Are you any good at resisting temptation? All of
us succumb to a little temptation now and then
but some people are blessed with more self
control than others. Temptation is about wanting
something that you really want, often something
that isn't right or good for you.
Resisting temptation is difficult because the object or subject of our
desire is often all the more desirable because it's forbidden,
out-of-reach, or hard to obtain. Sometimes temptation can turn into
obsession if it's not possible to obtain the desired thing or person;
other times, being able to give in to temptation leaves us feeling
dissatisfied, guilty, or upset because we've done something we
shouldn't have. This article discusses ways of dealing with
temptation.
!! Steps !!
_ Identify your own temptations. In the first
place, a temptation is something you believe you must resist because
to give in to it would be wrong according to your religious beliefs
or moral code, bad for your health or well-being, or will cause
disruptions in your relationships with other people. In the second
place, giving in to it will cause you to feel bad after the initial
pleasure, when it dawns on you that there is a high price to pay for
the behavior or action you've given in to. Some examples of typical
temptations include:
* Wanting to eat food that will cause you to feel guilty after
because you consider it to be fattening (it ruins your diet),
unhealthy (it might cause disease or lowered nutrition), or it's
inappropriate for you (because it's not something you're supposed
eat according to your dietary or health principles or religious
beliefs).
* Wanting to buy things you really want even though you don't have
the money, or you've already got enough things and you know you
really don't need more.
* Wanting to yell at someone because you're frustrated and you can't
restrain the temptation to lash out. This could be targeted at
anyone in your life, including your partner, your children, your
boss.
* Wanting to have an affair with someone. Toying with infidelity is
a commonplace temptation for everyone from celebrities, pop-stars,
and politicians, to neighbors and co-workers.
* Wanting to indulge excessively in alcohol or take illicit drugs.
* Wanting to give in to sexual urges which you feel are
inappropriate according to your beliefs or social mores, such as
reading pornography, visiting prostitutes, sex before marriage,
etc.
* Wanting to give in to procrastination and laziness. You'd rather
not be bothered doing something even though you know you should.
Why is the grass greener on the other side?Find what triggers
your temptation. There are a lot of possibilities for triggers
but you'll need to dig down to identify those specific to you.
Some of the more obvious triggers that bring temptation to the
fore include:
* Boredom with your current situation or relationships.
* Indecision or lack of thought about what you want out of life,
your job, your relationships, your future direction.
* Attention-seeking. Perhaps you're feeling that not enough people
are paying you adequate attention.
* Stress or feeling down.
* Frustration with the way things are headed in your life, with
other people in your life, with yourself.
* Lack of faith in yourself, or in your faith or core beliefs.
* A need to prove something to other people in your life, maybe even
as an act of revenge or "evening the score" (such as having an
affair because a spouse had an affair).
* A short-term or shortsighted view of the gains and a lack of a
bigger vision for your future.
Work out your guiding values. For some people,
faith provides a solid foundation of principles
and morals to abide by; for others abiding by
The Golden Rule, and seeking to actively be a
constructive part of civil society forms a
basis of values. Problems can often arise when
you lack a firm foundation of values which can
tempt you to live a life in which "anything
goes", or leave you unable to discern what is
right and wrong in any given situation. Ask
yourself: Do I have a complete set of values I
care enough about to abide by? Stemming from
this you might ask such questions as:
* What are my financial values? Do I care about budgeting or am I
too busy or disinterested to bother? Does it worry me when I get
into debt?
* What are my workplace values? What do I think constitutes
embezzlement, harassment, intimidation, or taking advantage of
others in a workplace context?
* What are my personal values? Do I care about my family before all
else? Do I put my family before my personal desires?
* What are my civic values? Do I believe I should help other people
even where it's clear they didn't help themselves? Do I think
voting matters? Do I respect political beliefs that are the
opposite of my own?
* What are my faith beliefs? Do I follow those beliefs or do I slip
often?
Think about what it is you're succumbing to.
