Sometimes there are days where I can sit down and crank out like three to four episodes in a row. I don’t have to restart. There’s no issues. It’s just this seamless, beautiful process. Today is not one of those days. I’ve restarted this episode. I think this is the fourth time. So hopefully fourth time is the charm.

I don’t know what’s up with me today. I’m just like, I’m chatty. But like, not in the way that I need to be. Like, I just want to sit here and bullshit on camera. Um, but that’s not what we’re here to do today. We’re here to talk about research. And self control, and I’m here to help you, not just like, talk about random things that are going on in my life, and that’s how the last three takes have started, and I was just like, Casey, this is ridiculous, we need to cut to the chase here, um, it’s funny because I feel like I have gotten very, very good when it comes to writing, whether it be like copywriting, you know, Instagram captions, sales pages, emails, whatever, becoming Much more concise with what I want to say and then sometimes I come on here, and I’m just like yapping away About things that are so unnecessary for you to hear.

So, anyway, we’re cutting to the chase. Fourth time here. Trying for the fourth time to cut to the chase, I should say. Um, okay. Self control research, guys. I I’ve talked about self control a lot on this podcast, and I think that makes a lot of sense because I talk a lot about mindset and behavior change, especially when it comes to health and fitness behavior change, health and fitness coaching for behavior change, because self control at least seems to be somewhat required.

If you’re wanting to change your behavior, sustain that behavior change over time. So, I have not gone this direction yet with an episode, and I feel like it’s, it’s very necessary given how much we do talk about self control. And the self control research has, I want to use the word changed, but it’s not really that it’s changing, it’s just getting updated.

And, This is how science works, right? Just because one paper comes out and says something in one direction, another paper could come out and say it in a different direction, and then now we go, oh, that’s interesting. What does that mean? How can we figure out what these differences are, and what is the, the, the truth, or at least closer to the truth, right?

Like, because science doesn’t actually ever prove anything. And fun fact, if you’re talking about science, you’re talking about research results, you really should not use the word. Proof. Because we’re never actually proving anything. We are just getting, gaining more evidence to support a certain hypothesis.

Can I sound any more like an academic? Um, so just keep that in mind. Honestly, just, that’s just like a quick tip. Anytime you’re talking about research, writing about Instagram caption, whatever, please don’t use the word proof because that’s not how science works. Uh, we are just, Continuously uncovering evidence and trying to create a clearer picture of what is going on, especially in psychology, because, man, humans are messy creatures!

They’re messy creatures, and it is nearly impossible to say that we know for a fact that something goes this way, right? We’re not as direct and clear as like a math equation might be, or like physics, right? So, on that note, self control research has failed. Gone different directions in the last decade, to the point where I actually This was a few years ago now at this point.

I had to update the self control module inside the health mindset coaching certification and make it a little bit more clear that this is now, you know, the current updated information that we know about self control. And originally it was thought that self control gets depleted as you use it. There’s actually a theory.

It’s called ego depletion. So if you wanted to pop into Google Scholar, you could type in ego depletion theory and tons of studies are going to come up about how self control gets depleted as you use it. Uh, however, Um, that has very much been called into question in the last decade or so, five to ten years.

Um, and replication of those studies that showcase that has been difficult. To the point where it’s not really something that’s taught very much anymore. I was actually speaking to my PhD advisor, shout out Dr. Jenny Burnett. We were talking about this and I was asking her some questions along the lines of how she teaches this stuff now, because she teaches.

So she was in one of my class, uh, social psychology courses at NC State. And she said that they don’t really talk about ego depletion anymore, that that’s not the way that things are described when we’re talking about self control because of this, like, we’re not really sure that this ego depletion theory thing is really that valid anymore based on more recent research.

So we’re not really sure that that’s how self control works, that it gets depleted throughout the day as you use it, type of thing. And What’s come to be maybe a more accurate depiction of self control is that it’s just so much more nuanced and some people may fall prey to that ego depletion theory that your self control gets depleted, others might not, and there’s just other variables that need to be considered.

Like, big surprise, right? Humans are complex creatures. So, in this episode, I’m focusing on describing What differences actually seem to exist between those who have high self control and those that don’t. With the intention for you to then, like, leverage this information for yourself, for your clients, and your coaching practices, for those of you that are coaches.

And I’m gonna be going over a bunch of tidbits of information that are all supported by Research studies. The citations for those studies are going to be tossed into the show notes as well, so if you wanted to go, like, dive a little bit deeper into those, you certainly can. Um, so, first things first.

