
How to get better at self-regulating
For affective forecasting and the impact bias: Failing to assess future emotions accurately can lead us to make the wrong decisions. Daniel Gilbert, psychologist and leading researcher in affective forecasting, advises us to think about what has brought us the most joy in our lives. Most of the time, the answer is people, friends and family. Therefore, it is useful to remember that happiness often comes from relationships, not from stuff or ambitions.
Another thing we can do it to look to others who have already made the decisions we face, then to try to honestly figure out how happy they are.
For the planning fallacy: People tend to underestimate how long it will take to complete tasks. Psychologists Justin Kruger and Matt Evans recommend that we “unpack” multifaceted tasks. For example, if you’re writing a newsletter like me, you can first try to break this task into subcomponents like looking for research papers, making bullet points, references section, etc. According to their research, this help people make more accurate estimates of how long a task would take (Kruger & Evans, 2004).
For self-control: Research suggests that practicing self-control of any kind can improve your self-control in other areas. For example, one study found that participants who avoided sweets for 2 weeks demonstrated better self-control on an unrelated task (Muraven, 2010).
Another method to improve self-control is to simply remove temptations. Instead of trying to inhibit our urges, it is much more effective not to have the temptation available in the first place. For example, if you’re planning on eating less sugar, you can avoid buying snacks or going to the café that serves your favourite dessert (Williamson & Wilkowski, 2019).
You can also try temptation bundling, which is to pair the reward you would have as an instant gratification with the activity you actually need to do. One study found that participants who were allowed to only listen to their favourite audiobooks at the gym were more likely to exercise compared to controls (Milkman et al., 2015).
Finally, be kind to yourself when you fail. A study by Breines & Chen (2012) found that after failing their exam, students who were in the condition designed to increase their self-compassion did better next time compared to students who were in the self-esteem condition.
To sum up, there are many strategies psychologists recommend to get better at self-regulation. It is important to remember that self-regulation doesn’t begin at the action stage; we also need it to decide which goals to pursue and how to pursue them. Different strategies work for different people, so you should try things out and find what works for you!
Thank you for reading, see you next time.
Sources:
Affective forecasting (Wilson & Gilbert, 2003).
Self-Compassion Increases Self-Improvement Motivation (Breines & Chen, 2012).