Have you broken one of your New Year’s resolutions yet? Being human is hard. We know the sorts of choices we ought to make, and we intend to make them, but we often don’t. The struggle seems to be between good and bad. According to an emerging model from the field of addiction studies, the struggle is between the future and the present.
Source: Science of US, January 3, 2017.
We might be hardwired to give in to temptation, but there is a way for us to fight back. A new way of looking at self-control is a bit more complicated and less intuitive than the standard angel-on-one-shoulder-devil-on-the-other view. But it’s worth the effort, because unlike the standard view, it allows us to hope — to imagine a state of being in which we can live life the way we want to without struggle. To change for the better, for good.