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Identifying factors that contribute to the successful self-regulation of goal pursuit has been of utmost importance to researchers for decades, given that failures of self-regulation are linked to societal problems as diverse and deleterious as violent crime, drug abuse, divorce, and obesity. What processes contribute to successful self-regulation? In several lines of work, I test the role of perceptual and attentional biases in overcoming various challenges of self-regulation, including the management of self-control conflicts and persistence during challenging tasks. Across the studies, I suggest people who are able to successfully achieve goals not only think about the world in goal-promoting ways, but perceive and attend to it in goal-promoting ways as well.