Ep #283: Self-Control

In this podcast, Kevin engages listeners in a comprehensive exploration of self-control, dissecting the intricate relationship between emotions, awareness, and behavioral regulation. He begins by advocating for an approach to emotions that involves fully feeling and understanding them without judgment or reaction. Kevin highlights the common tendency to buffer emotions by engaging in distracting activities like scrolling through social media or consuming substances. The theme centers around the importance of awareness in emotional regulation, stressing that resistance or avoidance weakens self-control.

Moving into the discussion on stress, Kevin illuminates how stress acts as a counterforce to self-control by redirecting awareness externally. Stress, he explains, pulls attention away from the internal conflict monitoring system, thereby hindering self-awareness. The antidote presented is a shift from external to internal focus during stressful situations, reinstating self-control through heightened awareness of internal processes.

Challenging the concept of self-control as an abstraction, Kevin posits it as a measurable skill contingent on internal awareness. He dismisses the notion of merely “just doing it” without understanding the underlying conflict monitoring system. Kevin draws from ancient wisdom, particularly yogic and Buddhist traditions, emphasizing the age-old principle that awareness precedes control. Practical strategies for enhancing self-control emerge, such as thought downloads, journaling, and meditation, all aimed at intensifying internal awareness of thoughts and emotions.

Throughout the podcast, Kevin dispels simplistic notions, urging listeners to delve into the complexity of their internal worlds. The key takeaway is that genuine self-control is not a mythical trait but a tangible skill cultivated through continuous internal awareness and understanding of one’s thoughts and emotions.

What Youll Learn from This Episode:

      1. Emotional Awareness and Regulation:

        • Encourages acknowledging and fully feeling emotions without judgment or reaction.
        • Advocates for understanding emotions rather than suppressing, avoiding, or buffering through distractions.
      2. Buffering and Stress:

        • Describes buffering as a common practice of seeking pleasure or distraction to avoid unpleasant emotions.
        • Highlights stress as a factor that diminishes self-control by diverting attention externally.
      3. The Conflict Monitoring System:

        • Introduces the concept of the conflict monitoring system as the internal process that regulates thoughts and emotions.
        • Stresses the importance of self-awareness and monitoring this internal conflict for achieving self-control.
      4. Internal vs. External Focus:

        • Explains how stress pulls attention away from internal conflict monitoring, reducing self-awareness.
        • Advocates for re-internalizing awareness during stress, shifting focus from external circumstances to internal thoughts and feelings.
      5. Self-Control as an Abstraction:

        • Challenges the notion of self-control as a standalone concept, labeling it an abstraction.
        • Asserts that self-control is a measurable skill tied to awareness of the conflict monitoring system.
      6. Ancient Wisdom and Modern Strategies:

        • Draws parallels with ancient teachings, particularly from yogic and Buddhist traditions.
        • Offers practical strategies such as thought downloads, journaling, and meditation for enhancing self-control.
      7. Continuous Internal Awareness:

        • Emphasizes that sustained self-control is contingent on prolonged internal awareness.
        • Dismisses the simplistic advice of “just do it,” advocating for a deep understanding of one’s internal conflict monitoring system.
      8. Cultivation of Genuine Self-Control:

        • Concludes that genuine self-control is not an inherent trait but a cultivated skill.
        • Urges listeners to engage with the complexity of their internal worlds for authentic self-control.
       

Listen to the Full Episode: 

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[INTRODUCTION]

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Alpha Male Coach Podcast, the only podcast that teaches men the cognitive mastery and alpha mindset that it takes to become an influential and irresistible man of confidence. Here’s your host, certified life coach, and international man of mystery, Kevin Aillaud.

[INTERVIEW]

00:06

What’s up my brothers, welcome back to the Alpha Male Coach Podcast. I am your host, Kevin Aillaud, and today I’m in Ecuador, one of my favorite places on earth. Now I tell you something, I’ve been to, what is it now, 64 countries in the world, and Ecuador is one of my favorite countries in the world. In fact, where I am today is actually one of my favorite places in the world. It’s a little pueblo called Mindo, Mindo Valley. It’s a little…

 

00:34

Northwest of the capital of Ecuador, which is Quito. Now I’m going to give you guys a very quick rundown of this because I don’t want to belabor this point too much. I really have some very fascinating content to get into today. I just want to tell you guys how much I love this place. And I don’t know if I’ve told you this before. I have been to Mindo before and I probably mentioned it on this podcast, but the reason why I love it, first of all, Quito, the capital of Ecuador is just like any other major city in the world. Okay. It’s like New York, Los Angeles, Paris.

