How To Achieve Self Mastery (7 Step Guide)

Hola.

In today’s society, we are constantly facing distractions, expectations that are pushed onto us and it’s simply never good enough. It is why it’s time to get your hands on becoming the master of your mind.

In order to thrive in knowledge mastery, self mastery and self discipline has to come first. Case closed. What is the point of learning a skill, when you haven’t even learned how to overcome procrastination, recognize self-sabotage and to get rid of limiting beliefs? This is just to name a few, but in conclusion, my dear friend: adversity has to become part of your life.

In this guide I will cover the 7 steps on how to achieve self mastery:

1. Check your thinking.
2. Know how your brain and thoughts work.
3. Evaluate your environment.
4. Forgive yourself & be grateful.
5. Channel your thoughts.
6. Never stand still – Enhance and improve.
7. Make it a daily living.

What Is Self Mastery?

Self mastery is the process of taking a deeper dive into your thoughts, how you feel and how it relates to your demonstrated behavior on a daily basis. It’s not only about changing and transforming yourself, it’s the awareness of the prior state that’s most important to get a grasp on first, because then you will understand why you want to see a change happening.

Mastering the self creates an inner strength and resilience in situations that put you off-guard and make you feel negative emotions like anger, frustration and disappointment. That resilience causes you to recover from it, because you’re able to put things into perspective, you lose unjustified judgment for example.

While the name suggests that there’s less you will have to do once you master the self, it is definitely the opposite. It is a never-ending process, because life simply does not ever pause and facing things in this experience on a daily basis, will have you challenged to question your thinking and coping every time. It is about gaining control over how you respond to certain situations, whether that be from within or in your outer environment.

In today’s society, with all the distractions around us and the quick gratification you can grab in just one click, people are in need of long-term strategies to get the fulfilling life in which they can face (unforeseen) situations with a mindset that doesn’t back down.

The 7 Steps To Achieve Self Mastery

If you have made it to this point, then simply go for it. After all, the worst thing that can happen is that you learn.

So, let me help you out. But remember, it is you who has to do the work to create a more authentic self. Now, let’s go.

Step 1. Check Your Thinking

Gather your courage and confront yourself. This is where you discover at what point you are right now and that you decide it’s time to change the position of your pawns on the board.

Questions that help you:

Am I happy with the way I’m living right now?
Have I actually become the person I want to be?
Is this how I want to be remembered?
Am I giving myself what I deserve?
Is this how I wish to continue for the next few years?
Have I given myself enough to bloom, flourish and thrive?

Now, how do you put this into practice? First and foremost, this is a step that never stops. Self mastery is about becoming the master of your thoughts, therefore of how you feel and how you will act. As you think, so you feel, so you act. And this is a constant process.

Your thoughts hold more power than people sometimes like to think, because, thoughts create reality. Think of it this way. Everything we use, came from thought. Every implemented idea, came from thought. Every demonstrated behavior, came from thought first. The thought energy is a fundamental energy that’s behind everything.

If you are not controlling your thoughts, you can’t control your reactions. There’s things we don’t have control over, but it cannot be emphasized enough that you do have control over how you react. You create with your thoughts and that’s where causality comes in.

Show up for your thoughts, so you can grow responsibility towards your feelings and actions. You are the captain of your ship and you will inevitably face waves, that’s a lifetime promise. But, you are still in charge of how to set the sail and you are the one that has the ability to revert around those waves.

The question is: Do you want to sail, or sink?

Step 2. Know How Your Brain And Thoughts Work

Now that you know you can create reality with your thoughts, that you therefore have a serious influence on your destiny, it’s important to know how this works in the brain.

Your brain doesn’t know the difference between what happened in the past and what is happening now. When you are focused on the intentional, desired thought that’s from within, then your body, also known as the unconscious mind, will begin to experience the new future thought in the present moment.

Know that every person, object, thing, place or situation has a neurological network (thought energy) assigned in your brain and there is an emotional component (feeling) connected to it.

You will find when you’re still so focused on frustration from a memory, that one person who annoyed you and the disappointment you had in yourself for any reason, that you create a thought pattern which in fact stems from the past.

