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Mastering Temptation:

When we make goals in our lives and move towards them, there are many things in our way. Many obstacles that are there to derail us, to push us back into the comfort zone that we exist in now. Many of them are within ourselves and are struggles that we have to learn how to win within our own minds and souls. There are, however; temptations out in the world that will work to force us from our path as well, and these we have to learn how to deal with as well if we are to achieve the goals we want to in life.

To deal with temptation, there are only two things that we need to do.  

The first is removing the temptation from our lives. In every environment that we have control over, you want to remove any temptations that will get in the way of your goals. Is your goal to eat healthier? If so, remove all the junk food from your home and your office. If you are not confronted with the temptation, then you will be less likely to lose to that temptation. You can extend this idea to  include your own mind  as a place that you can control too. Remove  thoughts that would lead you to temptation so that they are not a constant reminder of the temptation. This simple change in your surroundings and your mind will make the process of resisting temptation far easier since you won’t need to resist it as often because you have removed it.

The second change is to act proactively. We do not always have control over our environment and the temptations that might be in those places, such as when we go to a party or another social outing. In these cases we need to be proactive about temptation. We need to take a couple minutes to think about the temptations that we might find at those functions and do some preventative maintenance. Let’s take the goal of losing weight. If we are headed to a party that we know will have snacks that go against our goal to lose weight, then we need to figure out how to deal with that. One thought is to eat a good meal that is included in our food plan so that when we see the foods that are there we comfortable full already and therefore do not have to battle our hunger as well. We can also take a moment to put blinders on, mentally speaking. We can adjust our thoughts to gloss over that table of snacks when we look around so that we are not tempted by them at all. This selective vision skill can be a wonderful friend to us when we have no other control over our surroundings. It is a method to take control of the situation in our own head and thwart temptation before it can get a hold in us.

So what are some proactive choices you can make along your goals before headed out into the world? What changes in the environments you can control are you going to change to remove temptation from around you? Me, I have an apple sitting on my desk in front of me so that any time I get hungry there is an easy and healthy snack for me.
-Dominic

Life’s too Short to Have Bad Days!  What Are YOU Doing to Make Today Fantastic?