 

01:04

London like Shanghai. I mean, it’s huge. You can get anything you want there. It’s like Bangkok, right? And in terms of infrastructure in terms of amenities in terms of you know, first world luxuries You can really get anything you want in Quito Mindo is a tiny tiny pueblo in the middle of the cloud forest and it’s only about an hour and a half away From Quito. It’s amazing and you’re really in the jungle. You’re really in the rainforest

 

01:30

Now jungle, rainforest, what’s the difference? I’ll tell you brothers, it has to do with elevation. Has to do with altitude. Because we’re up in the Andes here in Mindo, we have a little bit more of a cooler climate. It’s still a tropical jungle, but it’s not fully tropic because it’s a cloud forest. So the tropics are more down closer to sea level, like the Amazon rainforest. Mindo is up in the cloud forest. So you have a little bit cooler temperatures,

 

02:00

What’s so amazing about Mindo, well about the cloud forest, Mindo just happens to be the pueblo I’m at. What’s so amazing about the cloud forest and this area of the world, the planet Earth, what’s so amazing about this area of the planet Earth is that there is the most biodiversity found here than any other place in the world. Now biodiversity means there’s the most variance of species.

 

02:25

There’s the most variance of plants. There’s the most variance of trees. There’s the most variance of insects. There’s the most variance of reptiles. There’s the most variance of frogs. There’s the most variance of birds. There’s the most variance of mammals. I mean, you can find sloths here. You can find bears here. You can find monkeys here. In fact, just looking out my window, in the same tree, I see a toucan and a monkey in the same tree, a bird and a mammal. It’s wild and we don’t see either of these things in the US unless you’re at a zoo.

 

02:54

Like you can get two cans, you can see two cans at the zoo, you can see monkeys at the zoo, but these things are right outside my window in the same tree and it’s everywhere. The most variants of all plant, all flora, all fauna. It’s beautiful. Now, why does that matter, brothers? Because I’m an energy person. And I wasn’t always an energy person. I’ll be honest with you, I was not always an energy person. In my earlier life, I was very, very dense. I was very, very heavy.

 

03:22

I was so locked in my mind, so deep in my conditioning. And as I’ve done this work to shed my conditioning, to let go of my trauma, what happens is you let go of the density that kind of fills the aura, kind of fills your body, and you become much more sensitive to the energy, to the vibration of your environment. And so now that I’m so sensitive to my environment, now that I’m so sensitive to energy, I love being around life. I love life.

 

03:53

Now I can get along in the desert as well. If the desert is okay, yes, there’s much less life, but because there’s less life, that life tends to really vibrate in a certain way where it’s almost attractive. You can almost say, oh, okay, well, there’s so little life here, it’s like calling you out. But in places like this, in the cloud forest, in the Amazon, in Tulum, in the jungles of Tulum, yeah, brothers, you can feel the energy all around you, and it’s very fulfilling.

 

04:22

It’s very energy filling, at least for me it is. To hear the insects, the insects are so loud at night. There’s a river right outside where I’m staying. There’s water moving, the frogs, the cacophony of frogs that are happening. Every night you can hear the frogs. They’re just like a symphony. It’s absolutely beautiful. You can hear the different bird calls. There’s so many variances of hummingbird species. Just here in this one little area that I’ve been, I’ve seen a dozen different hummingbirds.

 

04:51

It’s crazy, it’s wild. And to feel all of their energy is just absolutely magical. So that’s why I love it here. I love coming here. Now it’s high in the mountains, which is also part of my energetic profile, according to at least human design, which I’ve mentioned on this podcast as well, energy mechanics. I am a mountain person. So for me to be not just in the mountains, but also in the forest, I mean, I get the best of both worlds. I get the mountains, I get the high peaks, the Andes.

 

05:20

but I also get all of this life just surrounded by life. It’s absolutely amazing. And I would highly recommend, first, I mean, Ecuador, if you guys, if your geography is not up to par, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Ecuador is not one of those countries that’s in the news. So you probably, you know, it’s not really talked about. You may not know where it is. It’s in South America, but it borders the Pacific. Okay, so it’s in Eastern South America, or Western South America, excuse me, Western South America.