When you learn something new or improve a skill, your brain creates new neurological networks. So when you wake up every day with the same thoughts and go about your day with the same thoughts, feelings and behaviors, you live in the past each day. And you can’t create from living in that place.

In conclusion, train and activate your brain by pursuing the new and the beautiful unknown that is outside of your comfort zone. Embrace the discomfort that comes with it, because you’re finally learning and moving forward. It will pay off, guaranteed.

Step 3. Evaluate Your Environment

Yes, you become who you hang out with. Now, I’m not saying you should question your family members, that’s not ever anyone’s business except yours. What I can say is, love your family, but choose your friends.

This doesn’t come from an egotistical mindset, because if you think you’re better than them, so therefore they’re not good enough to be in your circle, then you’re really in the same place. This is about recognising that everybody is on a different journey and there’s people who will meet you on that path, and some don’t.

How do you approach this step?

Let me share some guidelines with you:

Understand the power of a peer (group). The biggest influential factor of your environment, the one that has the biggest impact on who you are, are the people who you surround yourself with. The fastest way to make lasting changes in your life is to surround yourself with people who are either at or going towards the same destination.
Define your criteria. What criteria would you want someone to meet, so that they resonate with you? I’ll give you some examples: one pursues possibility thinking over problem thinking, is direction focused, intentional, driven by growth, explorative, investing and nurturing, emotionally developed.
Decide who you are willing to lose. You may attempt to try to change someone, and maybe they will have a genuine change at heart. But if there’s no intrinsic change, you’re just trying to raise the dead. Again, it’s about recognising not everyone’s on the same journey.
Structure your peer (group) relationship. This is about using intention and direction. The intention sets the compass that allows you to strategically think about what you want the outcome to be. When there is a clear intention, it will show the direction. So, ask yourself this: what is my desired outcome?
Live by the formula of constructive interference and accountability. Constructive interference is when two frequency waves (of two people) are vibrating at the same frequency; you share the same criteria, values, you thrive when the other thrives – you resonate. Accountability is not letting the other person down, nor letting yourself down in front of this other person. When you both have a resonant frequency, it becomes fun to grow together. This is when 1 plus 1 doesn’t equal 2, but 11.

Take some time for this step and don’t let the realizations scare you, because that’s actually telling you it’s time to take responsibility for your self mastery.

Step 4. Forgive Yourself & Be Grateful

I’ll immediately tell you that this is no floaty, ‘woo woo’ stuff. Yes, there’s things you’re not proud of maybe. Yes, you have your regrets and things you have a hard time letting go of. Now, do you see this is about the past? It happened, it’s history, it’s unchangeable.

You can choose to stay in that place and live with regret and misery all you want, but you will never move forward if you do. Stop making excuses for why you’re thinking, feeling and acting a certain way, because of what happened in the past. Wouldn’t it be a waste of time if you were to spend X years in history where nothing can be changed? You know it is a waste, so get up.

Now, what is the approach?

Understand your past. It is there to show the lessons you are born to face.
Know you are human. Mistakes will be made your entire life. Forgive, learn and move on.
Be grateful for your experiences. They pushed you into directions, gave you valuable lessons and made you the person you are now.
It’s not about forgetting about your past, it’s the change of attitude. Allow it to be a part of you, but stop letting it dictate how you think, feel and act in this present moment and in all other moments to follow. Is it really worth letting negative thoughts get in the way of your happiness?

Take a moment each day to show acceptance and gratefulness towards your life in its entirety. Align with your truth, because truth is “that which is”. It’s everything that has happened in the past and what’s happening in the exact moment.

Take responsibility over your own path and control over the present and raise from self suffering, as it’s the ultimate way to self knowledge and then self mastery.

Step 5. Channel Your Thoughts

Let this saying from William Buhlman sink in:

“Souls create their own heaven or hell by the way they manage their thoughts.”

The higher you aim and channel your thoughts, the quicker you can recover from a moment of anger, frustration, disappointment or another emotion that carries a denser frequency. The denser, the more materialistic, the closer to hell you could say. The higher the frequency, the finer the energy particles, the closer to heaven. It is why the underworld is beneath and the angels are able to fly.

