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If you have a clear path for what you want in life, you may be less likely to be swayed by temptations that will hurt you in the long run. Write down the major things you want out of life: Is it a good career? Having a family of your own one day? Becoming financially wealthy? You don't have to lay out very detailed steps for achieving these goals as part of this exercise; instead, remember to keep your overarching goals in mind so you stay on track in your life. To form personal goals, it is important not to set the bar too high or else you will fail and this can kill your motivation. Instead, set some big goals (e.g., learn how to code software), but break those bigger more distal goals into smaller more achievable goals (e.g., read 1 chapter of a software coding book every week). In this way you can see tangible amounts of progress as you work toward accomplishing your more distal goals. Negative feelings can reduce self-control and make it more difficult for you to control your mind. One way to counteract negative feelings is, simply, to smile. Although the idea that feeling happy causes you to smile is more intuitive, the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that smiling can actually cause you to feel happiness. Research shows that spending on others can increase happiness and well-being. Happiness and well-being can increase your self-image and reduce negative feelings that make self-control more difficult. Exactly how you spend your time or money on others isn't that important. What matters is that you and those you are helping find it valuable. One way to control your mind is to make it more difficult for it to get what it wants. This extra effort will make it so that part of your mind is less likely to win out and influence your behavior. For example, if you want to control the part of your mind that wants to watch TV when a part of you wants to cut down on your TV watching time, you could put your remote control in a difficult to reach spot. Another example is that if you keep hitting the snooze button in the morning, you could place your alarm clock far from your bed, so that you are forced to get out of bed to turn it off. A further example is if you are having trouble refraining from sex, and you want to change this behavior, you could avoid putting yourself in situations that lead to sex: you could stay away from bars, nightclubs, and you could delete the phone numbers of people you sometimes hook-up with. When you successfully control your mind, reward yourself so that you are more likely to continue to do so in the future. For example, say you really didn't feel like exercising but you forced yourself to do it anyways, reward yourself with a piece of chocolate or with an episode of your favorite TV show. Be careful not to make the reward too excessive or you may find yourself out of control and back to square one where you started. For example, if your goal is to lose weight and you controlled your mind and exercised when you didn't feel like it, don't eat several chocolates or you will just lose the progress that you made. Just like rewarding successes can aid in future self-control, punishing yourself for self-control failures can aid in future self-control as well. In fact, studies show that the threat of punishments can lead people to exert more self-control. To ensure the punishment's effectiveness, place it in the hands of a family member, friend, or partner and tell them to dish it out if you fail to exert the self-control you desired. For example, they could hide your dessert and, at the end of the day if you failed to achieve your self-control goals, they could withhold that dessert from you. The mind and body are deeply connected; the mind can make the body stressed, and physiological stress in the body can lead the mind to feel stressed. When people are stressed they exert self-control to deal with those stressors and often have reduced self-control afterwards. As such, it is important to reduce stress to conserve self-control energy. There are a number of ways to reduce stress with evidence showing they work to some degree: Try relaxation techniques such as deep abdominal breathing, which involves breathing in deeply and holding your breath for a few seconds then slowly exhaling over the course of several seconds. You may also try focusing your mind on a single soothing word (such as calm or peace). Get some exercise, which will help you to breathe deeply and relax your tense muscles. Talk to friends and family, since social support can act as a buffer against stress.
Create a plan for your life. Smile, even if you don't feel like it. Spend time or money on others. Create obstacles for yourself. Reward your successful self-control efforts. Punish unsuccessful self-control efforts. Reduce stress.