# "The Willpower Instinct" Book Club, Intro and Ch. 1 **URL:** \ **Category:** Akrasia\ **Created:** [August 17, 2018, 6:15pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/the-willpower-instinct-book-club-intro-and-ch-1/4236 "2018-08-17T18:15:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 15
**Author:** ![dehowell](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/forum.beeminder.com/dehowell/32/867_2.png) [@dehowell](https://forum.beeminder.com/u/dehowell)\ **Post date:** [August 28, 2018, 12:20pm UTC](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/the-willpower-instinct-book-club-intro-and-ch-1/4236/15 "2018-08-28T12:20:37Z")
The pace has been working great for me. One week cycles are plenty of time to read the chapter and then try out the exercises. My highlights from chapter two: - Physiological conditions (diet/exercise/sleep) are going to have a substantial impact on how much self-control you have. - The body can go into either fight-or-flight mode or pause-and-plan mode in response to threats and conflict. In a secure, abundant environment, the former is rarely adaptive… and is almost certainly going to lead you astray when facing an _internal conflict_. - You **can build the capacity** to operate in pause-and-plan mode. Consistent exercise, meditation, sleep, and healthy diet all support more self-control and thoughtful decision making. - …however, these are all medium-to-long term interventions. For a immediate boost, don’t underestimate the power of taking deep breathes (5 seconds in/5 seconds out) and going for a five minute walk! - Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a physiological measure that correlates with better self-control. I participated in a self-care workshop at my workplace last year, which was based partly on HeartMath’s HRV-based breathing practice. As a company, [HeartMath endorses bonkers pseudoscience](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/17/heartmath-considered-incoherent/), but I think the basic intervention they recommend is good (and agrees with what Kelly McGonigal was saying in this chapter): 1. Set aside time to deliberately practice slow, paced breathing to improve skill at getting into a calm, high-HRV state. 2. Use the paced breathing when in a stressful situations to calm down fight-or-flight responses. I have one of their biofeedback gadgets (the [Inner Balance sensor](https://store.heartmath.com/innerbalance)), but I don’t think it’s really necessary. I can attest that paced breathing practice really does help – it got me through some of the worst of my son’s rebellious toddlerhood. Reading about the physiological factors of willpower got me thinking about the [correspondence bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error) (the tendency to blame circumstances for one’s own behavior and innate tendencies for the behavior of others). It feels like to me that the correspondence bias plays out a little differently when it comes to self-control. I’ve absorbed this cultural idea that willpower is a measure of character and that when I make bad decisions it’s because I’m a Bad Person. I know that’s an unhealthy perspective, but it’s a mental rut I can’t seem to totally purge. I wonder if I can train myself to remember the physiological circumstances when evaluating my impulse control, and in doing so vaccinate against useless self-blaming. --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.beeminder.com/t/the-willpower-instinct-book-club-intro-and-ch-1/4236)._