SELF CONTROL AS A CATALYST OF RICHES

On The Path Of Winners

By Bayo Ogunmupe

Self Control As Catalyst Of Riches

A MOST important dial of our self image thermostat is the sense of self control.

  When I am in control of myself, I feel competent to perform and reach my goals. This confidence in me is built upon a foundation of experiencing success. Success breeds success. With poor self image, you destroy your self confidence by remembering past failures, forgetting your successes.

  Thus, dwelling on failures mentally erodes your power of self control. If you want to win by practicing double win, you must always remember your tiny footholds of success and remembering, reinforcing and dwelling upon those footholds.

  A research experiment had a group of adults solving ten different puzzles. Everyone worked on his puzzle and turned in his result. Half of the people being tested were told that they had done well, and solved at least seven out of ten puzzles correctly. The other half of the group learned that they had done poorly, that they had gotten seven out of ten puzzles wrong. Of course, the puzzle results were fictitious. But the researchers wanted to see what the two groups would do when given ten more puzzles to solve. The results were predictable. Those who had been told they had done well in the first round did better in the second, while those who had been told they had done poorly did worse. Mere association with past personal success apparently leads to more persistence, higher motivation or something that makes them do better.

  The sense of control is crucial to the attainment of your goals. Have you ever spun out of control such that a stranger you will never see again could ruin your day, much less you forever? How we control things or ourselves is an important aspect of our drive for financial freedom!

  The human brain works like a space shuttle. It works like this: you set your goal and pursue it. You monitor feedback as it comes from the environment. After receiving feedback, you engage in self talk or self adjustment. Then you take a decision to allow your self talk to be positive. If you programmed yourself with positive thoughts, the self image thermostat in your brain automatically adjusts your course to the right direction. Without consciously thinking about success, you go on pursuing and finally reaching, your goal. Winners always win because they tell themselves over and over again, with words, pictures, concepts and emotions that they are winning personal victories now. Double winners remind themselves how by giving of themselves to others, they receive in return.

  In this essay, we will look at seven skills which, though not a fail-safe formula for instant success, will help you win any race you chooce to run. One, make the goals yours. No goal set for you by others will ever be sought with the same zeal and commitment as one you set for yourself. Remember, the personal goals you want are those you can achieve. And keep your goals to yourself or share them only with role models who will take the time to give you positive feedback and input.

  Two, set goals with deadlines. It is an irrevocable part of nature to work harder at our goals as our deadlines approach. A goal isn’t a goal unless it has a deadline.

  Three, set explicit goals. The more specific the goal, the easier it will be achieved. Four, commit your goals into writing. Solicitors know the wisdom of the written contract. It demands clarity, specificity, conditions, a time frame and commitment of money. When all the terms are understood, it usually results in better performance. A good contract is an instrument of success. Always carry a 30-day calendar with you everyday. My Samsung cell phone carries a 30-day calendar.

  Five, set goals that can be incrementalized and measured. Since long range goals don't lend themselves to step by step reinforcement and feedback, it is better to break them into many short range ones where you can experience the thrill of victory on a smaller scale. Victory propels you to victory. Six, set goals with pulling power. Goals we can reach without effort have no pulling power. The excitement of reaching a challenging goal is often greater than the actual achievement.

  Seven, do your goals pass the double win test? To be a true winner in life, you must consider the impact of your achievements on others. Your success must be beneficial to others otherwise you are a rogue not a winner. A good goal cannot succeed without the help of others. The winner is a goal minder, who becomes a gold miner, who shares his wealth with others. The gold digger is a rogue, like the woman who loves you for your money. You won’t learn of your poor judgment until your last days on your death-bed.

  Our champion for today is Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli American psychologist and winner of the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He is notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision making, behavioural economics and hedonic psychology.

  With Amos Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors using heuristics and biases. They developed prospect theory. Kahneman was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economics for his work on prospect theory. In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named him onto its list of top global thinkers. In the same year Kahneman published, Thinking Fast and Slow, which summarizes much of his research. It was a best seller.

  Kahneman was born in March 1934 in Tel Aviv, Israel while his mother was visiting relatives. He was raised in Paris, France where his parents had emigrated from Lithuania in the 1920s. Kahneman and his family were in France when it was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940. After his father died of diabetes in 1944, Kahneman and his family fled to British Mandatory Palestine in 1948, just prior to Israeli independence.

  Kahneman received his first degree in psychology and mathematics in Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1954. Thereafter he served in the Israeli Defence Forces. In 1958, he went to the United States for his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He began his academic career as a lecturer at Hebrew University in 1961. Later he became a visiting scientist at the University of Michigan (1965-66) and at the Applied Psyhological Research Unit of the University of Cambridge, UK (1968-69). He was a fellow at the Centre for Cognitive Studies at Harvard University in 1966-67.

  Kahneman left Israel in 1978 to take up a position at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Then, Kahneman and Tversky became fellows at Stanford University where they met a young economist, Richard Thaler. There, Kahneman and Thaler built the Prospect Theory in Behavioral Economics. Thaler, Tversky and Kahneman collaborated until Tversky’s death in 1978. Kahneman is currently professor emeritus at the Department of Psychology, Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs, Princeton University, USA. He has published two books with Anne Treisman, his wife since 1978.