Highlights of Self-Control Lesson

• Enthusiasm is the vital quality that arouses you to action, while self-control is the balance wheel that directs your action so that it will build up not tear down.
• To be a person who is well "balanced," you must be a person in whom enthusiasm and self-control are equalized.
• Life is too short and there is too much constructive work to be done to justify us in "striking back" at everyone who says that which we do not wish to hear.
• A person with well develop self-control does not go into ecstasies or become ungovernably enthusiastic over anything or anybody
• Self-confidence is one of the important essentials of success, but when this faculty is develop beyond the point of reason it becomes very dangerous.
• Self-sacrifice is a commendable quality, but when it is carried to extremes, it, also, becomes one of the dangerous forms of lack of self-control.
• You owe it to yourself not to permit your emotions to place your happiness in the keeping of another person. Love is essential for happiness, but the person who loves so deeply that his/her happiness is placed entirely on the hands of another, resembles the little lamb who crept into the den of the "nice, gentle, little wolf" and begged to be permitted to lie down and go to sleep.
• A person with well developed self-control will not permit himself to be influenced by the cynic or pessimist; nor he will permit another person to do his thinking for him.
• A person with well developed self-control will stimulate his imagination and his enthusiasm until they have produced action, but he will then control that action and not permit it to control him.
• A person with well developed self-control will never, under any circumstances, slander another person or seek revenge for any cause whatsoever.
• A person with self-control not hate those who do not agree with him; instead, he will endeavor to understand the reason for their disagreement and profit by it.
• We come now, to a form of lack of self-control which causes more grief than all other forms combined; it is the habit of forming opinions before studying the facts. No one has any right to form an opinion that is not based either upon that which he believes to be facts, or upon a reasonable hypothesis; yet, if you will observe yourself carefully, you will catch yourself forming opinions on nothing more substantial than your desire for a thing to be or not to be..
• Self-discipline is the most essential factor in the development of personal power, because it enables you to control your appetite and your tendency to spend more than you earn and your habit of "striking back" at those who offend you and the other destructive habits which cause you to dissipate your energies through non-productive effort that takes on form too numerous to be cataloged.
•  I could waste much of my time and energy in striking back at those who would try to destroy me, or I could devote this energy to furthering my life-work and let the result of that work serve as my sole answer to all who would criticize my efforts or question my motives. Decide upon the latter as being the better policy and adopt it.
• If your deeds are constructive and you are at peace with yourself, in your own heart, you will not find it necessary to stop and explain your motives, for they will explain themselves.
• The world soon forget its destroyers. It builds its monuments to and bestows its honors upon none but its builders. Keep this fact in mind and you will more easily reconcile yourself to the policy of refusing to waste your energies by "striking back" at those who offend you.
• Before you can achieve success in the higher and broader sense you must gain such thorough control over yourself that you will be a person of poise.
• You have not only the power to think but, what is a thousand times more important still, you have the power to control your thoughts and direct them to do your bidding! I repeat, you have the power to control your thoughts and make them do your bidding!
• Thought is the only thing over which you have absolute control, yet, unless you are the proverbial exception, which is about one out of every ten thousand, you permit other people to enter the sacred mansion of your mind and there deposit, through suggestion, their troubles, and woes, adversities and falsehoods, just as though you did not have the power to close the door and keep them out.
• Self-control is solely a matter of thought-control.
• When you deliberately choose the thoughts which dominate your mind and firmly refuse admittance to outside suggestion, you are exercising self-control in its highest and most efficient form.
• Thought, whether accurate or inaccurate, is the most highly organized functioning power of your mind; and that you are but the sum total of your dominating or most prominent thoughts.
• The ability to negotiate with other people without friction and argument is the outstanding quality of successful people. The art of successful negotiation grows out of patient and painstaking self-control. To watch a person who has acquired the art of successful negotiation is a liberal education within itself. Watch the physician who has acquired this art, as he walks into the sick room and greets his patient with a smile. His bearing, the tone of his voice, the look of assurance on his face, all mark him as one who has acquired the art of successful negotiation, and the patient begins to feel better the moment he enters the sick room.
• And all of this is predicated upon self-control! and self-control is the result of thought-control!
• Deliberately place in your own mind the sort of thoughts that you desire there, and keep out of your mind those thoughts which others place there through suggestion, and you will become a person of self-control.
• This privilege of stimulating your mind with suggestions and thoughts of your own choosing is your prerogative power that Divine providence gave you, and if you will exercise this holy right there is nothing within the bounds of reason that you cannot attain.
• How one went about controlling one's thoughts when in a state of intense anger? "In exactly the same way that you would change your manner and tone of your voice if you were in a heated argument with a member of your family and heard the door bell ring, warning you that company was about to visit you. You would control yourself because you would desire to do so." If you have ever been in a similar predicament, where you found it necessary to cover up your real feelings and change the expression on your face quickly, you know how easily it can be done because one wants to do it!
• Back of all achievement, back of all self-control, back of all thought control, is that magic something called DESIRE! It is no misstatement of fact to say that you are limited only by the depth of your desires!
• When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve. No one has ever explained this strange phenomenon of the mind, and perhaps no one ever will, but if you doubt that it exists you have but to experiment and be convinced.
• Don't say it cant be done, or that you are different from these and thousands of others who have achieved noteworthy success in every worthy calling. If you are different it is only in this respect: "They desired the object of their achievement with more depth and intensity than you desire yours."

Plant in your mind the seed of a desire that is constructive by making the following your creed and the foundation of your code of ethics:
 I wish to be of service to my fellow men as I journey through life. To do this I have adopted this creed as a guide to be followed in dealing with my fellow-beings:

• To train myself so that never, under any circumstances, will i find fault with any person, no matter how much i may disagree with him or how inferior his work may be, as long as i know he is sincerely trying to do his best.
• to respect my country, my profession and myself. to be honest and fair with my fellow men, as i expect them to be honest and fair with me. to be a loyal citizen of my country. to speak of it with praise, and act always as a worthy custodian of its good name. to be a person whose name carries weight wherever it goes.
• to base my expectations of reward on a solid foundation of service rendered. to be willing to pay the price of success in honest effort. to look upon my work as an opportunity to be seized with joy and made the most of, and not as a painful drudgery to be reluctantly endured.
• to remember that success lies within myself -- in my own brain. to expect difficulties and to force my way through them.
• to avoid procrastination in all its form, and never under any circumstances, put off until tomorrow any duty that should be performed today.
• finally to take a good grip on the joys of life, so I may be courteous to men, faithful to friends, true to God -- a fragrance in the path i thread.

extras:

• The time which many people devote to "gossiping" about others would, if controlled and directed constructively, be sufficient to attain the object of their definite chief aim. Study those around you and observe, with profit, that all the successful ones exercise self-control, while the failures permit their THOUGHTS, WORDS, and DEEDS to run wild!
• When an angry person starts in to vilify and abuse you, justly or unjustly, just remember that if you retaliate in a like manner you are being drawn down to that person's mental level, therefore that person is dominating you!.