Too little
Letting the impulse answer
“I will say the sharpest thing that occurs to me.”
Momentary satisfaction can add a second conflict without clarifying the first.
Self-Command
Let the next response serve what matters.
The cultivated restraint of impulses that would cause needless harm.
Self-Command directs an impulse in light of a considered purpose. New responsibilities can put you in situations where a feeling arrives before you know what to do with it. Anger may tell you that something is unfair; it need not dictate every word that follows. You can keep the feeling and choose the response.
Self-Command gives a response you can stand behind
In your first week at the shop, a customer blames you for a delay that began before your shift. A very satisfying reply arrives fully formed. You feel its first word approaching. Instead, you ask the supervisor to help with the complaint and explain what you know. The customer is still irritated. You are still angry. But the next part of the exchange concerns the actual delay, rather than the sentence you almost donated to it.
Finding the balance in Self-Command
An unfair complaint at a first job prompts a sharp impulse while a real problem still needs attention.
A fitting response
Choosing the response
“I need help with this complaint. Here is what I know.”
You direct your action toward useful support while keeping the unfairness in view.
Pursued too far
Suppressing every reaction
“A good worker never feels angry or asks for help.”
Control becomes self-erasure when it demands silence about needs or mistreatment.
A chosen response can address the problem without pretending the treatment was fair.
What Self-Command makes possible
Self-Command gives you more than the first available reaction. You can clarify a fact, seek help, state a limit or return to a conversation when you can participate usefully. At a first job, this also gives you room to learn how the workplace handles problems instead of acting as though you must already manage every one alone. A deliberate response can preserve both your voice and the task you want to accomplish.
Self-Command in ordinary life
A correction in company
Notice the urge to defend yourself before you have heard what was said. Ask about the point you do not understand.
A tense shared task
When frustration is making your words careless, ask for a pause or help with the part that is stuck.
Nearby virtues, different work
Temperance
Temperance orders appetite and enjoyment within a fitting measure. Self-Command directs an immediate impulse, including anger or the urge to interrupt.
Self-Respect
Self-Respect keeps dignity and legitimate needs in the decision. Self-Command helps choose how to act on them.
Self-Command and its counterfeits
Counterfeit Self-Command: the perfect customer-service face
An untroubled appearance can hide pressure to accept anything. The virtue concerns a considered response, which may include asking for help or ending an exchange.
How to cultivate Self-Command
Notice the impulse before treating it as an instruction.
Name the purpose and the facts you can stand behind.
Choose a response, pause or source of support that fits the situation.
Try it today
Recall an ordinary irritation. Privately draft a response that states what you know and what you need without adding an accusation you cannot support. There is no requirement to send it or revisit the exchange.
Questions worth returning to
- What useful purpose would this response serve?
- Am I directing my anger, or demanding that I stop having it?
Keep the practice proportionate
Self-Command does not require enduring abuse or managing a threatening person alone. A pause, appropriate support or leaving an unsafe exchange may be the considered response.
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
I’ve been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it.
Mrs. March · Louisa May Alcott · Little Women · Chapter 8
Jo is astonished to discover that her mother still experiences anger. The admission distinguishes a considered response from an effortlessly calm temperament; the page does not adopt the following wish never to feel anger.
… her fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried into repeating something of Bingley, which might only grieve her sister further.
Narrator of Pride and Prejudice · Jane Austen · Pride and Prejudice · Chapter XXXVIII
Elizabeth pauses before an exciting disclosure because it could expose painful information about Jane. Directing the impulse makes room for the person who would hear it.
… with strength of character that is not to be influenced, except on good reason, by anybody, or by anything.
Betsey Trotwood · Charles Dickens · David Copperfield · Chapter 19
David’s aunt includes a crucial qualification in her vigorous advice: good reasons may change a firm person. Self-command need not become resistance to every outside influence.
You do not suppose that I have ever felt much.
Elinor Dashwood · Jane Austen · Sense and Sensibility · Chapter XXXVII
Elinor challenges Marianne’s assumption that restraint means little suffering. Self-command concerns what a person does with feeling; an outwardly composed response does not disclose its cost.
I deny'd myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly …
Benjamin Franklin · Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection
Franklin pauses the satisfying interruption so that disagreement can be considered more fairly. His broader account admits that apparent modesty and actual humility are not identical.
… not reproachfully to reprehend any man for a barbarism, or a solecism, or any false pronunciation …
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations · Book I, VII · trans. Meric Casaubon
He credits Alexander with correcting language without making the speaker a spectacle. The urge to display a correction can be redirected toward helping someone be understood.
Curious, the way we sometimes do things we don't want to at all.
Mary Antin · The Promised Land · The Landlady
After her encounter with the landlady, Antin notices a gap between intention and action. That observation opens a useful question about impulse without excusing the treatment she received.
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Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.