Self-Control

All right, so here we are again. I love getting together with you guys and spending a couple minutes just talking about things that have been on my mind. A quote I read—a Greek proverb that I read a few weeks ago—really kind of resonated and brought back a lot of memories of my journey in life long term. Sometimes those memories are not always great, but even the tough stuff that we’ve gone through and the mistakes that we’ve made help hone and shape us to be a better person for our future and hopefully for the future of our family and those that we associate with and hang with. Our relationships with our friends and family members, and so on and so forth.

So let me read this to you and see how it resonates with you in your life. It’s something for you to maybe ponder on this week: “Self-control makes the man. A man without discipline is a boy full of reactions rather than a man of good actions.” Wow. I don’t know about you, but me personally, I’ve been a boy of reaction in my life. I’ve made some big mistakes, have reacted to things impulsively.

In my marriage—31 years, coming up this November—I have, and still sometimes do, react like a boy. No self-discipline. No correction, no pause in my reaction because it strikes a nerve, and I just react angrily without self-control. I’ve made those mistakes. I make them less today and less often, but I still make them. So while I can sit here and say I’ve improved, yay! I’m not done, haven’t arrived, but I’m getting better at it. And it’s something that we all need to be thinking about: self-control.

Proverbs 25:28 in the Bible says, “A man without self-control is like a city without walls.” If you think about ancient cities, they built walls to prevent invaders from coming in and destroying and hurting and harming their citizens. So a person without self-control is like a city without walls. I think Solomon was right when he wrote that, well over 3,000 years ago or whatever it was. And that’s smart for us to think about and recognize and realize that self-control is an important factor in the discipline of our lives and how we raise our family, how I raise my boys.

If I’m without self-control, it’s a striking resemblance. I’ll see my boys be raised without self-control and restraint in their own actions and their own reactions. These are sharp contrasts that I need to recognize and put into my own life. If we react inappropriately to a customer, if we react inappropriately to a guest in a building or something, I’ve seen staff members; I’ve had to terminate employees in the past because of bad reactions and letting the lack of self-control rule their lives. I’ve seen good young men and women make huge mistakes in judgment because of a lack of self-control that has cost them their career. Literally cost them their entire career.

I’ve seen people lose their temper and be a police officer for 18, 19 years and no longer a cop because of a bad moment. I remember reading a story about a guy that went through 12 years of college. 12 years of college and schooling and everything. He’s got a PhD. He goes and he works, and he’s going to be a counselor and stuff. So he walks into a juvenile detention facility, and within the first couple of hours, he gets spit on, and he punches a 15-year-old kid in the face. He can no longer work in that industry because he lacked the self-discipline and self-control. Imagine going through that much schooling and college and everything else and letting some saliva get up underneath and get you off base. That is amazing, but it’s true.

Self-control, or the lack of it, has destroyed many people—politicians, high dignitaries, you name it. It has harmed many different kinds of people in their lives because of a lack of control in their life. So it’s something for us to be thinking about. How we react on the job. How we do what we do in our relationships with our family and our friends. Have some self-control because without it, without that kind of discipline, you’re really just a boy or a young girl, just full of reactions. Reactions are not always the best—to react impulsively without thinking.

So it’s something for us to all maybe ponder and think about this week as you move through the rest of your week. Hey, God bless you guys. Have a wonderful week. I want you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I love you and you are valuable because nothing less will do. I want to say thank you for that value every day. So I hope you feel it. I know that this fall is going to be a great fall because of you. Thanks.