From
Henry Morton Stanley's Unbreakable Will
The explorer of Dr. Livingstone-fame provides a classic character study of
how willpower works
By Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney
Smithsonian magazine, December 2011
Read more:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Henry-Morton-Stanleys-Unbr
eakable-Will.html#ixzz1g3dAaFBz
"As Stanley realized, self-control is ultimately about much more than the
self. Willpower enables us to get along with others by overriding impulses
based on selfish short-term interests. Throughout history, the most common
way to redirect people away from selfish behavior has been through religious
teachings and commandments, and these remain an effective strategy for
self-control. But what if, like Stanley, you're not a believer? After losing
his faith in God and religion at an early age (a loss he attributed to the
slaughter he witnessed in the American Civil War), he faced a question that
vexed other Victorians: How can people remain moral without the restraints
of religion? Many prominent nonbelievers, like Stanley, responded by paying
lip service to religion while also looking for secular ways to inculcate a
sense of "duty." During the awful trek through the Ituri jungle, he exhorted
the men by quoting one of his favorite couplets, from Tennyson's "Ode on the
Death of the Duke of Wellington":
'Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory.'
"Stanley's men didn't always appreciate his efforts-the Tennyson lines got
very old for some of them-but his approach embodied an acknowledged
principle of self-control: Focus on lofty thoughts.
"This strategy was tested at New York University by researchers including
Kentaro Fujita and Yaacov Trope. They found that self-control improved among
people who were encouraged to think in high-level terms (Why do you maintain
good health?), and got worse among those who thought in lower-level terms
(How do you maintain good health?). After engaging high-level thinking,
people were more likely to pass up a quick reward for something better in
the future. When asked to squeeze a handgrip-a measure of physical
endurance-they could hold on longer. The results showed that a narrow,
concrete, here-and-now focus works against self-control, whereas a broad,
abstract, long-term focus supports it. That's one reason religious people
score relatively high in measures of self-control, and nonreligious people
like Stanley can benefit by other kinds of transcendent thoughts and
enduring ideals."
Read more:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Henry-Morton-Stanleys-Unbr
eakable-Will.html#ixzz1g3cg89ob
···
================================
"The Occupy movement is powerful, not because it is fighting for the rights
of a few hundred people to sleep outdoors, but because it is fighting for
the right of millions of Americans to sleep indoors." - Van Jones