Wheels of Willpower: How To Get Better at (Advising) Self-Control

During one badminton break, one friend asked my advice regarding his lingering knee pain while playing badminton. I advise him to stop playing badminton temporarily, seek medical consult for his knee injury and only resume playing when his doctor tells him so. On our next badminton game, I saw my knee pained friend still playing badminton and hasn’t consulted any doctor yet. I cautioned him again, but was really intrigued why he hasn’t followed my advice. His reply floored me. “We are almost of the same age. You also complain of occasional knee pain just like me. Yet you continue to play badminton. I guess this knee pain will just go away!”

As someone who has tried (and failed) some of my own advices, I ask friends and colleagues how my “hardheadedness” affect their chances of “following” my advice. It seems for many of us health workers, advising self control seem easy yet we all had our share of self control struggles, and these have implications of our advising particularly with health issues.

Of course there are many behavioral and social drivers when it comes to influencing health outcomes. Healthcare recommendations is just one of these, albeit an important one. We may not recognize this but when healthcare worker “self control” is out of control, the implications to our patients are as just as mind boggling. This is the topic of our #HealthXPh chat this Saturday October 15, 2022 9:00 PM Manila time.

• T1. As a healthcare professional, have you advised a patient on a medical concern yet you struggle following the very same advise?

When we talk of self control, the word “will power” comes to mind. Although there are many behavioral and social drivers to self control, we usually equate self control with “mind over body”, mind over flesh or simply the “will” to do things- will power. Many studies have already pointed the uncomforting truth that will power is often beyond our own “will”. Yet, we quixotically believe we have will power on so many things.

• T2. Can you recommend a specific strategy to reinforce self control when advising patients on health concerns?

One thing that comes to mind of course is avoiding too many self control habits at once or at the same time. There were studies now that prove that willpower is finite and our cognitive capacity is severely affected when its loaded all at the same time.

• T3. What other behavioral, social strategies do you advise in addition to self control when influencing a health outcome in a patient?

In the medical community our mantra for advising is “walk the talk”. This is easier said than done and I’m very interested in knowing how to improve our self control advises particularly when we try to improve our patients achieving a better health outcome! See you all in the #HealthXPh chat!

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