You have probably heard about self-mastery by now. However, you may not know what it means or why it is important. If you would like to know all the self-mastery benefits that can change your life, stick to the end of this article to find out.
What is self-mastery?
Self-mastery is the capacity to be in control of yourself in all areas of your life, including your body, your mind, and your spiritual self. Self-mastery involves being aware of how you operate in any situation in all of these areas and having the discipline required to control your emotions and impulses and to make the right decision at any given moment. This will ultimately allow you to live a happy and fulfilled life where you reach your full potential in all these important areas.
Why does self-mastery matter?
The ultimate goal of self-mastery is a happy and fulfilled life filled with trusting long-term relationships that nourish us, activities that stimulate our minds and curiosity, and that let us express our creativity, work that is meaningful to us, that makes us feel like we are contributing for something greater than ourselves, and a fit and healthy body.
Self-mastery is important because we need to live our life for OURSELVES, not for our emotional impulses or for others. It matters because it enables us to do what we really want in this existence so that we have no regrets when we get to the end of our lives. It matters because it provides many self-mastery benefits that can have a positive impact in our lives.
The benefits of self-mastery:
You may not be truly aware of all the useful benefits of self-mastery. Keep reading to know all about the best benefits of self-mastery:
- It helps you control your emotions
- It helps you control your thoughts
- You make better decisions
- You understand what is essential
- It provides self-discipline
- You will reach your goals more easily
- You are more successful at work
- You have more fulfilling relationships
- You help the ones around you
- You become more confident
I have broken down each one of these so that you can fully understand how they work and how you can make the most out of each one of them.
1. It helps you control your emotions
One of the fundamental components of self-mastery is emotional self-mastery. This involves understanding your emotions moment by moment, through self-awareness, and controlling them in a way that enables you to live a happy and fulfilled life.
By being in charge of your emotions, you no longer react emotionally to the situations in life. Instead, you stop. Take a breath. Then, you reframe the situation in a way that enables you to respond to it, instead of reacting to it.
This can prevent you from speaking loudly or in a bitter tone, or even slamming doors during an argument.
2. It helps you control your thoughts
We all deal with negative thoughts from time to time. Most of us develop limiting beliefs throughout our lives that creep in every now into our conscious minds. Such beliefs can be “I am not good enough,” “I am unlovable,” “I am dumb,” or “I am unworthy.” Do you recognize any of these? I surely do.
By mastering the self, you can begin to acknowledge these beliefs and also be aware of the thoughts you have moment-to-moment. Hence, you can spot the negative patterns sooner and develop the skills that enable you to replace those thoughts with more positive ones. A fantastic tool for this is affirmations. Louise Hay is the queen of affirmations. A great book of hers that I have read recently and loved is “You can heal your life.” It has great affirmations in there that you can use daily to change your thought patterns.
3. You make better decisions
Another one of the benefits of self-mastery is that you make better decisions. When you are in charge of how you feel and how you think, it is much easier to make the right decisions. You are no longer limited by your negative thoughts and emotions, such as fear, guilt, resentment, or anger, that harm your decision-making skills. You are able to use your rational mind more, as well as make use of your positive emotions to drive your decisions. Note that it is still important to use both our minds and hearts to make decisions. This enables us to choose a more balanced course of action.
You are now the one that is in charge of your own life. Your decisions are based on what you want and not on what others want or what you think others want, which is what usually happens. This will ultimately benefit you in the long run, since you are the person whose wishes you should honor the most.
4. You understand what is essential
When you make decisions out of a self-mastery place, you can clearly perceive what is important for you and the people who matter to you the most from what is not. You are the pilot of your plane now. You understand what will enable you to have a “safe flight” according to the weather conditions you face. You can ask yourself: what is essential now? And then you just do what is crucial. Do less, but better. Do not bother with the non-essentials.
If you would like to know more about this self-mastery benefit, I highly recommend the book “Essentialism,” by Greg McKeown. I have read it this past year and it really helped me gain perspective about what is important in my life and whose activities I do just to fill the time, when they are not that really important.
