Chapter 33 Appendix (1)
Self-Control Lesson 18: The Self-Improvement Handbook
Self-Control Lesson 1 Discovering Self-Control Disorders
At the beginning of the course, we need to do a "mine-sweeping" test on ourselves, so as to find out what problems exist in our lives, so as to determine the reasons that hinder the normal development of self-control.If the following phenomena are appearing in your body—even if they are not frequent, as long as more than one-third of the phenomena exist in your life, we can confirm that you already have a serious obstacle to self-control.

Course requirements: a quiet environment, such as a bedroom (after ten o'clock in the evening), and a company rest room (when no one disturbs you).

Course method: Enter the state of meditation, recall your performance in the past month, and re-screen your behavior.

Class time: 10 minutes or more.

False Hope: "You're always vowing to make a change and thinking it's a sign of willpower."

A: I have an awesome plan that, if I put it into practice, will fundamentally change my life tomorrow.

B: Things are getting better, although not yet, but I believe it will change after a while. C: She (he) will love me, because I have given a lot.

D: The performance of the company will improve. The peak season is coming soon. Maybe a big customer will contact me soon.

E: As long as I want to do it, I can do it [-]% well, so don't worry about the future.The future is full of hope and completely within my control.

Self-satisfaction: "bury your head in the sand and imagine that you have been very successful in something." A: Generally, people who like to entertain have a strong desire for self-satisfaction.

B: Even if I have made a little progress, I like to show off to my friends, and even exaggerate the facts.

C: Stop after completing 70% of the work, feel that it is not easy for me to complete these, and then leave the work behind and go to rest or entertainment.

D: I have no pursuit of life goals. I think it is good to continue like this, so I ignore the opportunity when it is in front of me.

Hedonic Mindset: "Invariably exhibits a state of ignorance about crises, prioritizing personal freedom and temporary enjoyment."

A: There is still time, and the problem is small. I can wait a little longer and watch TV (surfing the Internet) for a while. B: There must be a way for a car to reach the mountain. Even if things are troublesome, so what?There is no need to worry now, it will always be resolved.

C: I hate work taking up my rest time.I want to live every minute well, and I don't want to have a headache because of work.To know that today I have tea with friends (and go to the movies with my girlfriend), there is nothing more important than that.

D: In general, the hedonic mentality is generally manifested as: attaching great importance to the quality of personal life and ignoring responsibilities to work, society or others.

Sudden change in mood: "Inadvertently, the mood rises and the temper is short-tempered."

A: Suddenly angry, such as when shopping, talking or doing common things with my partner, I often lose my temper for no reason.

B: Changes in the weather can also easily make me restless.

C: Seeing that other people's actions do not meet their own requirements, even though it has nothing to do with them, they will feel upset, and bring bad moods into their lives to hurt the people around them.

D: For women, there are other manifestations of sudden emotional changes: too easy to cry, sentimental and impulsive behavior.

Compensation mechanism: "In order to obtain something or a certain thing, it is not obtained in the end, and another form is used instead."

A: The purpose of doing this is to reduce the anxiety in the heart, so the common manifestation of this disorder is that the heart is often anxious.

B: When a person fails to lose weight, he tends to become addicted to eating in a short period of time to make up for the "injury" he suffered after losing weight.

C: When watching a movie, some people will unconsciously make psychological compensation for the breaks between the screens of the movie based on their daily life experience, so as to realize watching movies and TV.That is, I often imagine plots that do not exist in the movie to satisfy my perfect imagination of the movie.This characteristic of the compensation mechanism is very clearly reflected in the extended discussion of a movie by a large number of fans on Twitter or on the Internet.

Fear: "Nervous tension, full of fear."

A: Don't dare to engage in a certain job, and avoid it until it is irretrievable.

B: I don’t want to meet a certain person, hesitate and entangle before meeting, worry about the process of meeting, worry that I am not perfect enough, and be underestimated by him (she).

C: I am full of boredom and fear of life, such as the feeling that I am afraid that today will end, or that I will start tomorrow.

Everyone has a similar experience.For people with strong self-control, they are always fleeting, and they are snuffed out as soon as they sprout.This exemplifies healthy restorative abilities and excellent emotional control.For people with weak self-control, it is a completely different situation: once they appear, they will take root in your mind, and then dominate and control your behavior, affecting your life from time to time every day, and more and more frequently.When you find yourself in the latter case, we can make it clear: the following lessons are of great significance to you, and you should read them carefully and practice according to the instructions in your life until they are completely expelled from your body .

Self-Control Lesson 2 Healing Loss of Control

In Lesson 2, we first let ourselves understand the current real situation by asking: "What is my strongest point?"

"What is my weakest point?" "Is what I am doing good for me?" "What is the probability of success for what I want?" Wish to move forward?"

These questions can help you face your real situation.At the beginning of the course, you must know your true self first, then you can find out the reasons for your loss of control and prescribe the right medicine.For example, we figure out whether there is a problem with the goal or the method, and then make targeted improvements.Afterwards, we strengthened them separately to increase our self-control ability in life and avoid the occurrence of out-of-control behaviors.

