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There's more to personal change than willpower
By Wang Yong |
December 10, 2011, Saturday
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YOU are who you're married to.
I have changed my spendthrift habits because of my frugal wife.
It was not that I had suddenly exercised willpower to save money because of her reprimands - her chiding would often fall upon deaf ears. It was because she simply "confiscated" my bank salary card, giving her control of the monthly salary deposits. She gives me only pocket money for daily use.
In the past two years when I parted with my card, I was unable to buy on impulse, as I had often done.
To be sure, I never had too much money to spend, I mostly bought cups and clothes at bargain prices. But years of impulse purchases of these little items - many were never used - did amount to waste.
My wife's confiscation paid off: After around seven years of drifting life in rented homes in Shanghai, we were finally able to pay the first installment for our first apartment at the end of last year. We did borrow from our parents, but we borrowed less than expected precisely because I had been forced to stop emotional spending.
Willpower counts, but it's a classic error in belief that willpower alone will allow one to change for the better. As the book "Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success" points out, people who rely on the "tough-it-out" model to change are ignoring other sources of influence, such as who they socialize with.
The idea is not new. In ancient China, it was already known that one takes on the color of one's company (jin zhu zhe chi, jin mo zhe hei - literally meaning that you become red if you are close to red, and you become black if you are close to black).
But the book is a fresh mind-opener in today's world where individualistic values are so worshipped that the success or failure of a person tends to be ascribed only to his or her own merit or demerit.
"Most people fail to reach their personal goals because they're in the dark about what's influencing their behavior," say the authors of the book (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler).
Don't automatically blame yourself for lack of willpower if you fail to change your behavior or life for the better. Think of other people or external environment that can have an enormous influence on you.
The other day, I overheard a conversation between a frugal lady born in the 1970s and a profligate girl born in the 1980s. Asked how she could finance her spendthrift lifestyle, the latter answered with pride: "My hubby will pay for my credit cards. I spend to live." In a way, her hubby has doted her into a profligate life.
If we look afar into the larger world of parasite boys and girls who feed off their parents, we would see that many of these children are not born to be parasitic; their parents have pampered them into becoming parasites.
Aside from who you live or socialize with, notes the book, the physical items in your life can also work for you or against you.
For example, if you buy with cold cash, you are likely to spend less than if you use credit cards. In this sense, our society is partly to blame for one's spendthrift behaviors, as it encourages banks to beckon consumers with credit cards.
Although the book is basically a personal guide to changing for the better, it has broader ramifications for running a city, a state, or a nation.
If a city wants its citizens to reduce road rage, it cannot count on their willpower alone; it had better reduce the number of cars on the road in the first place. You hardly go ballistic when traffic is easy.
If a government wants its officials to be clean, it cannot count on the willpower of every one of them; it had better put all the officials - from top to down - under the sunshine of public supervision.
But ours are ironic times.
We seem to know everything right, but we hardly do everything right. Our society keeps advertising sales of cars and of credit cards despite our collective acknowledgement of their negative effects.
I have changed my spendthrift habits because of my frugal wife.
It was not that I had suddenly exercised willpower to save money because of her reprimands - her chiding would often fall upon deaf ears. It was because she simply "confiscated" my bank salary card, giving her control of the monthly salary deposits. She gives me only pocket money for daily use.
In the past two years when I parted with my card, I was unable to buy on impulse, as I had often done.
To be sure, I never had too much money to spend, I mostly bought cups and clothes at bargain prices. But years of impulse purchases of these little items - many were never used - did amount to waste.
My wife's confiscation paid off: After around seven years of drifting life in rented homes in Shanghai, we were finally able to pay the first installment for our first apartment at the end of last year. We did borrow from our parents, but we borrowed less than expected precisely because I had been forced to stop emotional spending.
Willpower counts, but it's a classic error in belief that willpower alone will allow one to change for the better. As the book "Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success" points out, people who rely on the "tough-it-out" model to change are ignoring other sources of influence, such as who they socialize with.
The idea is not new. In ancient China, it was already known that one takes on the color of one's company (jin zhu zhe chi, jin mo zhe hei - literally meaning that you become red if you are close to red, and you become black if you are close to black).
But the book is a fresh mind-opener in today's world where individualistic values are so worshipped that the success or failure of a person tends to be ascribed only to his or her own merit or demerit.
"Most people fail to reach their personal goals because they're in the dark about what's influencing their behavior," say the authors of the book (Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler).
Don't automatically blame yourself for lack of willpower if you fail to change your behavior or life for the better. Think of other people or external environment that can have an enormous influence on you.
The other day, I overheard a conversation between a frugal lady born in the 1970s and a profligate girl born in the 1980s. Asked how she could finance her spendthrift lifestyle, the latter answered with pride: "My hubby will pay for my credit cards. I spend to live." In a way, her hubby has doted her into a profligate life.
If we look afar into the larger world of parasite boys and girls who feed off their parents, we would see that many of these children are not born to be parasitic; their parents have pampered them into becoming parasites.
Aside from who you live or socialize with, notes the book, the physical items in your life can also work for you or against you.
For example, if you buy with cold cash, you are likely to spend less than if you use credit cards. In this sense, our society is partly to blame for one's spendthrift behaviors, as it encourages banks to beckon consumers with credit cards.
Although the book is basically a personal guide to changing for the better, it has broader ramifications for running a city, a state, or a nation.
If a city wants its citizens to reduce road rage, it cannot count on their willpower alone; it had better reduce the number of cars on the road in the first place. You hardly go ballistic when traffic is easy.
If a government wants its officials to be clean, it cannot count on the willpower of every one of them; it had better put all the officials - from top to down - under the sunshine of public supervision.
But ours are ironic times.
We seem to know everything right, but we hardly do everything right. Our society keeps advertising sales of cars and of credit cards despite our collective acknowledgement of their negative effects.
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