The Steps Towards Developing Self-Control
The development of healthy mind and personality are determined by family environment, education, and society. However, individuals may change and improve their self-control ability. Self- control is the most important key to be successful, which is even stronger than the intelligence. Accordingly, the success of living bases on consistency, patience, communication, and self- control of each person. Everyone has willpower, but some use that power better than others. People who can control their emotions, attentions, and actions are better at dealing with conflicts and overcoming obstacles. They are also happier, healthier, and have more achievements in their career. Understanding personal feelings to help people having better feeling and better understanding what is going on in life. Also, they can take advantage of positive points and make negative points easier to solve. Those great results are because of understanding actual emotions that is important to be successful. However, some people always stuck in frustrated, depressed, fears, and unhappy feelings which do not known by themselves. Their emotions are very bad, but they do not know how to relieve it. Therefore, if people understand their feeling, they will pass any hard time without bother any someone else. Besides, they will not be distracted by simple things which discourage their goals. That is very important to develop self- control, so people should learn how to build a consistently awareness and enhanced personal values.
Everyone has more willpower than they think so that using it everyday to get that power stronger. The more they understand themselves, the more they can control and choose the right behaviors. Self- awareness leads people understand where they are and where they want to go. Without self- control, emotions may out of control which results bad things what unexpected to happen. Thus, people with strong willpower and self- awareness have respectable behaviors with everything happen in their life. Their choice becomes power which cannot be taken away. Building self-control is a serious challenge. However, it makes positive changes in people’s life such as restraining bad manners. Taking control emotions and actions themselves makes their life easier, more confident, and elevate their self- esteem. There are so many ways to increase self- control that people can practice every day.
First of all, listing the habits or actions they want to control, and they must push themselves to follow it. If there is anyone gives them suggestions, they should take it into consideration. Remember that their wish to change must be from the inside, so that they should listen to their intuition, feeling, and credit the feedback they received from people around them. They should also commit themselves to effort to change and develop self- control to actually change their behavior. There are some examples such as stop smoking, control inner anger, eating and sleeping behavior, and so on.
The second, choosing a typical action they want to control from the list. There are many sections in life that people can use self- control to show good behavior. So, they need to learn how to relax and calm to slow things down. Enhancing their energy and set realistic goals that an achievable. Be realistic about what kind of changes they want so it can be suitable with their time and ability. If they try to do everything at once, they might face overwhelmed that will ruin everything. So, realistic is the most consideration while building self- control.
The third, research a behavior what they are working on. They can look up online to find if there is any one has the same change and how they figure it out. People also ask friends who have made similar change. For example, if stop smoking is the change they want to change, search online about medicine helps to distract their mind. Also, ask friends who had have the same problem, so that they can tell their experiences. Then, they should make a list and make sure they follow it exactly. They also try some different ways to figure out what works for them. That is a big challenge, so the effort must be strong and consistent.
Next, taking an honest inventory of themselves is very necessary. Personal journal can help individualize their experience of change. Raising awareness about their own emotional triggers that cause impulsivity and lack of self- control that help control themselves behaviors. Meanwhile, increasing awareness of impulsivity helps control emotion and gives people chance to have a right decision in every situation. Let go back to the smoking example, the person should ask themselves how the feel without cigarettes and how their body change after a while quitting it. By understanding the positive change, people will have more energy and enthusiasm to complete the goal. Then, a realistic goal is the most important. The failure of building self- control since the goal is not achievable. That makes they give up after trying a long time, but the goal is not achieved. Therefore, a clear goal makes people complete it step by step and then they will be successful. That is better than giving it up with an unrealistic goal. For example, let start reducing smoking times of a day instead of completely quitting it. It will help the body does not feel any big change so that it can be adopted easier. Next, let mark your progress. The key here is progress, not perfect. They need create a processing calendar to record their effort. When they feel that they are losing control, mark it on the calendar, and then write it on the journal to evacuate that it is reasonable to be erased. The more they know their emotion, the more they become aware of themselves, the easier it will be the challenge coming. For example, when people feel stress or angry, they usually want to smoke to release. So that, they should mark on the calendar that every stressful time is the red alert to stay away from cigarette. They can go to somewhere to get fresh air and calm down.
The next step is motivating themselves. Keeping a clear reason why they want to control their behavior and reminding them of this behavior. They need record their inner motivation in the journal, so they can remind themselves every time they need. For example, they can make a list of prizes of cigarette they usually buy for a week, so that they will realize how much they spend for unhealthy things. Also, never forget all of the advantages of stopping smoking such as having extra money, getting heathier, and protect people around them. Besides, people should learn to put their efforts into positive action. Such as they focus on variety behaviors to replaces the behavior they are trying to build self- control. This is like a process to determine what really works for them. If the goal does not go well, they can change to other strategies instead of giving it up. People also care about themselves which help them getting better in increase self- control. For example, if it is difficult to stop smoking in a whole week, they can try to smoke three days a week to make it easier. Besides, they can find some other ways to distract their mind from smoking such as play sport, eating heathy, waking up early in the morning, and stay away from friends who smoke a lots.
Another step is developed new hobbies. When they are focusing on what their interest in such as sports, games, arts, etc. the life will be more interesting. That will help develop self- control and stay away from boring feeling. A part of the change is replacing by another easier change that calm their impulsivity and anger. There are many ways to share hobbies by joining an online website or club with people who have the same hobbies. Moreover, meeting more friends will improve communicate skill or team work that is very useful for their life. They can also practice controlling themselves through the reaction on every issue which happened in the group.
The next important thing is building themselves by encouraging themselves to make the change they want to do. they don not to be too harsh on themselves when they feel they have not reached the goal. Also, people should keep focusing on their best efforts as well as stop thinking about the failure. they can use the journal rearrange negative statements until they realize that they are too rushing to achieve the goal. For instance, their goal is stop smoking but they still smoke three or four times a days. In that case, they have to look back the process in a different way and remine themselves that they really had a bad feeling of disappointed. Next, they can take time to write down what different things they can do such as playing sport, reading book, or studding harder. Be proud of themselves and do not ever feel afraid to try again with a new stagey. Nowadays, there are many tools and systems that support themselves. Let people around know what they are trying to do, so they can help by giving experience, suggestion, and encourage. People who believe in themselves will let others help them and receive any reasonable suggestion. Besides, internet is the best choice to support.
Finally, people reward themselves when they have any positive change in self- control. For example, in the first week of stop smoking, people can have a fancy dinner to remine that they did a very good job. Also, they could use the money saved from cigarette to go to spa and enjoy themselves. Building self- control is not easy, so that people need to be patient. People cannot see the change immediately, so they need to be patient and stay calm. There is a slight punishment when they make a mistake such as doing laundry, housework’s, volunteering. Believe in themselves so they can do right things and control their emotion. Self- control will help everyone have a better life and successful. People who have self- control live happier and more successful. However, to get control the emotion, people have to practice and really effort to be successful.