Research does suggest that having higher self control is helpful. And you may have heard this and been like, okay, Kasey, if that’s the type of research we’re talking about in this episode today, I’m just gonna tune out and catch you next time, because duh. Right? Duh. Self control is helpful. And the research, though, supports, like, hang with me, okay?

Give me a second. Supports that those with high self control do better in school, have better relationships, less Binge eating episodes and substance abuse. We also see less mental health problems. So those are some pretty big markers, right? Um, and I think this is interesting too because there is a narrative that exists.

And I think you guys will all Um, understand this, especially if you are in the health and fitness coaching space, that people with high self control are like boring, you know, the classic, you just need to live a little type of phrases get tossed at them. This is something that our clients experience a lot.

And you’ve probably heard when working with clients that this high self control like white knuckling your way through things a lot of the time is synonymous with like. Being stuck up, the inability to let loose, like you’re no fun type of thing, and sometimes it might not even be that our clients or like you yourself are hearing this from people around you, but you’re actually thinking that about yourself, like I’m going to be seen as no fun, I’m going to be seen as someone that doesn’t want, that nobody wants to hang out with because I am trying to exert self control, resist temptation when maybe everybody else is not.

Right? However, research points in a different direction, that high self control actually leads to More likelihood of someone feeling better in the moment and also just having more satisfaction with life in general. So, as much as it can seem like, oh, like, having high self control, needing to exert self control, whatever, leads to someone being, like, grumpy, crabby, not having any fun, they can’t let loose, no one wants to hang out with them.

The research that I’m looking at here doesn’t really support that narrative, right? Um, which can be really helpful from a mindset perspective, of course I’m going to go there. Because if you believe that self control, having high self control, having the ability to exert self control, whatever, however you want to look at it, if you believe that that actually adds to your life, that’s a good thing, then the chances of you being able to do it Are much higher because you believe that there’s going to be positive outcomes for you that that is something that is valuable to you versus thinking like, Oh, this is going to make me look bad.

I’m not going to make friends, you know, spiraling in that direction and having maybe more of a fixed mindset about like what self control can do for you. Like it’s going to be bad. It’s not going to be helpful, whatever. Then. Chances of you actually doing it and being able to use self control probably pretty low because you don’t see the value in it, right?

So, we love this research that says, at least supports, that high self control equals positive outcomes, right? So that said, something that was recently discussed, it’s kind of interesting, I wanted to bring up here on, was it the, I can’t remember if it’s health mindset coaching certification. This is the certification program that I run for health and fitness.

professionals. I have a level one and a level two. And right now, both of them are in session, so it is hard for me to remember if the conversations were being held in a level one call or a level two call. But regardless, someone had asked about the differences between willpower, self control, self discipline, like these words, right?

And if they are essentially just the same exact thing. And so we had that. Discussion and one of the main takeaways that I wanted everyone to to take away was that The definition that someone holds for each of those words is far more important than whether or not we are deciding as like a group in the health mindset coaching certification if they’re synonymous, right?

So if you have a client who uses the word willpower versus a client who uses the word self control, maybe noticing like the difference between what those mean to those people. Or maybe you have one client who sometimes uses one word versus the other, depending on certain circumstances and contacts like pay attention to that.

Because that will tell you a lot. But one thing I wanted to note is like, across all of these different words, self discipline, self control, willpower, they all imply effort, right? So again, although those definitions may vary depending on the person, It seems like there’s effort involved, like, willpower, self discipline, self control, right?

This is all like, effortful type of language. And maybe you don’t agree with me. Maybe you’re like, no, I don’t actually see that to be the case. Because again, everyone’s perceptions, it’s never really just like semantics because everyone Sees words differently and has their own definitions and what have you.

But the truth is, people who are actually good at self control are not actually using a lot of effort at all. And that is what I want to really get into inside this episode. And how this belief that self control equals effortful. is actually, it’s actually something we really need to unpack, because those who are quote unquote actually good at self control have this like effortless edge and that is what allows them to continue to be successful, avoid temptation, and there’s a difference between resist and avoid temptation, we’ll get into that too.

Okay, we’re gonna start with this study. It was on 200 people. Study was out of Germany. Again. If you’re looking to dive into this further, there will be a citation in the show notes for you to grab. And these people were firstly assessed on their level of self control. And researchers assessed this, it was self report type of data, right?

So it was a sit down, answer these questions, and we’re going to use that to assess how quote unquote good you are at self control. And this was a measure of faith. Trait Self Control, which is important to note because Trait Self Control is different than State Self Control, and this is generally like trait versus state, this is like something good to know, trait being more like personality characteristics versus state.

