23 ways to improve Self-Control and Will

Hello fellows, I have just researched techniques for improving self control and decided to share them with you, so here they are:

23 Cognitive-Behavioural Techniques to Improve Willpower





1) Admit your problem!



2) Recognize the factors which activate or weaken self-control and avoid them. If it is not possible, prepare beforehand!




3) Recognize craving while it is weak and easily controlled. Strong craving weakens self-control, memory, concentration and causes stress!



4) Evacuate the risky environment!



5) Observe the craving pasively without reacting. Take the role of a passive observer!



6) Utilize negative motivation, become aware of the negative effects that the vicious habit causes!



7) Utilize positive motivation, realize the advantages of abstinence!



8) Seek inspiration from positive examples and models!



9) Slow down, become aware and stop automatic behaviour!



10)Imagine driving and reaching an orange trafic light that goes to red: Stop and Think.



11)Don't react to the craving and postpone your decision until it goes away.



12)Do physical exercise.



13)Talk to someone.



14)Focus your attention on a safe object.



15)Stop concentrating on the craving, consciously maintain your attention in a neutral form and relax.



16)Use autosugestion through phrases by reciting phrases such as:

1. Abstinence is effective at reducing my cravings!

2. I will to lead a healthy life!

3. Abstinence enables me to be happy!



17)Meditate, Pray, or contemplate the essential and absolute.



18)Learn to do slow and deep abdominal breathing, possibly also yogic breathing techniques such as sheetali or ujjayi.




19)Get sufficient Rest and Manage your Time efficiently so that you are less tired or bored.




20)Manage your emotions effectively, learn to Prevent or Efficiently Process negative emotions.




21)Have a sense of Humour, Laugh at and be emotionally detached from the things that you cannot control.



22)Systematize your Mental Process of Self-Denial and increase your Willpower through Systematic Self-Denial.



23)Overcome pessimistic thinking patterns. Possibly through the following five methods:

1. Evoke the opposite. (exempli gratia: I am worthless < I am a manifestation of the universe)

2. Be aware of the adverse consequences of negative thoughts. (exempli gratia: low self esteem)

3. Maintain your awareness in a neutral form and wait until the negative thought patterns cease. (exempli gratia)

4. Find the triggers of these thoughts and analyze. ('disinfect the wound')

5. Clench your teeth, push your tongue against the palate, endure. (exempli gratia: Rocky Balboa, eye of the tiger)


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Also, I've found some useful articles:

http://www.addictioninfo.org/articles/754/1/Developing-Self-Control/Page1.html

http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Optimistic

http://www.wikihow.com/Build-Self‐Control

http://www.wikihow.com/Control-Your-Mind

http://www.wikihow.com/Control-Your-Subconscious-Mind

Although the advice is fairly generic.

GOOD LUCK,
AND MAY THE DEMIURGE MANIFEST THUNDEROUS PRIMORDIAL FORCES
IN ASSISTANCE TO THEE​

 

Yes, I was refering to the Demiurge as the fiction of the Geometer that is imagined by theists. But only Pandeism is the true understanding and the only logical conclusion from the fact of existence.

Also, the Gnostics don't know what good and evil are, everyone believes that suffering is evil, which is wrong. Plato explained in The Republic that morality is about the harmonious or discordant functioning of systems and not pleasure or pain as the shallow minded peasantry believe.


http://youtu.be/TZ4QO9bC-7I?t=19s

Good and evil make the world go round.

 

It was arrogant, I know. But if they say that the Demiurge is evil because he created a world in which there is suffering then they don't know what evil is. Evil is not pain or misery but the discordant (dis)functioning of systems.
Also, good and evil are unavoidable in any such manifestation which gives the appearance of limitation, since any form of reality allowing for discrimination and multitude must be based on duality and conflict. I am sure that this simulation is so because it was designed to allow for most possibilities to happen.

So the Demiurge is not evil, even though it demands love and war. It is sophisticatedly dynamic, and fun.