7 The Secret to Self-Control

自我控制的秘密

IN 1971, as the Vietnam War was heading into its sixteenth year, congressmen Robert Steele from Connecticut and Morgan Murphy from Illinois made a discovery that stunned the American public. While visiting the troops, they had learned that over 15 percent of U.S. soldiers stationed there were heroin addicts. Follow-up research revealed that 35 percent of service members in Vietnam had tried heroin and as many as 20 percent were addicted—the problem was even worse than they had initially thought.

1971年，越南战争进入第十六个年头，康涅狄格州的国会议员罗伯特·斯蒂尔和摩根·墨菲来自伊利诺伊州的科学家发现了一个令美国公众震惊的事实。在视察部队时，他们了解到驻扎在那里的美国士兵中有超过15%的人吸食海洛因成瘾。后续研究显示，越南35%的服役人员尝试过海洛因，多达20%的服役人员上瘾ーー这个问题比他们最初想象的还要严重。

The discovery led to a flurry of activity in Washington, including the creation of the Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention under President Nixon to promote prevention and rehabilitation and to track addicted service members when they returned home.

这一发现在华盛顿引发了一系列活动，包括在尼克松总统领导下成立了预防药物滥用特别行动办公室，以促进预防和康复，并跟踪回国后上瘾服役人员的情况。

Lee Robins was one of the researchers in charge. In a finding that completely upended the accepted beliefs about addiction, Robins found that when soldiers who had been heroin users returned home, only 5 percent of them became re-addicted within a year, and just 12 percent relapsed within three years. In other words, approximately nine out of ten soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam eliminated their addiction nearly overnight.

李·罗宾斯是负责这项研究的研究人员之一。罗宾斯发现，当曾吸食海洛因的士兵回到家中时，只有5%的士兵在一年内重新上瘾，只有12%的士兵在三年内复吸。这一发现彻底颠覆了人们对海洛因上瘾的普遍看法。换句话说，在越南使用海洛因的士兵中，大约十分之九的人几乎在一夜之间戒掉了毒瘾。

This finding contradicted the prevailing view at the time, which considered heroin addiction to be a permanent and irreversible condition. Instead, Robins revealed that addictions could spontaneously dissolve if there was a radical change in the environment. In Vietnam, soldiers spent all day surrounded by cues triggering heroin use: it was easy to access, they were engulfed by the constant stress of war, they built friendships with fellow soldiers who were also heroin users, and they were thousands of miles from home. Once a soldier returned to the United States, though, he found himself in an environment devoid of those triggers. When the context changed, so did the habit.

这一发现与当时盛行的观点相矛盾，当时的观点认为海洛因成瘾是一种永久和不可逆转的状况。相反，罗宾斯揭示，如果环境发生根本性变化，上瘾可以自发地消失。在越南，士兵们整天都被吸食海洛因的线索包围着:很容易获得，他们被战争的持续压力所吞噬，他们与战友建立了友谊也是海洛因吸食者，而且他们离家千里之外。然而，一旦一名士兵回到美国，他发现自己身处一个没有这些诱因的环境中。当环境改变时，习惯也改变了。

Compare this situation to that of a typical drug user. Someone becomes addicted at home or with friends, goes to a clinic to get clean —which is devoid of all the environmental stimuli that prompt their habit—then returns to their old neighborhood with all of their previous cues that caused them to get addicted in the first place. It’s no wonder that usually you see numbers that are the exact opposite of those in the Vietnam study. Typically, 90 percent of heroin users become re-addicted once they return home from rehab.

将这种情况与典型的吸毒者的情况相比较。有些人在家或和朋友一起上瘾，去诊所戒毒ーー那里没有促使他们上瘾的所有环境刺激ーー然后带着导致他们上瘾的所有先前的线索回到原来的社区。难怪你经常会看到与越南研究相反的数据。通常情况下，90%的海洛因使用者一旦从戒毒所回到家中，就会重新上瘾。

The Vietnam studies ran counter to many of our cultural beliefs about bad habits because it challenged the conventional association of unhealthy behavior as a moral weakness. If you’re overweight, a smoker, or an addict, you’ve been told your entire life that it is because you lack self-control—maybe even that you’re a bad person. The idea that a little bit of discipline would solve all our problems is deeply embedded in our culture.

