Walter Mischel Quotes

Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.

In fact, Bill Clinton's an excellent example of what he should be doing when he realizes that he's not invulnerable. He realized two things: his invulnerability was contextualized in two things: junk food, and he had a problem with certain kinds of women.

If you can deal with hot emotions, then you can study for the S.A.T. instead of watching television, and you can save more money for retirement. It's not just about marshmallows.

If you want to know why some kids can wait and others can't, then you've got to think like they think,

The idiosyncrasies of human preferences seem to reflect a competition between the impetuous limbic grasshopper and the provident prefrontal ant within each of us.

James Watson summarizes the conclusion: A predisposition does not a predetermination make.

When I am asked to summarize the fundamental message from research on self-control, I recall "Descartes's famous dictum cogito, ergo sum - "I think, therefore I am." What has been discovered about mind, brain, and self-control lets us move from his proposition to "I think, therefore I can change what I am." Because by changing how we think, we can change what we feel, do, and become. If that leads to the question "But can I really change?," I reply with what George Kelly said to his therapy clients when they kept asking him if they could get control of their lives. He looked straight into their eyes and said, "Would you like to?

I made a pact with my three-year-old thumb-sucking daughter that if she stopped sucking her thumb, I would stop sucking my pipe.

I have an easy tendency to stumble and fall, which is not a good thing in an 84-year-old guy, so when I brush my teeth, then I do balancing exercises.