Self-control is Strength. Calmness is Mastery. You – Tymoff – 10 Powerful Reasons

I was looking for a positive motivation to guide myself on the path to serenity and while scrolling through the internet, I came across a powerful life quote that says, Self-control is Strength. Calmness is Mastery. You – Tymoff.

The person who recognizes the importance of self-control and calmness in life will be able to understand this quote better. These two traits hold significant meaning on their own, and the main purpose of this article is to understand them and the relationship between the two. We will also grasp why self-control is strength and calmness is mastery. So, I request you to read the entire article and stay tuned till the end because it will cover many popular and thought-provoking topics.

What is Self-Control or Self-Discipline?

When we talk about self-control, it’s important to understand that it is very closely related to your emotions. While we will discuss emotions in detail in a separate blog post, in this article, whenever we talk about self-control or self-discipline, we are mostly talking about controlling your emotions and feelings.

I believe emotions are what make us human. If we didn’t have emotions, there would be no difference between us and a programmed machine. Having emotions and feelings is good because they give us a purpose in life, and because of them, we stay connected with our near and dear ones and care for each other.

Emotions teach you how to live, help you understand the difference between right and wrong, and make you a responsible individual. Without these emotions, perhaps our lives would have no purpose, and we might not be able to imagine how the world would look without emotions and feelings.

But it is important to understand that if we emphasize the importance of having these emotions, why are we then talking about controlling them? Our body has certain senses that make us aware of the pleasures and pains of the world, and these senses are inherent from birth. Keeping these senses under our control is what teaches us self-control and self-discipline.

Because of our senses, we become attached to the world, which leads us to experience both good and bad things in life. These experiences develop our sentiments and emotions, which in turn create a unique perspective towards the world. Often, there is a human tendency to hold on to experiences that bring us happiness, not wanting to let go of those moments. On the other hand, we want to quickly forget the experiences that we consider bad, as enduring them becomes beyond our capacity to tolerate.

When you can remain emotionally stable in moments of happiness by staying focused on your goals, and also keep striving without losing hope or giving up in times of adversity until you reach your destination, then you have learned to control your emotions.

Self-control or self-discipline means directly controlling your emotions and feelings in any situation or circumstance, not letting them overpower you, and in such situations, listening to your mind instead of your heart is called self-control. When you have self-control over yourself, you don’t let your emotions flow freely, nor do you let them dominate you, which weakens your morale.

How to Establish or Improve Self-Control or Self-Descipline?

Advising on establishing or improving self-control is as easy as it is difficult to follow that advice yourself. You’ll come across plenty of people who will advise on this topic, in-fact, some of the bits of advice might be things you already know, yet you still don’t follow them knowingly. However, if you pay attention to the points below, you will surely be able to establish or improve your self-control or self-discipline.

