Control Your Impulses & Gain Confidence
By Barry Michels
In the Soul Diving video, Self-Restraint Sets You Free, I spoke about how self-restraint—controlling your urges and impulses—can paradoxically set you free. In addition to freedom, there is a second benefit we don’t normally associate with self-restraint: it builds confidence.
What do self-restraint and confidence have to do with each other? That’s what this post and video is about.
You already know the answer to this intuitively. Every one of you, myself included, has gone through the experience of making New Year's resolutions and not keeping them. Think about it. On New Year's Day, if I say, “This year I'm going to cut down on sugar and carbs,” and on January 3rd I start eating donuts, how confident can I be in myself?
A big part of being self-confident is having credibility with yourself. Do you believe you will carry out the commitments you make to yourself?
If the answer to that question is yes, you're going to be confident regardless of how much you achieve or don't achieve in life.
“It is mathematically impossible to be confident if you can't trust yourself to carry out the commitments you make to yourself.”
—BARRY MICHELS
But most people have to admit the truth, which is that if they make a commitment, they’re good for a couple of days . . . maybe. After a week, they have stopped completely, and eventually they forget they even made the commitment. If you had an employee who was that unreliable, you'd fire him on the spot!
It is mathematically impossible to be confident if you can't trust yourself to carry out the commitments you make to yourself. So when you give into impulses, you destroy your confidence.
Leonardo da Vinci put this beautifully: “You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than what you have over yourself. The height of a person's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment.”
If you're interested in more on this subject, learn more about the Black Sun Tool. Also check out my Google Talk, The Tools to Transform Your Problems Into Courage, for a more detailed dive into this connection between self-restraint, confidence, and freedom.
