How Cognitive Distancing can help in Mastering Self-Control
What if we had the ability to step back. Truly step back. Away from our mind and body, and see ourselves as though we were someone else. What if we also had the ability to see what we were thinking, but from the outside. Without the weight of emotions that stop us from seeing clearly. A ‘God’s eye view’ of ourself.
In my long attempt to read more books, I promised to finish one by the end of this month. “How to Think like a Roman Emperor” by Donald Robertson. In this book, the author explains the philosophy of Stoicism, through the story of Marcus Aurelius; one of the greatest Roman emperors that lived.
As I progress through this book (yes I am yet to finish it 🤞🏼), There are many insights that caught my attention. There was one thing however, that stuck to my mind. As though it was the forbidden secret to truly being a master of oneself. This secret, was cognitive distancing.
What’s that? Well, to summarise what I understood, it is the action of distancing ourselves from our emotions and viewing things rationally. Accepting what we were feeling and yet, moving forward with logic. Looking at emotions as natural reactions to incidents, and not as factors that influence our decisions.
Why do I see this as the secret to self-mastery? If used well, cognitive distancing could help us see things just as they are. Nothing more, and nothing less. Our emotions sometimes tend to make this vision blurrier than usual.
Seeing emotions as nothing more than just initial reactions, helps in seeing the road forward.
Let’s look at a simple example.
You’ve set a goal. A fitness goal. You’re aim is to lose 2 kilos and to become leaner. To achieve this, you have created a workout and a nutrition plan. The nutrition plan is simple, and mostly consists of avoiding junk and processed foods. You’ve been doing great so far, but there comes a day that has been more stressful than usual. Your work has been putting some pressure on you and you need a stress-buster. You come back home after a heavy work day and you decide to “take a break”. So you decide to order food in.
You open your food delivery app of choice (as if there are so many), and you enter the world of temptation. You see the numerous restaurants that the app pushes in front of your eyes, and you try resisting the temptation to order that. But your stress gets to you. You tell yourself that you’ve been having a tough time at work, and you deserve a treat.
It’s not at all wrong to think this way, but what if you could do better? Let’s imagine that you are playing a video game, and you are controlling the main character in that game. The main character is — you guessed it — you! You’ve worked hard to level up this character. But now you see them getting tempted to do something that might hinder that progress. You don’t punish this character for it. Rather, you empathize with it. You understand that this temptation has emerged due to many reasons. You see this temptation as a natural reaction of the stress that this character has gone through on that day, allowing them to feel it.
You don’t judge the decisions that they take next. You give them the freedom, but also letting them know that you understand this feeling and that it’s just that — a feeling.
Imagine being this character, who then takes the decision not to act on impulse, but to let the feeling pass.
That is the power of stepping back. Checking yourself at every step. Being aware of your thoughts. Not overthinking! But just observing the thoughts we have. Something as simple as that could make a world of a difference in how we react to things.
Overall, that’s how I think cognitive distancing can help in achieving self-control. Practicing this, of course, will take time and effort. But consistently being mindful can make it a habit. And good habits die hard 😉. Have an awesome week!