1. Be Focussed: Being focused is crucial in life if you want to have self-control over your emotions. Focus means having certain goals in your life that are your main priorities, and if you are unable to control your emotions and feelings, then achieving those goals can become difficult. When you stay focused, you automatically think of eliminating all the distractions that are hindering the achievement of those goals.
2. Divert from Distractions: Self-control means avoiding distractions that weigh heavily on your emotions and sentiments. Try to divert your mind towards activities that make you more productive and focused, and make a conscious effort to completely avoid distractions that derail your focus from your goals. The best way to do this is when you feel tempted towards those distractions, have something that can pause and force you to reconsider your choices.
3. Meditate: Emotional overflow often occurs due to having various thoughts running through your mind, which prevents your mind from focusing on one thing. When your mind is filled with so many things, it becomes challenging to judge right from wrong, and you start thinking more about your emotions than your mind. This emphasizes the importance of meditation, which helps you control your thoughts. We’ll discuss this in detail in upcoming articles.
4. Avoid Temptations: Avoid anything that can undermine your self-control level, whether it’s a distraction or a triggering activity that prevents you from exercising self-control. The best way to do it is to force yourself not to do that thing or have someone who stops you from those temptations. You need to do something that prevents you from facing those triggering points or creates a situation where those trigger points don’t affect you.
5. Fortify Your Mind: To practice self-control, it’s essential to have a strong mind. You’ll need to start engaging in activities that strengthen your mind, challenge yourself with tasks that are important to complete, and gradually increase the difficulty level of these tasks. It’s important to set aside emotions and develop an analytical and logical mindset where you analyze everything in detail and think in a multidimensional way. Exercise your mind and improve your level of self-control.
6. Change Habits: To achieve self-control, it is very important to change your habits. Usually, our habits are part of our daily routine, which we follow consistently. When something becomes part of our routine, it becomes very difficult to change. In such cases, it’s necessary to change the habits that are preventing you from achieving self-control. To do this, you need to create a schedule in which you replace bad habits with good ones that will make you more productive. Sticking to this schedule will become an important goal for you.
7. Set Milestones: Obviously, you cannot achieve self-control overnight or in a few months; it is an improvement that you will gradually gain. It’s not about working on self-control for a few days and then giving up. Your achievements should be measurable, and the only way to measure them is by setting milestones. These milestones should be challenging, and their level should gradually increase. You should reward yourself after reaching a milestone, but do not let your emotions overpower you. Instead, focus on preparing for the next checkpoint.
8. Read and Learn: To achieve self-control, your mind needs to be enlightened. You should read and learn from things that motivate you to control your emotions. When we read about something, we discover aspects that can significantly help us become more resilient. Therefore, eliminating distractions and gaining knowledge is more beneficial in mastering self-control. You can only make it your strength when you understand it thoroughly, inside and out.
9. Prioritize Other Things: We often fail to control our emotions because we give them more value compared to other priorities in life. When you lack self-control, numerous thoughts keep running through your mind, consuming all your time. In such circumstances, it’s important to prioritize other significant things, which you can only do when those things matter to you. This is why having goals in life is crucial; they prevent you from getting distracted and keep you focused.
10. Weigh Benefits: Another motivational factor for achieving self-control is considering its benefits and cons. Identify idols and role models for yourself and follow those who have already achieved this level of self-control. Gradually, you will notice a positive change in your thinking, which will motivate you to attain self-control. When you are under the right influence, your grooming aligns in that direction, and your mentality develops accordingly.

Why Self-Control is Strength?

Below are 10 powerful reasons that make self-discipline your core strength:

