Self-Restraint: Power Through Limitation

In this discussion, we will learn about a secret weapon for becoming an important person in the modern world. It costs nothing, and everyone can practice it, yet it is so exceedingly rare that it can be considered a superpower.

We can call it “self-restraint.”

Note that this is not what people usually refer to as “self-discipline.” Self-discipline involves using willpower to contend with one’s daily bad habits, such as consistently waking up early, exercising, spending less time on one’s phone… Sometimes you can control yourself, sometimes you can’t; those are your own affairs and don’t affect others. Self-restraint speaks of something much larger, something you cannot choose not to obey; it is an absolute limitation on freedom.

The average person’s intuition is to wish for fewer restrictions. Ideally, I’d do whatever I want, and I can change my mind at any time, and everyone has to accommodate me. Nowadays, when young people get married, it’s called a “grand wedding.” They call their children “little princess” or “little prince.” And when they grow up, it’s “I am the queen,” and even when hailing a ride-share, the driver has to say “Princess, please get in.” These people fantasize about getting whatever they want, like protagonists in an exhilarating drama, with the whole world cooperating to help them put down antagonists and assert dominance, believing this is “strength”…

That is not strength. That is a very weak state, because it is the state of a child. A child can flip a table and create chaos at any time, and no one will blame them, but no one will hand them the keys to a safe, either.

If you expect everyone to coddle you, what you get is everyone guarding against you and avoiding you.

Conversely, as long as you can actively practice self-restraint, to the extent that people believe you are highly restricted, that you are not free, then you can play an absolutely crucial role in society —

“An adult knows what not to do.”

This will bring you immense power, because you are someone who can be “entrusted.”

We will discuss three mechanisms. You will see how much an individual who cannot do whatever they want can actually accomplish.

The Three Powers of Self-Restraint #

The first mechanism is “credible commitment,” as referred to in game theory.

This is a theoretical contribution by Harvard economist Thomas Schelling, whom we have mentioned multiple times. In 1960, Schelling proposed in his book The Strategy of Conflict that the ability to constrain an adversary sometimes depends on the ability to constrain oneself [1]. For example, if two cars are driving towards each other on a road, about to collide, whoever swerves is considered to have “chickened out.” So how can you force the other person to swerve? The answer is to remove your steering wheel and throw it out the window in front of them — I no longer have the option to yield, so you have to.

Talk is cheap. You must make a substantive, irreversible move to constrain yourself; only then is your commitment credible, and only then will others cooperate with you.

A borrower mortgages their property to a bank, a contractor places a performance bond with the client, a company entrusts customer funds to a third-party escrow, a government subjects taxation and borrowing to legal procedures that cannot be easily bypassed. All these arrangements weaken their own freedom — but precisely because of this, banks dare to lend, clients dare to commence work, customers dare to pay, and investors dare to lend money to the state.

This is also what we mentioned earlier: why after the Glorious Revolution, the king could not arbitrarily levy taxes, and the British government’s power was highly restricted, its ability to borrow actually increased [2].

Another case that is bound to be written into history books is TSMC. Morris Chang later recalled that from its inception, TSMC adopted the “pure-play foundry” model: it does not design its own chips, but only manufactures them for others; it does not compete with semiconductor companies like Intel and Texas Instruments, but instead becomes their supplier [3].

Note that this is not a promise like “I won’t steal your design” — that kind of promise is worthless — this is about dismantling the very place where stolen designs could be used: What could a company without a chip design department, that fundamentally doesn’t sell its own chips, possibly do with NVIDIA’s designs if it stole them?

As a result, everyone was completely reassured. This is why Apple and NVIDIA dared to stake their entire fortunes on TSMC’s production lines, and why all parties dared to fully cooperate with it in developing the most advanced processes. Today, over 70% of the global wafer foundry business is in TSMC’s hands alone [4].

There’s also a more interesting piece of history. In 1956, Thailand was a staunch ally of the United States, but it was eager to establish a diplomatic channel with New China, yet feared Beijing wouldn’t trust it. The most trusted advisor to Thai Prime Minister Phibunsongkhram, Sang Phathanothai, used a method particularly familiar to Chinese people: he secretly sent his two underage children, a son and a daughter, to Beijing to be cared for by Zhou Enlai. In ancient times, this was called “hostages”! Later, it was these siblings who participated in the reopening of Sino-Thai contact in 1972, paving the way for the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1975 [5].

