MARY, OUR MOTHER

1. 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. Even though it's not a religious article, it could help some of us who seem to fall a lot or fail to live up to our good intentions!
   Read the whole article here: http://www.wikihow.com/Deal-With-Temptation
   Deacon John

1. 
   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 viewing 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.

2

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.

3

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?

4

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]

5

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]

6

Avoid the soda temptation; bring your own water bottle

Plan 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.

7

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.

8

Distract yourself; enjoy yourself

Replace 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.

9

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.

10

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.

via wikihow.com

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