Now, this is taken from a philosophical and spiritual point of view, but I will break it down for you in a practical way.

How you can put this into practice:

Catch your negative emotions (towards yourself, others, and situations). decide if it’s serving you, if it was justified to blame the other person or if it’s worth letting a situation dictate your response before you yourself decide how to act on it.
Understand the input-output principle of the universe. How you think, how you feel and how you act have an effect on what you get back in return.
Transcend problems through love, not through fear. Through fear, you will expect the worst, you will anticipate on the worst and with that you will most likely create that undesirable situation and when you do this by love (umbrella for kindness, non-judgment, prosperity, et cetera), you open up to the possibility of positive outcomes that are in favor of you. Through love, you keep in mind the deeper meaning, your purpose as to achieve something.

The ultimate goal is to channel your thoughts through the highest potential. This should not be taken as an egotistical outlook on how we manage our thoughts and demonstrate our behavior.

So many of us are so preoccupied with taking care of others, and in the process we forget ourselves far too often. In order to be of sustainable service to others, is to first take care of yourself and that’s a never-ending process. It’s not selfish to take care of yourself and have a constant want of improving yourself, it’s a selfish thing if you don’t.

To put a bow on this one: bettering yourself and self mastery means a commitment to questioning your thoughts. And facing fears, really, can only be done by you.

Step 6. Never Stand Still – Enhance And Improve

As explained in step 3, in order to maintain the changes and creating new neural networks, is to keep on investing in your growth work so you stay on top of mastering the self. Self mastery is a life-long process and it should become a daily part of your life to grow your wisdom and engage into establishing personal success. Otherwise, it will fall apart. Let that be the dragon behind you pushing you forward.

Things you can do for enhancement and improvement:

Find a mentor: Preferably one that doesn’t know you on a personal level.
Learn about topics that teach: Learn about the deeper depths about you and your environment. Examples would be: philosophy, spirituality, psychology, stoicism, leadership and the fundamentals of a business mindset.
Find a course that fits your desires: And one that holds you accountable.
Trigger your senses: Learn by using multiple senses. Find and watch inspiring videos, read books about transformation, listen to podcasts.
Free yourself from distraction: Eliminate things that trigger your old thoughts and behaviors, by for example banishing social media for a while. It really is a wonderful and effective medicine.
Get moving, dance it out: It is scientifically proven that physical activity activates your creative thinking.
Step out in the open world: Do this every day. Smile to strangers, invite new and inspiring conversations to come your way.

Every day, do things that make you 1% better. And 1% is a lot, considering you would be 100% better in 100 days (!), if doing this consistently as you should. Aim high for yourself, because you don’t deserve anything less. You are the CEO of your life, claim that ownership.

Step 7. Make It A Daily Living

It cannot be said enough, but knowing and bettering yourself is a daily practice. Each day that goes by without you investing into yourself, is a step closer to your old, limited thinking, closer to hell you could say as you now know that it is both heaven and hell you can create from your thoughts.

Instead, wake up every day knowing you are going to improve something again, that you’re going to learn something new and at the end of the day, you may even realize you recovered from a limiting belief faster than you did earlier. Kudos. This is the way to go my friend.

Become passionate about uncovering the deeper layers of yourself, what makes another person tick in their daily life and then in return what makes you tick.

As Marcus Aurelius would say, you’re going to die, you’re a mortal and you run out of time. It’s not about fearing death, but about growing appreciation and love towards being alive and everything you want to experience in this life of yours. And it starts with self awareness.

Remember, now is the time and your personal growth is forever when you’re in it.

The Endnote.

And there you have it! I hope I’ve given enough kicks in the butt for you to get moving. It really cannot be expressed in words enough how important it is to show up for your personal development and the mastery of the self, as it’s only possible to be of service to others if you are of service to yourself first.

Remember that life is an experience and we are all here to learn, grow and contribute. Why not make it the best you can by unhooking that full potential inside of you?

You are the only limit. It’s for you to decide how far you go. And I would say, go further and beyond. Outlive your peers.

From my thriving heart to yours,

Anne