2992: Avoid Temptation With the Science of Cheating by Tyler Tervooren of Riskology on Building Healthy Habits

[00:00:01] Wenn jemand Charles und Melanie gesagt hätte, dass sie nach ihrem Tinder-Match gemeinsam einen Channel mit crazy Aufgaben starten. Also wirklich crazy. Fünf Tage auf einer einsamen Insel verbringen, eine Zipline an einem Gurt runterrasen, eine Million Views knacken, eine Wand mit Saugnöpfen hochklettern und Fallschirm springen in Ägypten? Das hätten die beiden niemals geglaubt. Aber das ist das Ding mit Tinder. Es führt dich an Orte, die du nie erwartet hättest. Wohin es dich auch führt. It starts with a swipe. Tinder.

[00:00:29] Kennt ihr auch diesen einen Freund, der morgens einfach so ruckzuck aus dem Bett und danach aus dem Grinsen gar nicht mehr rauskommt? Der sogar noch vor dem ersten Kaffee unverschämt gut gelaunt ist und mit der Morgensonne um die Wette strahlt? Furchtbar. Ekelhaft. Wie kann man nur so... Ausgeruht sein? Ganz einfach. Trainiere deinen Schlaf und werde auch du zum Morgenmenschen. Mit der Galaxy Watch 7 oder dem Galaxy Ring und der Samsung Health App.

[00:00:55] This is Optimal Health Daily. Avoid temptation with the science of cheating. By Tyler Trevorin of Riskology.co. And I'm Dr. Neil Malik. Hey there, welcome to another edition of Optimal Health Daily. This is one of just a few podcasts in the world where blogs are read to you. And on this show, you get the added bonus of hearing my commentary at the end. Oh, and another bonus, on Fridays, I answer your questions.

[00:01:20] Now, to check out our other shows, just search for Optimal Living Daily wherever you're hearing this. But for now, let's get right to today's post and start optimizing your life. Avoid temptation with the science of cheating. By Tyler Trevorin of Riskology.co. We're all looking for ways to be better. We want to treat our loved ones better.

[00:01:47] Or eat healthier. Or work harder and be less lazy. We want to maintain the highest character so people trust us. But that's hard. And cheating is easy. Think of the last time you found yourself saying, This is a bad idea, but I'm doing it anyway. The temptation to sway from our most virtuous path is sometimes overwhelming. When you're faced with it, what do you do? Do you stay on the path and honor your significant other?

[00:02:16] Or give in to a one-night stand? Do you eat the salad you packed for lunch? Or cheat and go out for fast food? Do you work on your important project or wander around the internet? Or do you struggle through the day without nicotine? Or smoke that cigarette and start all over? Sometimes you succeed and take a step forward. Others, you fail and fall back. What is the driver of these successes and failures?

[00:02:42] How can you predict when your willpower will carry you and when it will fail you? If you know this, you can make the right decision every time and feel confident in your ability to resist temptation when it's staring you right in the face. That knowledge is so valuable that it's been studied by psychological researchers extensively. They found there are concrete steps you can take to both reduce your exposure to temptation and avoid it when it appears.

[00:03:11] Focusing on temptation leads to failure. In the 90s, researcher Roland Miller studied a handful of men with partners by asking them how committed they were to their relationships. Then, he had them look at pictures of attractive women and recorded how long they spent investigating the photos. Two months later, he followed up to ask, Are you still in your relationship? There was no correlation between how committed the men said they were before and their current relationship status.

[00:03:40] But a correlation was found elsewhere. Men who spent the least time inspecting the pictures were more likely to report that yes, they were still in their relationship and still happy. Sounds like a classic case of social comparison. Miller noted in his research, Even if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, happy gardeners will be less likely to notice.

[00:04:07] Consider also the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. Children were given a marshmallow and told if they don't eat it now, they'll get even more marshmallows later. The kids who were most successful at avoiding the overwhelming temptation were the ones who looked away. They focused their attention elsewhere. Your brain chemistry affects your willpower. Fast forward to 2011, when Lauren Norgren and Eileen Chow, psychological researchers at Northwestern University,

[00:04:36] followed up on Roland Miller's study. They devised their own experiment with the central question, Can your visceral state determine how likely you are to give in to temptations that erode your relationship? The answer? Yes, absolutely. They gathered a group of men in relationships and put them into two groups. Group one was shown 10 minutes of an erotic film. Group two was shown 10 minutes of a fashion show, a comparatively PG alternative.

