Nutshell: How to build self-control

Self-control is not about suppressing or ignoring how we feel. It’s about taking the time to choose when or if to act on our initial instincts.

As a psychologist and former hostage negotiator, George Kohlrieser knows a lot about operating under pressure.

He has studied thousands of C-suite executives and board members, concluding that the very best share one notable quality: they stay calm and cool in a crisis, able to manage their own emotions. This creates an aura of safety and calm in those around them. They don’t spread fear, anger or tension.

Sounds great. We’d all want to be like that when the chips are down.

But that’s not easy. Staying on an even keel can be challenging even at the best of times. There’s always that niggling conversation with Dave from Accounts or the supplier who never delivers on time that threaten to throw a spanner in the works.

The problem is that, when we detect that threat, our brains still think we’re being chased by a woolly mammoth, triggering a 'fight-or-flight' response that takes over to the exclusion of all else. EQ guru Daniel Goleman calls this an “amygdala hijack”.

And once that happens, it’s hard to think straight.  

But while these impulses may be beyond our control, how we respond is not. That’s where self-control comes in.

It’s about taking advantage of the gap between our knee-jerk response - and what we actually say or do. When our amygdala sends out that anger or panic signal, we have a window to handle it well – or not.

It’s not for nothing that Goleman sees self-management as one of his four EQ competencies. 

So how can make the most of the opportunity these windows provide?

Self-control: a finite resource?

Social psychologist Roy Baumeister has spent many years researching the term he coined: ego depletion.

Baumeister believes that our ability to self-regulate is limited; exerting self-control in one area will use up energy for regulating ourselves elsewhere. He likens ego depletion to the tiredness that comes from physically exerting a muscle. The corollary to this is that, like a muscle, self-control can be built and strengthened over time.

Baumeister’s ideas have more recently come in for criticism. Researchers attempting to replicate his studies have found little evidence to support the ego-depletion theory.

Some have concluded that signs of ego depletion were observed only in people who believed willpower was a limited resource – making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Others have concluded that self-control is not a finite resource but instead acts like an emotion.

Just as we don’t “run out” of happiness or frustration, self-control comes and goes based on how we feel and the situation we find ourselves in. For example, we’re much less likely to feel depleted if we enjoy, or feel motivated by, what we’re doing.

And, if self-control is more like an emotion than fuel in a tank, we can learn to manage and use it to help us to overcome negative feelings or lack of motivation.

Building self-control

So, whether we see self-control as ego-depleting or a feeling to be acknowledged and deployed like any other, there are plenty of things we can do to build it.

Like so many other things, it’s about awareness and practice, understanding (labelling) how we’re feeling so that we can identify, even anticipate, when we’re likely to experience an amygdala hijack.

Then we can use some simple techniques to restore our equilibrium.

• Take a meta-moment

• Work on our physical intelligence

• Learn how to manage our energy

• Make pre-commitments

Take a meta moment

While we may have a lesser or greater innate ability to manage our impulses, it’s certainly possible to develop that self-control muscle. More than anything, it’s about minding that gap between those triggers and how we react.

Mark Brackett from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, calls these meta-moments, and advocates a four-step process to help us go beyond our first impulse:

Sense the shift
Recognise when we are activated, caught off guard, or have an impulse to say or do something we might regret. We will feel a shift in our thinking or body or both.

Stop or pause
Step back and breathe. Breathe again.

See your best self

Think of adjectives or an image that helps us visualise our best self. Think about our reputation. How do we want to be seen, talked about, and experienced? What would we do if someone we respect were watching us?

Strategise and act
Choose the path that will close the gap between our triggered self and our emerging best self.

The more we practise the art of waiting, of using that moment to pay attention to and acknowledge our inner signals, the better we’ll get at more rational and less emotional responses.

It’s something we can practice in a whole host of everyday work situations.

For example:

• Never send an e-mail in anger.

• Think carefully about addressing a tricky performance issue if our minds are elsewhere.

• Give ourselves enough time to make important decisions, even if the clock is ticking.

Work on our physical intelligence

Physician and neuroscientist Alan Watkins believes that leadership requires “physiological, emotional and cognitive coherence”.

So, it not just our thoughts and feelings that need to be in alignment; we also need to think about our bodies, our physical intelligence.

For Watkins, our physical state underpins everything else. Yes, our behaviours come from our thoughts and feelings, based on our emotions. But if we want to control those behaviours (and improve our performance), we need to start right at the bottom of Watkins’ iceberg - with our physiology. 

This makes sense when we think about the physiological effects of flight or flight.

We’ve all experienced those sweaty palms or that shallow breathing as we struggle to regain control.

Just breathe

Simple breathing exercises are an immediate way to help de-escalate the biochemical effects of flight or flight – part of Brackett’s second meta-moment step.

They help us to open up our bodies so that we’re less tense.

For Watkins, it’s the rhythm of breathing – breathing in and out for the same amount of time – that really matters:

• Breathe in for two counts and out for two counts as a way of stabilising ourselves.