Rather than blithely letting yourself fall into
temptation, do the mental hard work of thinking
it through to its final consequences. Few
people tolerate pushing themselves through the
entire process mentally because it's easier to
make excuses up after the fact; thinking
implies responsibility. This isn't a simple
case of "I'd like chocolate, so I'm going to
have some because I'm feeling really sad right
now." This is thinking that requires you to
identify what will happen if you give in. Hard
thinking is the part many people don't reach or
care about pushing through, precisely because
thinking is difficult.[1]
* Taking the case of chocolate, think about what it will do to your
weight, your migraine, your complexion, your wallet, your friend's
faith in you, your Facebook page declaration that you've given up
chocolate, your promise to your partner not to eat it anymore,
etc. Think about people's reactions when they find out you've
given in. Think about how you will feel. Think about how this will
impact on your relationships, your health, the esteem and trust in
which you'll be held by others. Really force yourself to focus on
the enduring end outcomes, not the momentary, fleeting pleasure or
joy.
* Think about what it is you think is missing or unbalanced in your
life that leaves open this door to temptation and what you are
going to do about replenishing that aspect rather than giving in
to the temptation.
* Note that not thinking about negative thoughts, as advocated by
many self-help gurus, is considered to increase your desire to
give in. A thought suppressed is a thought waiting to bounce right
back, as shown by the famous test by David Wegner using
Dostoyevsky's task to not think about a polar bear, which ends up
being the only thing you can keep thinking about![2]
Exercise your willpower. After thinking hard
about the consequences, add your willpower to
the equation. Expect exercising willpower to be
difficult. Megan Oaten says that exercising
willpower hurts when you first try but that,
with practice, it becomes much easier.[3] Start
with something small and work your way up
gradually. There are two possible approaches
here, one offered by Howard J Rankin using
visualization, and one offered by Richard
Wiseman, using gratitude. Try both to see what
works for you:
* The visualization approach_: Visualize yourself resisting the
temptation. Picture yourself seeing that chocolate bar, picking it
up, feeling it closely, perhaps even smelling it. Then visualize
yourself putting it down and walking away from it. Make the whole
experience as real and tactile in your mind as possible. When you
feel you've practiced it enough, go to the store where they sell
chocolate. Look at it. And resist it. Take along a friend if this
gives you support. After a while, you might even consider taking a
taste test to see if you can eat just a little without overdoing
it.[4]
* _The gratitude approach_: Concentrate on all that you have to be
grateful for. Gratitude enables you to remember what you have in
life that is good, to be happy about, such as your family, your
job, your pets, your hobbies, your health, your friends, the fact
you've got a roof over your head and enough food to eat, etc.
Gratitude grounds you in a way that removes justifying giving in
to temptation because you felt "deprived" of something or someone.
Importantly, write down your gratitude, for clarification and
reference.[5]
Avoid the soda temptation; bring your own water bottlePlan for
temptation. Accept that you'll be tempted sometimes. Once you
know your temptations and the triggers, work to manage them.
That way, you can overcome them before they take hold. This is a
positive way of tackling them rather than avoiding them
(although, avoidance is discussed in the next step as another
possibility.)
* For example, if you know you love to snack in the afternoon slump,
have fruit or vegetable sticks ready to chew on instead of the
regular chocolate bar. If you know you like the guy across the
street, tell his girlfriend how gorgeous he is; she'll take care
of keeping him away from you. If you know that you like buying too
much, take no credit card to the sales with you, and only take $20
cash for lunch.
Don't enable temptation. This is the negative
flipside of planning for temptation and it
involves removing or avoiding the source of
your temptation from your life if you're
finding it impossible not to succumb. Some
approaches might be:
* Move to another city or town if you can't stop thinking about
having an affair with someone. Or simply stop seeing them.
* Avoid sales if you can't resist buying things you don't need.
* Never buy the food that you find yourself unable to stop
over-eating. Don't make stashes or stockpiles in the house. Stay
away from places or aisles that sell your temptations.
* Don't buy alcohol if you can't stop at moderate drinking.
