Self-Control Mastery: How Staying Away from Temptations Is Smarter Than Avoiding Them

Let me hit you with something you won’t find on your Instagram feed: self-control isn’t about flexing willpower in the face of a donut.

We've been sold this lie that avoiding temptation means you’ve got to stare it down like some Hollywood hero in a slow-motion standoff. The truth? It's smarter—and easier—to stay as far away from temptation as possible. That’s not cowardice.

It’s strategy. Sun Tzu, in The Art of War, would back me up on this. He wasn’t about to waltz into enemy territory to see how strong he was. He just didn’t let the enemy get close.

So, what does science say?

Turns out, neuroscientists have been poking around the brain's command center for a while now, and the consensus is that willpower is a finite resource.

Yes, it's like your phone battery—impressive at 100%, but by 5 PM, you’re anxiously watching it drain because you ignored all the low-battery warnings.

This concept, called ego depletion, means that every time you resist a temptation (whether it's donuts, doomscrolling, or daydreaming about quitting your job), you’re using up valuable cognitive energy.

A famous study from The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people who resisted a plate of freshly baked cookies (I know, it's cruel) had significantly less stamina on subsequent tasks.

Why?

Because their willpower tank had been drained dry. Now, if those same folks had just avoided the cookie tray altogether? They’d have been marathon-running their way through those tasks.

My Rogue Guide to Staying Away from Temptation

1. Environment Design.

You’re not morally superior for walking past the cookie aisle with gritted teeth. You’re just hungry and sad. Change your environment! Keep your home, workspace, or browser history free of distractions. There’s a reason detox diets work better when the cookies aren’t staring you down from the pantry.

Research by behavior change expert BJ Fogg shows that adjusting your environment is a key factor in forming better habits. Make the healthy choice the easy one by keeping the fridge stocked with fruit rather than keeping a pint of ice cream screaming your name from the back.

2. Implementation Intentions.

You’re at the mercy of your brain’s autopilot more than you think. If you wait until you're standing in front of temptation to make a decision, you've already lost. Instead, set up implementation intentions. These are pre-made decisions that sound something like: “When I walk into a party and see the snack table, I’ll head straight to the veggie platter.”

According to Peter Gollwitzer’s work on this, it’s a hack that stops you from wasting mental energy deciding what to do on the spot. It’s like programming yourself with cheat codes for real life.

3. Friction, My Friend.

Make bad habits harder to access. Want to cut down on mindless phone time? Delete the apps that waste your time, or log out of your social media accounts after each session. Want to stop binge-watching Netflix? Put the remote somewhere inconvenient—like the neighbor’s house.

This taps into a psychological principle called friction, which basically means that people are lazier than they care to admit. The more steps between you and the temptation, the less likely you are to bother. According to behavioral economist Richard Thaler, adding even small inconveniences (like adding a password to access Netflix) can significantly reduce bad habits.

4. Cue Control.

Self-control isn’t about internal fortitude, it’s about cutting the cues that trigger your bad habits in the first place. Charles Duhigg, in The Power of Habit, outlines how habit loops—cue, routine, reward—are the architecture behind every temptation. Want to control yourself? Control the cue.

If stress makes you snack, learn to identify the moment stress kicks in and divert yourself to a different routine, like a walk or deep breathing (because it’s scientifically proven that pretending you’re calm is the next best thing to actually being calm).

5. Rewards for Resistance.

Your brain is wired for short-term rewards (thank you, dopamine). So trick it by creating small, immediate rewards for good behavior. After an hour of hard work, reward yourself with a break—but not the kind that leads to a two-hour YouTube hole. Neuroscience backs this up—your brain is more likely to stick to a new behavior if it knows a reward is coming soon.

In sum, it’s not that you’re weak when you give into temptation. It’s that your brain was set up to fail from the start.

The key to smarter self-control is removing the temptation altogether.. not to test how long you can resist. Life’s too short to exhaust yourself wrestling with things you could simply dodge.

And speaking of life being too short, if you’re still getting tangled in other people’s expectations, demands, or toxic cycles (aka temptations of the emotional variety), you might want to check out my book Boundaries = Freedom.

It’s all about drawing lines to free yourself from all the things you should be resisting but don’t really need to.

Because sometimes the best control is just saying no—or better yet, not even picking up the phone.

Your Biggest Fan,

Lauren