State being more like temporary condition, right? So they were measuring trait self control, like, are you high or low in trait self control? So like your actual, like, characteristics about yourself, right? So that’s how the study started. They assessed those things. And then these 200 people were little devices that sent them pings throughout the day.

And when those pings came through, those people were asked a series of questions related to whether or not in that moment they were currently or recently desiring something and asked a few more questions about that desire. You know, who are, who are you around? What does that look like? What is that thing that you’re desiring?

Et cetera. And. At each of these time points, the goal was to essentially see, like, are you in a situation or were you recently in a situation where you had to use self control? Or you were prompted to resist temptation, right? That was kind of like the goal of this, and to track that throughout the day in real time as people were just living their lives.

in Germany. And a lot of the findings from this study are not super surprising. So, first off, 50 percent of the time when these 200 people were pinged and required to reflect on whether or not they desire something, 50 percent of the time when they were pinged, they were. Desiring something there was something that they desired in that moment or recently and the most common desires that they had were things like wanting to eat, wanting to sleep, wanting to drink, use social media, have leisure time, like relax.

Or some kind of like social contact is what they were desiring when that was being pinged. This is super interesting. I’d actually like, you know, I’m like, I want to kind of do this with myself. Like many times throughout the day I have like a little alarm that goes off that reminds me to think like, are you like craving anything right now?

Do you desire anything right now? And see what comes up and how often 200 people it was 50 percent of the time. And when participants, the people in this study, use self control, They were able to resist whatever that desire was. 80 percent of the time, which is like, pretty solid, I feel like, right? I’m not sure that I would have guessed that high.

That in general, 80 percent of the time, when someone is faced with something that they desire, that maybe they don’t really want to do, or it’s not like, serving their best interests, whatever, you know, donuts in the break room type of situation, 80 percent of the time, they are able to resist it. That’s actually like, that’s pretty solid.

I mean, that’s a solid B, you know? So. There was an interesting finding, though, that I want to share with you guys. Those who scored high on trait self control, remember they did that at the beginning before we went into this experiment, they didn’t actually have less desires than those Who were comparing them to, so you know, those that had maybe, um, lower trait self control.

So it wasn’t that there was a difference in number of desires. So this is essentially saying, like, per this one study, right, that people who are high in trait self control, they are not, like, going about their day feeling like I have less desire to do, to eat, to drink, to see someone, to take a break, to whatever.

So they noticed that, but, and this is a big but, compared to those other people with lower trait self control, those with high trait self control, had less issue when those dire desires arose. Okay, so they reported having less conflict when they had those desires. So that essentially means they had less temptation to give in to those desires.

So same amount of desires, but less feeling of like temptation and like, oh my gosh, this is difficult. Like lots of friction. Like it’s hard for me to say no type of thing. So I have a quote actually from the researchers. They said, people with high levels of trait self control are good at avoiding temptation, not resisting it.

I’m going to say that again because I feel like it’s really important. People with high levels of trait self control are good at avoiding temptation, not resisting it. So the key words here And I kind of alluded to this previously, is the difference between avoid and resist, which then brings us back to this idea of effort, which I talked about at the beginning too.

If you can avoid something, avoid even putting yourself in the situation in the first place, That is a lot less effort, still some effort required, right? A lot less, though, than having to be in the situation and then resist the temptation. That’s a lot more effort, right? So we’re starting to see kind of this, like, through line, connect the dots type of situation here related to those who are Quote unquote high in trait self control and I’m saying it in quotes because we’ll get into it later.

I’m not going to start that conversation now. Um, quote unquote high in state or trait self control. Oh my gosh, I’m like tripping over my own words. Um, we’re seeing Those people, high in self control, are better at avoiding situations where they would have to use self control. So then, here’s what I was kind of getting at, that begs the question, is it really that they’re good at self control?

Or is it that they have this other ability, which, I don’t know what we want to name this, just ability to avoid situations of temptation. So they don’t ever have to resist. Temptation. You feel me? You following? You picking up what I’m putting down? I hope so. Because that felt a little circular and confusing even for me.

Um, okay. That said though, there was another study that kind of tested this idea of the difference between avoiding versus resisting temptation. And in this study, researchers found that the people who scored high on trait self control so we’re like holding on to that still, reported also So, more often using strategies to minimize or avoid temptation.

