HAVE MAXIMUM SELF CONTROL

Self control is the ability to regulate and alter your responses in order to avoid undesirable behaviors, increase desirable ones, and achieve long term goals. Research has shown that possessing self control can be important for health and well being.

Common goals such as exercising regularly, eating healthy, not procrastinating, giving up bad habits, and saving money are just a few worthwhile ambitions that people believe require self control.

People use a variety of terms for self control, including discipline, determination, grit, willpower, and fortitude.

Different Psychologists define self control as:

1. The ability to control behaviors in order to avoid temptations and to achieve goals.
2. The ability to delay gratification and resist unwanted behaviors or urges.
3. A limited resource that can be depleted.

Still, some researchers believe that self control is partly determined by genetics, with some just born better at it than others.

Importance of Self control

How important is self control in your day-to-day life? The 2011 Stress in America survey conducted by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that 27% of respondents identified a lack of willpower as the primary factor keeping them from reaching their goals. The majority of people surveyed (71%) believed that self control can be both learned and strengthened.

Researchers have found out that people who have better self control tend to be healthier and happier, both in the short term and long term.

In one famous 2005 experiment, students who exhibited greater self discipline had better grades, higher test scores, and were more likely to be admitted to a competitive academic program. The study also found that when it came to academic success, self control was a more important factor than IQ scores.

The benefits of self control are not limited to academic performance. One long term health study found that high levels of self control during childhood predicted greater cardiovascular, respiratory, and dental health in adulthood, as well as improved financial status.

Delaying Gratification

The ability to delay gratification, or to wait to get what you want, is an important part of self control. People are often able to control their behavior by delaying the gratification of their urges. For instance, someone who wants to attend an expensive concert might avoid splurging their money on weekend shopping trips. They want to have fun, but they know that by waiting and saving their money, they can afford the exhilarating concert instead of the everyday mall trip.

Delaying gratification involves putting off short term desires in favor of long term rewards. Researchers have found that the ability to delay gratification is important not only for attaining goals but also for well being and overall success in life.

Ego Depletion

Research has found that self control is a limited resource. In the long term, exercising self control tends to strengthen it. Practicing self control allows you to improve it over time. However, self control in the short term is limited. Focusing all of your self control on one thing makes it more difficult to exercise your self control on subsequent tasks throughout your day. Psychologists refer to this tendency as ego depletion. This happens when people use up their reservoir of willpower on one task, making them unable to muster any self control to complete the next task.

Health Benefits of Self control

Self control is also important for maintaining healthy behaviors. What you eat for breakfast, how often you work out, and whether you have a consistent sleep schedule are all decisions that can be impacted by your levels of self control and have the potential to affect your health.

Researchers have found that self control can have a number of potential influences on health and well being. One longitudinal study found that adults who had greater self control in childhood were less likely to have:

• Substance dependence or addiction to tobacco, alcohol, or cannabis
• Sexually transmitted infections
• Elevated inflammation
• Periodontal disease
• Airflow obstruction
• Metabolic abnormalities

While it is clear that self control is critical for maintaining healthy behaviors, some experts believe that overemphasizing the importance of willpower can be damaging.

The belief that self control alone can help us reach our goals can lead to people to blame themselves when their health is influenced by factors beyond their control. It may also lead to feelings of learned helplessness where people feel that they cannot do anything to change a situation. As a result, people may give up quickly or simply stop trying in the face of obstacles.

Motivation and Monitoring

According to psychologist and researcher Roy Baumeister, lack of willpower is not the only factor that affects goal attainment. If you are working towards a goal, three critical components must be present:

There needs to be a clear goal and the motivation to change. Having an unclear or overly general goal (such as getting stronger) and insufficient motivation can lead to failure. You are more likely to achieve a clearly defined goal (like bench-pressing 150 pounds) with a specific motivation.

You need to track your actions toward the achievement of the goal. Simply setting the goal is not enough. You need to monitor your behavior each day to ensure that you are doing the things that need to be done in order to reach your goal.

You need to have willpower. Being able to control your behavior is a critical part of achieving any goal. Fortunately, research suggests that there are steps people can take in order to make the most of their available willpower.

Tips or Ways To Improve Self Control

While research suggests self control has its limitations, psychologists have also found that it can be strengthened with certain strategies.

So much of success and achieving goals is built on good habits, and good habits are often built on discipline, self control, and the elimination of bad habits. But improving self control and building good habits is much easier said than done, and it takes a lot of physical and mental discipline to better yourself. Here are five ways to help improve self control and build good habits:

1. Truncate temptation

We are not wired to consistently resist temptation, a study found that the way most people resist temptation is to truncate the temptation. According to a study by the American Psychological Association, “training self control through repeated practice does not result in generalized improvements in self control.” So you can stop beating yourself up for not having much self-control, we’re not wired for it. However, if people are not wired to have self control, how do disciplined people exist? They truncate temptation, creating effortless self control. Instead of struggling to resist temptation, truncate the temptation. Set yourself up for success by managing yourself and your surroundings by truncating temptations. It helps to make decisions automatic and self reinforcing, so you can focus on priorities and decisions that matter more.