[00:05:05] Then they split the groups up again and showed each man pictures of attractive women. Here's the twist. One group was told nothing about the women in the pictures. They were just a bunch of good-looking strangers. The other group was told the pictures were of women who had just enrolled in their classes. This gave the subjects the impression that they might actually meet these women. The men who were in a hot, visceral state, the guys who just watched an erotic film, spent considerably more time

[00:05:33] inspecting their neighbor's garden. The greater the temptation, the more time they devoted to the destructive task. When you're in an agitated or hot mood, you're more likely to give in to temptation. Now here's where it really gets interesting. The guys who watched the fashion show, the ones in a cold, visceral state, spent less time focusing on the attractive women in the pictures, the greater the temptation became. It was like they had a superpower allowing them to pull away the greater their temptation grew.

[00:06:02] So what does this mean? To avoid temptation and enjoy a happy and fruitful relationship, or to stay on track with any goal, personally or professionally, you need to keep yourself in a cold, visceral state when temptation comes calling. Keep yourself cool when temptation gets hot. The science of avoiding temptation doesn't just apply to relationships. The same studies have been done on those that smoke and others trying to stick to good habits. To lead a happy life,

[00:06:30] accomplishing your goals and building strong habits, you have to keep yourself in a cool, visceral state. Maintain a calm mood. That means avoiding situations that would get you worked up just before being confronted by temptation. When you understand your triggers and how they affect your decisions, you'll be able to keep your head clear as temptation and cheating at school, home, or work rears its ugly head. If you're going out with attractive colleagues, don't expose yourself to anything with a strong charge before you meet them.

[00:07:01] If you've been craving a cigarette all day, don't go to the convenience store where packs are on display on the way home, even if you need something else there. If you're hungry and trying to make good food choices, don't go to a restaurant. Even better, don't allow yourself to get into a hot, visceral state by becoming too hungry without a plan. If you're feeling upset about money, avoid places like department stores or Amazon where it's incredibly tempting to spend it. Leaving on a business trip?

[00:07:29] Try not to argue with your partner before you go. These are the kinds of life automation rules that will help you make good decisions even when you're stressed out or frustrated. Whatever temptation it is you face, find the triggers that agitate you into a hot, visceral state and focus on avoiding those. When you do, you'll automatically start to beat your temptations because you'll avoid them before they have a chance to derail your plans. Do this right now. Take what you've just learned

[00:07:59] and make a plan to implement it right now. Think of one temptation you regularly face and fail to avoid and then think of what actions or situations tend to put you in the hot, visceral state that makes it so hard to do the right thing. You might find, especially for the biggest temptations, that there is more than one trigger. Now think of some things you can do to avoid those triggers in the first place. This will probably take a few tries to get right, but that's a small price to pay

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[00:10:23] Go to Shopify.com slash OHD. Shopify.com slash OHD. Dr. Neil here for my commentary. It seems those in the marketing industry know human behavior the best. When today's author Tyler was talking about trying to eat more nutritiously and watch portions, maybe the suggestion would be don't go to a restaurant. The temptation to eat larger portions and not so nutritious foods

[00:10:51] is too great when you're in that situation. He also suggested trying to eat regularly to avoid feeling so hungry that we make a hasty decision about our next meal or snack. Tyler also said that if saving money is a goal, it may be helpful to avoid places like department stores or scrolling through Amazon where it's so tempting to spend it. Well, here's where all of those examples, the temptation to spend money and consuming not so nutritious foods, are combined. That place is the checkout stand

[00:11:21] at your local supermarket. Here in the US, we call this the impulse buy section of the store. This is where not so nutritious foods are often sold and many of these are sold at sale prices like you can get 10 full-size candy bars for just $10. In fact, just before you enter the checkout stand, there's usually a refrigerator there selling cold sodas, you know, just in case we forgot that sodas exist. Well, it turns out companies pay a hefty premium

[00:11:51] for their products to be located at this impulse buy section of the supermarket. Now, why would companies pay extra to put their products in this specific location? Because it's effective. It turns out by the time customers reach the checkout stand and see all of those products on sale at the impulse buy section, they've experienced something called decision fatigue. Basically, they're in a hot visceral state. Customers have had to make hundreds of shopping decisions before finally getting to the checkout stand.

[00:12:20] And many times by the time we reach the checkout stand, we're sort of irritated and just want to get out of there. And our brains are exhausted. So 10 full-size candy bars for $10 sounds like a great idea now. And in case you're wondering, shoppers do spend about $6 billion on products sold at this impulse buy section alone. So how can we fight this temptation? How can we get back to a cooler visceral state? Well, back to Tyler's main point.

[00:12:49] It may be helpful to have a plan, like maybe a grocery list, so we don't get lured in by these tricks. See, you can apply a plan to almost anything. We just have to take that first step and make one. All right, that'll do it for another edition of Optimal Health Daily. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a great rest of your day and I'll be back here tomorrow with another post and where your optimal life awaits. Now, let's go. Let's go. Here we go. Go. .