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Show Control Thyself, Says Doc by Dr. M. Ford McBride As I've examined my life and the lives of others, I've found that the common foundation foun-dation of most problems is absence of control. Overweight, anger, disorganization, smoking are only a few examples of problems stemming from inadequate control. Often control is a word we equate with mechanical, unfeeling regularity. Looking at control from a positive perspective, it can mean freedom to develop interests and inner feelings about the significance of life and what can be accomplished. ac-complished. It is never too late to learn useful control. Couseling psychologist, psychol-ogist, John D. Krum- boltz, points out that one problem in maintaining main-taining self control is avoiding temptation. Self control is learning to arrange your environment en-vironment so temptation tem-ptation is removed. For example, the best way to maintain control over excessive eating is to restrict the types of foods you have in the house or if you can't leave vending machines along don't carry loose change in your pocket. Dr. Krumboltz also suggests that an important im-portant part of development self control con-trol is sticking to a difficult dif-ficult task which may not have immediate reinforcing consequences. consequen-ces. He suggests that difficult jobs need to be broken down into smaller parts and rewards arranged frequently for accomplishing accom-plishing each small part. For example, a person promises himself him-self a soft drink as soon as he finished a predetermined part of a job. Two people can also help each other. The other day my wife and I made an agreement that if we finished several tedious household tasks we had been putting off, we could go out to dinner. din-ner. In summary, to maintain effective control con-trol over your environment en-vironment avoid temptations, tem-ptations, break difficult dif-ficult tasks down into smaller parts and work closely with other people. |