Impulsiveness causes a lot of failures, large and small. Giving in to impulsiveness means not doing the difficult and important work you want to do. It means breaching your commitments to yourself to live better. It leads to bad feelings and down-goings.
I started training in this topic a little bit ago. The gains are large.
It's one of the best feelings I've ever had, knowingly overriding an impulse to do something stupid or distracting by using my conscious mind. I detect the impulse/feeling, think, and channel my attention/energy elsewhere.
It's hard to describe how joyful it is pull back from making a stupid decision. And I think, "I trained myself to be able to do that. I wouldn't have done naturally." Magnificent.
When the topic comes up, people like to ask me how I work on it. I have a hard time answering.
Well, that's not true. The grand-daddy of impulse control is meditation. You do basic mindfulness meditation, keep re-focusing on your breath (or mantra, or whatever) and watch the thoughts and impulses try to pull you off. And then you re-center and re-focus. That's the biggest one. I do it daily for at least five minutes.
But there's little hidden opportunities all over the place to train. I was on the subway in Shanghai early in the morning, and it was extremely cold. I was dressed in a very light sheer t-shirt, and I was shivering.
And then, it's like a bell goes off in my mind. "Ah! A training opportunity!"
So I worked to not fight the cold, nor to shiver. Just to sit there, cold, calm. I knew I'd be off the train in a few minutes and there was no real danger to the cold.
I sat there. My body wanted to shiver, or to move around, or to get up. I worked not to. It's interesting gaining this control over oneself. Yeah, I'm cold. It's unpleasant. So what?
These little opportunities are everywhere. Letting anger dissipate if dealing with someone rude, dangerous, or stupid while traveling or driving. Pushing hard to finish some work before sleeping. Waking up on low sleep and jumping into what needs to be done.
Taking a cold shower, letting food sit in front of you when hungry without eating it, doing just a few more situps/pushups or laps in the pool, making one more call, going faster, going slower, and so on.
Little opportunities to train in this art are buried everywhere. It's a pleasure to seize them, and improve in the art of impulse control.