Let no one deceive you with the notion that you can be saved while a slave to sensual pleasure and self-esteem. When the body sins through material things, it has the bodily virtues to teach it self-restraint. Similarly, when the intellect sins through impassioned conceptual images, it has the virtues of the soul to instruct it, so that by seeing things in a pure and dispassionate way, it too may learn self-restraint. (Maximos the Confessor)

Self-control, moderation, sound-mindedness, self-awareness, avoiding excess, and prudence are all wrapped into the Greek virtue of σωφροσύνη or sophrosyne.

In the Charmides Socrates and Critias engage a handsome youth in dialogue regarding the nature of sophrosyne. Their findings are ambivalent - purposefully so, in my opinion. But early in the discussion, Socrates sets out the following hypothesis. Jowett translates sophrosyne as temperance.

For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates, as he declared, in the soul, and overflows from thence, as if from the head into the eyes. And therefore if the head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul; that is the first thing. And the cure, my dear youth, has to be effected by the use of certain charms, and these charms are fair words; and by them temperance is implanted in the soul, and where temperance is, there health is speedily imparted, not only to the head, but to the whole body.

I am charmed by the fair words of Plato. Aristotle and many others added their weight, if no more charm.

But in reading the words of Jesus I perceive the first thing is not self-control, but openness to God. It is through vulnerability rather than control that a healthy soul and mind is nurtured.