How To Harness Power Of Mind For Resisting Temptation (With Tips)
The other day, I ran across an ancient proverb. It read: Good habits result from resisting temptation. There’s a great value of facts in this.
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We’re all human, and each of us faces temptation every day. It comes at us in food, shopping, credit/debt, envy, jealousy, and alcohol — just to name a few. We’re motivated to cave to temptation for a variety of reasons.
All of them are understandable in their way. After all, who wouldn’t want a bigger house? Haven’t you earned that big slice of chocolate cake?
One of the things we must do is learn to face those temptations and develop means for battling them back. If you’re a parent, you’re also tasked with teaching your children the means to resist their temptations. After all, they face just as many as you, if not more, and they go into that battle with their minds still in development.
With that thought, I’ve put together the following list to provide you with some tools for resisting temptation.
Not every one of these tools applies to each temptation, i.e. alcohol has its unique challenges, particularly if you’re an addict. But this should provide a set of tools to draw from to help with resisting temptation.
17 Tips For Resisting Temptation
- Acknowledge your weakness. Most people overestimate their capacity to resist temptation.
- Develop constant reminders of your foibles. Write notes to yourself. If you’re a techie, you can even schedule direct messages via Hootsuite on Twitter to be twitted to you throughout the day. How cool is that?
- Find a replacement vice. If you’re an ice cream addict, try to find a fruit or vegetable that you love to eat. A low-fibre diet can help.
- Develop a reward system. When you’re successful at resisting temptation, you earn the reward. Save it for exceptional times.
- Reduce your access to temptation. If your work lunch group always heads out at 11:30, plan to be at your workout by 11:00.