越南的研究与我们许多关于坏习惯的文化信仰背道而驰，因为它挑战了把不健康行为视为道德弱点的传统观念。如果你超重，吸烟，或者是个瘾君子，你的整个人生都会被告知，这是因为你缺乏自我控制，甚至可能你是个坏人。一点点纪律就能解决我们所有的问题，这种想法深深植根于我们的文化之中。

Recent research, however, shows something different. When scientists analyze people who appear to have tremendous self-control, it turns out those individuals aren’t all that different from those who are struggling. Instead, “disciplined” people are better at structuring their lives in a way that does not require heroic willpower and self-control. In other words, they spend less time in tempting situations.

然而，最近的研究显示了一些不同的东西。当科学家们分析那些看起来拥有巨大自我控制力的人时，他们发现这些人和那些挣扎着的人并没有什么不同。相反，“有纪律”的人更善于以一种不需要英雄意志力和自我控制的方式来构建自己的生活。换句话说，他们在诱人的情况下花费的时间更少。

The people with the best self-control are typically the ones who need to use it the least. It’s easier to practice self-restraint when you don’t have to use it very often. So, yes, perseverance, grit, and willpower are essential to success, but the way to improve these qualities is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.

自制力最强的人通常是那些最不需要使用自制力的人。当你不必经常使用自我克制的时候，练习自我克制会更容易。所以，是的，毅力、毅力和意志力是成功的关键，但是提高这些品质的方法不是希望你成为一个更有纪律的人，而是通过创造一个更有纪律的环境。

This counterintuitive idea makes even more sense once you understand what happens when a habit is formed in the brain. A habit that has been encoded in the mind is ready to be used whenever the relevant situation arises. When Patty Olwell, a therapist from Austin, Texas, started smoking, she would often light up while riding horses with a friend. Eventually, she quit smoking and avoided it for years. She had also stopped riding. Decades later, she hopped on a horse again and found herself craving a cigarette for the first time in forever. The cues were still internalized; she just hadn’t been exposed to them in a long time.

一旦你理解了习惯在大脑中形成后会发生什么，这个违反直觉的想法就更有意义了。一个已经在大脑中编码的习惯，随时准备在相关情况出现时使用。当来自德克萨斯州奥斯汀的治疗师帕蒂·奥威尔开始吸烟时，她经常和朋友一起骑马时抽烟。最终，她戒了烟，并且戒了好几年。她也不再骑马了。几十年后，她跳上了一匹马，再一次，发现自己渴望一支香烟，第一次在永远。这些暗示仍然被内化;她只是很长时间没有接触到它们。

Once a habit has been encoded, the urge to act follows whenever the environmental cues reappear. This is one reason behavior change techniques can backfire. Shaming obese people with weight-loss presentations can make them feel stressed, and as a result many people return to their favorite coping strategy: overeating. Showing pictures of blackened lungs to smokers leads to higher levels of anxiety, which drives many people to reach for a cigarette. If you’re not careful about cues, you can cause the very behavior you want to stop.

一旦习惯被编码，每当环境提示再次出现，行动的冲动就会随之而来。这就是为什么行为改变技巧会适得其反的原因之一。用减肥演讲羞辱肥胖者会让他们感到压力，因此许多人回到他们最喜欢的应对策略:暴饮暴食。向吸烟者展示被熏黑的肺部图片会导致更高程度的焦虑，从而促使许多人去抽烟。如果你不注意暗示，你可能会导致你想要停止的行为。

Bad habits are autocatalytic: the process feeds itself. They foster the feelings they try to numb. You feel bad, so you eat junk food. Because you eat junk food, you feel bad. Watching television makes you feel sluggish, so you watch more television because you don’t have the energy to do anything else. Worrying about your health makes you feel anxious, which causes you to smoke to ease your anxiety, which makes your health even worse and soon you’re feeling more anxious. It’s a downward spiral, a runaway train of bad habits.

坏习惯是自我催化的:这个过程是自我催化的。他们培养他们试图麻木的情感。你感觉不好，所以你吃垃圾食品。因为你吃垃圾食品，你感觉很糟糕。看电视会让你感到无精打采，所以你会看更多的电视，因为你没有精力做其他事情。担心自己的健康会让你感到焦虑，这会让你吸烟来缓解焦虑，这会让你的健康状况更糟，很快你就会感到更焦虑。这是一个向下的螺旋，一列失控的坏习惯列车。

Researchers refer to this phenomenon as “cue-induced wanting”: an external trigger causes a compulsive craving to repeat a bad habit. Once you notice something, you begin to want it. This process is happening all the time—often without us realizing it. Scientists have found that showing addicts a picture of cocaine for just thirty-three milliseconds stimulates the reward pathway in the brain and sparks desire. This speed is too fast for the brain to consciously register—the addicts couldn’t even tell you what they had seen—but they craved the drug all the same.