5. It provides self-discipline
To truly master yourself, you need to master all areas of your life, including your physical, mental, and spiritual self. For this, you undoubtedly need self-discipline. You need the discipline to quit toxic habits and implement good ones, to start eating better, sleeping better, to have a fitter body, to feed your mind positive content that you can learn from, such as through reading, to choose healthier activities, to feed your soul with activities that make it sing, whatever that is. It can be dancing, swimming, reading, hanging out with your friends, trying new things, having a cozy evening at home with your loved one(s). However, you need the discipline to choose the right thing that will nourish you and make you a better person overall.
Discipline is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. When working towards self-mastery, you are constantly training this muscle. This is a highly valuable skill that you can use across all areas of your life and that will benefit you tremendously. Without discipline, you cannot achieve your long-term goals. Passion only gets you started. You need the discipline to keep going.
I have a book recommendation for the topic of discipline as well. It is called “Grit” and I have read it a while back. It is written by an expert in this field, Angela Duckworth. She gives amazing advice about how we can develop our resilience and how we can instill it in others, in particular, in our children. So, it is also full of insights for parents.
6. You reach your goals more easily
Another self-mastery benefit is that you reach your goals more easily. The key ingredient to meet your goals is discipline, which you surely gain in the self-mastery process. With the grit and resilience you acquire, you can direct your energy and efforts to achieve what you truly want. Not what society, your parents, your kids, your other half, your friends want from you, but what YOU want from you. Plus, with all the extra physical and mental energy you gain through a healthier lifestyle, you are much better equipped to reach your goals faster and more efficiently.
If you are interested in knowing more about how you can reach your goals, I recommend the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. It is one of my all-time favorite books. It is filled with useful ideas about how you can trick your mind to want to do the right thing and not the wrong one. Please read it if you need a little push or if you are currently in a slump.
7. You are more successful at work
With all the benefits that have been previously mentioned, such as emotion management, better decision-making skills, being better at understanding what is important and what is not, and discipline, you have the perfect ingredients for being successful at work. As you master yourself area by area, you will be healthier physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. This innately makes you more productive. More importantly, it makes you productive at what matters the most. You don’t just do more, you do more of what is important for the company you are working for. If you own the company, even better. You will achieve the goals of your company much faster. You will end your tasks much faster and your work will start being recognized for what a big difference it makes. You can even start having a 4-hour work week, who knows?
8. You have more fulfilling relationships
As you master yourself, you gain awareness of your faults and your qualities, and you start working on your faults and making better use of your qualities. Therefore, you begin to be easier to relate to, which is a great self-mastery benefit.
You think before you speak. Since you are in control of your thoughts, you can choose to think loving thoughts towards someone, such as “this person is acting out of a feeling of inferiority, that is why he/she is craving attention” or “this person is feeling insecure right now, that is why he/she is making a scene” instead of negative ones. You make an effort to act from a more loving place that is aligned with your new self, the one that is mastered.
Furthermore, you are in charge of how you feel. Thus, you can act instead of reacting purely emotionally. This prevents you from doing something or saying something that you can regret later on and that does not come from a loving place.
9. You help the ones around you
One of the most compassionate benefits of self-mastery is that you can truly help the ones around you. As a result of developing better relationships, you start inspiring people for them to master themselves. Your loved ones will start asking what you have done to change and will want to improve as you have.
You will also be able to provide better advice to the people in your circle since you have gained a new clarity about what matters the most and since you are in such fit shape in all areas of your life. You have more energy and patience to help your kids and/or your other half. Since you have filled your own cup first, you can now fill those of others.
10. You become more confident
One of the most important benefits of self-mastery is that you gain self-confidence. By being fitter in all areas of your life, you will inevitably gain confidence in yourself. Confidence is all about the promises you make to yourself and keep. If you continuously make small promises to yourself that you keep, you will slowly build your self-confidence. If you make promises to yourself that you cannot keep, your confidence suffers.
In the process of self-mastery, you need to make small every day promises to yourself, such as “today, I will work out for at least 10 minutes” or “today, I will meditate for at least 5 minutes” or “today, I will dance to one of my favorite songs in front of the mirror and I will sing it out loud because my soul is craving it.” As little as it seems, the more you do this and keep your word, the more confident you become.
Conclusion
As you can see, the art of self-mastery can provide you with amazing benefits that will help you live a more fulfilling life in all areas. The self-mastery path is an ongoing one that never stops, as we can always learn more and improve. That is the beauty of it. Enjoy the journey and where you are at right now. If you commit to this fantastic path, it can only get better from now on.