American economist Oliver Williamson specifically studied this kind of arrangement, calling it a “hostage” [6]: The transaction can only be successful if something that can be forfeited is pledged to the other party.

Are you kidding? Do you think people will trust you with a mere display of power? Achieving great things is not child’s play.

Second Mechanism: Becoming a Social Interface and Infrastructure #

And if people can trust you repeatedly, consistently, and structurally, you become an interface, an infrastructure in society. This is the second mechanism through which self-restraint brings you power.

An interface is first and foremost a clearly defined contract, stating what inputs I accept, what outputs I guarantee, and what things I will never change without authorization. The prerequisite for two modules to connect is that both parties guarantee not to cross the boundary at the interface. By providing a reliable interface, you find your niche.

Positioning is a process of exclusion. If you say “I can do everything,” the market hears “you’re not proficient at anything,” or “we don’t know what you can do,” to the point of “we don’t know you.”

A restaurant that specializes in only a few signature dishes will have its name remembered by customers; a lawyer who only takes certain types of cases will be the first person clients think of when they encounter that kind of trouble; an investor who clearly focuses only on certain stages or industries means entrepreneurs know what projects should be brought to their table. Every possibility you exclude clarifies your social address a bit more.

TSMC only does wafer manufacturing, not chip design. Besides earning trust, it also transformed itself into a public infrastructure for the entire industry.

Third Mechanism: Avoiding Being Spoiled and External Correction #

The third mechanism is this: Only by entrusting the power to correct you to people and things beyond your control will you avoid being spoiled by those around you.

If you are truly in an environment where whatever you say goes, and everyone around you is at your beck and call, then you are in danger. Because a sense of power can make people foolish. Here is a series of studies —

In 2003, UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner and colleagues proposed the “approach-inhibition theory,” stating that a sense of power systematically reduces a person’s sensitivity to constraints, risks, and the internal states of others [7].

In 2011, Kelly See and colleagues at New York University experimentally demonstrated that once a sense of power is induced in subjects during an experiment, they immediately become more confident, less receptive to advice, and even more prone to making erroneous judgments [8].

A 2014 transcranial magnetic stimulation experiment found that simply having subjects recall an experience where they dominated others significantly reduced the mirror response in their brains, at the neural level, to the actions of others [9].

Simply put, merely feeling powerful, you will begin to underestimate risks, overestimate yourself, and become duller to the thoughts and feelings of others.

What if you truly have power, and truly no one can limit you?

People around you will start to tell you what you want to hear, rather than the truth. As long as a person’s promotion, income, and resources depend on you, they will automatically optimize the information presented to you: Bad news will be delayed, dissenting opinions softened, and more of what you like to hear.

In 2011, management scholars James Detert and Amy Edmondson found through four studies that self-censorship in the workplace often stems from an internalized set of unspoken rules about “when not to speak up”; even suggestions that are clearly beneficial to the organization are swallowed back prematurely [10].

On one hand, you don’t hear bad news; on the other hand, even if you hear it, you don’t understand it. In a word, you’re spoiled.

Philosopher Karl Popper said that some theories “appeared to be able to explain practically everything”: no matter what happens, it could be taken as confirmation of the theory — but “this apparent strength was in fact their weakness” [11].

What power does is turn a person into such a “universal theory” — where no matter what happens, it proves they are right. They appear omnipotent, but in reality, they have lost the ability to be corrected by reality.

Look at those corrupt officials: They were originally normal people, even capable ones. But the later they were in power, the more absurd, even ludicrous, their actions became, as if they had lost all reason. They are actually just like children spoiled by their parents.

Perhaps it’s not that power corrupts, but that power makes people foolish, and foolishness corrupts.

People instinctively want to be pampered. But if you want power, you don’t want to be pampered. You want genuine feedback.

True Power Comes From Empowerment #

Trust, positioning, feedback – these three mechanisms are all the same thing: “credible expectations.” Herein lies a fundamental understanding of power.

The power most people imagine is “their own power”: What I can do. Ideally, I’d be like a superhero in a comic book, independent and free to do whatever I want. This is a childish fantasy. How great can one person’s power truly be, no matter how immense?

True power is “the power of empowerment”: where others entrust resources, information, positions, and futures to you — it is the power transmitted by the world through you.

