Too little
Retaliation: swing the foam mallet to make the other player pay for the embarrassment.
Self-Command
Check the impulse to punish while anger is making power feel righteous.
The cultivated restraint of impulses that would cause needless harm.
Self-Command restrains impulses that would cause needless harm. Anger can make power feel like permission: the action seems right because you want it urgently. Cultivated restraint creates an interval in which you can choose the response’s purpose and form. The feeling may remain intense while the action becomes deliberate.
Try a practice
A small heroic scene
Someone knocks your foam superhero helmet off the costume-game table. You reach for the giant squeaky mallet, then set it down and ask for space. The mallet contributes one small squeak to the conversation. It is the only punishment administered that afternoon.
An invented illustrative scene.
Self-Command gives…
Self-Command leaves more responses available than the first retaliatory impulse. You can ask what happened, object clearly, leave the game or use the agreed route for a concern. Restraint protects your capacity to choose; it does not require agreeing that the breach was acceptable.
What Self-Command makes possible
A fictional hero can lower a raised hand and still oppose a wrong. Putting down a phone before sending an angry message can let the next sentence address the issue instead of adding an insult. That small interval is something to cultivate before a difficult moment.
Self-Command: finding the balance
A fitting response
Governed impulse: put it down, take space and choose how to address the breach.
Pursued too far
Punitive self-control: forbid yourself any feeling or objection because anger seems unheroic. Suppressing the issue is no substitute for choosing a response.
Where there is a threat, distance and appropriate support can be the deliberate response. No practice asks you to stay in an unsafe exchange.
Self-Command in ordinary life
An angry draft
Save it privately and reread it later before deciding whether any message is needed.
A game dispute
Set down the prop and use the agreed discussion route rather than retaliating.
Nearby virtues, different work
Temperance
Self-Command checks the immediate impulse; Temperance limits the appetite for more force or domination.
Courage
Courage can face the fear of making a firm objection; Self-Command shapes how that objection is made.
Self-Command and its counterfeits
Frozen submission counterfeits Self-Command when staying silent is treated as the only controlled response. Self-Command restrains needless harm while allowing a firm boundary, an objection or departure.
How to cultivate Self-Command
- Notice the action the impulse is demanding.
- Create a pause using space or a delayed message.
- Choose words that address the issue without adding needless harm.
Try it today
If a low-stakes irritation arises, pause before sending a message or responding. Set down the relevant object or step away if that helps, then choose whether to speak, delay or leave. Do not remain with threats or coercion to prove restraint.
Identify an option the pause made available that the first impulse had excluded.
Questions worth returning to
- What action is my anger trying to authorize?
- What would address the issue without adding a new harm?
Keep the practice proportionate
These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.
About these practicesQuotations and further reading
Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.
When I have an unusually difficult question to decide—one that appeals strongly to the emotions—I find it a safe rule to sleep over it for a night, or to wait until I have had an opportunity to talk it over with my wife and friends.
Booker T. Washington · Up from Slavery: An Autobiography
UP FROM SLAVERY (zero-based)
Booker T. Washington · Project Gutenberg 2376 current HTML transcription; source typography preserved; first printing not collatedWashington describes a pause and consultation before an emotionally charged decision. His personal habit offers an option for ordinary deliberation, rather than a universal guarantee about timing or safety.
I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it?
Robert Louis Stevenson · Kidnapped
CHAPTER XXIV THE FLIGHT IN THE HEATHER: THE QUARREL (zero-based)
David Balfour, narrator · Project Gutenberg 421 current HTML transcription; source typography preserved; first printing not collatedDavid sees the consequences after his retaliatory speech. His regret gives the earlier interval for choosing words an object: avoid adding a harm that later wishes cannot undo.
… the one class preventing our becoming angry, the other preventing our doing wrong when we are angry.
Seneca · Minor Dialogues, Together with the Dialogue on Clemency
CONTENTS. (zero-based)
Seneca · 1889 George Bell and Sons; Aubrey Stewart translation; Project Gutenberg 64576 HTML display edition
Latin original, English translationSeneca separates preventing the feeling from preventing a harmful action once it exists. The second task is especially relevant to choosing a response while anger remains present.
… when I afterward came into his situation, I took care never to imitate it.
Benjamin Franklin · The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
(zero-based); exact captured edition
Benjamin Franklin, autobiographical narrator · Project Gutenberg 148 current HTML transcription; source typography preserved; first printing not collatedFranklin recalls resenting Bradford’s exclusion of his newspaper from postal distribution, then declining to repeat it after gaining the same position. His own earlier bribery of riders is also in the account, so the episode does not certify his whole conduct. The chosen restraint refuses to turn acquired power into retaliation.
Let us wait for the time when we ourselves can give orders: at present we speak under constraint from anger.
Seneca · Minor Dialogues, Together with the Dialogue on Clemency
CONTENTS. (zero-based)
Seneca · 1889 George Bell and Sons; Aubrey Stewart translation; Project Gutenberg 64576 HTML display edition
Latin original, English translationSeneca asks whether anger is directing the apparent exercise of power. A pause can make the chosen response more deliberate; his punitive social setting is not endorsed as a model for ordinary relationships.
… he would not for the world have behaved amiss; still, it was particularly easy to laugh.
George Eliot · Middlemarch
CHAPTER XXXV. (zero-based)
Narrator, describing Fred Vincy · Project Gutenberg 145 current HTML transcription; source typography preserved; first printing not collatedFred wants to avoid mocking another person at the reading of Featherstone’s will. Mary helps him change seats: restraint can use practical assistance while the impulse is still present.
let him not make his fellow-creatures wait.
Ralph Waldo Emerson · Essays, First Series
PRUDENCE (zero-based)
Ralph Waldo Emerson · Project Gutenberg 2944 current HTML transcription; source typography preserved; first printing not collatedEmerson brings self-command into the small promises and habits of ordinary life. The excerpt asks that an impulse or distraction be checked for someone else’s sake, rather than making power over another person the test.
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Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.