Self Improvement Articles

Ten Tips for Avoiding Temptation

No matter what goals you’re trying to achieve in your life, there will always be temptations to stray from those goals. If you’re prepared for avoiding temptation, you can create a plan that will get you through and help you stick to your goals. Let’s look at the ten tips for avoiding temptation that will help you reach success.

1. Know Your Goals – It cannot be stated enough how important it is to write out your goals in a very specific way. What exactly do you want to achieve? Describe it in as much detail as you can so that you know what type of work will go into it.

2. Give Them a Deadline – When you set a goal, don’t leave it without a time to finish it and experience success. Instead, set deadlines for each goal that you create, and even smaller goals in between the big ones so that you can note progress as it’s happening.

3. Know Your Why – For the most part, your goals will inform your why. For example, if you have a goal to set up a new website in 90 days, why? Do you need it because you’re having a new launch? If you want to lose 15 pounds this year, how much do you want to lose each week or month and why did you pick that number? Those details will help you.

4. Be More Self-Aware – This means that you know how you feel and why you feel how you feel. You can note that you’re extra tired, so you better get a healthy snack before you grab a piece of chocolate cake so that you can avoid temptation in the first place.

5. Keep a Gratitude Journal – It’s hard to fall off a path you’ve set for yourself when you take the time to be thankful for the journey. You don’t have to take a long time. Each evening, just write down three things you’re thankful for and why.

6. Be Accountable to Your Promises – Most of your promises are going to be to yourself, but some will be to family, friends, or maybe a boss. It doesn’t matter who you have obligations to but it’s important to be accountable if you fail – and also to be accountable when you succeed. Taking time to accept success will create more success.

7. Develop Habits – One thing to do about temptation is to develop habits over willpower. For example, if you want to drink more water, set up a system that makes it easy to get the amount of water you want in your body. Then do it the same way daily. After a month or so, it’ll be a habit and it’ll come more naturally.

8. Create a Vision Board – It always helps to visualize the potential results of reaching your goals. It will make it feel real when you can see it.

9. Create a “What If” Plan – When you know you’ll be in situations where temptation exists, talk to yourself about it. Craft a plan on what you’ll do to avoid temptation if it happens.

10. Start Over If Needed – Even if you realize right in the middle that the goal was wrong, or the plan to get there was flawed, it’s okay. You can start over. You can tweak anything and fix it so that you can keep going forward.

Developing your self-discipline is almost all about avoiding short-term temptation to get off the path toward reaching your long-term goals. When you learn to avoid temptation in the first place, you won’t have as much of a chance to fall off the path.

The True Impact of Addiction

Many people erroneously assume that their addiction won’t harm others. Of course, it does depend on what the addition is too. But for the most part, addition can really harm you and your entire community.

* Physically Harmful – Most additions have something to do with drugs, food, or other substances that can harm your physical health and sometimes the physical health of those around you. For example, cigarettes not only hurt you but the second-hand smoke also harms anyone around it, and the chemicals that are left behind on surfaces also continue to harm people.

* Can Kill Your Career – One issue with addition is that it often gets in the way of your work life, even if you think it’s not. You won’t be as productive as others and you’ll call in sick more. And if you think no one knows about your addition, you’re wrong.

* Bad for You Emotionally – When you are addicted to something, it is a very emotional thing because you know it’s bad for you and that it’s harming everything about your life, but you feel powerless to stop it. The guilt can be worse than anything.

* Ruins Your Financial Future – This can be very true for any type of addition, because often it requires money being spent that isn’t really in the budget. For example, a gambling addiction can lead you to spend just as much money that you don’t have as cocaine addiction. A coffee addition might not impact you or others much in other areas, but it’s still going to impact your finances.

* Harms Your Freedom – When you have an addiction, you tend to base all your choices on whether you can have that thing you’re addicted to or not. You may avoid social activities and doing things outside of where you can comfortably engage in your addiction.

* Harms Romantic Relationships – Addiction requires lots of lying and deception. When the partners find out, they are usually not too happy about it. They will usually break up the relationship, or if they are also damaged, they may stay in it and you will both be miserable together.

* Ruins Friendships – The same that happens in romantic relationships will happen (though much faster) in friendships. Friends will lose interest in being around you if it’s always dramatic and about you and your addiction. They may love you, but they are powerless to help.

* Can Harm Those You Don’t Even Know – If you engage in your addictive behavior around anyone, you can harm them even if you don’t know them. For example, driving under the influence, going bankrupt due to gambling debts, and more, all contribute to problems in your community.

* Can Cause Bad Impact on Your Entire Community – When a community is harshly impacted by addiction, it will become less desirable to live in. The people who can do so will leave.

To lessen the impact of addiction on yourself, your family, and your community, seek professional help to help you develop good habits to replace bad ones so that you can overcome the addiction. Don’t allow that word “addiction” to frighten you. Some addictions are simply bad habits. Some carry with them an additional problem of a chemical addiction, either physically or emotionally, which may require professional help to overcome.