Ability to establish firmness towards goals
Not only must you have goals, but you must also have correct and reasonable goals.When you find that there is no problem with the goal, you must strengthen your confidence, and the motivation generated in this way is valuable, otherwise you may fall into a state of powerlessness and busy work, and it is difficult to avoid losing control of your life.With confidence in the correct goal and motivation, you will not be anxious about trivial matters.Even if you have some bad emotions, you will overcome them quickly, because your energy has been fully focused on the goal.

Training method: ideal role-playing games——enhance your sense of entry into the target role.

Imagine that you are engaged in the most suitable and valuable career, and it is best that it is the job you are doing, so as to cultivate a sense of mission in your heart and inspire infinite fighting spirit.In this state, quickly sort out the clues and clarify the current problems and solutions.When these scenes are displayed in a clear picture, our grasp of things will increase and our confidence will become stronger.

Increased impulse control
Even a person with strong self-control will have impulsive moments.For example, when we see a soda can on the ground, we suddenly want to kick it with our feet (no matter what the occasion, we will inevitably have this idea); when we see someone buy a new fashion mobile phone, we immediately want one, etc.Such impulses are often detrimental to demeanor or produce unnecessary expenditures, so there is a need to control them.

How to cultivate this impulse control ability?

Specific clothing: In addition to explaining the disadvantages of impulsiveness to yourself, you can also use the "clothing modification method" in training to solve it.Psychologists have done experiments and found that different clothing has corresponding changes in our psychology.So when you are impulsive, you can arrange some suggestive clothing such as "calm" and "quiet" for yourself, such as wearing bows and suspenders.Wear certain clothes as casual clothes at home to improve impulsiveness.For example, when you really want to go shopping the next day, you can put on home clothes and slippers, deliberately do not wash your hair or make a facial mask to increase the barriers to going out and control the urge to go shopping.When similar things are repeated three to five times, you will find that your similar impulses have been relieved.

Slow down: This training does not take too long, just like a game every day, set yourself to slow down the speed of speaking and activities within 30 minutes, and explain this, as time goes by, we are impulsive. Time will naturally be alert.

Silence training: When you are eager to join the discussion or even quarrel about a certain issue, immediately silence yourself and don't join the "battle situation".Even when someone invites you or targets you, force yourself to remain silent for at least 10 minutes each time.After ten minutes, you will find that you have no interest in debating or arguing.

Self-sustainability while maintaining passion

Passion is an instinctual range of emotions that everyone possesses, including ecstasy, euphoria, burning love, etc.People who are excited are also the most likely to lose control of their emotions.Things that are too exciting and passionate will arouse his madness or make them inattentive.However, most people don't think it's a harmful emotion and try to dispel it.They often don't realize how important it is to train on this, so most of people's gaffes occur when passion is overwhelming.

Meditation: In addition to analyzing the adverse effects of the out-of-control behavior during passion and clarifying the harmfulness of this behavior, we might as well do some meditation training.For example, sit quietly with friends for 20 minutes every Sunday, which will help you quickly calm down after emotional agitation.When meditating, we can choose a quiet place, such as the balcony in the afternoon, the study room or the yoga studio are all very good places.

Growing flowers: "Growing flowers" is just a general term for this training method. You should cultivate similar and relatively static hobbies, such as making tea and playing chess are one of the options.You must stick to this habit and become an important hobby in your life, rather than short-term training for utilitarian purposes (although there will be some effect, but when you stop insisting, the effect will disappear).

Visual edification: Through home decorations (such as calming landscape paintings), let yourself calm down.

Cultivate patience with desire

Everyone has desires, but not all desires should be fulfilled or satisfied immediately.If people want to properly suppress their desires, they will not get angry when many desires fail. This can also help them develop more far-sighted thinking, instead of being kidnapped by immediate interests and desires.

If you find that you really can’t control your desires, such as some children, if they want ice cream, they must get it immediately, or if you are very eager to go to a nightclub at two o’clock in the morning to indulge, then deal with it appropriately, otherwise the consequences will be serious. Very serious.Because some desires are illegitimate, and some desires require delayed gratification.

Take a clear stance: To build this capacity, you cannot pamper yourself first.When desire arises, you must have a clear stand, satisfy what should be satisfied, and learn to reject yourself.

Balance beam training: By walking on the balance beam (10 minutes a day), cultivate yourself to suppress desires from balance gains and losses.If you don't have the conditions at home or nearby, you can also buy a football for dribbling practice, and train yourself to control the ball by balancing the center of gravity, so that you know how to choose.

Strengthen your empathy

Empathy ability refers to our ability to understand and communicate with other people's feelings. Training this ability can help us understand and accept others, so that we can properly handle all kinds of bad emotions that arise when we get along with groups.

Situational practice: In self-control classes, we take a more relaxed approach to developing this ability.In the training center in Los Angeles, we let the trainees play the facial expression game, divided into two groups, A and B. Group A set a situation, and asked group B to make the appropriate expressions of the characters; after that, it was the turn of group B to set, It's up to Group A to do it.The game is not mandatory, it has the nature of observation, our course consultants are watching closely, recording the performance of each group and each student, so as to judge which areas they should improve.

