Nick McGowan (00:05.047)
Hello and welcome to the mindset and self mastery show. I’m your host Nick McGowan. And today on the show, I want to talk about cultivating your self control and your mindset has to do with that. And there’s just no other way around it. You have to be able to actually think through what’s going on, but you have to also couple it with

what you’re feeling in a moment, and then what the fuck are you gonna do about it? And like the easiest way to be able to put it, are you going to fly off the handle, are you going to lose control, or are you going to be in control? Are you going to have your self-control as a major portion of what you’re doing and how you move throughout life? So.

When I thought of self-control before, I thought it was just being aware of what you did. That was it. I said, well, if you’re aware of what you’re doing, then you’re in total self-control. And when we think of just somebody saying to us or us feeling from within, you just need to be in control. It’s, to me, I’m kind of like, I get it, but it’s not that easy.

And I was trying to figure out another way to be able to put that. But really, I mean, think about it. Is it ever that easy? Now for some people may be easier for others. There may be self-control problems.

but I think all of that really stems from somewhere. But let’s talk about what is self-control. So self-control is the ability to manage your impulses and manage your emotions and just your behaviors in general. Ultimately, to be able to lead you toward, let’s just say a successful life.

Nick McGowan (02:28.854)
That’s the, I guess the easiest way to look at it, where if you can manage your impulses and your emotions and your just overall behaviors, then life will be better for you. Now, that is not taking to effect if any crazy shit happens. If some tragedy or some tragic situation or anything.

but those moments can help you become more in control and help you with your self control. Not to say that you need to go through craziness in life to be able to do it, but you know, sometimes you need to be able to be put in a spot where it’s in question, how are you going to manage your impulse or manage your emotions or manage the behavior that you have.

If you don’t ever have to actually do anything with those, then I guess really what’s the point of even learning how to do it? But that’s not how life works. You’re in situations all the time. And if it’s a really simple one, like, I don’t know, somebody cuts you off, maybe they got a little too close to your car and your impulse was to like yell at them or just lose control or to be in a kind of a dark hole for…

hours or days because of it, then that’s where you really need to be able to work on the self-control. And again, I get that it’s easier said than done, but being in that spot where you can be in control, you then have more control over the situation, even in situations that are uncontrollable. I feel like I’m saying the word control in some sort of way, almost too much. But by you being able to…

be in a situation where you can be in control of how you are, then you at least take control and ownership of that side of the situation. Again, if somebody were to cut you off, if you would freak out or like chase them or do something crazy like that, anything could happen. You get pulled over by a cop, you get into an accident, they could get out with a gun. You don’t know. And in a situation like that,

Nick McGowan (04:51.51)
You really gotta think, is it worth any of the stuff that would come along with it? Would you feel better? Even if you think you may, I guarantee that you wouldn’t. And if you got shot, you absolutely would not. If you got a ticket because you were chasing somebody because they cut you off or something, come on, you’re not gonna feel great from that at all. Being able to be in control of your impulses and your emotions and the behaviors that you have,

you are then more in control of what is most of life that is uncontrollable. It’s things that are happening around you, but at least you can maintain that control from yourself. Now understanding that that’s what it, what it is, is just the management of those impulses and emotions and behaviors. I had then asked myself, well, where does it come from? And things that I’ve learned.

over the course of my life have compounded into habits for me. And they’ve compounded into good and bad habits. And self-control, or lack thereof, comes from that. So it’s not just, when we think of where self-control comes from, I want you to think from the perspective of what is the makeup of it? And where does it come from in life? And the impulsivity?

and even seeking risks and just how you relate to things, the temperament that you have in situations, maybe even how self-centered you are or aren’t.

your preference for how you handle situations if you really like things to be easy or you want things to be really difficult and also how you perceive and the preference that you have for being physical, going out and hiking or walking or staying away from that and not to tie the health like your bodily health into that but