 

05:48

On the east, it’s bordered by Columbia, and on the south is Peru. So you kind of got in, it’s like at the northwest corner of South America. Absolutely beautiful. Small, you know, smaller country, but like I said, Quito is just like any other major metropolis in the world. And just outside Quito, you’ve got the Andes, you’ve got the cloud forest in the Andes. Beautiful. Anyway, let’s get into the work today, brothers. We’re gonna talk about self-control. Now, researchers have been working with self-control for

 

06:18

I mean, people have been studying this thing for a very long time. And they used to believe, okay, they used to believe that self-control was inherent. They used to believe that self-control was innate, that it was something that you were born with or you were not born with, that you either had or you didn’t have. Later on, they debunked that theory and they began to believe that self-control was something that you could practice, that it was something you could build up, that you, it was like

 

06:48

There’s like a skill set that if you cultivated it, if you worked on it, that you would have more of it and you’d be able to use more of it in your life. That theory has also been debunked. Ironically, but not surprisingly, thousands of years ago, it was said that self-control is simply what follows awareness, that control follows awareness. It would be the yogis, the Buddha yogis, the Hindu yogis, they would say, awareness precedes control.

 

07:18

And this was, again, thousands of years ago, researchers have been trying to figure this out. And what we say, at least what we say in the academy is your energy follows your awareness. So whatever you’re paying attention to is where your energy will go. And remember, consciousness is energy and energy is conscious. So I know there’s a lot of platitudes in there. I know there’s a lot of sayings in there. And I’ll talk about all of these when you guys come into the academy. I’ll define all these for you. You’ll understand this.

 

07:47

because it really is a course curriculum. It’s a training of how to be more conscious, of how to be more of yourself, how to really, really maximize your life’s potential. But for the purposes of this podcast, what I want you to understand is that self-control is basically the turning off of, or lack of awareness of the conflict monitoring system. And what that means is that self-control, number one, is not something that you’re bored with, or not bored with. Self-control is not something that you can

 

08:16

cultivate or build up on. It’s something that you are choosing to exercise or not exercise. Now self-control has to do with willpower is that it is a diminishing principle. They would say it’s a diminishing thing. It will weaken under certain circumstances. And those certain circumstances are emotional regulation and stress.

 

08:44

Now, emotional regulation is essentially emotional resistance. And we’ve talked a lot about that in this podcast, but I wanna briefly mention it here so you guys understand what this means. Brothers, we are always feeling. We’re always feeling. Emotions are not something that we either have or we don’t have. And they’re not something that are either masculine or feminine. I know that there’s this idea out there that men are very mental, conscious, logical, we’re very mental people. And the women are very emotional and feely and flowy and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

 

09:14

This is baloney, okay? All human beings are both always thinking and feeling all the time. It’s not that women are feeling and men are thinking. All human beings are both thinking and feeling all the time. Even though we live in duality, even though we live in an illusion, a holographic illusion of duality, it’s not an either or game. This is not an either or program. This is a both and program. Okay, the matrix is made up of both and. It’s not made up of either or. Even though it appears to be.

 

09:43

And that’s a part of the illusion. That’s why I call it an illusion. So when it comes to emotions, brothers, we’re always feeling, and it’s important that you know you’re always feeling, because a lot of times you don’t know what you’re feeling. And if you don’t know what you’re feeling, then you could be resistant. There could be a resistance in there. There could be avoidance in there. There’s reaction. When we react, we know we’re feeling. And what we really want to do is allow our feelings. I’m not going to do the whole feeling.

 

10:11

podcast, I’m not going to do the whole feeling content today. If you guys are, if you’re ready for it, if you’re ready to enroll in the academy, then by all means, this is the time to do that in terms of emotion, because all of February, we’re working on emotion, the power of emotion and how to work with your emotions. So if this is something that’s intriguing to you, if it’s something that you’re ready to work on, now is the time to enroll in the academy to get this training, this coaching. But if essentially when we work with emotions, there are four ways to handle emotions.

 

10:40

There’s the way we wanna handle emotions, which is allowing emotions. We wanna feel them. We wanna feel them fully, but without judgment, without reaction, without avoiding, without resistance. We just wanna have them there and know that they’re there without making our decisions through them. We don’t wanna make our decisions emotionally. That’s not the way to go because that’s kind of like a reaction, right? But we do wanna know what we’re feeling. We wanna have some attachment or some engagement with, not attachment to necessarily, but we do wanna be engaged with. We wanna be knowing and be aware of what we’re feeling.