We also often analyze with students how people would feel in different situations.In addition, in personal course training, the best way is to encourage yourself to selectively make more friends, so that you can gain more experience about other people's emotions, so as to increase mutual understanding.

Keeping pets: This is an optional method. To get along with pets, you can cultivate your love, caring and other sentiments.But this method requires you to have certain conditions: plenty of time, money, and you have enough patience (it can also be obtained from the process of taking care of pets).

Train your optimistic association ability

It refers to our ability to strengthen optimistic associations when we encounter difficulties.If we do not have this ability, or if this ability is not strong, we will easily lose confidence in the face of difficulties, and our negative emotions will become stronger and stronger, so that we cannot control our emotions.

Build confidence: Whether a person is optimistic or not is related to their confidence in the future.To make yourself confident, you should give yourself sufficient life support, including necessities for life, spiritual encouragement and attention.In doing things, we must be fully prepared, and then start to act after we have strong and firm self-confidence, so that we will not easily fall into trouble and fundamentally avoid difficulties.

Watch more comedies: You can watch more comedies (movies and TV shows), read humorous novels, and subtly make yourself used to face everything happily.

For example, in the course, we recommend students to watch the family comedy "Everybody Loves Raymond" to help them face their out-of-control family life with an optimistic attitude.

Let yourself have the ability to dispel worries

All over the world, worry is natural.You worry a lot, and I often get caught up in worries that seem terrible.However, excessive or long-term worry will cause many bad emotions in oneself, leading to out-of-control behavior and going off track.Even, when the situation is serious, it can cause physical diseases.Therefore, cultivating the ability in this area and the ability to dispel worries is also a very important part of the self-control course.

Starting from the psychological aspect: The enhancement of the ability to dispel worries mainly starts from the psychological aspect.Usually, you can't put too much pressure on yourself. If you find yourself worrying too much about the gains and losses of things, you should let yourself look away.You can instill in yourself more concepts such as "realistic gains and losses are uncertain" and "value orientation diversification" in your life, so that you can understand and eliminate worries.

Create a plan to solve the problem: The most effective way is to guide yourself to face your worries head-on, and take responsibility instead of avoiding it.When a problem occurs, you have to arrange a solution plan immediately, so as to eliminate the worry in your heart and prevent it from growing excessively in your body and making you feel at a loss.

Give Yourself a Powerful, Quick Transfer Ability in Desperate Times
The desperation that arises when a crisis comes is because most people take the current problem too seriously.Although adults seldom feel hopeless, if they find themselves looking too negative in everything, appropriate counseling and training are necessary.This training helps us shift stress in our lives and prevent negative emotions and behaviors from flourishing.

Attention shifting: When necessary, you need to know how to temporarily place your attention elsewhere. This is attention shifting.You can use some people or things that can support you to make them the object of transfer, such as parents, close friends, brothers and sisters, groups, and even the toys you liked when you were young, and the virtual substances that you usually pay special attention to—such as Internet hobbies.

Cultivate your own group communication skills: participate in more beneficial social activities and make friends.This can not only transfer the pressure, but also solve the practical problems encountered in life through the increase of contacts, and let your contacts help you release the pressure.

Participate in more recreational activities and physical exercise: In similar activities, despair can be diverted, emotions can be released, and confidence can be enhanced.

Reading should become a regular habit of yours: it calms the mind and allows you to learn from the experiences of others.When reading, it can not only relieve our stress, but also improve our state of mind, broaden our horizons, and enhance our ability to resist stress.

Self-control Lesson 3 Emotional Management Training

Course description: In the actual training of the self-control course, emotional management is to do relaxation exercises.Purposeful relaxation exercises allow the body to relax, and also provide a channel for the release of our accumulated emotions.Therefore, emotion management training is essentially a process of "releasing bad emotions".

Course Method: Breathing and relaxation exercises for the body.

Diaphragmatic deep breathing exercises
This training is to use the diaphragmatic muscle part to do deep breathing exercises.The diaphragm is a large muscle under the lungs, spreads forward to the lower part of the ribs, and spreads back to the back.If there is nothing wrong with the diaphragm, when you inhale, the abdomen bulges; when you exhale, the abdomen tightens.Most people breathe through the chest cavity rather than the abdomen.Chest breathing is small, while abdominal breathing is deep.Deep breathing means that the abdomen is full of gas, and the whole body gets more oxygen, which is the abdominal breathing method mentioned in yoga.Babies breathe like this.

With each inhale, your diaphragm expands and your belly bulges; with each exhale, your belly tightens.If you have no difficulty, place one hand on your belly so you can feel the movement of the diaphragm.

Continue to breathe, breathing slowly and steadily.

Inhale once for the count of four... 1, 2, 3, 4, then exhale.Then count to eight and exhale once.

Do the above process repeatedly, and the time for each time is not fixed, and you can do it for about 10 minutes each time.If you feel uncomfortable, you can stop temporarily, adjust the rhythm later, and start again, because this means that you have discovered your own problem-you are in a bad mood.

(End of this chapter)

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like