Go for a walk, call a friend, throw in a load of laundry, or do whatever it takes to get your mind off the thing that is tempting you at the moment.

2. Plan Ahead

Consider possible situations that might break your resolve. If you are faced with temptation, what actions will you take to avoid giving in? Research has found that planning ahead can improve willpower even in situations where people have experienced the effects of ego depletion.

For example, if you are trying to reduce your sugar intake and you have a hard time controlling those late afternoon snack attacks, eat a well balanced lunch packed with plenty of fiber, protein, and whole grains that will keep you full longer.

3. Measure Your Progress

What gets measured gets managed. According to Psychology Today, monitoring your progress keeps you focused on your goals. Monitoring helps us become experts on our own behavior, and it makes habits less difficult to govern and change.

4. Learn How To Manage Stress

Stopping and taking a few deep breaths helps your heart rate slow down, that helps you relax in the moment. Make sure to exercise regularly, eat well and make sure you’re getting enough sleep. It all improves focus, cognitive function and your health. You make poor decisions when your blood sugar is low and you are sleep deprived. Exercise helps you sleep better and helps you have discipline with your diet. Learning how to manage stress in healthy ways ensures you have the energy to keep grinding when work and life can feel overwhelming.

5. Prioritize Things

Make a to-do-list for every day, week and month, so when you’re feeling overwhelmed, you know you’re making progress and doing the very best you can. It makes you feel more in control, because feeling overwhelmed and seeing things going out of your control only leads to disorganization, stress and wasted time.

6. Practice Using Self Control

While your control might become depleted in the short term, regularly engaging in behaviors that require you to exert self control will improve your willpower over time. Think of self control as a muscle. While hard work may exhaust the muscle in the short term, the muscle will grow stronger over time as you continue to work it.

7. Focus on One Goal at a Time

Setting a lot of goals at once (such as making a list of New Resolutions) is usually an ineffective approach. Depleting your willpower in one area can reduce self control in other areas. It is best to choose one specific goal and focus your energy on it.

Once you turn the behaviors needed to reach a goal into habits, you will not need to devote as much effort toward maintaining them. You can then use your resources to achieve other goals.

8. Meditate

Meditation is a great way to strengthen your self control muscle. If you’re new to meditation, mindfulness meditation is a great place to start learning how to be more self aware so you can better resist temptations. This technique can also help you learn to slow your thoughts, which can help you control any gut impulses getting in the way of your self-control.

9. Remind Yourself of the Consequences

Just like self control can help you achieve your goals and improve your physical and mental health, a lack of self control can have adverse effects to your self esteem, education, career, finances, relationships, and overall health and well being. Reminding yourself of these consequences can help you stay motivated as you work to control your self-control.

10. Forgive Yourself

You are going to fail; failing is a part of life. Forgive yourself and move on. Beating yourself up and worrying achieves nothing, it is wasted energy. Winston Churchill once wrote, “Success consists of going form failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Eighty percent of achieving a goal is your attitude, and good attitude is a happy worker, and you’re going to need to learn how to happily grind if you want to build self control and achieve ambitious goals.

11. A Can-Do Attitude

Viewing ourselves as free and responsible for our actions is the foundation for self discipline. Evidence shows that people function better and are more able to deal with stress when they feel that they are in control. Believe that things are beyond your control and they probably will be.

12. Confidence

An important component of motivation is the person’s self perceived ability to achieve it. People will not build up much motivation for change if they believe it is impossible for them. In the face of difficulties, people with weak self confidence easily develop doubts about their ability to accomplish the task at hand, whereas those with strong beliefs are more likely to continue their efforts to master a task when difficulties arise.

13. The “Why” and “How” Mindsets

“Why” questions encourage long-term thinking, or desirability of pursuing an action. In contrast, “How” questions bring the mind down to the present and consider the goal’s attainability or feasibility. From a distant perspective, one sees the forest, but from a near perspective, one sees trees. Thus, distance impairs our ability to identify specific details of the choice. However, there are also low-level details associated with this task such as going to gym, avoiding our favorite snacks, and so on. The Why questions can benefit people to keep maintaining a new habit, such as daily exercise or diet. As Nietzsche remarked, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

Summary

Self control is an important skill that allows us to regulate behavior in order to achieve our long term goals. Research has shown that self control is vital for goal attainment. While self control is a limited resource, research also suggests that there are things that you can do to improve and strengthen your willpower over time.

This is the starting way to have effective human relations and a hitch free communication with the people in terms of situations you might find yourself in life. Constant practicing of Self control will always make you have a clear edge in everything you face and it has special ways of connecting the psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual together to work in your favor.