 

11:11

If we’re not aware, then it’s probably we’re resisting. We’re really trying to suppress. We’re really trying to push it down. And we’ve practiced that so much that now we become blinded to our emotions. We don’t know what we’re feeling at all. Other ways to handle emotion are buffering, which is avoiding, you know, you guys know what buffering is. Buffering is, you know, picking up your phone and scrolling through the TikToks or picking up your phone and playing your video games or going to the refrigerator, grabbing some food, grabbing a beer, you know, turning on the television, watching some Netflix,

 

11:40

porn on your computer, running down to the casino, playing some cards or gambling is also a form of that. There’s a lot of different ways you can buffer, but essentially what it is is I need some juice, right? I need some dopamine. Give me the good stuff. Give me the stuff that feels good. Give me the stuff that lights me up so that I don’t have to feel the stuff that I’m trying to avoid, these quote unquote bad emotions, these emotions that I wanna not be feeling right now. And that’s a part of emotional regulation. That’s a part of trying to regulate

 

12:11

what you’re feeling. It’s like, if you’re really, really angry, if you’re really, really saying, you know what, I really just wanna, I really wanna kick my boss’s teeth in or I really wanna, you know, my wife is making me so mad I could just scream, whatever it is, if it’s anger, and you know, a lot of men especially, we’re prone to anger, you know, there may be a lot of anger, you’re just suppressing it, suppressing it, suppressing it. That’s where you could lead into either suppression, resistance or avoiding, which is buffering. Now, if you’re reacting to that,

 

12:40

emotion then you’re also not really regulating it because you’re not watching it. You’re not monitoring it. Remember self-control is The lack of self-control is when you turn off your awareness of your conflict monitoring system You want to have your monitoring system on there. You want to be feeling these emotions. You want to be aware of them but the other thing that reduces self-control is stress and this is probably not surprising to you guys because

 

13:07

Essentially, stress is bad in all ways, all the time. I mean, whenever there’s some kind of ailment out there, whenever some kind of new disease out there, whenever something happens to somebody, it’s like, oh, stress is the cause. Stress is the cause of this, stress is the cause of that, stress is always the cause of everything. So it probably is not surprising to you that when I say that stress is a part of what will lower your self-control.

 

13:33

Now the reason why stress is the reason, it was one of the reasons why it lowers your self control is because it draws you out of your internal monitoring system and it puts you out into an external monitoring system. So your awareness, remember awareness precedes control. And if your awareness is drawn out of your internal self and drawn out into the external hologram, then immediately, like I say, you’ve stopped that internal monitoring system.

 

13:58

You’ve stopped being aware of yourself and you’re now aware of the environment, you’re aware of the circumstance, that is what is causing the stress. You’re putting everything out there, you’re projecting it out. And this is in terms of using the model of alignment, in terms of some of the basics that we work on both in the academy, and I talked to you guys about in this podcast, that’s basically putting your attention, putting your awareness on the C line, rather than on the T line, putting your awareness on the circumstance rather than on your thoughts, rather than doing mind management work, rather than doing cognitive mastery work.

 

14:27

You’re just out there being fully aware of all the external stuff. And that’s what’s creating you to be in a state of stress. Now what boosts self-control? Well, not surprisingly, what boosts self-control is going to be an awareness of the internal. It’s anything that makes you awareness of your thoughts, cognitive mastery, or any of your feelings, emotional ownership. So we could say, well, meditation is a part of that. Well, you may say, Oh yeah, but Kevin, look like

 

14:56

If I had the self-control to meditate, to journal, to go for a walk, to do these thought downloads and models of alignment, then I really wouldn’t need the self-control because I need the self-control in order to be able to do the things that I’m not doing. And that’s where my lack of self-control is. But here’s the thing, brothers, and I want you to understand this conceptually. Self-control is an abstraction. And I know I’ve used that word a lot lately. Money is an abstraction.

 

15:26

hardness, firmness, density is an abstraction. You know, what we think is hard, the walls, the floors, the tables, you know, everything that we find to be a solid matter is really made up of mostly void. It’s made up of mostly emptiness. That’s an abstraction. I talked about money being an abstraction. Money is the map. It’s not the terrain. You know, it’s an abstraction. It’s a representation of something. It’s a measure of something.