* Don't buy illicit drugs. Besides being a crime, the health and
life toll taken by illicit drugs is real. You only need to search
online for examples.
* Don't socialize where you're sorely tempted to do things that
aren't right for you, such as bars, casinos, brothels, etc.
Distract yourself; enjoy yourselfReplace the temptation with
distractions or pursuits of substance. Distracting yourself by
doing something active is a good way of resisting temptation.
Find other things to do to compensate for the lack or boredom
that is confronting you. Get out and exercise, go for a back
country hike, distract yourself from food by looking at
something visually stunning such as a coffee table book, take up
a new hobby, write a book on resisting temptation, plan a
budget, wash the dog or the car, etc. Whatever you choose to do
to distract yourself, throw yourself into it wholeheartedly.
* Lighten up and let fun into your life. Allow yourself to have fun
so that you lose that sense of depriving yourself. Make it your
goal to ensure that your family and friends are having fun too.
* Instead of fighting change, embrace it. Embrace change in people
around you, embrace change in your workplace and life, and grow
with change.
* Be mindful about what you do rather than self-indulgent.
Seek help. This is an often overlooked solution
when bound up in thinking this is purely your
own battle. Reaching out to other people to
help you resist a temptation can be a very
powerful solution, providing that they're
understanding, caring, and prepared to help.
People on whom you might be able to rely
include parents, family members, friends,
teachers, counselors, your doctor, your
minister of faith, financial or budget experts,
etc.
* Talk to a counselor or therapist about underlying emotional issues
that cause you to fall prey to temptation, so that you can work
out how to manage it more successfully.
* Try hypnosis. Some people find hypnosis is useful for temptations
such as over-eating or not pushing themselves enough to exercise
regularly.
Reward yourself for not giving in to
temptation. Whenever you overcome adversity,
you deserve a break. Do something that's good,
fun, and healing for you and perhaps for those
around you who might have been impacted if
you'd given in. Take the family out to dinner,
take your boyfriend hiking, watch a marathon
of your favorite movies, spend time relaxing
with someone you love, reconnecting.
* Take care that the reward has nothing to do with temptation; make
it about connecting with others or yourself, about furthering the
good in your life, or about giving yourself some chill space.
!! Video !!
!! Tips !!
* Meditation and breathing exercises might help you.
* Avoid seeing certain temptations as romantic, in the sense of
giving in to your wild passions. Wild passions need to be tamed by
inner discipline, not allowed to run rampant through your life and
everyone else's.
* Listen to other people's warnings; perhaps they're not just saying
things to annoy you, perhaps they have a grain of truth or
experience in them. At least hear out what others have to say.
!! Warnings !!
* Some people are more prone to temptation than others but it is
possible for everyone to practice and succeed in using willpower
to resist temptations.[6]
* Avoid falling down the slippery ladder of once tempted, always
doomed. Forgive yourself past mistakes and choose to learn from
them and become stronger for future situations. Temptations of the
past have passed; temptations from now on are the ones you can
tackle successfully.
!! Things You\'ll Need !!
* Gratitude journal
* Distractions such as a hobby, activity
!! Related WikiHows !!
* How to Stop Obsessing over Disturbing Thoughts
* How to Stop Being Dramatic
* How to Deal With a Hard Life
* How to Stay Positive when You Know Your Life Sucks
* How to Say No to Drugs and Alcohol
!! Sources And Citations !!
* Manal, 5 Easy Steps to Understand and Deal With Temptation,
http://onewithnow.com/2010/07/5-easy-steps-to-understand-and-deal-with-temptation/
– research source
* Anastasiya, A Valuable Guide to Resisting Temptations in Life,
http://balanceinme.com/balanced-mind-and-soul/how-to-resist-temptations/
– research source
* Angela Hynes, Absolute willpower: you can turn weak, underutilized
self-control into strong, tough resolve that will help you meet
your fitness and weight-loss goals,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0846/is_7_24/ai_n13606433/
– research source
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