Ulysses contract: what it is, how to use it, and examples

Let's see what the Ulysses contract is and its advantages and disadvantages in shaping our behavior.

Willpower comes and goes, it's as simple as that. What we set out to do one moment, convinced that we would do it, the next day may become a titanic odyssey and unlikely to be done, unless we are forced to do it or have no other choice.

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 for a beer with friends on the day we were supposed to go to the gym.

Fortunately, there is a strategy to prevent temptations and laziness from keeping us from reaching our goals: Ulysses' contract. Here's what it's all about.

What is the Ulysses contract?

Odysseus, hero of Greek mythology, after the Trojan War made a long voyage back to Ithaca. The odyssey was not without dangers, as the goddess Circe warned him. One of them was the song of the sirens, a malicious melody that bewitched anyone who heard it and would end their lives..

Some sailors, enraptured by the beautiful song, jumped into the sea and drowned in it while their captains steered the ship to where the sirens 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 the sirens' sea.

Fortunately, Circe told him what to do: his sailors should put wax plugs in their ears and, if he wanted to hear the sirens' song, he should ask his men to tie him to the ship's mast. Then he could hear the hypnotic chant and, if it had an effect, he would not lose his life by jumping into the sea. No one would free him if he started asking his men to let him go, for the sailors would not hear him and would be too busy rowing with their heads down.

And, indeed, that was how it happened. When they passed the island of the sirens and the sirens 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 who asked to be released. They survived, they could tell it and Ulysses and his men continued living stories that would swell the famous work that is the Odyssey.

This whole story has served to give name to a curious phenomenon present in our daily lives: the Ulysses contract. This term refers to any agreement by which one sets up barriers to avoid 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.

This type of contract can be made with ourselves only or, also, involving other people, in anticipation of the possible loss of control over our decisions.. To ensure that we do not fall into the trap of immediate reward, vice and laziness, we force ourselves not to have the choice of rewarding the now, the present, in the face of 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 of us is not a single self, but the sum of several, of several here and several nows that make that effort we set out to make at a certain moment turn into nothing. Desire comes and goes, so does optimism, and our willpower is extremely moldable by circumstances..

Examples of Ulysses' contract

To better understand the idea of Ulysses' contract, let's 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 with wax caps. Many of them are not only given as an explanation of what the Ulysses contract is, but also for those who wish to apply them in their lives if precisely one of them is the vice or temptation they are going through right now.

A fairly simple example of such a contract would be, when we are in the supermarket, not to buy any sweets and to avoid succumbing to going off the diet.. Being at home we won't have them on hand and, when we feel like them, we simply can't resort to them comfortably because we don't have them. The here and now 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 that of wanting to be in shape and joining a gym. As we are paying the fee, we force ourselves to go so as not to feel that we are wasting our money. If this doesn't work, we can arrange with a friend to go together, asking them to make us go. The social pressure and fear of looking bad to a friend will make it less likely that we will skip the training day.

The gym fee could be compared to the mast to which Ulysses was tied, while the friend who forces us to go and who throws to the ground every excuse we can make is like the faithful sailors with wax in their ears immune to the pleas of the Hellenic hero.

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 program automatic transfers from one of our accounts to another one, also ours, to force us toanother, also ours, to force us to save. Another option is to make the credit card have little money or, directly, leave it at home and carry just enough in the 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 substantial donation to some organization that provokes a visceral rejection in them and give it to a friend with the instruction that, if he or she smokes, they should give it to him or her. An extreme case is that of people with alcoholism, who when they go to rehab for the first time are asked to throw away all the bottles of alcohol in the house.

Is this strategy foolproof?

Despite sounding great as we have seen them up to this point, the Ulysses contracts are not foolproof. Their main problem is that, as easily they are signed, so easily they can be cancelled. The ideal would be to use the system that other people are involved in what we have proposed.physically present to prevent us from abandoning ourselves 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. Moreover, the one and the other can manipulate each other to break what they have agreed to and skip whatever they have decided to do together, be it going to the gym, quitting Smoking or spending less money. We can resort to persuasion to violate the agreement, making the other person's involvement worthless.

It is difficult to find a friend with whom you trust enough to sign an oral contract of this kind but who is strong enough, hard enough, and cold enough to not allow us to break it.

That is why Ulysses' solution was so effective. By covering the ears of his sailors, he not only prevented them from being charmed 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 judge and jury. If we had the ability to conduct ourselves by certain self-imposed rules without resorting to external constraints, then we would have no problems in achieving our objectives and therefore we would not need this type of contract. It would be enough to propose something to ourselves and that would be it. The problem is that we end up negotiating with ourselves and, sooner or later, we end up giving in to our own desires..

However, we should not lose hope. It is better to apply a Ulysses contract, limiting our options and eliminating temptations, than to hope 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 should not give the slightest chance to that which can ruin the goals and dreams we want to achieve.