Practical Ways to Build Self-Control in Your Daily Routine (10 Tips)

Self-control means being able to control your emotions, thoughts, and behavior despite what is happening around you. You are in charge of your wants and actions. Self-control can affect how you live your life every day.

Building self-control is important because it allows you to reach your goals faster. It also helps you make better decisions and feel your best.

When you exercise self-control, you are saying no to what you want now and choosing what is better for you in the long run. If you want to eat healthier but want to eat junk food, you can control your desires and choose not to eat junk food. As a result, you will feel better and be healthier.

People who have self-control save their money instead of spending it. Students with self-control do their school work instead of surfing the web. When you have self-control, you say no to things that aren’t good for you and your body.

10 Ways To Improve Self-Control In Your Everyday Life Routine

1. Set Goals

Setting goals can help you start working on your self-control. When you set goals for your life, you give yourself direction when you feel like life is moving all over the place. Goals can help you focus on where you want to be in life.

When you set goals for yourself, you want to be as specific as possible. You should avoid saying things like “I want to eat healthier.” Instead, you can say something like “I will eat four servings of fruit and vegetables a day.”

You should measure your progress when trying to reach your goal. You can look back at where you started and where you are now and see if you need to improve any areas. Maybe you haven’t been eating enough vegetables, so you can buy more vegetables next time you go to the grocery store.

Tracking your progress can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. You can buy a journal or use an app on your phone. You can also set up monthly goals and give yourself rewards when you achieve them. By looking back at how far you’ve come will help you build up self-control when you’re feeling down.

2. Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the state of being aware of your thoughts and feelings in the present. Mindfulness is a hot topic these days and has been proven to help people increase their self-control. Being mindful can help you stop acting on impulse and help you make better decisions.

One way to practice mindfulness is by meditating. Take five minutes and focus on your breathing or a positive mantra. Meditation can help your mind become aware of your impulses and feel them pass without giving into them. Building this skill will allow you to have more self-regulation, which can help you with self-control.

Breathing exercises can help you become more mindful as well. Take some time to focus on your breathing. Try taking deep breaths in and slow breaths out. When you breathe deeply, you are sending more oxygen to your brain.

When you are focused on your breathing and sending more oxygen to your brain, you can think more clearly. You will be less likely to panic and start making rash decisions. Building this skill can help you make better choices instead of acting on impulse.

3. Create A Daily Routine

Creating a routine can help you have more self-control. When you create a routine for your day, you will feel less overwhelmed. You will already have a plan set in place for most of your day. You will make far fewer decisions, which will save you tons of self-control for bigger decisions.

Think about what you want to get out of life. Do you want to be more productive at work? Do you want to be more physical? Maybe you want to start eating healthier. These are all goals that you can include in your daily routine.

Once you know what you want to accomplish, try to build activities into your day that will help you get there. If you want to eat healthier, you can try packing a healthy lunch instead of buying one. If you want to be more productive at work, you can reply to emails first thing when you get into the office.

Try writing your daily routine down in a planner. Include times to sleep and times to relax. Remember that you can only go at your pace. Once you get used to your schedule, start adding in new things instead of overhauling your whole routine. Building habits will allow you to have more self-control slowly.

4. Eliminate Distractions

Distractions are everywhere these days. From social media to our smartphones buzzing every five minutes. Identify what your distractions are and try to avoid them when you need to get work done.

Once you know what your biggest distractions are, you can find ways to eliminate them. If you know you will be tempted to look at Instagram, turn off your notifications. When your phone isn’t buzzing every few minutes, you will not feel the need to look at it.

You can also set times throughout the day that you allow yourself to browse social media. By limiting your time on social media, you are allowing yourself more time to focus on the things you need to get done.

Try keeping your workspace clean and clutter-free. If you have garbage everywhere, you will be tempted to look at it rather than doing the things you should be doing. There are also many website blocker apps that you can download. Using these will allow you to build up self-control by not clicking on websites you’re not supposed to be on.

5. Use Rewards

Rewarding yourself is a great way to help you build up more self-control. When you give yourself a reward after you make a good decision, you are training your brain to want to repeat that behavior.

Choose a reward that you will look forward to but isn’t too big. If you stuck to eating healthy for an entire week, reward yourself with your favorite healthy snack or a bubble bath.

