Ulysses Contract: What It Is, How It Is Used, And Examples
Willpower comes and goes, simple as that. What we set out to do at one moment, convinced that we would do it, the next day can become a titanic odyssey and it is unlikely that we will do it, unless we are forced or have no other option.
It also happens the other way around: doing something we shouldn’t, like eating that succulent and delicious sweet from the pantry despite being on a diet or going out for drinks with friends on the day we were supposed to go to the gym.
Fortunately, there is a strategy to prevent temptations and laziness from preventing us from achieving our goals: Ulysses’ contract Below we will discover what it is about.
Ulysses, hero of Greek mythology, after the Trojan War made a long journey back to Ithaca. The odyssey was not without danger, as the goddess Circe warned him. One of them was the song of the sirens, a malicious melody that enchanted everyone who heard it and would end their lives
Some sailors, enthralled by the beautiful song, jumped into the sea and drowned in it while their captains directed the boat towards where the mermaids were, crashing the ship and sinking. Our hero knew that, when the time came, if he did nothing, he would succumb like all those who had sailed through the sea of sirens.
Fortunately, Circe told him what he had to do: his sailors should put wax plugs in his ears and, if he wanted to hear the sirens’ song, he should ask his men to tie him to the ship’s mast. So he could listen to the hypnotic chant and, if it took effect, he would not lose his life jumping into the sea. No one would free him if he started asking his men to let him go, because the sailors wouldn’t hear him and would be too busy rowing with their heads down.
And sure enough, that’s how it happened. When they passed by the island of the mermaids and they sang their songs, the sailors, deafened with wax plugs, did not hear them They continued rowing, immune to the hypnotic song of those malicious beings and, also, to the pleas of Ulysses asking to be released. They survived, they were able to tell it and Ulysses and his men continued living stories that would add to the famous work that is the Odyssey.
All of this history has served to give a name to a curious phenomenon present in our daily lives: the Ulysses contract. This term refers to any agreement by which one puts up barriers to avoid falling into future temptations It could be seen as a remedy to fight against one of the main weaknesses of our brain, which is the desire to receive immediate reward.
We can make this type of contract with ourselves only or, also, involving other people, anticipating the possible loss of control in our decisions To ensure that we do not fall into the trap of immediate reward, vice and laziness, one forces oneself not to have the option of rewarding now, the present, over future benefits or consequences. The Ulysses contract works by taking away our opportunity to choose, limiting our free will, and forcing us to do what must be done.
We continually sign Ulysses contracts, without even knowing it. We do it so as not to succumb to temptation, knowing that each one is not a single self, but the sum of several, several here and several now that make that effort that we set out to do at a certain moment become nothing. Desire comes and goes, optimism too, and our willpower is extremely moldable by circumstances
Examples of Ulysses contract
To better understand the idea of Ulysses’ contract, we are going to look at a few examples that represent this phenomenon very well, with its equivalent to the mast to which the Greek hero tied himself and, also, to the sailors deafened by wax plugs. We not only give many of them as an explanation of what the Ulysses contract is, but also so that whoever wishes to apply them in their life if precisely one of them is the vice or temptation they are going through right now. .
A fairly simple example of a contract of this type would be, When we are in the supermarket, do not buy any sweets and avoid succumbing to going off the diet Being at home we won’t have them on hand and, when we feel like it, we simply won’t be able to use them comfortably because we don’t have them. Here and now he asks us to eat sweets, but fortunately our past self in the supermarket knew how to anticipate this situation and avoided buying them.
Another case would be wanting to be in shape and join a gym. By paying the fee we force ourselves to go so as not to feel like we are losing money. If this doesn’t work, we can agree with a friend to go together, asking them to force us to go. Social pressure and the fear of losing face with a friend will make it less likely that we will skip the day of training.
The gymnasium fee could be compared to the mast to which Ulysses was tied, while the friend who forces us to go and who throws away every excuse we can make is like the faithful sailors with wax in their ears immune to the hero’s pleas. Hellenic.
And since we give so much importance to money, we can give another example, very useful for saving. It would also be a Ulysses contract to schedule automatic transfers from one of our accounts to another, also ours, to force us to save. Another option is to keep the credit card with little money or, directly, leave it at home and carry just enough in your wallet to avoid wasting it on nonsense.
A curious case of Ulysses’ contract is the following: There are people who, in order to quit smoking, sign a check with a more than large donation to some organization that causes them visceral rejection and they give it to a friend with the instruction that if he smokes, give it to him. An extreme case is that of people with alcoholism, who when they go to rehabilitation for the first time are asked to throw away all the bottles of alcohol at home.
Is this strategy foolproof?
Although they sound very good as we have seen them up to this point, Ulysses contracts are not infallible. The main problem with it is that, as easy as it is to sign, it is so easy to cancel it. The ideal would be to use the system of having other people involved in what we have proposed physically present to prevent us from giving in to our vices or avoiding doing what we should.
However, this is impractical because, in addition to the fact that these people are also human like us and can also fall into vice, we need to convince them first of all that we both need to be strong and move on. What’s more, each other can manipulate each other to break what they have agreed to and skip what they have decided to do together, whether it is going to the gym, quitting smoking, or spending less money. We can use persuasion to violate the agreement, making the fact that someone else is involved has been of no use.
It is difficult to find a friend with whom you have enough trust to sign an oral contract of this type but that is strong, hard and cold enough not to allow us to breach it.
That is why Ulysses’ solution was so effective. By covering the ears of his sailors he not only prevented them from being enchanted by the malicious song of the sirens, but they could also lower their heads and continue rowing without being tricked by their hypnotized captain into changing course.
The problem of persuasion is more serious when we ourselves are the judge and party. If we had the ability to live by certain self-imposed rules without resorting to external restrictions, then we would have no problems achieving our objectives and therefore we would not need these types of contracts. It would be enough to propose something and that’s it. The problem is that we end up negotiating with ourselves and, sooner or later, we end up giving in to our desires
However, we must not lose hope. It is better to apply an Ulysses contract, limiting our options and eliminating temptations, than to expect that by sheer force of will we will succeed in what we have set out to do. Desire, optimism and strength change from one day to the next, they are very variable, so we must not allow ourselves to give the slightest opportunity to what can ruin the goals and dreams that we want to achieve.