Nick McGowan (06:58.146)
with really where the mind is with that. Does it want you to go out and do that or does it not? And all of those pieces from a younger, smaller version of you has all compounded and become really how your self-control is made up today. And

all those factors and all the ways that you’ve been and you’ve been kind of taught how to be through experiences of life or people beating you down with it or even sharing wisdom with you that you’ve incorporated in being able to understand how you are in those different situations and the reactions that you have within different situations will stem from your impulsivity. Your

being risk averse or seeking out risks or again your temperament in situations and how you’re either the center of the situation or you’re not the center of the situation and the preference that you have for the really simple or really hard tasks and the activity that you will put into that, the energy you will put into something. And

tying that all together will show its head, either good, bad, ugly, different, whatever, it’ll show its head in those situations where you need to be in self control. And to be in that spot where you can take that self control and do something with it takes a lot of work to be able to do that. And I know sometimes I speak in a very like macro situations, almost like really just slowing the world down. But

For me, that helps. And different people I’ve worked with, and I’ve helped over the course of time, it’s helped them to be able to understand what the pieces are, because once we understand how those pieces work and relate to each other, then we can start to speed things up.

Nick McGowan (08:53.238)
I think of it almost like I’m a musician, so playing guitar, and if you play music or play any sort of instrument or learned any sort of new skill, you start to speed up over the course of time. Then from the musician standpoint, I think of playing scales. You start to play these scales and you get where your fingers go and what the sound is and what the notes are. And then you start to speed things up and you can move through them and you can rip off.

what all the notes are, what you’re hitting, you can tie the sound to it, you can start to move forward and backward with everything, then you start to move a lot faster. And it doesn’t initially start like that, but it starts from the one, two, three, four, and just kind of moving through it all.

Same deal. And again, I know I speak in these small macro situations at times, but that’s really the reason for it, to be able to help you figure out and know what the makeup is, so that you can do something with it, and you can start to move on it really, really rapidly. So understanding the self-control and how pieces make up how you react and how you are either controlled or not controlled.

then let’s think about the brain and where that comes from. And I bring that into the situation of this conversation because there have been comments and some people that have said that sometimes things sound just really woo and like there’s no practical

scientific thing to point to, and not just from my show, but many shows and just many different conversations that are out there. And there’s a lot to the science. There’s also the interesting thing that I think about science is that it’s constantly being updated. It’s evolving, because the more that we learn, and the more that we understand, the more that we’re able to tie all of this together. So

Nick McGowan (11:00.958)
in our brains where self-control really resides and where it comes from is the prefrontal cortex because that’s where we make all of our decisions anyway. And that control goes along with our decisions. In a different episode I talked about when something happens and you’re in a spot where you have to react or you’re going to react.

You can either take that emotion that wells up and put it into a box and push it away, or you can take that emotion and do something with it. And that’s where self-control comes into play. Being able to understand that the same spot in your brain that makes decisions is the one that holds your self-control. And that’s where you get to be able to do something with your self-control. And

other than the knowledge of knowing where that comes from, it’s not really going to come into play in daily life. It’s just going to happen. And it’s up to you to be self-aware to do something in the moment that is of a controlled space, in a controlled space within yourself and being able to understand that in this moment.

I can be self-controlled and if I were self-controlled, what would I be doing? How would I be reacting? What would I be doing from there? And this is a journey. As you really hone in on your skills of being in control and your self-control will tie into just your overall mindfulness and the way that you look and react to life.

And some of the ways that you’ll be able to see it and actually be able to start to do things with it is in the three different areas of self-control. The first being impulse control. The second being your emotional control. And third being your movement. I’d mentioned behaviors before and I’d mentioned about

Nick McGowan (13:07.638)
how we relate to either doing physical activities or not doing physical activities. And that all kind of ties into your movement. So let’s break this down with the first one, that impulse control. When I think of impulse control, I think of the initial responses that just instantly happen. Like if you put your finger on a hot stove, you’re going to pull your finger back, you’re going to pull your entire hand back, if not your entire arm. Like even when I just did that and I thought about it, my entire body.

just like jerks back because that’s the impulse. The impulse is to be able to save you from that. Understanding where that comes from is important to be able to being able to put it into use and understanding that your impulse is there as an alert.

just like the second type of self control, which is your emotional self control, your emotions are there as an alert. Do you see the pattern with that? Your impulse and your emotions are there to alert you to do something, which goes straight to the prefrontal cortex that says, Hey, we need to make a decision.