1. Teaches You Patience: Self-control teaches you patience, which is crucial to maintain in any challenging situation. When you learn to control your emotions and feelings, your behavior automatically becomes more composed. This helps you use your mind more than your emotions when making decisions. Consequently, you don’t let your emotions overpower you and you make thoughtful and well-considered choices.
2. Control on Emotions and Desires: Controlling your emotions is a very difficult task, and those who learn to do so become internally stronger and emotionally resilient. Often, our emotions and desires can become significant distractions during important moments in life. However, if we learn to control them, we can use these emotions as a source of strength during tough times. We just need to know how to use our emotions at the right time and not let them overpower us.
3. Improved Focus: When you learn to control your emotions, your focus on your goals also increases. You can easily tackle distractions and obstacles that come your way and think more logically about things. Your attention shifts from multiple distractions to priority items, and you can better decide what is right and wrong in those matters.
4. Prioritize Things: When you start using your mind more than your heart, you can better prioritize things in your life. You understand the importance of time and where you need to stay focused at that moment. Self-control teaches you to manage your emotions, allowing you to pay attention to things that you might otherwise not give due importance to.
5. Calculated Decisions: Your decision-making ability also improves significantly because you start thinking logically and analytically rather than emotionally. You take an interest in understanding the situation and try to think about it from every angle, putting emotions aside and considering it multi-dimensionally. In this way, your decisions are never biased or driven by emotions; instead, they are calculated and support the best possible scenario.
6. Handles Stress: By gaining control over your emotions, handling stress and tension becomes much easier because you prevent your emotions from overflowing in challenging situations. Self-control teaches you to act patiently in tough situations and prevents you from making hasty decisions. When you have self-control, you remain calm and composed even in difficult situations, which naturally helps you manage stress effectively and make the right decisions.
7. Non-Greedy: With self-discipline and control over your emotions, you don’t develop greed for anything. You manage your desires well and don’t let your emotions overpower you in fulfilling them. You don’t get attached to things, and you can live comfortably with just the bare minimum necessities. Anything beyond the basic necessities becomes a delight for you, and you learn to live without them as well.
8. Improved Health and Wellbeing: By controlling your emotions, your mental health and emotional well-being improve significantly. You don’t overreact in any situation and handle everything peacefully and calmly. Your stress levels are reduced, and you become well-prepared to face any situation. Your focus on your goals remains strong, and distractions can’t easily disrupt them.
9. Manage Challenging Situations: Self-control helps you face challenging situations where it is essential to use your mind more than your heart. When you have control over your emotions, you can think about dealing with the situation logically, which helps you brainstorm many ideas. By keeping your emotions in check, you can prepare for outcomes that you might not have considered otherwise.
10. Self-Regulation: Self-control teaches you to handle yourself in tough situations and move forward. It teaches that both joy and sorrow are temporary and spending too much time on either is futile. It’s important to stay focused on your goals and progress in life, rather than getting carried away by emotions in moments of happiness or getting too disheartened in moments of sorrow.

Calmness is Mastery – The Art of Emotion Control

Staying calm in moments of chaos is the greatest mastery. Often, in tough situations, we hesitate and, in that anxiety, we make mistakes that worsen the situation. I think practicing calmness is the most important skill, and mastering this skill should be a life goal for all of us.

Imagine you are stuck in a situation where everything is going against your expectations, and you slowly start losing your patience. In such a situation, there will be a moment when you will completely lose your patience, leading to an emotional outburst. After that, you won’t have any idea what to do. However, one thing is certain: there is a high chance that instead of controlling the situation, it can become even worse.

Speaking of calmness, what is calmness? It’s the highest form of self-control over your emotions. When you become so skilled at controlling your emotions that you never let them overpower you, you reach the mastery level of calmness. 

You might have noticed that when we are tense in a situation, we often end up making mistakes because, at that moment, we are not fully using our minds. In tense situations, if your emotions overpower you, you lose control over yourself and cannot understand what is happening to you. In such situations, the chances of things getting worse increase.

Stress, tension, and pressure are all overbursts of emotions that overpower your mind. If you do not let these emotions overpower you and remain calm in challenging circumstances, you can tackle these tricky situations with much more ease.

When we talk about self-control, it involves learning to control your emotions and keeping them in check. As you gradually master the control of your emotions, you also start reaching a level of calmness. Essentially, the more you exercise self-control, the more you gradually master calmness. Therefore, understanding this interrelationship between self-control and calmness is quite important.

You can also relate a calm state to meditation. Usually, when you meditate, you let go of all the thoughts running through your mind and focus solely on your breath until your entire attention is centered on it. Gradually, your focus shifts from your breath to other parts of your mind and body, and amidst all this, the numerous thoughts in your mind disappear on their own, and you find yourself in a peaceful state.

After mastering calmness, we do the same thing. In any tense situation, the thousands of thoughts and emotions that trigger in your mind, you learn to control them to such an extent that they become as insignificant as a small amount of stress, and you can use your entire thinking to deal with the situation logically and tactfully. When you can do this, finding a solution-oriented outcome for the situation becomes easier, and all your energy remains focused only on one thing.

How Do You Master Calmness?

The biggest thing in all of this is how you achieve this greatness, right? How do you master calmness? What can you do to keep yourself calm in any situation? To answer this I have provided some points below, If you follow them religiously, it will help you achieve the highest level of calmness.