 

15:51

And inches and miles are abstractions. They are measurements of distance, but they aren’t the actual distance. It’s the way we arbitrarily have labeled a certain amount of distance and said this is so and so an inch. I mean, it can be very valuable, it can be very useful, but it’s still not real. It’s an abstraction. And self-control is likewise an abstraction. Self-control is not real. What it is, it is a regulation. It is an awareness of your internal

 

16:21

conflict monitoring system. So when people say, oh, if I take cold showers or if I do these hard things, if I get into a cold plunge, if I do, you know, X, Y, Z, then I’ll get better at self-control. And the research doesn’t show that actually. The research doesn’t show that if you take a cold shower, you’re gonna get better at handling anxiety or get better at going to the gym or get better at meditating or get better at following your calendar or doing a morning routine. In fact,

 

16:48

If you take cold showers, the only thing you’re really going to get better at is taking cold showers. At least that’s what the research is showing. There’s really nothing correlating taking cold showers to increasing any amount of self-control because self-control itself is an abstraction. Self-control itself in terms of existence doesn’t really exist. What self-control is, is the monitoring, the awareness of, and let me put say the awareness of. Because again,

 

17:15

where your attention goes, where your awareness goes, that’s where your energy is. And so when you’re aware of your internal conflict monitoring system, when you’re aware of what’s going on within you, whether it’s your thoughts, whether it’s your feelings, when you’re put your awareness internally, that’s when you’re actually exercising self-control. And this makes sense because as long as you’re monitoring, as long as you’re aware of that conflict monitoring system, as long as you’re actually putting your awareness and putting your energy into that,

 

17:44

you will be exercising control of the self because you’re watching yourself. You’re watching your mind go through all of the back and forth between do I eat the pizza or do I stay on my diet? Do I eat the slice of cake or do I stay on my diet? Right? Do I go for the beer or do I keep to my 60 day no alcohol? Do I go to the gym or do I sit and watch TV? Right? If you’re watching that, if you’re watching that back and forth between the self, if you’re watching that conflict monitoring system, then you are controlling

 

18:13

The self. But the moment you shut that off, the moment you turn off that conflict monitoring system, your awareness of that conflict monitoring system, as soon as you stop paying attention to it, as soon as you stop giving it energy, that’s when you just kind of give up. You kind of give up and say, ah, okay, I’ll have the slice of pizza. Ah, okay, I’ll have the piece of cake. Ah, okay, I’ll go ahead and watch TV. Ah, okay, I don’t need to do, I’ll have the beer, right? Because it’s just a beer, I’ll get back on the no alcohol tomorrow.

 

18:42

That’s where it comes from. So there’s actually no such thing as quote unquote self-control. There’s actually only an awareness of the conflict happening within you. So essentially brothers, what I want you to hear from this podcast is, what I want you to understand and take away from this is if you’re trying to increase your self-control, what you’re really trying to do is you’re trying to monitor your mind and your feelings. You’re trying to be more aware of your internal regulating process. Now,

 

19:11

If you are suppressing your emotions, then you’re going to weaken your self-control. If you fix the emotional turbulence, then at the same time, you are exercising self-control. And when I say fixing emotional turbulence, all I mean is when you’re watching it, when you’re allowing the emotions, if you’re suppressing, if you’re avoiding, if you’re reacting, you’re weakening your self-control. These are the other three ways we deal with emotion, right? If you’re feeling stressed out,

 

19:41

If you’re really out there, if you’re putting all of your energy, all of your mental energy on the circumstance, all of your mental energy on the external, then the way you increase or the way you bring yourself back into self-control is to re-internalize your awareness. Bring your awareness from the external back to the internal. Bring it from the circumstance. Bring it from whatever’s happening, whatever your boss is saying, whatever your boss is doing, whatever your wife is saying, whatever she’s doing.

 

20:06

Maybe your girlfriend decided to break up with you and you’re thinking about the future. You’re thinking about your life without her. You’re thinking about maybe what she said or maybe you’re thinking about the past, what you might’ve did for her to decide to make this decision. You are externalizing your awareness. Your awareness is on the past. It’s on the future. It’s on the circumstance, what she said, what she did. Instead, if you want to increase your self-control, if you want to regain your self-control, then it’s a re-internalizing process. You bring your awareness back to the internal.

