The Only Way to Keep Your Resolutions
Our research also shows that when we make people feel grateful, they’ll spend more time helping anyone who asks for assistance, they’ll make financial decisions
that benefit partners equally (rather than ones that allow profit at a partner’s expense), and they’ll show loyalty to those who have helped them even at costs to themselves.
It’s far more likely that what led to success was strong social bonds — relationships
that would encourage people to cooperate and lend support to one another, which helped to ensure that their sacrifices would be returned time and again when required in the future.
Making people feel proud — not arrogant, but proud of the skills they have — makes them more willing to wait for future rewards
and more willing to take on leadership roles in groups and work longer and harder to help a team solve a difficult problem.
It’s our emotions — specifically, gratitude, compassion and an authentic sense of pride (not hubris) —
that push us to behave in ways that show self-control.
Likewise, when we make people feel compassion, they’ll take on the burdens of others, spending more time
and effort to help get others out of jams and ease their distress.
Professor Mischel found that those who could wait — those who had self-control —
were also the ones who had better academic and professional success years later.
If you peruse the books on the best-seller lists, you’ll find variations on a theme: The best way to increase self-control is to use our willpower (and related mental capacities like executive function —
that part of the mind that directs planning and reasoning) to ignore or suppress our craving for immediate pleasure.
