My weakness is ONLINE SHOPPING. I told myself I am going to do a no-purchase-February, but I failed at the start of the month, so much for determination.
In the book <The Marshmellow Test> one sub-chapter talks about why our goals fail, be it fitness goals, financial goals, etc.
“When people anticipate that they will not be able to control themselves, they often try to make precommitments to reduce the temptations in their environment: they strip the house of the irresistible foods that are bad for them, get rid of the liquor, or throw away their stashes of cigarettes - or, if they do buy them, they do so in smaller, more expensive quantities in the hope that this will make them too costly to afford.
But when these strategies are tried without a binding commitment, without a specific If-Then implementation plan to give them teeth, they are likely to fail. We are wonderfully creative at making commitments and then finding endless ways to get around them.
For example, my greatest temptation is ONLINE SHOPPING. What I did was I deleted the Shopee, Lazada, Shein, etc shopping apps from my phone. The less I see them means I won’t buy things online right? WRONG!
I logged in to Shopee/Shein on my laptop (again and again), and got happily submerged in the SINFUL world of ONLINE SHOPPING when I was bored. What I realised I should have done instead is to have an If-Then implementation plan.
For example, if I do online shopping in the month of March (January and February are beyond redemption), I will give RM100 to a person that I dislike, or I will give a nice dress away, reinforced with being accountable to a person I trust.
If-Then Implementation plans can work with temptations as well as cultivating new habits, example:
- When the clock hits 5 pm, I will read my textbook
- I will start writing the paper the day after Christmas
- When the dessert menu is served, I will not order the chocolate cake
Stop being envious of others to reach their fitness/financial/etc goals ‘effortlessly’, for yourself to make pre-commitment strategies work, you need to turn them into If-Then implementation plans. Give it a try, and perhaps you can achieve your goals this year!
Completed: Book 1 in 2023 - <The Marshmallow Test: Understanding Self-Control and How to Master It> by Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow (Let’s see how many books I can read this year, fingers crossed, haha)
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