You're Stronger than You Think

Thank you for spending some time with me at my new Psychology Today blog! It's an honor to be here, and I hope I can contribute something to the wonderful community of bloggers here.

While I plan to blog on various topics, one theme I hope to revisit on occasion during my stay here is the potential within each of us, the amazing things we human beings can do when we put our minds and hearts to it. So much you read these days seems to emphasize what we can't do rather than what we can. For instance, don't blame yourself that you can't (say) pass up those cookies, because you're evolved—or genetically predisposed, or trained by your upbringing—to crave them.

Any or all of those things may be true, of course. Our tastes and desires—especially those that flow from our basic drives—may be out of our control. But those factors do not make our choices—we do. We can choose to resist them. Strength, resolve, fortitude, willpower—whatever you want to call it—we all have it, but it doesn't do us much good if we don't use it.

Take procrastination, for example: people have devised many brilliant coping mechanisms and workarounds to cut down on procrastinating behavior. Now, don't get me wrong—they do work, and they can be tremendously helpful for those who are suffering from the consequences of such behavior (including me). But they're mostly short-term fixes, crutches if you will, and as such they won't do much to help solve the problem in the long run. If you regard procrastination as a symptom of weakness of will (as I do), a more effective and lasting solution would be to act to boost your willpower, not accommodate your lack of it.

Don't get me wrong—as my fellow blogger Roy Baumeister and his colleagues have detailed, we're not all-powerful, none of us has perfect willpower, and we can't resist temptation all the time. But we don't always have to accept our day-to-day weaknesses or failings either—sometimes, perhaps more often than we think, we can overcome them. But it takes effort.

Every day people conquer addictions, quit bad habits, and stop engaging in destructive behavior—we can do amazing things, if we try. We marvel to tales of heroism, bravery, and strength of character, and you may think, "I could never do that." Why not? How will you know until you try? Psychologists are brilliant people, but they don't know you.

I maintain that we have more control over our character, our judgment and strength of will—the essence of who each of us is—than we commonly believe. We have to recognize that we have the potential to improve ourselves. Sure, we have limits, but we won't know what they are until we try to reach them—and we may find out we're not as limited as we were led to believe.

I'll blog more about where I get this all from—a little philosophy, a little psychology, a little of my own work and a lot of others' work—in later posts. In the meantime, please leave comments below and let me know how I'm doing!