Exercising Self-Control

It is clear that satisfaction with life has some unique criteria that are not as central to the emotional states of security and loving kindness. Certainly, meeting needs for safety and belonging contribute greatly to satisfaction with life, but control of ourselves and our lives makes a separate significant contribution that is the focus of part IV of this paper. When rating satisfaction with our lives, we tend to evaluate the ways we are engaging life as well as the results we are getting. People seem to understand that satisfaction is not just something one either gets or doesn't get, but something which results in large part from one's choices and efforts.
In addition to the outcomes we experience, our satisfaction is based on the extent to which we exercise control of our lives by displaying the requisite control of ourselves necessary to take appropriate actions and avoid self-defeating habits. This control is referred to as self-determinism in a theory by the same name that has produced a comprehensive line of relevant research. As we will see, self-determinism is not as simple as just thinking positively, but requires a certain level of courage and intentional mental work.
Close examination of research on self-determinism reveals patterns that can be relied on as guiding principles for lives filled with personal meaning. Three of the principles that underlie the strategies or beneficial practices that are discussed in this section are as follows:
Controlling our selves is foundational to controlling our lives.
Challenging goals can be met through a series of small realistic steps.
The most meaningful goals address our needs for belonging and contribution.
In this section we examine three powerful strategies for exercising control of our lives that are based in these principles. Each is the primary focus of one the three parts of this section. The first is setting meaningful and challenging goals. The second is sustaining powerful intentions, and the third is creating beneficial habits.
Much of our satisfaction is with .the meaning and purposes that we create with our lives. Investment in meaning and purpose has the highest impact on satisfaction with life. Research provides consistent evidence that meaning and purpose derive significantly from meeting important intrinsic psychological needs through personal achievement, personal growth and contributions to others. People who are more successful in education, vocation and relationships through this orientation are more satisfied with life.
Self-determinism is experienced by exercising intentional mental control over those aspects of one’s life that are possible, creating a life with the meaning one wants it to have. To accomplish this, an individual must first have intentional self-control exercised through planning, taking adaptive actions and inhibiting self-defeating responses to enticing or distressing situations. This mental control operates through a reflective process that sets directions in life and assesses progress toward goals.
The role of intention in developing and maintaining thriving practices is mentioned throughout this paper. When considering satisfaction with life, sustained intention is a critical central component. Intention is the focus of physical, mental and emotional energy on personal goals. It is activated and maintained through the motivation that comes largely from the appraisal of benefit of outcomes and from self efficacy. In research studies the strength of intention is measured by the level of assurance that individuals express about reaching a goal and the stability of that assurance over time.
Intentions work hand and hand with habits to direct our behavior. Habits are automatic sequences of behavior that have been assigned to the control of situations. The object of intentionally establishing a beneficial life practice is to gradually turn the control of the behavior from mainly mental control to mainly situational control. Situational control is established when relevant cues from situations activate habitual responses and little mental control is required.
Self Efficacy: Belief in Oneself
To a very large extent, a person’s degree of self-determinism is related to the beliefs he holds about his ability to take actions that control situations in his life relevant to his goals. In lay terms these beliefs are often referred to a self- confidence. Beliefs about one self are reflected in research on the three most broadly studied self-related traits: self- efficacy, internal locus of control and responsibility, and self-esteem.
Self-efficacy reflects beliefs about one’s capability to perform in ways that positively influence the outcomes in one’s life. Internal locus of control reflects beliefs that the control and responsibility for future directions and outcomes in one’s life reside mostly within one self rather than outside one self. Self-esteem is a reflection of beliefs about self worth and competence based on the absence of perceived debilitating deficiencies.
Timothy Judge at the University of Florida and his colleagues determined that the uniqueness of these three traits is overshadowed by their commonality. The significant overlap found between measures of these traits indicates that they are essentially concerned with a single broad aspect of personality which is best referred to as self-efficacy, or what most people refer to as self-confidence. Self-efficacy is a major component of what was referred to as the thriving temperamental quality of surgency in an earlier chapter.
From a broad and powerful perspective, self-determinism and personal success in life are derived from the reciprocal relationships between challenging intrinsic goal-attainment and self-efficacy. Achieving gains in either one of these areas has a positive impact on the other. Self-determined individuals are persistent in their pursuit of significant challenging but realistic goals. They expect to grow personally in order to meet these goals. Their hopes for their futures are reflected in strong expectations of successes in life. They anticipate goal-related challenges, and respond to setbacks with resilience. Self-efficacy serves as the main predictor of the stability of intentions over time and a crucial personal resource for satisfaction with life.
Similar to other areas of spiraling upward, success is based on the positive adaptive cycle between self-efficacy (a resource) and challenging goal attainment (thriving behavior). As a personal resource, self-efficacy is based mainly the on cumulative stored experiences of achieving self-set challenging goals. However, challenging goal attainment is also an effect of self-efficacy. Higher self-efficacy promotes the selection of more challenging goals and the expectation of success. A goal is challenging to the extent that attainment requires personal growth. The life-long optimistic commitment to important challenging goals is one of the hallmarks of thriving.
