{"id":36081,"date":"2015-10-27T11:24:08","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T19:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/?p=36081"},"modified":"2015-10-29T10:20:07","modified_gmt":"2015-10-29T18:20:07","slug":"compartmentalizing-free-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pickthebrain.com\/blog\/compartmentalizing-free-will\/","title":{"rendered":"Compartmentalizing Our Free Will"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

<\/p>\n

Throw out the diet books and stop starving yourself. \u00a0Here\u2019s the next big thing in healthy living:<\/span><\/p>\n

Duct tape. \u00a0Yellow duct tape.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what <\/span>researchers found<\/span><\/a> when they partitioned grocery store shopping carts into sections, one side for fruits and vegetables, one side for other items. \u00a0Just a little nudge to make shoppers more conscious of their purchases led them to buy more healthy food and less junk.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers, Brian Wansink, Dilip Soman, Kenneth Herbst, and Collin Payne, didn\u2019t stop there. \u00a0By varying the size of the compartments, they discovered that shoppers bought even more fruits and vegetables in proportion to the size of the designated compartment. \u00a0With a little manipulation, customers could be prodded into choosing a healthier diet.<\/p>\n

Ah, but there\u2019s the rub. \u00a0How dare they manipulate us! \u00a0Who are <\/span>they <\/span><\/i>to play with our minds, to force us to conform to their values, and to interfere with our free will?<\/span><\/p>\n

To which there is only one obvious response: \u00a0<\/span>nonsense!<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

You can redesign the shopping cart any way you want, but the only way it changes people\u2019s buying patterns is if the people want to change. \u00a0As many of us know from experience, it\u2019s a lot harder to change our habits than to <\/span>decide <\/span><\/i>to change our habits, no matter how much we may really want to change.<\/span><\/p>\n

When we do succeed, it\u2019s often because we manipulate ourselves. \u00a0We buy pricey gym memberships so we\u2019ll feel we\u2019ve wasted our money if we don\u2019t use them. \u00a0We hire trainers to push us out of our comfort zones. \u00a0Sometimes we buy clothes a size too small so we have to trim down before we can fit into them.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, it\u2019s our own free will that motivates us in the first place to manipulate ourselves, or to allowing ourselves to be manipulated.<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to yellow duct tape. \u00a0The subliminal message of pseudo-police-tape strung across our carts suggests restrictions imposed by a higher authority. \u00a0Human nature is such that we conform to societal norms, even if we like to think of ourselves as non-conformists. \u00a0We also long for equilibrium, so we want the compartments in our carts to be balanced, even when they aren\u2019t the same size.<\/p>\n

Are we being manipulated? \u00a0Well, what if we are? \u00a0Grocery stores are already manipulating us with the soft music they play to make us linger, through the absence of clocks in the store to help us lose track of time, and by rearranging their shelves every few months to make us look harder for the products on our lists and indulge in impulse-buying. \u00a0So why not embrace an effort to manipulate us to do what we want to do anyway?<\/p>\n

Moreover, what we react to initially as an infringement on our free actually offers us a powerful tactic in asserting our free will. \u00a0Even if we can\u2019t rely on store owners to help us help ourselves, we can make our own mental compartments to rein in our impulses.<\/p>\n

Almost everyone has heard the story of the teacher who placed a number of stones in a large glass jar. \u00a0\u201cIs the jar full?\u201d the teacher asked. \u00a0Everyone in the class agreed that it was.<\/p>\n

Then the teacher took a bag of gravel and poured it into the jar. \u00a0The gravel filled the empty spaces around the stones. \u00a0Again, the class agreed that the jar was full.<\/p>\n

The teacher repeated the exercise with a pail of sand, and then again a pitcher of water, after which he explained the lesson: \u00a0\u201cIf you make room for the big things first, you can always find room for the small things. \u00a0And it\u2019s the same way in life. \u00a0If we first make room for our family and our community, we can still find room for our careers, and then for our pastimes, and then for our possessions. \u00a0But if we fill up our lives with the little things first, we\u2019ll never be able to fit in the things that really matter.<\/p>\n

Free will means taking responsibility for everything we do, which means not allowing our impulses to control our actions or others to dictate our priorities. \u00a0And as we find ourselves living increasingly in a marketing culture, we have to create our own mental compartments to remind ourselves not to buy everything that society is trying to sell.<\/p>\n

Of course, the system isn\u2019t foolproof. \u00a0The researchers also found that if we shop when we\u2019re hungry, we go right back to our old bad habits. \u00a0Which offers more evidence that good choices depend on clear thinking, and that we can\u2019t manipulate our way out of bad behavior except through persistent self-discipline.<\/p>\n

Selfishness and self-indulgence are our constant enemies, always pulling us this way and that way, rooted so deeply inside us that we can never escape them. \u00a0But with a little determined ingenuity we can turn them against themselves and, by transforming them from negative into positive energy, free ourselves to become the people we are meant to be.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Yonason Goldson<\/a>, a talmudic scholar and former hitchhiker, circumnavigator, and newspaper columnist, lives with his wife in St. Louis, Missouri, where he teaches, writes, and lectures. \u00a0\u00a0Request the first four chapters of his new book<\/span> Proverbial Beauty: \u00a0Secrets for Success and Happiness from the Wisdom of the Ages<\/span><\/a> at this link for free or order now <\/span>on Amazon<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we do succeed, it\u2019s often because we manipulate ourselves. We buy pricey gym memberships so we\u2019ll feel we\u2019ve wasted our money if we don\u2019t use them. We hire trainers to push us out of our comfort zones. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12163,"featured_media":36465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[24,9,6],"tags":[2317,62,66,4635,4629,206],"yoast_head":"\nCompartmentalizing Our Free Will<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When we do succeed, it\u2019s often because we manipulate ourselves. We buy pricey gym memberships so we\u2019ll feel we\u2019ve wasted our money if we don\u2019t use them. 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