<center><h1>The Path to True Self Control</h1></center> **Willpower:** Exerted in the moment when you’re feeling the effect of temptation. More similar to decision-making **Self-control:** Exerted in the past as a way to prepare for temptations. More similar to planning and habituation Odysseus and the sirens is the proverbial tale of self-control. Odysseus, wanting to hear the Sirens’ song and live to tell the tale, but he knew there was no way to resist them. So, he had his crew tie him to the mast and plug their ears with wax, so only he’d be able to hear the song while the crew could sail by without harm. If Odysseus had relied on willpower instead he would have had to *will* himself to resist the Sirens’ song. A feat every person before him had failed to do. Now, most of us would agree that having distinct terms for exerting control over yourself probably isn’t that useful. I certainly won’t be correcting my friends when they talk about willpower when psychologically they may be talking about self-control, but it does matter when we discuss strategies to improve their effectiveness. Neuroscientist Chandra Sripada insists the slight variation is important. Both, in how our brains view individual tasks and how we understand interventions. Imagine you have a goal of losing weight and you know that driving by your favorite restaurant always makes you think about ordering takeaway. If I told you to exert self-control in this scenario, you’d probably think “okay, I can resist even looking at the restaurant as I drive by”, but what I’m really suggesting is you take a different route home altogether. Those linguistic differences have an impact on the message and that’s exactly where interventions start to fail. --- Let’s take this a step further. The Marshmallow Test, a famous experiment where children are tasked with resisting eating a marshmallow placed in front of them and if they do, they receive a second one. Decades later the kids that resisted eating the marshmallow showed better life outcomes on almost every success metric. In recent years, academics, parents, schools, and influencers have pointed to that study and said “Look! If your kid can just exert self-control they’ll live a better life”. But, we need to ask ourselves, were some of those kids better prepared with different strategies to resist temptation OR did they simply overcome temptation in that moment? When parents tell their kid to "practice self-control" there is no expectation for them to create a multi-pronged approach to better behavior. Yet, we know from a trove of research that redirecting your behaviors and building in failsafes for your habits works far better than exerting willpower. The key realization, then, is that meaningful change doesn't come from willpower alone, but from strategically designing our lives to support better choices. Like Odysseus, our greatest power lies not in resistance, but in preparation.