Self-control, as per its definition, is the “the ability to control oneself, in particular, one’s emotions and desires in different situations.” Self-control is determined in terms of the ability to control our anger, wait for the right time to say or do certain things, wait for our dreams to get fulfilled, satisfy our needs or even see our phones when we want to or not as an immediate gratification fulfilment.
This reminds me of the time when I took up a one-day challenge of switching off my phone for 24 hours. I wanted to test my self-control, and turns out, I was successful. Of course, phones have become so important for most of us that we cannot keep away from it completely. Perhaps, we can find an alternate solution to keep ourselves away from our phones, for instance, for a few hours?
That is when I realised that self-control is something that we all are unaware of within us, so it is important to test how much of it do we have within us. Similarly, during this pandemic, due to so much stress and loneliness, many of us succumb to depending on alcohol for washing away our miseries. This is where we lose our self-control due to being so drained in the sadness. Here’s the catch: we ensure that in these difficult times, we don’t lose ourselves in the process.
Anger is an emotion that is dominant in many of us. At times, this emotion drains us mentally, so self-control is important in order to manage this powerful, scary and dark emotion. It’s challenging to control our anger in many situations. Whenever you feel like you are getting angry, just breathe before you say or do anything irrational.
Another situation where we require to use self-control is in our sexual urges. Of course, everyone has urges and it’s totally normal to have them. Sadly, due to the current circumstances, we must control these urges until we have at least some level of protection from the virus.
Due to general illiteracy and lack of awareness of sex education, many of us are unable to control these urges, i.e. we show a lack of self-control that sometimes gets manifested in the form of sexual assault, harassment or rape. This is surely no excuse. If we do not control ourselves, then it’ll eventually lead to pain and suffering. To conclude,
“If you learn self-control, you can master anything.” — Anonymous