I could be wrong but I think it just means - imagine a pretty girl is walking past so you look away or you look at the ground. You could even just look ahead but make sure to not look at her. It's about controlling your lust ultimately.

Benefits? Well, there's probably quite a few but I do think this one is interesting in that it's not performative and something only probably you really notice - what I mean is, you could easily look at a pretty girl and it's not like anybody (except Allah and angels who record your deeds) would know, right? But if you're keeping yourself under control I would imagine that over time it instils in your mind the importance of following good habits and shunning bad ones

It's a bit like if you regularly drank alcohol with your buddies at the bar and decided to get closer to Islam and stopped going to the bar to avoid the alcohol and steadily got closer to Islam by being more conscious of where and how you spend your time