Exercising self-control is a fundamental aspect of personal growth and well-being. It empowers individuals to make conscious choices, resist temptations, and act in alignment with their long-term goals and values. By mastering self-control, we can navigate life’s challenges with resilience, make wiser decisions, and cultivate healthier relationships.
Exercise Self-Control.
It serves as a cornerstone for achieving success, maintaining emotional balance, and fostering a sense of inner peace.
Embracing self-control empowers us to lead a purpose-driven life, where we are the architects of our destiny, rather than victims of circumstance. Bellow, discover the Art of Applying Self-Control in Your Life.
You start by making one small shift in your mindset.
Stop thinking about self-control as a type of self-imposed punishment.
Why? Because whenever you do, you risk experiencing it in a negative way. When you use the word “control” you probably don’t see it as something positive, right? It’s more that you feel like something is being taken away from your life, not added to it.
You start speaking to yourself in terms of what you think you “should” do, or what others put pressure on you to do. Next thing you know, you’re just blindly following directions, and not thinking through what’s best for you to do.
How do you shift that mindset?
Instead of thinking about self-control as yet another thing to add to your never-ending list of tasks, think about everything it can afford you. It can allow you to develop positive habits so you can improve the quality of your life.
Self-control is strength; right thought is mastery; calmness is power.
It can give you sufficient time to achieve mastery in any discipline you choose. And best of all, it can give you freedom to become a better version of yourself.
Here are ways to practice self-control in your daily life.
Use your willpower to tackle procrastination.
When we wake up and start thinking about the day ahead of us, it’s no surprise we get overwhelmed with the amount of things we need to do. The result? We end up procrastinating and postponing our tasks.
Sounds like an ordinary thing many people do first thing in the morning, but it’s a mistake we cannot afford to make. Why? Because we all have a finite amount of willpower that takes us through the waking hours. If you want to focus on priorities, work on them early.
- Complete that task you’ve been putting off all week before lunchtime. It’s going to take much less time if you do it right away than if you leave if for the evening.
- Write up a plan for your school or work week. There are many benefits if you do, however the biggest one is you won’t have to panic when a deadline is fast approaching.
- Finish up homework before you go out to have fun. Chances are you’ve already been putting it off for days, but it’s not going anywhere. The benefit? You won’t need to stay up all night making up for lost time.
- Make specific, time-constrained commitments.
- Commitments aren’t just promises you make to other people. You can and should make them to yourself first. Instead of waking up with the best of intentions and making vague plans for what you want to achieve, get more specific about what you want to do not just that day but also in the near future.
The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success.
A great way to begin is to define a very specific goal you want to achieve in a certain time frame. For example, you can say:
- I am committed to finding a job in 6 months that is both a good fit for my skill set and is in a company whose values align with mine.
- I am committed to focusing on my studies in the next 30 days so that I can pass all three of my exams with top marks.
- I am committed to building my physical endurance by running 4 times a week for 3 months so that I can be prepared to participate in a 5K race.
- Make a new habit stick with tiny steps.
All those good habits we want to have ideally will need self-control, time, and repetition.
The trick is in not making a habit sound vague and intimidating, but making it doable and realistic in your daily life. Maybe your goals are big ones, for example to start working out, stop eating junk food, get more sleep, or find more time to start your own business.
The best path to achieving any big goal is to incorporate one good habit at a time, and by breaking it down into tiny steps.
- Begin your mornings with a mini-workout for 10 minutes for a month to get into the habit of regular exercising, before you buy that expensive gym membership.
- Start going to bed 30 minutes earlier than usual to give yourself more time in the morning to read, listen to a podcast, or brainstorm a personal project.
- Prepare and pack your lunch the night before so you don’t find yourself out of time in the morning, which can cause you to be so hungry midday that you’ll be tempted to get junk food.
Practice saying NO to yourself and others.
If you often find yourself running out of time to do everything you need or would like to do, it probably means you’re wasting time and energy on things that are not that important in the long run. There are many ways to start building up your “no” muscle.
- If there’s leftover dessert in your kitchen, this doesn’t mean you should eat it after lunch and again after dinner until it’s all gone. You can freeze it, give it to a neighbor, or take it to work to share with others.
- If you’re working on a project that’s due tomorrow, and a friend calls to invite you to go out for a movie, it doesn’t mean you should drop everything and go with them. Your focus is probably at its highest peak and you’re in your flow state. It’s okay to say no, then offer another time when you’ll be free.
- If you’re in a dilemma whether to commit to a project you’ve been asked to take on, consider how it fits in with your priorities. Be aware of what is important to you, how much time you have available, and if committing to the project could add more stress to your life than it will give you benefits. Maybe the solution is to politely decline the offer, or say you can help out a couple of evenings for a week if that would help.
Think about the long-term benefits of practicing self-control in your life.
All these ways in which you can practice self-control have the potential to impact your life not just in the immediate future, but also in the long term.
It’s important that you make the connection between what changes you make in your life right now with the version of yourself you see in the future.
Ultimately, what will help you is to be consistent in your efforts and to believe in yourself that you can succeed. Believing in yourself can look something like this:
- Start thinking about the big picture of your life. Although it may feel like you’re sacrificing some things right now (time out with friends when they invite you, or the pleasure of eating a delicious dessert in a restaurant), think about what being disciplined can afford you.
- Write down a list of specific ways in which you are now practicing new habits that can add up to bigger results a year from now.
- Put yourself in the driver’s seat of your life journey. This is not as abstract as it may sound. When you’re in the driver’s seat, you take control over what happens next. You act, you don’t react. You don’t let situations, external factors, and other people always dictate how you will behave. And you don’t allow yourself to get carried away for emotional reasons so much that you lose track of why you started working on a goal to begin with.
- Trust yourself that you can become a better version of you. Think of all the plans you’ve made, all the time you’ve put into working towards a goal, no matter how big or small it may be. Don’t let all that time go to waste. Trust your judgment when it comes to how you decided to spend your time. Believe you can keep on doing it. When you trust and believe in yourself, self-control will become a skill you can apply to every area of your life: your education, career, relationships, your passions and interests.