And there is only one prerequisite for others to empower you: You are predictable.

You must exercise self-restraint to provide certainty to others; the capriciousness you give up becomes the space for others to act.

This is what Chinese people call “kaopu” (reliable/dependable). What is “pu” (谱)? Musical scores, chess notation, family trees — they are predefined, verifiable tracks of behavior. To say you are “kaopu” means your actions follow a track, such that others can arrange their own plans according to that track; “meipu” (unreliable) means no one can plan based on you; the most severe is “lipu” (outrageous/off-the-charts) — you’ve leaped beyond all expectations.

We often say that being relied upon is the best treatment the modern world can offer you — if you are “kaopu,” others can rely on you.

If you can play a defined role and undertake a defined responsibility, or even become an infrastructure, you will become a key figure in society.

How to Design Credible Constraints #

So, how does one gain power through self-restraint? There’s no fixed algorithm here, but I can offer you a framework, a one-sentence “constraint design brief” —

“To make ___ dare to entrust ___ to me, I voluntarily give up the freedom to ___ under ___ circumstances; this boundary is guaranteed by ___ visible mechanisms; it can only be modified through the ___ procedure.”

This sentence forces you to clarify six things: Who needs to trust you, what they need to entrust, what circumstances are most likely to trigger your capriciousness, specifically what freedom you are giving up, what makes others believe the boundary exists, and how the boundary can be modified.

You can also publicly write down delivery standards and timelines, allowing collaborators to see progress; disclose conflicts of interest in advance, and write untouchable boundaries into contracts; keep records of approvals for major decisions, and don’t push all failures onto implementers; if you go back on your word, let your reputation suffer, or automatically lose certain opportunities, suffering real financial loss.

Being verifiable and incurring losses if you breach is what makes a commitment credible. This is far more powerful than any “I’ll do my best” or “I’ll take care of this.”

If you want to establish a niche, more important than personal branding is first writing a “don’t do list”: What types of benefits I won’t take, what kinds of clients I won’t accept, what trends I won’t chase; I’d rather lose opportunities than change my standards.

A true brand is built by consistently refusing dilution. You must maintain “slow variables”: You repeatedly solve the same type of important problems, consistently deliver in a way that others can recognize, and allow yourself to absorb information from a wide range of fields. Only then will the world assign you a position.

If you want honest feedback, you cannot indulge your sense of power. Power is a responsibility, but the sense of power is an illusion: “I see things more accurately than others, I don’t need to explain, I can change my mind at any time.” To be worthy of possessing power, you must relinquish the privilege of capriciousness —

Speak last in important discussions; don’t use your position to replace reasoning; don’t make major decisions on impulse; give dissenting opinions a formal seat; write down your judgments beforehand, and reconcile them with your original words afterward; do not allow yourself to casually rewrite history.

The key here is “narrow mission, wide input.” If your mission is too broad, others won’t know where to find you; if your input is too narrow, you will become increasingly foolish within your niche.

Vulnerability Is Humanity’s License #

Of course, you cannot have only constraints and no capability. The ideal situation is high capability, low capriciousness — However, with the advent of the AI era, the value of low capriciousness may surpass that of high capability.

We are witnessing AI surpassing humans in one capability after another. Yet, for critical decisions across all industries, the final signature must still come from a human: No matter how accurate AI diagnoses, prescriptions must be signed by doctors; no matter how good AI is at analyzing financial reports, audit opinions must be personally signed by partners.

The fundamental reason here is that humans can be harmed.

Signing is essentially a form of collateral — once you sign, your license, property, and freedom are pledged. If something goes wrong, your license is revoked, and you are the one who goes to jail.

The end of the chain of responsibility must be someone who can be harmed, but the world can only harm humans, not AI. If AI says “I guarantee,” the information content is zero — not because it’s insincere, but because it has no risks to pledge. In the words of this discussion: AI cannot produce a hostage. The ability to be harmed is not a human defect; it is a human license. An invulnerable person cannot be engaged with.

Moreover, self-restraint is not just about not doing bad things or being moral. It’s not a slogan for self-cultivation, but a comprehensive set of techniques for gaining trust, feedback, and authorization.

Exercising restraint is also not as simple as merely following rules. Given a law, it’s hard for the average person to judge whether an action is illegal; this is why professionals like lawyers and judges are needed.