 

20:35

You check in with yourself, you check in with your feelings, you check in with your thoughts. What are my thoughts about this? What are my feelings around this? And that’s how you increase your awareness of the internal self. You boost your conflict monitoring system, which is self-control. Whenever you bring your awareness to that interior place, whether it’s through thought downloads, whether it’s through doing the model of alignment and looking at your unintentional, where were my thoughts when I was not conscious? Where were my thoughts that led me to that behavior? Where were my thoughts that led me to…

 

21:04

grabbing the beer, eating the cake, you know, deciding to watch television instead of the going to the gym. You know, where were my thoughts? What were my feelings? When you bring your mind, when you bring yourself back to the internal, when you bring your awareness back to your mind, back to your feelings, that.

 

21:21

is when you boost your conflict monitoring system, you really start to look at what’s going on within you. What is the conflict that’s happening within you? And brothers, the more you do this, here’s what’s wild. Now, first of all, say that meditation can do this as well. Obviously, right? That’s why meditation, they say, will boost your self-control. Why does meditation boost your self-control? Because what is meditation? Meditation is focusing on the internal processes, whether it’s the meditation, whether it’s the Vipassana meditation, where you’re focusing on your breath.

 

21:50

Whether it’s a transcendental meditation, where you’re focusing on a word, whether it’s a simple observation meditation, where you’re watching the thoughts come and go, you’re just watching them without engaging with them. Whether it’s a body scan meditation, where you put your awareness on different body parts and checking in on how they’re feeling, being aware of where they are in space and time. All meditation brings you internal, it brings you back to the internal self. And there may be conflict in there. There may be conflicts, but it doesn’t matter.

 

22:20

because it’s not the conflict that matters, it’s your awareness of the conflict. In fact, in order to break any addiction, if you wanna break an addiction, if you wanna change a pattern, if you wanna get out of a bad habit, again, bad habit, what is bad, right? Bad, good, if you wanna change, here’s the thing, brothers, if you wanna change, if you want to, if you’re saying like, Kevin, thank you for the information, what do I do? Thank you for telling me all of this, thank you for giving me all of this weird psychological and spiritual stuff.

 

22:50

Tell me, what do I do? How do I get more self-control? How you get more self-control is as I said, pay more attention to your internal self. You’ve got to pay attention to your thoughts. I would offer journaling, I would offer thought downloads. Pay more attention to your feelings, emotional management, not regulation. You’re not suppressing. Emotional regulation is like suppressing. It’s like resisting. It’s like avoiding, you’re regulating your emotion.

 

23:19

I’m talking about emotional awareness. It’s all awareness, mental awareness, awareness of FOD, which is mind management, emotional awareness, awareness of emotion, which is emotional ownership. Cognitive mastery, emotional ownership. That’s how you do it. That’s how you exercise self-control. But remember, self-control itself as a thing is an abstraction. It’s a word. It’s just something that’s there. Like money is just something that’s there. We say we measure things with money. We measure distance with inches. Inches are just there.

 

23:48

We measure distance with inches. Well, what are we really measuring when we talk about self-control? What we’re really measuring is our ability to monitor our conflict system, our ability to become aware of our conflict monitoring system. And that happens in the brain. That’s what our brain is doing all the time. It’s looking for where is there conflict? Where is there something that just, this is what I like, this is what I don’t like. I want to avoid the things that I don’t like, right? The motivational triad, avoid pain. I want to go after pleasure.

 

24:18

Right? More pleasure, less pain, and do it automatically. That’s the motion motivational triad. And that’s what the brain is doing all the time. That’s the conflict monitoring system. And to become aware of that, to put more awareness in that is how you gain self-control. Now, the funny thing is, so many people out there, coaches and otherwise, are saying, look, if you wanna do something, just do it. You know, don’t write about it, don’t think about it, don’t feel about it.

 

24:48

Just do it. You know, if you wanna quit smoking, if you wanna quit drinking, if you wanna quit watching pornography, if you wanna quit eating sugar, if you wanna, you know, go, if you wanna start something, you wanna start running, you wanna start working out, you wanna start a business, you wanna start waking up at 4.30 in the morning. They’re all saying the same thing. They’re just saying, just do it. Just do it, just do it, just do it, just do it. But here’s the thing. The only way you can just do it.

