Solve Your Problems through Increasing Self-Control

Take a hard look at the emotional troubles and addictions so many of us carry, and a pattern shows up: a lot of it would ease if we simply had more self-control. Plenty of people who wrestle with these things will tell you as much. They know that with a steadier grip on themselves, the mental health struggles would loosen. Then there's the victim mentality, which almost all of us have fallen into at some point. It quietly steals our hope and talks us out of the ambitions we carried into adulthood. What follows is a look at a few approaches drawn from Psychology that can move us forward in this one area, so the rest of life has room to open up.

Address it from the root rather than the surface. The most reliable way to break a bad habit is to figure out what pushes us toward it in the first place. For some people that means standing appointments with a therapist. For others, a few good self-help books do the work of holding up a mirror and showing us what makes us tick. That is really the whole point of Psychology, which translates roughly to "soul study." Everything begins in the mind, so the task becomes learning to steer the mind and handle the emotions that run through it.

Many of our habits are a form of self-medication. We are dosing the stress and anxiety that pile up across an ordinary day. That's partly why someone might visit a psychiatrist and walk out with a prescription for something like an antidepressant that dulls the craving. The part people tend to miss is the trade they just made. The craving fades, but a daily dependence on the pill quietly takes its place. On top of that come the long-term side effects, and none of it touches the underlying skill we never built, which is managing our own emotions. Doing that work is what frees us from leaning on outside substances to do the regulating for us.

Mindfulness meditation offers one path toward that footing. Sitting with the present moment clears some of the noise and teaches us to stay planted in the now. The practice came out of spiritual tradition, but you don't need to be spiritual to drop your anchor in the present and let the anxieties drain off. The more centered we get, the more capable we feel of meeting whatever the day hands us. That sense of capability is where self-confidence grows, and a shortage of confidence tends to run alongside conditions like depression, anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, and Schizophrenia.

So much of the victim mentality traces back to that same thin self-confidence. We either don't grasp how much power we actually hold, or we do grasp it and it scares us. Science has shown the human body is capable of healing itself from a great many ailments. Think of the antibodies our own bodies manufacture when an infection sets in. A person with a strong immune system can have prescribed antibiotics do nothing, because the body already handled it.

By the same logic, groups built on the Anonymous model, Alcoholics Anonymous among them, often fall short. Their core instruction is to just stop giving in to the habit. Strip away the habit without touching the reason it existed, and our nature simply reaches for the next thing to self-medicate with. Sometimes that replacement is religious ritual, which happens to be the foundation those groups rest on. Almost any compulsive behavior can be the body's way of medicating itself: drinking, drugs, sex, religious practice, even being a workaholic.

The interesting twist is that none of these things are rotten in themselves. There is real truth to the old idea that most things are fine in moderation. A drink in good company, a pipe now and then, work itself, and sex can all be perfectly healthy, even restorative. Doesn't it feel more like freedom to do these things because you choose to and they're fun, rather than because some compulsion has its hand on the wheel while you try to patch over an empty spot inside?

Commit to growing, learn the basic principles of why we do what we do, and the self-control starts to build. That is how we get out ahead of these habits and master them before they master us.

E Bishop Wooten. References: The Daily E Blog, dailyevotionals.wordpress.com