Having self-control is extremely important for achieving goals, being happy and having healthy personal relationships with the people around you.
In fact, people who have high self-control tend to be more successful and popular, and they tend to be successful in different areas of life. However, people who have low self-control are more at risk of falling into addictions, overeating or underachieving.
Nevertheless, sometimes this self-control ends up failing, and the ability of each person to resist temptation or not is overestimated.
The positive side is that a person has the ability to learn to control his or her emotions just as he or she works other parts of the body, such as muscles. To do this, a series of mental exercises must be carried out. The following is a list of about ten techniques for emotional self-control.
Ten techniques for maintaining self-control in adults
- Recognizing when you are low on energy: research has shown that self-control is a limitless resource. Putting it into practice has clear physiological and psychological effects, such as lower glucose levels. There is a limit to self-control, and when a person tries to self-control for a period of time they will have expended energy, and will be more likely to give in to temptation. This is known as “ego depletion”. To avoid this, people should avoid temptation when they know that their levels of self-control are low. A fundamental step in having good self-control is to know when a person has less energy.
- Establishes commitment: if a person is committed to pursuing difficult goals, this can mean that a great performance can be achieved. It is difficult to compromise, because people usually try to keep their options open, although being hard on oneself can be positive. Some examples of compromises could be any of the following:
- Setting time limits for completing tasks
- Going out with limited money
- Keeping only healthy food at home, thus avoiding temptations to eat fatty or sweet foods
- Using rewards: the use of rewards can work to increase self-control, as making short-term sacrifices in exchange for long-term gains when they had a self-reward in mind.
- Use punishments: as in the case of rewards for good behavior, punishments can also be used for poor performance, as the threat of punishment helps to achieve long-term goals.
- Combat the unconscious: you should avoid physical and mental temptations, and stay close to what follows your goal. Devaluing temptations and increasing the value of goals improves performance. When you value your goals more, your orientation towards them will be better, just as devaluing temptations helps you avoid them.
- Adjust expectations: you should be optimistic about your capacity or ability to avoid temptations.
- Adjust values: when you value your goals more, you will be more oriented towards them. In turn, devaluing temptations allows you to automatically avoid them.
- Use your emotions: emotions control reason, so they can be used for self-control.
- Use self-affirmations: Sometimes, self-monitoring involves avoiding a bad habit. Self-affirmations are one way to do this as it reaffirms the values you believe in. Thinking about it can help to regain self-control at the moment when it has dropped.
- Thinking in the abstract: One of the reasons that self-affirmations work is that they make a person think in the abstract, and this improves self-control. People who think abstractly are more likely to avoid temptations.
At the same time, a final reason for avoiding temptations should be mentioned. There are people who firmly believe that, if they fall into temptation just once, they can come back with more energy to control themselves and not fall again. The best example would be smoking, people may think that by smoking that last cigarette nothing will happen and that afterwards they will feel more like quitting, although research has shown that this is not true. Surrendering and falling into temptation does not increase resistance, but will increase the person’s tendency to fall into temptation again in the future.