Whether you’re trying to lose weight, stick to a budget, organize your house, or manage your time, there’s one secret to your success: self-mastery.
What do time management, weight loss, home organization, and money management all have in common? All of these outward goals start in one place—inside your mind. You need to know how to develop discipline and have self-control before you can successfully tackle these jobs. It’s all a mind game.
I often joke that rather than call it time or money management, we should call it mind management. Rather than referring to weight loss, we need to focus on urge control. Instead of home organization, we really need mind organization.
So, if you’re ready to get more done and achieve your goals, here’s how to have self-control and learn to practice self-mastery.
Self-Mastery Starts in the Brain
Everything we do starts in our heads. Our brains send signals to our limbs to move. Our words originate as thoughts. Our relationships and connections are all based on our judgments and the inner workings of our minds as well.
Often, we may think we can control the outer structures of our life (our house, our money, our weight loss) by following a system or a to-do list. This line of thinking is deceptive because it often works for a while. However, we need to get our brain on board to really make weight loss, home organization, money management, following our calendar, or ANY other routine stick.
Getting our brain on board is the biggest trick to achieving anything, but self-mastery is usually the step we skip or don’t even realize we need to take. Sometimes it feels the harder we try, the more our brains work against us.
Honestly, nobody ever told me that as soon as I tried to stay within my budget, my brain would start to convince me I needed those cute shoes because they’re on sale (and no, they aren’t in the budget). No one ever mentioned that when I resolved to stop eating ice cream before bed, ice cream would be the only thing on my mind every night.
We may find that when we finally sit down to organize our schedule or when we get out the boxes and bags to organize our closet, we’re suddenly completely overwhelmed. The task seems insurmountable, and we aren’t sure where to begin, so instead, we stop.
You see, our subconscious likes familiarity, predictability, routine, and ease (especially ease). Our minds work really hard to keep our patterns going, even if they aren’t good for us in the long run. So your “adult brain” really knows learning self-control is important. Your subconscious brain, or “toddler brain,” will do everything possible to hold onto your current patterns. The familiar is easy, and it feels good right now (even if it’s not great in the long run).
How to Have Self-Control: Break Patterns
There are three steps to learning self-control. If we want to know how to have self-discipline, we can start here.
- Decide what you want to change.
Sometimes you’re not sure what you want to change or why. But ask yourself, what changes are you hoping to make? How do you feel when you imagine making this change? Think long and hard about it—what will your life look like once you’ve achieved self-mastery of this skill? Finally, do you really believe you can make this change? (You can!)
- Align your thinking with your goal.
Once you’ve figured out what you want to change, it’s time to align your thinking with the goal. What do you think about your goal or about the new change you wish to make? Are these thoughts really moving you in the direction that you want to go? (For example, are these thoughts self-defeating, or are they kind, nurturing, and motivating, taking into account your value and worth?)
If you realize that you’re not thinking about the desired change in a way that fuels your fire, you might need to adjust your approach. Aim to find real, motivational thoughts and genuine reasons why this goal is achievable and moreover why you want it.
- Take consistent action to prove your thinking true.
Once we truly believe in the goal we want to achieve, our toddler brain will go to great lengths to prove our line of thinking true. The truth is proven by taking daily action—as we see our goal start to move closer and closer, we affirm for ourselves that it IS, in fact, achievable, and we CAN do it. As we begin to practice self-control and discipline in our thinking, we’ll be building self-mastery.
What is Our Purpose
As we’re taught in 2 Nephi 2:25, We are that we might have joy. Our purpose on Earth is to progress, grow, and experience happiness. As children of God, we know this to be true, but sometimes we might feel as though we’re getting in our own way.
Setting and accomplishing goals, self-mastery, and positive changes are essential parts of our purpose in life. As we work to overcome weaknesses, we develop our God-given talents. We align ourselves with activities and situations that will help us feel happier, more accomplished, and more settled. Through self-mastery, we become better versions of ourselves—stronger, more capable, and wiser. We can use these new strengths to bless our own lives and the lives of those around us.
I want to add a note about overcoming weakness here. As a warning—don’t spend so much time looking for your weaknesses to “fix” that you forget how amazing you are! It’s all too easy to see what’s wrong with us and forget about everything that’s right! When we seek to change, we will have the most success when the change comes from a place of love for ourselves. We cannot hate ourselves into being better (but that’s a subject we’ll go deeper into at another time).
You may think this all sounds good in theory, but how do I actually achieve self-mastery? How do I learn self-control, and how do I develop self-discipline?
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