Albert Bandura at Stanford University has been the main theorist and proponent of research on self-efficacy. His summary of research on self-efficacy is so instructive that it is quoted here:
“A strong sense of efficacy enhances human accomplishment and personal well-being in many ways. People with high assurance in their capabilities approach difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered rather than threats to be avoided. Such an efficacious outlook fosters intrinsic interest and deep engrossment in activities. They set themselves challenging goals and maintain strong commitment to them. They heighten and sustain their efforts in the face of failure. They quickly recover their sense of efficacy after failure or setbacks. By sticking it out through tough times, they emerge stronger through adversity.”
In reviewing available research on self-efficacy, Bandura found some support for a general type of self-efficacy, a broad trait that propels individuals into goal-setting in areas where they have little or no previous experience. This can be attributed in large part to internalizing the three general principles of self-determinism outlined earlier.
Bandura found even more significant support for self-efficacy specific to each type of goal. When deciding to engage in goals, people draw mainly on their past experience with similar goals. A history of success with a particular type of goal is central to self-efficacy for new goals of a similar type. It is evident that success breeds confidence.
Hope, Optimism and Expectations of Success
When thriving in life, people generally expect their efforts to produce success, a quality generally known as optimism. In the mid eighties, Michael Scheier and Charles Carver defined optimism and pessimism mainly as expectancies of good or bad outcomes, which contribute greatly to one's level of satisfaction with life. They developed the Life Orientation Test to measure optimism and pessimism, and it was widely used for a season by researchers. Optimistic life orientation was found to predict superior coping abilities and positive life outcomes in many areas better than many other traits such as self-esteem. As the research progressed it became clear that differences in life orientation reflected differences in hope.
Hope as a motive or driving force for success and satisfaction was studied by C R Snyder at the University of Kansas. He determined that hope drives optimists to find and engage useful strategies to achieve their valued personal goals. To do this they focus on past successes and engage in considerable positive self-talk. When an adopted strategy fails to work, they cheerfully shift to an alternate strategy.

Optimists' responses to successes may not be as important as their responses to failures. Interpreting failures as a reflection of one's own ability and value creates a state of pessimism about future successes that leads to restricted goals and limited effort. Making a responsible analysis of what worked and what did not work, distanced from the appraisal of one's worth, leads to the constructive redirection of effort.
While optimists experience somewhat more successes than pessimists, they experience about the same number of failures. They can have a lot of both because they just engage life more. Martin Seligman at Penn University had been studying depression when he took an interest in optimism. He had determined that depressed individuals learn helplessness mainly through their responses to setbacks and disappointments that are outside of their control. They tend to feel responsible for much that they cannot control, and come to feel helpless about much of what they can control.
Seligman found that optimists, while overestimating, have more accurate beliefs about what they can control. And they assume responsibility for it. Because of this they respond differently to setbacks by learning where they have control, and where responsible behavior will pay off. Instead of becoming discouraged by their failures they consider failures to be useful information, and turn their enthusiasm for success toward a different approach or different venture. Thus, they are constantly directing their energies toward expected positive goals. Many of these outcomes are realized as life successes in work, relationships, and recreation.
It is apparent that the description of optimistic people is practically the same as persons with high self-efficacy. In fact, self- efficacy has been found to account for most of the effect of optimism on personal achievement, so optimism is more of an effect than a cause of self-efficacy. It seems that optimism is the thriving emotion in the beneficial perspectives that promote personal achievement.
The creation of realistic optimistic perspectives is one of the major coping strategies of physically, emotionally and spiritually healthy individuals. These perspectives are the outcome of careful reflection and the tools of problem-solving. They are created from the thriving parts of the mind where safety, contentment and attachment reside. An optimistic perspective has two main qualities: it has a positive emotional tone and it is enabling. It supports constructive changes necessary for both success and personal growth.
Focusing on Performance Goals
Optimists expect to reach their goals because they believe that the outcomes are primarily dependent on their effort, rather than conditions outside of their control. In addition to adopting challenging outcome goals, they create paths to those goals through performance goals. A performance goal is the effort an individual must exert through well-formulated action plans to achieve an outcome goal. Failure to focus on performance goals leads to incomplete action, poor outcomes and growing discouragement. Many worthy endeavors have been abandoned because individuals were over-focused on outcomes and under-focused on performance.
A proven strategy is to work from action plans that carefully outline the steps that are required to realize an outcome goal. Skipping reflective action planning for important goals increases the time required to take the most productive actions. Good action plans are as specific as possible, but also dynamic. They are adjusted when actions taken fail to have the desired results.
Strategies have been devised that maintain focus on performance goals. One is to prioritize the items on a list of all the things you can think of that need to be done, first by determining which are immediate and essential, which can be filed away for a more appropriate time and which are not essential. Looking at the list of those that are essential, you then determine the “next best action” and take that action.