So they’re seeing the same thing again. There’s a relationship between the people who are high in self control and the people who are most frequently minimizing or reducing the amount of times that you’re having to even use self control. That’s essentially what’s being found here. And those people were more likely to choose to, like, set up their work environments in a way that avoided distractions, for example, versus needing to use self control to resist the temptation of distraction.

So, Again, it just like begs the question, are people who are good at self control really good at self control or are they just good at avoiding it? It’s like, that’s really the question. And something else I want to include here too is just a quick chat about habits because we know that when something is habitual, it’s less effortful, right?

It’s somewhat automatic for us. So perhaps there’s a link here between. The less effortful direction that people who are high in self control. Typically take and habits, which are less effortful in it of themselves. I also apologize. I’m getting over a cold and I feel like every once in a while I sound a little nasally, so I’m sorry for that.

And to tie in this kind of like Habit hypothesis, we’ll call it. There was a 2021 meta analysis, and I know I’ve mentioned this before, but for the sake of reminding, a meta analysis is essentially a study on a bunch of studies. So it’s like, let’s pull together a bunch of high quality studies and see, based on all of these different studies on a similar topic, what we can glean from that versus just looking at one study, right?

So this was a study of a bunch of studies. Researchers did, in fact, find a relationship. between high trait self control and habits. So high trait self control is actually associated with more automatic behaviors compared to the more consciously controlled type of behaviors. And some of the study results that were included in this meta analysis that support this idea is essentially people who are high in trait self control mention weaker, unhealthy snacking habits.

So they, Snack unhealthily less often, they have stronger exercise habits, and also stronger meditation habits, and this was based on a study looking at a three month meditation retreat. So, or, sorry, three months after a meditation retreat, not a three month retreat. But they were looking at meditation habits after this retreat.

And that was related to those who have high trait self control. People were.

So, which is really cool because obviously on this podcast, we talk a lot about health and fitness behavior. So meditation, snacking, exercise. If we can see that there’s a connection between those types of habitual actions and someone who is high in trait self control, then it becomes for us as health and fitness coaches or us for ourselves.

It’s like, okay, cool. If that’s the case, then. Really, this underlying mechanism is high trait self control. So how do we improve that, right? We can look at that as like the mechanism for healthy habits, which is really cool. So quoting the research on this too, by relying on stable habits and routines, individuals with better self control can enact important behaviors more automatically.

and more effortlessly. So there is this like intimate tie between habits and high trait self control. And the link, the similarity between the two seems to be this like Lower effort, more automatic process, right? So again, another thing that could potentially help, help someone have higher trait self control would be to help them build healthier habits.

So you can see here how there’s maybe just like this synergistic effect between high trait self control and healthy habits, right? So really working on one, or hopefully you’re working on both of them, really, um, they will help each other out. And that will just kind of like continue to snowball into this really good, healthy situation.

So, I feel like in general, the goal, the old goal, we will call it, has historically been to increase self control. Like, I want to increase self control, I want to get better at self control, I want to get better at resisting temptation. But really, based on this research, the, the goal we should be shooting for is to reduce the need for effortful self control in the first place so that you aren’t ever even presented with the need to resist temptation.

So, rather than trying to figure out the best way to, like, white knuckle your way through situations or whatever, the thing you should really be doing is just not putting yourself in those situations in the first place. Easier said than done, a lot of the time, right? But this is where, as a coach, or if you’re listening to this for yourself, really start to think more about So your environments, your habits, the people that you’re around, and just how often you’re actually putting yourself in a situation where you have to exert self control.

You have to resist temptation, and is there a way that you could maybe reduce that a little bit? And by doing so, you may notice, oh my gosh, I feel like I’m getting so much better at self control. Right? So really, really. To wrap all of this up, what we’re trying to do here is stop trying to resist temptation and instead work on avoiding it.

Because the people who are actually good at self control are the ones setting up their environment and their habits to not have to use self control in the first place. I hope this was helpful. I hope running through some of these research studies was interesting to you and there were some good takeaways.

As always, I’m open to any feedback, any questions that you have, if there’s something that You would love to hear more on, please let me know, and I can maybe slot that for a future episode. I love getting ideas from you guys, so please don’t hesitate to reach out, and please don’t hesitate to leave a review.

If you enjoyed this episode, we choose new winners every single month to get a free workshop from me. You have to leave the review and And screenshot the review and put it into the review form because otherwise there’s no way for us to find you, contact you, and give you your prize. And you’ll see the link to that form in the show notes as well.

Okay my friends, gonna wrap it up there. Thank you so, so, so, so much for spending some time with me and I’ll see you next time.