Self-control's an idea that's been conceptualized by the world as (literally speaking) how much control one has over one's self. Which is common sense, of course. Self-control is a determinant of a person's personality, among others. It determines who you are and what you're like. Some people have more self-control, others have less.
It can be argued that it's something you're born with or if it's something you develop. I can see both sides of the issue. On one side you're born with a compassionate personality. You're willing to accept things as they are, accept people as they come, and generally not try to create a ripple in things if you can do so. Compassion leads to understanding, which leads to more self-control over such emotions as anger and outright rage. You understand people more, therefore you get angry at them less.
It's also easy to see how it's developed. Patience is a virtue that comes with practice, as is self-control. But where does it come from? I mean, how are some people able to have more self-control than others? That's what picked at my mind today, so I thought about it.
To me, self-control comes from two things:
(Note - Self-control in this post is mainly what I'm referring to to mean how composed one is around people. It's a much broader subject, but that's what it'll be in this post.)
1. Your past experiences - Self-control is either degraded or strengthened by what happens to you in your life. People who go through harder things are either likely to have volatile emotions or have little to no hint of emotion due to the fact that they're used to having hidden them all their lives. This again comes down to basic personality we're born with as humans. If you're compassionate by nature, you don't want to burden others with your troubles. Instead, you let others come to you and sympathize with them by supplying some of your own past experiences that click with theirs in order to make them feel like they're not alone. Now, the other end of the spectrum isn't necessarily without compassion. It's merely harder to find. As such, they're more prone to volatile responses instead of keeping it inside. Neither is particularly a bad thing, but exercising self-control is a value society tends to hold high in wants of a drama-free world (which exists practically nowhere, so what's the point of writing this again? :P )
2. Your view of people - Now, factors 1 and 2 are interconnected in that past experiences may affect your view of people. I could certainly go into all the types of views of people that I've seen in my experiences, but that would take forever and would probably be a longer read than you'd like seeing as this one's long enough, so I won't go into that. However, the main idea still stands that your view of people affects your level of self-control around them. The more sympathetic and interested you are in people, the more self-control you will have around them in an effort to help and / or learn from them as far as studying the psychological aspect of human nature. However, if one's easily angered, it's due to the fact that they've been hurt in the past, are experiencing problems in the present (or both), or are just anti-social or it's something built into their personality.
It still doesn't completely satisfy my curiosity as to why we have differing levels of self-control, but those were some of my thoughts on it. Hope you enjoyed my first pointless rant, err post.
"Self-control is the ability to indulge in your darkest desires and remain unchanged in mind and soul."
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