Everything in life is a skill.

Whether it’s your health, relationships, or business (wealth), everything that contributes to a fulfilling life revolves around skills.

Health involves fitness and diet.

Relationships involve communication and emotional intelligence.

Business involves a multitude of skills.

So, without a doubt, you’d agree that living a good life requires you to develop skills—especially in the domains I just mentioned.

Behind every skill lies an underlying skill that leads to achieving greatness.

But before I reveal this fundamental skill, allow me to share a bit about the skills I’ve developed and why I’m qualified to talk about this.

In other words, let me backup my claim with real-life experience, so you can see that I’m not just making this stuff up or repeating something I saw in a random video. This is based on genuine, lived experience.

I’ll keep it brief so we can dive straight into the topic.

Throughout my life, I have mastered three core skills, which happen to be the very skills that contribute to a fulfilling life: health, wealth, and relationships.

For wealth, I’ve mastered the skill of coding.
For health, I’ve mastered fitness and diet.
For relationships, I’ve mastered communication.

I’ve been coding consistently on a daily basis for the past 7 years.
I’ve been working out and dieting for the past 15 years.
I’ve been improving my social skills daily for the past 18 years (driven by the fact that I was heavily bullied in my early years).

And all of these skills share one crucial underlying skill that allowed me to reach a high level in each of these domains.

That skill is called Emotional Self-Control.

You got what you came for! But before you click away, I’ll also share how to develop this emotional self-control, so stick around for a bit.

“Emotional self-control” might sound a bit abstract or even mystical.

What I’m essentially saying is that you need discipline. But I don’t like simply saying, “You need discipline to achieve greatness.”

First of all, everyone knows that already, and second, the term “discipline” is often vague.

Most people don’t see discipline as a skill that can be developed. They see it as something you either have or don’t.

On the other hand, emotional self-control is more commonly viewed as a skill that can be developed, and it feels less vague.

But in reality, they’re one and the same.

What is discipline at its core?

Discipline is about doing what you set out to do, regardless of how you feel.

In other words, despite your emotions, you follow through with your intentions.

It doesn’t matter if you feel happy, sad, angry, down, depressed, or lazy—you do what you need to do despite your emotions.

That’s discipline. You don’t need discipline to do something if there’s no resistance.

And that’s precisely what emotional self-control is: not letting your actions be dictated by your emotions.

So, at its core, discipline is just emotional self-control.

Okay, cool, but how do you develop emotional self-control?

I’ll get into that! But first, let’s discuss why it’s so important to have emotional self-control—it goes beyond just discipline.

Why Emotional Self-Control Is So Important

It amazes me that hardly anyone thinks about developing their emotional self-control.

I believe the biggest reason for this is that most people aren’t even aware of how much their lives are controlled by their emotions.

And yes, even men are influenced by their emotions.

A big example of this is social media or media in general.

The things that go viral or make headlines are those that trigger your emotions: bad news, war, negative events.

It’s no wonder people feel depressed after watching the news.

Let’s dive into something more personal: the people you interact with or spend time with.

Whether you want to admit it or not, everyone around you is trying to manipulate you in some way. This manipulation can be either positive or negative.

Manipulation isn’t always one-sided or inherently bad. Some people use manipulation tactics to push you toward actions that benefit you, while others use them to hurt you.

Intentional or not, it happens all the time. That’s a fact.

Your boss might get moody or even angry to pressure you into completing a task.

Your friends might manipulate you into going out to have fun at a bar.

But there are also more subtle and devious forms, which I’ve personally experienced.

Friends and family tried to manipulate me into returning to a regular coding job and abandoning entrepreneurship.

I stayed committed to my path, and now I make my own money.

How did I do that?

By having emotional self-control.

The essence of manipulation is targeting your emotions to achieve a specific outcome—the manipulator’s desired outcome. And that outcome might be something you don’t want.

By developing strong emotional self-control, you won’t be swayed by other people’s manipulation tactics.

With strong emotional self-control, you’ll be the one controlling the outcome of your life.

I hope I’ve “manipulated” you enough to see the importance of emotional self-control. Now let’s discuss how you can train this skill.

How to Train Your Emotional Self-Control

I’ve tried numerous methods to train my emotional self-control over the years.

At the time, I didn’t call it “emotional self-control.” I just wanted to stop thinking so negatively about my situation, especially because I was bullied a lot and had no friends. I was left alone with my thoughts, which were unsurprisingly negative.

There are two things I tried:

• Meditation
• Emotion Auditing

I’ll focus on the latter.

I tried meditation for years, but I found it takes a long time to see the benefits and is less effective than auditing your thoughts.

So how do you do this?

Just watch your emotions. That’s it.

Sounds simple, right?

Not really.

Emotions begin with a thought, and thoughts are either self-created or triggered by something external.

But here’s the thing: we can’t control our thoughts.

Thoughts will inevitably pop up—thousands of them each day, good or bad.

There’s nothing you can do to stop them, but you can choose not to be influenced by them.

So emotions will arise from these thoughts, but you can control your actions and calm the emotion.

The way to do this is by auditing your emotions and giving them a label.

Don’t react to them.
Don’t respond to them.

Reacting will only trigger more thoughts, which will, in turn, trigger more emotions.

Instead, just acknowledge and label the thought:

“Oh, I feel sad now.”
“Oh, I feel angry now.”
“Oh, I feel lonely now.”

It’s like watching a cloud passing by. You simply experience the emotion without staying in it too long.

This tactic might sound super easy, maybe even too simple, but it works like magic.

In the beginning, you’ll forget to do it all the time. But if you stick with it, you’ll realize how many emotions are triggered by meaningless thoughts.

You’ll learn not to be influenced by those thoughts and to just let them flow.

I can’t emphasize enough how important this is.

Control your emotions, and you’ll control your life.