The Real Secret to Self-Control - East Idaho News

The Real Secret to Self-Control

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Thinkstock 112614 Studying?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1417002579933dolgachov/iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Everyone is susceptible to some form of temptation and a lot of people often give in to it, sometimes with disastrous results.

However, as researchers at Florida State University report, it doesn’t have to be that way, provided you know the strategy for success.

It’s pretty simple, actually: just don’t get into a situation where you might lose your self-control, according to a study published in Personality and Individual Differences.

In an experiment with 38 college students, the participants were told to choose between a crowded student lounge to solve a problem or wait for a quiet lab to become available.

Most of the people ranked with low self-control picked the lounge over the lab while a majority of those with more self-control chose the lab over the lounge. Another experiment with people aged 18-60 yielded similar results.

The bottom line, according to the FSU researchers, is that high self-control is more associated with shunning distractions than trying to overcome them.


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