Principles are abstract, reality is always specific; to accurately judge where not to cross the line in the face of temptation, changing circumstances, and various exceptions, is itself a highly technical discipline.

In an Era of Capriciousness, Reliability Is Scarce #

Why are people so infatuated with unbridled freedom? Is it because they were disciplined too strictly as children? For some, their greatest subconscious desire after growing up is “no one tells me what to do”: they want to be unrestrained, do whatever they please, and become furious at the slightest inconvenience. In the words of Professor Wu Zhihong, this is called “omnipotent narcissism” [12].

Until a few decades ago, most people lived in a world of scarcity. That world had a very low tolerance for error; a single small indulgence could mean the whole family went without food. Therefore, human society has always been governed by strict rules and rituals, and the average person was not privileged enough to be spoiled.

The modern world has, for the first time, made imperial treatment affordable: many families have only one child, and parents are reluctant to let them experience setbacks; schools are afraid to let them feel wronged; companies only screen candidates, they don’t educate; social safety nets provide a floor; businesses cater to them; and even the information you hear is filtered by algorithms according to your preferences. Thus came the first batch of mass-spoiled people in human history — what Wu Zhihong calls “giant babies”: adult capabilities, but a child’s sense of responsibility.

When you see those “giant baby” comments online, you should realize there’s an arbitrage opportunity here.

Credible constraints are scarce. In an era where everyone is capricious, you don’t need extraordinary talent; as long as you can control yourself and keep your word, you automatically enter a sparsely populated track.

If you don’t practice the piano, you still have the freedom to casually play a few notes at home. But only by training your ten fingers until they are no longer capricious, will you have the freedom to perform on a grand stage and have an entire orchestra accompany you.

We have always talked about expanding our options, retaining optionality, finding room for free play within the gaps of hard constraints, and letting our minds arise without dwelling on anything — But if you want to gain power, to achieve great freedom in a certain aspect, you must actively give yourself more, not fewer, constraints.

A Poem in Praise #

Though thunder in hand, no might displayed, A single promise, firm as mountains, held tight. Think not self-restraint dampens inner fire, A thousand distant sails, to you aspire.

Notes #

[1] Schelling, Thomas C. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960.

[2] North, Douglass C., and Barry R. Weingast. “Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England.” The Journal of Economic History 49, no. 4 (1989): 803–832.

[3] Chang, Morris. “Can Semiconductor Manufacturing Return to the US?” Interview by Jude Blanchette and Ryan Hass. Vying for Talent. Brookings Institution and Center for Strategic and International Studies, April 14, 2022. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Vying-for-Talent-Morris-Chang-20220414.pdf

[4] TrendForce. “Strong AI Demand and Early Consumer Electronics Inventory Build Drive Top 10 Foundries to 3.7% QoQ Revenue Growth in 1Q26, Says TrendForce.” June 12, 2026. https://www.trendforce.com/presscenter/news/20260612-13095.html

[5] Poonkham, Jittipat. A Genealogy of Bamboo Diplomacy: The Politics of Thai Détente with Russia and China. Canberra: ANU Press, 2022. https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/genealogy-bamboo-diplomacy

[6] Williamson, Oliver E. “Credible Commitments: Using Hostages to Support Exchange.” American Economic Review 73, no. 4 (1983): 519–540.

[7] Keltner, Dacher, Deborah H. Gruenfeld, and Cameron Anderson. “Power, Approach, and Inhibition.” Psychological Review 110, no. 2 (2003): 265–284.

[8] See, Kelly E., Elizabeth W. Morrison, Naomi B. Rothman, and Jack B. Soll. “The Detrimental Effects of Power on Confidence, Advice Taking, and Accuracy.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 116, no. 2 (2011): 272–285.

[9] Hogeveen, Jeremy, Michael Inzlicht, and Sukhvinder S. Obhi. “Power Changes How the Brain Responds to Others.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143, no. 2 (2014): 755–762.

[10] Detert, James R., and Amy C. Edmondson. “Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-for-Granted Rules of Self-Censorship at Work.” Academy of Management Journal 54, no. 3 (2011): 461–488.

[11] Popper, Karl R. “Science: Conjectures and Refutations.” In Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 33–65, esp. 34–35. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963. https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/popper.htm

[12] 武志红：《深度关系》，九州出版社·磨铁，2023年7月。