• Increase the number of counts as we breathe in and out (four counts each, then six).

This will relax our bodies and slow our heart rate enough to enable us to respond in a more considered way – to exercise self-control.

Body scan

Another technique is to try is body scanning.

This involves paying attention to the parts of the body in a gradual sequence, either working from our head to our feet, or vice versa.

• To start, we close our eyes, breathe rhythmically and focus first on our feet, for example. What are they doing, how are they feeling?

   

• Then we move on up through our knees and hips, stomach and chest to our heads, sensing any tension we might be feeling along the way.

The combination of breathing and awareness of our physical body will encourage us to stretch out, move our shoulders or flex our ankles, feeding us with more oxygen and giving us the space for self-regulation. 

Manage our energy

Tony Schwartz, CEO of The Energy Project, believes that “energy is the fuel for self-control”.

Instead of seeing self-control in terms of grit, persevering under pressure or toughing it out, it’s much better to manage the reservoir of energy we have available to us.

That means being aware of, and tackling, the things that deplete our energy stores – our energy drains - and taking note of the things that give us energy – our energy boosters.

Energy basics: refresh and renew

Getting enough sleep, taking breaks at and from work, eating well and regular exercise will all boost energy.

Meditation and techniques such as mindfulness, or established rituals and routines, work well for some people too.

 A 2014 study coined the phrase “bedtime procrastination” for those all-too-familiar times when we know we should go to bed and sleep, but, ironically, feel too tired to leave the sofa. Working flat out during the day and arriving home over-exhausted is not a great resilience- or energy-boosting strategy.

Research also suggests that we need to master the art of “micro-breaks” during the day itself – and that those breaks need to be the right type of breaks too.

Total relaxation, switching off our brains and daydreaming or stretching, or social interaction help to create the buffers we need to keep going. Cognitive breaks or checking social media, offer much less respite. How long a break we take can be less important than what we do with that time.

When and where we take a break also matters. Perhaps counterintuitively, taking breaks earlier in the working day can have more effect.

And we shouldn’t ignore the power of simply going outside. Even a five-minute walk on that patch of rough ground by the office can make a difference when it comes to recharging our batteries and our ability to exercise self-control.

Balancing drains and boosters

Our energy levels are also personal.

What might drain one person of energy – a social night out with our colleagues, for example – might be a real booster for someone else.

It figures, then, that understanding our own drains and boosters is an important precursor to making the most of our energy reserves.

We can use a simple chart to help us identify – and balance – our energy. So, if we know that we have an hour of energy-sapping invoice approvals ahead of us, can we follow it up with a task that always gives us a buzz? If we have to have a difficult conversation with a team member, might 20 minutes of yoga after work be invaluable?

Ideally, we’ll also look to decrease the amount of time we spend on our energy sappers (maybe there’s a better way to manage those invoices?) so that we can focus more on our boosters. And anything that gives us more energy also helps to improve our self-control.

Make precommitments

Homer’s hero, Odysseus, becomes a modern-day self-management hero in the work of author and journalist Daniel Akst. In his book, We Have Met the Enemy, Akst invokes the story of Odysseus and Homer’s shipwreck-inducing Sirens to explain the concept of precommitments.

Odysseus has the self-awareness to realise that it will be nigh on impossible for him, and his crewmates, to resist the beautiful song of the Sirens that would lure them to their doom. Instead of relying merely on willpower that could fail him, he decides to take action to protect him from a future, ego-depleted, version of himself.

By plugging all of his sailors’ ears with beeswax and ordering them to tie him to the mast of their ship, Odysseus is able to overcome the latest in the series of fiendish challenges Homer puts in the way of his safe return home.

The stakes might not be so high in the average work setting, but the idea of a precommitment – anticipating those moments of ego depletion and setting ourselves up in advance to resist impulse or failure – can be a useful self-management tactic. It’s especially powerful if we can involve others in our future-facing pacts.

For example, our present self might know that having to create lengthy management reports will sap our energy. And this will make our future self much more likely to be really rude to Dave in Accounts when he chases us for the nth time the day the report is due.

But by making a precommitment, for example, asking a colleague to remind future us that Dave is only doing his job, is a simple way to bind us (metaphorically if not, Odysseus-like, literally) to resist our first impulse and behave with the courtesy for which present us would want to be known.

A Japanese proverb reminds us that “he who smiles rather than rages is always the stronger”.

Kohlrieser’s model leaders have clearly found ways to keep their cool, even in trying circumstances. But getting in touch with our emotions and learning to deploy them in appropriate ways will always be a work in progress.

Best to start on that journey straight away.

Test your understanding

• Identify the four stages of a Marc Brackett “meta-moment”.

• Explain the difference between an energy booster and an energy drain.

What does it mean for you?

• Choose one the techniques outlined here and make a plan for how you might use it to build your self-control and emotional intelligence. Reflect on whether it has helped and why.