How to Successfully Exercise Uncanny and Resolute Self-Control

The Practice of Self-Control in an Indirect Confrontation

The impatient and rude woman ranted and raved at the hairdresser, insisting that she would be late for her flight in the evening if the hairdresser did not attend to her hair immediately. This was despite the fact that when she entered the salon, the hairdresser was attending to me. As soon as she entered the salon at 10.30 a.m., she gave a cursory greeting and disdainfully queried the hairdresser, “I thought you said that you could attend to me at 10.00 a.m.?” The implication of this was why the hairdresser was attending to someone else.

She kept on murmuring and complaining while the hairdresser was doing my hair and haughtily threatened to leave to another salon. According to her, she had to do her hair, do her nails, go back home to clean her house and do a million other things before her flight from Ghana to Europe at 11:00 p.m. The overwhelmed hairdresser assured her that she would finish doing my hair very soon in order to attend to her. She said this in a very placating tone, knowing that the customer was always right and weary of losing a customer, no matter how rude.

Throughout this irritating encounter, I resolutely kept silent, exercising uncanny self-control. I was quite appalled at the customer’s display of arrogance and lack of finesse. The customer’s behaviour was as if I didn’t exist. To her, I was a person of no consequence since I apparently did not have a flight to catch that evening. She probably thought of me as a country bumpkin who had no idea of her supposedly glamorous lifestyle.

Mind you, I had booked my appointment the previous day for 8.30 a.m. that morning. I think that the hairdresser should have informed the customer to come to the salon at 12 midday when she would be sure that she had finished attending to me. This would have avoided this unnecessary and unpleasant confrontation.

I took a deep breath and reminded myself of four ways to exercise self-control, which have served me in the past. They are as follows:

Four Ways to Exercise Self-Control

1. Decide to control your anger

The first way to exercise self-control is to make a conscious decision to control your anger. Once you control your anger, you have won half of the battle. We should remember that anger is more destructive than constructive. Hence, we should relentlessly control it. Benjamin Franklin, the American polymath, in indicating that nothing good comes out of anger said that, “Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.”

2. Analyse the situation and the possible outcomes of your chosen response

The second way to exercise self-control is to analyse the situation and the possible outcomes of the response that you choose. If you react in anger, this is likely to escalate tempers which may result in a heated quarrel or even fisticuffs. On the other hand, if you choose to be patient and exercise self-control, you avoid fighting unnecessary battles. By choosing to be smart cowards, we avoid unnecessary conflict. The author, C. Joybell C., thus admonishes us, “Choose your battles wisely. … Life is too short to spend it on warring. Find only the most, most, most important ones, let the rest go.”

3. Silently empathise with the other party

Another way to exercise self-control is to silently empathise with the other party. Whenever you put yourself in the other person’s shoes, it becomes easier to appreciate their behaviour and to tolerate it, no matter how rude or overbearing it may be. In this particular instance, I just imagined how stressed out and impatient I would be if I were to be the one travelling that night with yet a million things to do. With that sense of empathy, it was easier to swallow my righteous indignation.

4. Leave the scene as quickly as possible

Another means of exercising self-control is to leave the scene as quickly as possible. When you leave the scene, you remove the temptation of reacting to the trigger of anger. Hence you avoid confrontation and all its possible outcomes. In this particular instance, I left the salon immediately the hairdresser finished doing my hair, after paying her. I didn’t want to be in the same room with such an ill-mannered person for any minute longer than was absolutely necessary.

At the end of it all, I was satisfied with myself for having succeeded in exercising self-control. Do you have any other ways to exercise self-control? Kindly provide your comments by clicking on the chat icon beneath the heading of the article.

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