 

25:11

is if you’ve monitored, is if you become aware so deeply, if you’ve paid so much attention, if you have a very, very high awareness of your internal conflict monitoring system. That is why the people who come to the academy get results. That is why you get results when you go through the academy process, when you go through the training at the academy. Because what we do is you, I guide you, well, I and other coaches, we guide you into

 

25:41

paying attention to your internal self. Human beings have been programmed, brothers. We have been programmed, we have been trained to pay attention to the external. We’ve been trained to pay attention to other people, other things, to pay attention to money, pay attention to business, pay attention to status, pay attention to labels, pay attention to danger. I mean, a part of it isn’t just conditioning, a part of it is a part of our human beingness.

 

26:09

Right? Our animal instincts, pay attention to danger, look out for danger, look out for that, look out for this. That’s the conflict monitoring system. And when we internalize that, this is what’s so beautiful about being a human being is that we’re not Pavlov’s dogs, is that we do have a metacognition, is that we can think about what we think about. And so that we can pay attention to, we can bring our awareness to, our consciousness new, our energy to, right? Cause consciousness is energy. We can bring our energy to and awareness to.

 

26:36

our conflict monitoring system. And when we do that, when we do that over and over and over again, we are actually in a state of self-control. And when we are in a state of self-control for a certain amount of time, then we’re able to just do it. Then we can just do it. Then we wake up one morning and we say, I’m just going to stop drinking coffee. I’m just going to stop drinking alcohol. It happens when you’re ready. And by ready,

 

27:02

It means that you’ve paid enough attention to that internal conflict monitoring system. You’ve paid so much attention to it that now you have the control. You’ve brought enough awareness to the control. The longer you can be aware of it, the more in control you will be. And that goes back to what they said thousands of years ago. Right brothers? That goes back to what the yogis said. That goes back to what the Buddhists said.

 

27:28

Because the researchers here have been trying to figure this out. They were like, oh, is this inherent? How do we figure out? Where can we get self-control? How can we be more controlled of the self? But they said thousands of years ago, they told us awareness precedes control. The more awareness you have of your internal self, the more awareness you have of your thoughts, of your feelings, the more you will have control of your internal self, of your thoughts and your feelings. The more you put your awareness on your external.

 

27:58

The more you stress out and the more you emotionally regulate, which is to say the more you suppress emotion and avoid emotion, and sometimes react to emotion because you’re regulating. It’s not about emotional regulation. It’s about emotional awareness. If you want more self-control, brothers, it’s very simple. Self-control is an abstraction. Self-control is a measurement. If you want to be able to measure higher in your ability to control yourself, the way to do it…

 

28:26

is to bring more awareness, bring more energy, consciousness to your internal self. And the more you pay attention to your internal conflict, the longer you can be aware of that conflict, which is to say the more thought downloads you can do, the more models of alignment, the more unconscious and conscious models of alignment, intentional and unintentional models you can do that conflict. You know, the unintentional model being where I’m at, the unintentional model being where

 

28:56

What I don’t want, you know, the unintentional model says, I want the pizza, right, I want the cake. And the intentional model says, I’m going to stay on my nutrition plan. I’m going to stay on my meal plan for 30 days. The more you can bring attention to that conflict, the more in control you will be because you are in a state of being aware of how you monitor it. The moment you drop it, this is what you need to know. The moment you lack awareness, the moment you go unconscious, the moment you take your energy and move it away from that.

 

29:25

When you take your awareness away from that conflict monitoring system, that’s when you quote unquote fail. That’s when you go and you go back into your old habits. That’s where you relapse. You relapse into whatever it is that you’re trying to change. You relapse into watching TV instead of going to the gym. You relapse into sleeping till 9 a.m. instead of waking up at 4 30. You relapse into watching pornography. You relapse into drinking alcohol. You relapse into smoking cigarettes or whatever else is going on. Eating sugar, right?

 

29:55

It’s only when you remove your awareness. It’s when you take your awareness away from it. So the way to do it is to stay aware. Stay aware, keep your energy focused, keep your energy, which is awareness, which is consciousness, on your conflict monitoring system. That is how you measure self-control. Self-control itself is an abstraction. If you want more self-control, brothers.

 

30:22

If you want to be in more self-control, if you want to be more in control of yourself, all you have to do is keep your awareness on your internal process. Keep your awareness on your thoughts and on your feelings. And that’s what I have for you today. Until next week, elevate your alpha.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Alpha Male Coach Podcast. If you enjoyed what you’ve heard and want even more, sign up for Unleash your Alpha: Your Guide to Shifting to the Alpha Mindset, at the alphamalecoach.com/unleash.

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