Are we going to lose our minds? Are we going to go crazy? Or are we going to be in control in this situation? And then from there, what do we do? But that impulse will shoot that straight to the top. Be like, we need to do something about this. And the subconscious pull back from, I don’t want to burn the shit out of my hand, or, oh my gosh, that hurts, being able to pull back, that decision was already made for you. And you were reactionary in that. So.

knowing what your impulses are and what happens, like, almost like having kind of a, a jarring look. If somebody does something, understanding where that came from. Sometimes you’re just being judgy as hell. Other times there are things that

Nick McGowan (15:00.918)
don’t align with you and the way that you look at life and how you believe life should be. And you can kind of work through that and understand again, well, without getting into a deep, dark rabbit hole with this, understanding that your impulses come from somewhere. And you need to do something with those impulses, but you need to understand that they’re really there to be able to guard and kind of guide in certain ways, but also

reactionary and it’s an alert for you that impulse of we need to do this then the emotion the emotional side of that and how you control your emotions within self-control and being able to understand that your emotions are alerts there’s something to just let you know hey this is this makes you sad or hey this makes you really happy or anything in between and then doing something with your movement

I think from when I was a little kid, I was angry as a little kid because I didn’t know how to control my emotions. I didn’t feel safe in certain ways. There are all the things that tie into that. But I remember I would throw things or I would punch walls. What a dumb thing that was. Can you relate to that? Have you done that silly stuff that only basically hurt your hand and sometimes got you in trouble? I…

I think of that timeframe of being out of control and my movements of me just pushing the energy to the side. A less toxic way to go about that, but still can be almost toxic at times, is how some people will put themselves at risk by going out and…

doing really risky things, like let’s just say riding on their motorcycle. They’re really upset and they jump on the motorcycle and they start flying off at a hundred miles an hour. That’s, it’s risky.

Nick McGowan (17:08.638)
And not to say you couldn’t or shouldn’t do that. It’s just if that’s how your movement is happening from there, and that’s the energy that you’re getting out. Or like people that try to get into a fight or they’ll go to the gym or whatever. Like being able to be in control of your movements.

Now, there’s a lot that goes into all of these things, but I just want to kind of talk from a high level of that of like the three different types of control of the impulse control and the emotional control and your movement control. But it’s still a decision that’s being made. No matter what it is, it’s what are you going to do? How are you going to react? What’s the decision you’re going to make? And then being able to move from there. So overall, when I think of self control, especially

as a journey toward mindfulness and being disciplined and ultimately having the life that you want. It really starts with understanding that there’s shit that you need to work on. I think that’s the easiest way to be able to put it. And I say it like that and even laughing as I do because there’s still shit I need to work on.

and I am working on a lot of it, but there’s still a lot more for me to work on. Same with all of us. There’s a lot for us to be able to work on and work through. And understanding how you process through things, not just in the moments and like how you process a situation, but how you work through and process through situations will really set you up for success or will hurt you and continue to hurt you.

Some people will say, I just talk to myself and I’m good, or I pray about it and I’m good, or I just talk to my therapist and I’m good. Then if you’re good, great. But I want you to really question that. And like, are you good? And are you okay with just being good? Do you want it to be actually healed and processed? Look, you can lie to me. You can lie to yourself. You can fucking lie to anybody you want.

Nick McGowan (19:10.678)
But if you are lying to yourself and you’re taking the easy route, then you’re not actually doing the work to be able to be healed. And if you don’t want to be, and you want to continue to be in pain and be upset, then I guess keep on with that. But if you don’t want to be like that and you actually want to be healed and feel like you can move past things and have more self control, then I suggest overall.

being able to process through specifically your childhood. I believe most, if not every problem that we have as adults or anywhere in our life, it stems from childhood because that’s where we learned everything. And then we compounded on it and then we learned differently as we got older. But going back and processing through your childhood and thinking about the situations that don’t make you feel joyous and healthy.

you’re able to work through and process those, those are gonna help you be able to actually control yourself more. Because you will have worked through that and you’ll understand where those situations came from, what happened, what they mean for you now, what the story was that you were telling yourself, and what the new story is that you’re telling yourself, and what you believe to be true.

You’ve got to go through and you got to process through it. So as a step for this, and to be able to be in self control at any given point and have the control that you want, you have to process through your life. And again, I would really suggest processing through childhood. Now, if you’re asking, what does processing mean? I would suggest…

processing with a mental health coach, a therapist, or actually going through processes like visualizations to be able to work into your subconscious, to be able to work through those situations, heal from them, change the way that they are and what their meaning is, and then being able to move from that and move into the rest of your life from a healed perspective.