1. Meditation: Meditation is the foremost and most beneficial way to master calmness. As I explained earlier, through meditation, you try to focus your attention on just one thing at a time, which helps other thoughts in your mind naturally fade away, making you feel calm and composed.
2. Enough Sleep: When we let our emotions take control of us, it significantly affects our sleep, and it’s quite obvious that when sleep remains incomplete, irritability is inevitable. If you want to achieve mastery in calmness, the first thing to do is improve your sleep schedule. Aim for at least 7-8 hours of sleep and avoid using electronic devices at least half an hour before bedtime and after you wake up. Try to ensure that your mind is completely free before sleeping, and for this, I highly recommend a short night walk after dinner.
3. Healthy Diet: Start having a healthy diet, and avoid foods that increase your blood pressure or cholesterol levels. Enjoy all vegetables and eat only as much as you need. Keep your stomach around 80% full after meals, and avoid overeating. Remember to eat to live, not live to eat.
4. Exercise: This is a very important factor in achieving calmness. When you create a schedule and exercise daily, discipline automatically comes to you. And here, exercise doesn’t just mean building the body muscle but also keeping yourself fit. I recommend that you at least run 1 km daily. Running teaches you to balance your mind and pushes you beyond your potential.
5. Connect with Nature: Step out of social media and connect with nature. Go for a morning walk before sunrise and experience the morning’s tranquility. The chirping of birds and the gentle rays of the sun make you calm and composed. Dedicate this time in the morning just for yourself, and while enjoying the beauty of nature, you can also plan your daily routine.
6. Set No Expectations: Don’t keep any expectations from anyone. Where there are expectations, many times you may also have to face disappointment, and experiencing disappointment means an outburst of emotions. In such cases, don’t allow yourself to feel disappointed. Adopt the mindset that things will remain as they are, and there’s no benefit in thinking about what will happen in the future. Keep your focus on your goals.
7. Practice Forgiveness: Learn to forgive others; there’s no benefit in holding grudges. Forgiving others allows you to release the emotions trapped inside you, so learn to forgive, forget, and move on. This is truly a good way to move forward in life. When you forgive someone, you feel lighter inside and don’t hold anything against them, which is very important for achieving mastery in calmness.
8. Learn to Let Go: You need to learn to let go of certain things; it’s essential to understand that attaching yourself to something without reason brings no benefit. It only increases your stress and leads to facing disappointment. You can achieve calmness only when you have control over your stress and tension levels. If you remain attached to things and hold grudges against them in your mind, sooner or later, there will be an emotional outburst. That’s why learn to let go.
9. Gain Knowledge: Absolutely! Keep learning something new every day and maintain curiosity. Knowledge is indeed power, happiness, and a path to mastering calmness. Develop a curious mindset and show interest in things that can improve you. Approach tasks with dedication, whether big or small and enrich yourself with knowledge.
10. Be Kind: Lastly, become a good person and treat others well. Don’t expect that if you treat others well, they will treat you the same way. Not everyone in the world is equal. If you want to achieve mastery in calmness, everyone doesn’t need to have the same intention. Respect all living beings, whether animals, humans, or anything else. Maintain patience in your nature and appreciate the beauty of the world.

Conclusion

To Conclude, Self-control is Strength. Calmness is Mastery. as it makes you internally strong and emotionally stable. Self-control isn’t just about controlling your emotions and impulses but also about using them in the right place to build your power. While calmness is about achieving the highest form of self-control.

There are many ways you can improve your self-discipline and strengthen it, with the most beneficial and efficient being meditation, which teaches you how to focus. Ultimately, self-discipline teaches you patience and how to stay focused in life, enabling you to effectively manage stress and improve your overall health and well-being. When you start mastering self-control, you will gradually also learn to master calmness and that’s the beautiful interrelation between the two.