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Comment by restalis | Hacker News Reader

As far as I could observe, on myself and others alike, it's about wether the transition happens under the radar or not. Being warned at the right time, forced to look at one's own condition and admit the degree of danger it carries if left as is, is usually enough to save the victim. There is more than that, of course. It all boils down to the amount of available willpower, which can be affected by a lot of factors. That willpower is also what prevents one's relapse, which an obvious fact for everyone, I suppose. What I'm not sure everyone is aware of is that willpower can be trained, the best starting from an early age. (Also, the willpower is not the same as discipline. Discipline is taken care of in schools, willpower training not so much.)

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On the other hand, this doesn't align with my experiences or what I read at all. Alcohol seems to be extremely dangerous for certain groups of people, which is why they often choose not to drink at all, ever. While many other people can have the occasional drink and it doesn't go beyond that.

In fact, that's a pattern I've noticed: there are people who will often not touch certain substances, activities, etc., for fear that they will get addicted to it. It seems to take less willpower to just not do it compared to doing a moderate amount of it.

Meanwhile, I don't seem to get addicted to anything whatsoever and I don't think awareness or willpower has anything to do with it. The key thing is just that I don't develop much of reaction and I can easily forget about the substance/activity. It just doesn't stick. It's not that I'm actively resisting a desire, /I just don't have one/. Another thing that doesn't stick for me? Habits. I wonder if these two are related. Most people seem to develop habits much faster and better than I do.

> What I'm not sure everyone is aware of is that willpower can be trained, the best starting from an early age.

I'm very curious what you're basing this on. I would say that is quite a claim to make. And how far? For whom? Is there a cap? Does it depends? Last time I tried to look up willpower trainability, hoping for some solid resources, I came up short.

I haven't observed that my willpower ever increased. If anything, it decreases over time if I try to apply it to the same thing. If I went to do something for a month, it's harder to do it next month. I can make a given activity take less willpower. I can become more efficient at it. I can apply motivational tricks. But the amount of actual willpower seems to stay roughly the same and relying on it is a recipe for disaster in my case.

Willpower trainability is in the same bucket as things like ego depletion and stereotype threat and smiling causes happiness and all those other things that I would take with a pound of salt due to the complexities of studying such things.

"The key thing is just that I don't develop much of reaction and I can easily forget about the substance/activity. It just doesn't stick. It's not that I'm actively resisting a desire, /I just don't have one/."

That's exactly the end result of the actively trained willpower for me.

"I'm very curious what you're basing this on. I would say that is quite a claim to make. And how far? For whom? Is there a cap? Does it depends?"

All I can give you for sure are my own experiences and the methods my parents used in this regard. However, these are close to what I've seen in martial arts training and other domains. Since my childhood years my parents were very watchful for my instincts and urges and intervened most of the time. They made me aware of my impulses and what triggers them and when I failed to control myself they actively pushed me to slip into a harsh or painful lesson. I remember one of them when I had a definite plan for my hard raised money and they exposed me to a good salesman. I knew what salesmen do and they warned me that that one was better than the others and I had to resist or risk my money on some overpriced unimportant thing for me. I lost, but the lesson stood and now I'd say it worth both the money and the bad feeling that came after. I had many lessons, starting from addressing the appetites for sweets (like any kid) to resisting the provocations for violence (where I had to consciously know when it is or isn't necessary), but usually it didn't come to the hard part.

I think the most important bit was that I developed a sense of my own willpower resistance and its limits. Of course there is a cap, but I kind of sense when I'm about to slip, and I routinely test those limits in a controlled environment. The willpower is not there to be abused, it's there to buy you some time to change course when you realize you're going to be trapped. And yeah, it depends on a lot of things.

"I haven't observed that my willpower ever increased. If anything, it decreases over time if I try to apply it to the same thing. If I went to do something for a month, it's harder to do it next month. I can make a given activity take less willpower. I can become more efficient at it. I can apply motivational tricks."

I think here you confuse willpower with motivation. Willpower is the ability to exert self control regarding your urges, when you have them. What you describe here is a case where you don't have any urges at all. It may involve willpower if you abstain from something when you push yourself to do something else, but it's not used directly. Motivation is another thing that it's addressed enough in our society.

I read a book once ("change anything") that was convinced that willpower practically "always loses" so you have to attack it differently, like modifying your environment/social environment/tools you know how to use, etc. Good read :)

Selection bias. Assuming will power to be a trainable trait...

It'd be clear our current society does not recognize this fact, and that it would lack methods to train in effectively. People that seem to have reasonably high will power would be those that either won the genetic lottery or stumbled on some way to (informally) train themselves while trying to do something else.

It would be as if a bunch of tall, reasonably fit guys in their 20s went to play a basketball match against an NBA team. The fact that they would have no chance has more to do with their lack of (serious) trainning that with their innate lack of basketball talent.

Anecdotally I absolutely agree with you; the role of "mindfulness" can't be understated.

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