Nick McGowan (21:20.926)
And if you have deeper questions and want to know how do I go about that, what do I do, reach out to me. Send me an email. I’d love to be able to either help if I can or point you in the direction of a resource that we have as part of our company. Any way that I can be able to help, you need to be able to process through it. You can do whatever you want, but my suggestion is that you actually take that step to be able to process through what had happened and why you react the way that you do. When you figure out…

the processing side and how you’re going to do that and whether that’s going to be a once or twice sort of thing or an ongoing thing. Beautiful. From that I also want you to understand what your triggers are. Because understanding when and how you’re triggered, you’re then able to know this is that moment. This is that moment where I need to be in control. This is the this is the self control spot. Like this is where I put this into play. Or you don’t. But you need to make that decision. You’ll know

where it’s coming from, as you work through what your triggers are, because your subconscious will start to kind of feed you that information as you work through it and ask, why is this like this? Why do I feel this way? What, what has happened? And again, the processing will help you understand that. So if you just skip, skip that second step and just go to the first one, you’re going to be able to understand what your triggers are. And then from there, being able to figure out what your

Protocol is or using a tried and true protocol. There have been times in different situations. I’ve talked about how taking a quick beat or breathing for a few seconds or Stepping away and just getting out of the energy and the space that you’re in There are different ways to go about it. But understanding what your specific protocol is may actually Need to be guided by somebody else

And that can come from your processing as well. I’ve done processes with people before where by the end of it, the mentor that’s there can actually help you understand how to take the next steps and what steps look like for you and what those protocols are and how you go about that. But understanding that those protocols are there for you and understanding that maybe you have your own that you’ve created.

Nick McGowan (23:43.55)
is just an understanding. It doesn’t mean that you’re doing it. So how do you actually do it? How do you do it practically? And how do you do it sort of on demand? So you want to start small, start in a situation where you can be in control of

I guess an easy thing, simple thing would be how you eat something or when you eat something. And you can start that as a small sort of situation. The thing that comes to mind is like if you like to eat chocolate at night, maybe you start off with that. I’m not going to eat chocolate past eight o’clock, nine o’clock, whatever that is. And setting a small goal to be able to do that. You then start to really flex that self-control muscle.

And then even if it’s heavy or hard for you to do that at first, then over the course of time that muscle will start to be more intact with your being. But it takes you to start small. When you do start small, I want you to keep the end in mind or at least keep the bigger picture in mind.

So that you’re not just starting small and just saying, well, I’m not gonna eat this chocolate tonight because this fucking guy told me that I should do this. It doesn’t make any sense. If you have that larger picture and that.

big picture in mind of this is really why I’m doing this, then if you’re not even eating that chocolate at night, then maybe you’re getting to bed earlier and you’re getting more sleep and you’re feeling better in the next morning and the next few hours from that time where you would normally just kind of crash because you stayed up or whatever. And in the long run, that’ll help you

Nick McGowan (25:30.778)
know, benefit you by having different disciplines and different ways you handle things. It just, even from the sense of maybe you got up earlier than you had a year before because of that little thing that you’re doing. That might sound a little ridiculous, but again, if you think about doing something small,

and compounding on that while understanding I’m doing this so that I can strengthen the muscle that I have so that the rest of my life I can be more fluid and freely move about and feel healthy and resolved of my traumas. Then you’re starting small, but you’re keeping that end in mind. And along the lines of that, removing temptation.

If you know that you eat a lot of chocolate at night, I’m just gonna keep running with this thing, I guess. If you eat a lot of chocolate at night, then maybe you just get rid of most of it, throw half of it out. That might sound crazy, but it may not. Or you put some away where it’s locked or just hidden away, and know that if you’re starting to uncover where that thing is, that big…

payload of chocolate, then you’re taking those steps to be able to do that. And that puts more obstacles in your way to at least alert you like, Hey, you told yourself you weren’t going to do this thing. We’re just removing the temptation altogether and not having the chocolate in the house at all. And taking that small step to be able to do that. And when you remove that temptation, you then don’t have to be in a spot where you feel bad from it.