Embracing Personal Growth
Personal success and personal growth go hand in hand. In fact, Carol Dweck at Stanford University has demonstrated that success is facilitated by having a growth mindset. Persons with growth mindsets anticipate and embrace the personal growth challenges inherent in all of their goals. Many of their goals are focused on personal learning and growth as the primary outcome. Persons with fixed mindsets select less challenging goals that are largely consistent with their existing knowledge and skills, thereby limiting the extent of their successes.
It is mainly the growth requirement that makes a goal challenging. The growth component is a central part of the allure and interest of many new goals. Challenging goals for personal achievement often require the acquisition of increased knowledge, skills and resilience. Goals for personal development often require growth in self control, gratitude, compassion and forgiveness.
Looking for Well-Being in the Right Places
There is considerable research on the process by which people look into their futures and make predictions about what will influence their well-being. This includes most decisions, from the least to the most important. Dan Gilbert at Harvard University, a leader in this field, has found a remarkable consistency in the results of this research. Many people are very poor predictors of what will make them happy and satisfied with their lives. Their perspectives and expectations do not produce what they really need, limiting their sense of thriving.
Research indicates that people seek well-being in life mainly from three sources: their persistent moods, their sense of meaning and purpose in life, and the fulfillment of what scientists refer to as extrinsic motives. Extrinsic motives include such things as material abundance, physical beauty, and social acceptance, recognition and power. Investment by individuals in moods as a source of well-being has moderate positive impact, especially if they focus on managing stress and distress. Investment in extrinsic motives has been consistently shown to have low impact. Investment in meaning, purpose and satisfaction with life has the highest impact on well-being.
Focused pursuit and realization of extrinsic motives actually undermines the thriving orientation to life by setting up false expectations of happiness and satisfaction and thwarting true self-actualization. Many studies have demonstrated that the use of such rewards as money and position often undermine productivity in previously intrinsically satisfying work. Deci and Ryan maintain that success and satisfaction in life can both be compromised by an unchallenged agreement to pursue goals specifically for the rewards offered by others and the culture. Their work serves as an important caution against over investment in extrinsic rewards.
On the other hand, they found that successful responses to intrinsic growth motives serve as psychological nutrients for thriving in life. The pursuit of intrinsic motives such as belonging, competence and contribution to others is often experienced in a thriving state called “flow”. In this state, individuals remain engaged in goal-relevant activities in a calm and focused manner for extended periods of time. Afterward, they seem content and satisfied with what they have accomplished, rather than tired and depleted. The emotional states people experience while engaged in work is related to the degree of interest and focus they can sustain.
Research shows that the pursuit of intrinsic goal attainment makes powerful contributions in life. We have seen that it creates meaning through personal achievement and growth essential to satisfaction with life. Just as important, goal attainment creates positive beliefs about oneself. Any person wishing to create more meaning, self-confidence and optimism can begin by reaching a single realistic challenging personally relevant goal.

Follow your intrinsic motivation
Be aware of the underlying goals and perspectives that drive the investment of your personal resources. Continually challenge them for authenticity and sound purpose. Focus on your needs for autonomy, competence and belonging, and look for intrinsic rewards that meet these needs. This will assist you in seeking a life of purpose that is true to your real self. Derive extrinsic rewards such as financial prosperity, personal attractiveness and power as the secondary consequence of your successes. And, keep these extrinsic rewards in perspective.
Set clear realistic goals and action plans
Work toward clear realistic written goals. Realistic goals are based on careful analysis of your knowledge, skills and emotional resiliency. They are also based on the availability of other required resources. Careful planning should specify the steps to be taken to reach goals. Regularly review active goals, and intentionally engage activities that fulfill important steps toward the goals. Assess and keep track of your progress.
Expect to reach your goals
Expect to reach goals before you pursue them. Make sure that your current and achievable skills, knowledge and effort are the primary determinates of the desired outcomes. Review your beliefs about your ability to control your performance and the outcomes. Be sure you are ready to devote the effort required, understanding that the effort required is usually underestimated.
Expect to grow to reach your goals
Rather than being dissuaded by the demands of desired goals, expect to grow in knowledge, skills and emotional resiliency to meet them. In fact, set goals that require personal growth as key components. Most meaningful endeavors require performance goals and intermediate steps that are directed toward growth. Anticipate, embrace and plan well for growth needs. This is especially important when goal outcomes are primarily focused on spiritual self-transformation.
Expect challenges once you begin
Many projects are derailed because of unexpected challenges that overwhelm original intentions. You can not anticipate all of the challenges that can arise. So, expect to face unanticipated challenges without responding with discouragement. Expect success to take more effort and other resources than you initially plan for. If it doesn’t, be surprised and well pleased.
Interpret set-backs and failures as learning experiences
If you want to be more optimistic and experience more personal success in life, treat your failures as learning experiences rather than reflections of your abilities and value, and make sure you examine them well enough to get the lessons. An accurate understanding of what was in your level of control and your level of responsibility is essential for learning from your failures. Use this information to re-evaluate and adjust your strategies. You may also have to adjust or abandon some goals if you find that you do not have sufficient control over the resources required for success. Once you have done this, release your disappointment as a negative motive for future behavior, and focus on your new expectations for other current and future successes.