You can also create smaller goals that lead up to your main goal. If you want to read more books, you can reward yourself after reading a chapter with 30 minutes of TV. Building up more self-control will allow you to better accomplish your goals.

Make sure your rewards are suitable for your tasks. If you don’t finish a task that was very difficult for you, you can reward yourself with something bigger. If you want to watch a new movie, that movie will not seem like a reward.

6. Stay Accountable

Accountability is a great way to build more self-control. Tell your friends and family what you want to achieve. You will feel more motivated to not cheat yourself when other people know your goals.

Find someone who will help keep you accountable. You want to find someone who will listen to what you have to say and will help motivate you. Once you find that person, you two can promise to check in with each other.

You and your accountability partner can choose how you want to check in. Do you want to do weekly calls? Text each other every day? Meet up once a month? Tracking your accomplishments will allow you to see how far you’ve come.

You and your partner can also keep a log of your accomplishments. Write down each time you cheated and each time you stayed strong. Reflecting on your wins and losses will allow you to have a more considerable amount of self-control.

7. Practice Delayed Gratification

Delayed gratification is when you resist the temptation of an immediate reward. You do this by replacing that small reward with a more significant reward in the future.

Many people have trouble with eating right or saving money. Each time you give into those cravings, you are telling yourself that you will never be able to wait. If you practice delayed gratification, you will learn more self-control.

Try waiting 15 minutes before you give into your craving. Maybe you love snacking while you work. Next time you have a hunger pang, set a timer for 15 minutes. Work on something else until that timer goes off.

Once that timer goes off, assess if you are still hungry. You will feel hungry at first, but as you let that feeling pass, you may not want that cookie as much. The next time you want to eat junk, try waiting 30 minutes. Your brain will start to think that waiting is normal.

You could also practice delayed gratification when you want to buy something. Tell yourself you will wait 48 hours before you buy something. If you still want it in 48 hours, you can buy it.

Maybe you were just buying it on impulse. When you save that money, you can buy that dream vacation you’ve always wanted.

8. Reflect & Adjust

One of the best ways to build self-control is by reflecting on your decisions. Take some time each day and assess what you did that day. Think about what you could have done differently and what you should continue doing.

Purchase a journal that you can use to record your daily activities. At the end of each day, write down things that you did that you should be proud of. Write down times that you lacked self-control and how you can avoid those situations.

There are many apps out there that you can use to help build up your self-control. Some apps will allow you to track your habits and reward you when you hit goals. You can set reminders that will prompt you when it’s time to focus.

You should look over the information these apps provide you with each week. Look for trends and where you can improve. From there, you can set weekly goals that you can implement into your everyday life.

9. Take Care of Your Body

Taking care of your body is essential when it comes to self-control. You cannot make good decisions when your body is tired, hungry, or stressed out. Get enough sleep each night, eat three balanced meals, and try to manage your stress.

Exercise is another great way to help you take care of your body. Exercising will help you relieve stress, boost your mood, and give you more energy. Go for a thirty-minute walk if you can’t hit the gym.

Think of self-control as a battery that you use throughout the day. When you don’t take care of your body, you are depleting that battery. You’ll have little to no self-control when that battery runs out.

By sleeping, eating, and exercising, you will charge that battery back up. You’ll have more willpower to say no to cookies and the ability to stick to your goals.

10. Learn to Say No

Learning to say no is a great way to build self-control. If watching TV at night isn’t going to help you reach your goals, say no. If eating that cupcake isn’t going to benefit you, say no.

Saying no is difficult, especially if you don’t want to let someone down. But you have to remember that every time you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else.

Try starting small when it comes to saying no. Tell yourself that you will not have seconds at dinner. Tell yourself that you will only watch one episode of your show. Each time you say no, you are one step closer to saying no when it matters.

Conclusion

In this article, we discussed ten ways that you can start building up self-control in your everyday life. Whether it be by breaking your goals down into small steps or practicing mindfulness. I hope you can take away one thing from this article and start implementing it into your daily routine.

Remember that building self-control takes time, and you will stumble every now and then. Don’t be hard on yourself and keep pushing forward. Everything you try will take time to start feeling natural. But once you start your path to more self-control, you’ll be happier you did.

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