The word temptation sure covers a lot of ground so I will just narrow the field down for the purpose of this article. The temptations I refer to here in this article are those that habitually lull you into a state of relaxation and escape.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with relaxing and escaping once in a while. Who doesn’t like to drink a beer to relax and watch a TV show to escape?
But if you find yourself reaching for too many beers and much too often for the remote, when you know you should be doing other things, you’ll find that it’s turning into a temptation you can’t resist.
And each time you cave into your temptations, you reinforce the belief that you’re not strong enough to resist and it starts to take root and become habitual.
These kinds of temptations lull you into a state of relaxation, inaction, “down” time, where you’re completely oblivious to your surroundings and because of that, you lose out in terms of being able to take advantage of opportunities had you been aware of what’s going on around you.
But in order to take advantage of those opportunities, you need to be striving for something to begin with in order to see those opportunities and that brings us to the remedy for resisting these kinds of temptations.
You must simply desire something greater than your temptation.
Your desire MUST be greater.
It can be for anything, but again your desire MUST be greater.
Let’s say you’re stuck in a dead end job and you’re looking for a better career for yourself.
Coming home after work, it’s easy to order that pizza and drink those beers and watch the latest episode of whatever is on that night. It’s very tempting.
But your desire for finding a better career for yourself is far stronger.
So you resist that temptation and instead head to the bookstore to read some books on how to find the work you love to do.
Now obviously, had you caved to your temptation, you never would’ve done that. You never would’ve taken that action. You just would’ve succumbed to that state of relaxation.
Now let’s say after reading the book, you decide to apply the advice in it that talks about informational interviewing. You decide to find people in careers you think would be well suited for you to see if it would be a good fit and ask those people questions about it.
Again, you come home from work tired, thinking about canceling that informational interview you made with the person who’s working in finance, but you resist and go on the interview.
The interview goes well, it seems like a good fit, and what’s more, the person you interview mentions there’s an opening for an entry level position at his firm.
Now do you think the next time this person comes home, the temptation to just kick back and relax will be as great?
No.
Because he’s got momentum now.
Things are happening. He’s got to polish up his resume and brush up on his interviewing skills for the job that will take him out of his current dead end one.
Now obviously this is all a fictitious example but it’s there to prove a point.
If you don’t resist your temptations, you will always sink to the level of relaxation where nothing gets done and you lose out in terms of opportunity costs you don’t even see.
But if you desire something greater and resist your temptation just ONCE, and you focus your energy on that something you desire, you start seeing those opportunities and taking action on them.
And you start getting results.
And you start getting momentum.
Which only increases your desire even more because you see the fruits of your labor and that helps you resist temptation that much more, so much to the point where it’s not even a temptation anymore – just a trivial annoyance.
You concentrate on that desire and throw yourself into whatever it is and you spot more opportunities, take more actions, get more results, in short develop HUGE momentum.
It’s hard for people who cave into these relaxation temptations to develop that kind of momentum because each time they cave, it kills the flow and they have to start all over again.
If you find yourself in a situation where you’re tempted, just take a moment and breathe.
Breathe slowly and let the energy that’s all tense, ready to be released into temptation, circulate throughout your body
Breathe and summon up the pure willpower to resist the temptation by focusing on what you desire greater than your temptation. If you do this ONCE, if you resist just ONCE, it proves to be a huge kink in the system to give you the opportunity to develop that momentum that will prove to minimize the desire to cave into your temptations.
The power of resisting temptations is the same power that ultimately creates momentum.
That momentum increases your power to resist temptation, which just goes on to increase your momentum.
And the cycle then starts to engage in your favor exponentially.