研究人员将这种现象称为“线索诱发的欲望”:外部诱因导致强迫性的渴望重复一个坏习惯。一旦你注意到某件事，你就开始想要它。这个过程无时无刻不在发生----通常我们都没有意识到。科学家们发现，给瘾君子们看一张可卡因的图片，只需要33毫秒，就能刺激大脑中的奖励通路，并激发他们的欲望。这种速度对于大脑来说太快了，无法有意识地记录下来----瘾君子们甚至不能告诉你他们看到了什么----但他们依然渴望毒品。

Here’s the punch line: You can break a habit, but you’re unlikely to forget it. Once the mental grooves of habit have been carved into your brain, they are nearly impossible to remove entirely—even if they go unused for quite a while. And that means that simply resisting temptation is an ineffective strategy. It is hard to maintain a Zen attitude in a life filled with interruptions. It takes too much energy. In the short-run, you can choose to overpower temptation. In the long-run, we become a product of the environment that we live in. To put it bluntly, I have never seen someone consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment.

关键是:你可以打破一个习惯，但是你不太可能忘记它。一旦习惯的思维模式在你的大脑中形成，它们几乎不可能完全消除ーー即使它们已经被闲置了很长一段时间。这意味着仅仅抵制诱惑是一种无效的策略。在充满干扰的生活中很难保持禅的态度。这需要太多的能量。在短期内，你可以选择压制诱惑。从长远来看，我们成为我们所生活环境的产物。坦率地说，我从未见过有人在消极的环境中坚持积极的习惯。

A more reliable approach is to cut bad habits off at the source. One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.

一个更可靠的方法是从源头上戒掉坏习惯。消除坏习惯最实际的方法之一就是减少对导致坏习惯的暗示的接触。

If you can’t seem to get any work done, leave your phone in another room for a few hours.

如果你似乎不能完成任何工作，把你的手机放在另一个房间几个小时。

If you’re continually feeling like you’re not enough, stop following social media accounts that trigger jealousy and envy.

如果你一直觉得自己不够好，那就停止关注那些会引发嫉妒和嫉妒的社交媒体账号。

If you’re wasting too much time watching television, move the TV out of the bedroom.

如果你在看电视上浪费了太多时间，那就把电视从卧室里拿出来。

If you’re spending too much money on electronics, quit reading reviews of the latest tech gear.

如果你在电子产品上花费了太多的钱，那就不要再看最新科技产品的评论了。

If you’re playing too many video games, unplug the console and put it in a closet after each use.

如果你玩了太多的电子游戏，每次使用后拔掉控制台的插头，把它放在壁橱里。

This practice is an inversion of the 1st Law of Behavior Change. Rather than make it obvious, you can make it invisible. I’m often surprised by how effective simple changes like these can be. Remove a single cue and the entire habit often fades away.

这种做法是对行为变化第一定律的颠倒。与其让它显而易见，不如让它隐形。我经常惊讶于这些简单的改变是如此的有效。去掉一个暗示，整个习惯往往就消失了。

Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one. You may be able to resist temptation once or twice, but it’s unlikely you can muster the willpower to override your desires every time. Instead of summoning a new dose of willpower whenever you want to do the right thing, your energy would be better spent optimizing your environment. This is the secret to self-control. Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible.

自我控制是一种短期的策略，而不是长期的策略。你也许能够抵制一两次诱惑，但是你不可能每次都能集中意志力去超越你的欲望。当你想要做正确的事情的时候，与其召唤新剂量的意志力，不如把你的精力用在优化你的环境上。这就是自我控制的秘诀。让好习惯的线索变得显而易见，让坏习惯的线索变得隐形。

Chapter Summary

The inversion of the 1st Law of Behavior Change is make it invisible.

行为变化第一定律的反面是使它不可见。

Once a habit is formed, it is unlikely to be forgotten.

习惯一旦形成，就不太可能被遗忘。

People with high self-control tend to spend less time in tempting situations. It’s easier to avoid temptation than resist it.

自我控制能力强的人往往在诱人的情况下花费更少的时间。避免诱惑比抵制诱惑更容易。

One of the most practical ways to eliminate a bad habit is to reduce exposure to the cue that causes it.

消除坏习惯最实际的方法之一就是减少对导致坏习惯的暗示的接触。

Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.

自我控制是一种短期的策略，而不是长期的策略。