Think about it. If you’re like, well, I don’t want to eat chocolate past nine o’clock. And the easiest way to do that is to just remove the temptation, not have chocolate in the house. What happens at nine o’clock? You go, wow, shit, I could really go for some chocolate. You look around and there’s none. You can’t do anything. And if you get in the car and start driving somewhere to get chocolate, that should be a giant alert to you that something’s wrong. You’ve set yourself up for.

Nick McGowan (27:36.178)
for failure at that point as you’re moving through that but you’re taking all those steps to be able to do it and it should Alert you to let you know. Hey, you don’t want to do this. You told yourself Now there’s nothing wrong with eating chocolate at night unless your doctor tells you not to or whatever not everything doctors say is 100% accurate anyway, but

Being able to understand that if you’re setting yourself up with that small goal, then you want to be able to keep the end in mind that you’re doing it to understand how you can better strengthen yourself with your self-control muscle. Then removing the temptation may be the easiest and best way for you to go about it, or at least slightly removing it so that there are some steps in between. And then you can measure your progress. Maybe take a

Pat a paper and a pen or even just a little notepad. And each night that you didn’t eat chocolate, you can put a check box.

in a day or the weeks that you didn’t or whatever and you can look back and you can see the progress that you’ve made. And keep in mind, if you tell yourself I’m not going to eat chocolate past 9 o’clock at night for 30 days and you make it 3 days and eat chocolate, totally okay. Learn from it, grow from it and just start over again. And start it from that moment.

It starts day one all over again. I had recently put out an episode about drinking and the alcohol problem that I had and that I guess I still kind of have. It’s in my body, but I don’t, I don’t have alcohol. I haven’t drank any alcohol in over a year. By removing the temptation, what I’ve done is we don’t have any alcohol in our house at all. There are some times where I don’t even know if I want the Listerine that we have or the mouthwash that we have. Cause there’s a little bit of alcohol.

Nick McGowan (29:24.24)
alcohol. And that’s a way that I can remove that temptation, I can get something else that doesn’t taste like that. But by removing that understanding that I don’t have those temptations, if I were to get alcohol, it would take me getting in the car.

driving in town, going to get it and do all these things that would just be giant alerts to me to let me know, hey, you’re being an asshole. You’re going against what you said you were going to do. But I remember when I started that I started it off small saying I’m not going to drink today. And then I’m not going to drink the next day and then kind of going on from there knowing that the long term said I wanted to be in control of my life and the way that I look at things and how I do things and I don’t want alcohol to be a part of that.

So, I know I’ve jumped from chocolate to alcohol because chocolate may not be as much of a vice or anything and the alcohol may, but neither of them may be or they may totally be and they may be hand in hand where you may be slugging back drinks and eating a bunch of chocolate at night.

Either way, being able to actually understand what those little things are that you can do to be in control will start to flex that muscle and start to strengthen it. And then being able to set yourself up for success by removing the temptation, or at least moving the temptation, and then tracking your progress. I brought up the reason for drinking, or not drinking rather, it’s been over a year. However, if I drank tomorrow, I would start over again.

Now I know that I’m not going to drink tomorrow because I’ve removed temptation and I don’t have that and that’s not part of what I want to do. And there’s negative consequences that go along with it. That would just, it is not what I’m going to do. But if it were to happen, I would just start over and you’d start from one and then you’d start the next day and just compound and go on from there. And then you learn how to manage your stress in those situations. And.

Nick McGowan (31:29.05)
learning how to manage your mindset in those situations and Having the end in mind and I’m sure you can see how the pattern kind of works with this, and then you prioritize what What really needs to happen and show grace to yourself so on your path towards self-mastery?

And I like that I always like to ask that question, but for myself, I get to say to you on your path towards self-mastery. I want you to understand that self-control is a muscle. And even if you haven’t worked that muscle out for years.

You can pick up the weights again, and you can start small. You can start today and you can start to move on it and understand that it’s a journey. In fact, it’s a beautiful journey of mindfulness and discipline that will help you cultivate self-control and help you to understand what that looks like and tie into your muscle. So thank you for being with me today. If you have questions or you need some help with being able to have more self control and understanding how to do it and figuring out what you’re doing,

your protocol is, then please feel free to reach out. Send me an email, reach out to us on our website. I would love to help however I can, or however anybody on the team, or any resources that we have, but don’t hesitate. We’d love to be able to help you. And again, thank you so much for being with me today.