This article describes an approach for challenging and overcoming temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions such that affected individuals can create greater peace, harmony, and happiness in their lives. Temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions are among the more significant hurdles to happiness that people experience in their lives and generally fall into two broad categories: (1) those which significantly threaten well-being such as those involving drugs and alcohol, and (2) those which do not significantly threaten well-being, but consume their lives more than they would like such as those involving perfectionism or excessive entertainment such as television, social media, movies, the internet, adult entertainment, computer games, social activities, puzzles, other forms of entertainment, or a combination of these. In the first case, affected individuals generally seek to overcome these kinds of temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions with the goal of removing them from their lives completely. In the second they might either seek to overcome these kinds of challenges permanently or to moderate them such that they do not become such hindrances to their lives.

Temptation, addiction, compulsion, and distraction issues often arise whenever affected individuals do not remain mindful of the unhappiness that results from the associated cumulative negative consequences of engaging in these temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions; primarily focusing their attentions on short term pleasures and sacrifices rather than longer term peace, harmony, and happiness. One of the problems associated with these kinds of pleasures is that often, after people engage in such pleasurable activities, these experiences do not measure up to their expectations. Not only do these experiences often not deliver what these individuals might be seeking, but they also have tendencies to induce follow-on negative feelings of guilt, depression, and/or anxiety; dissatisfactions and negative feelings which can drive the affected individuals to pursue other pleasurable activities in the attempt to appease these negativities. No one ever achieves the peace and happiness they are hoping for by engaging in a continuous cycle of pursuit, because they will never get all they are hoping for and there will always be something more which can attract their attention. This “pursuit of pleasure => negative feelings” cycle is one of the reasons why so many people feel so unhappy for so much of their lives. A happier, more peaceful way to live is by living simply and loving and appreciating what you already have in your life while working towards any positive changes that you truly desire in a steady, balanced fashion.

Many temptation, addiction, compulsion, and distraction challenges result from focusing on the pleasurable, more appetizing, pieces of the whole. At best they represent a small subset of the pieces of the whole. At worst they represent something different than what would truly be realized should affected individuals engage in their temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions. Most likely they will find themselves somewhere between these two extremes. So why do so many people fall into the temptation trap? One reason is because they often do not consider the more complete pieces of the whole, representing the fuller picture of their present life situation, when the temptation scenario begins to unfold.

It can be easy to give into the temptations of the moment, whenever individuals mindlessly focus on the more appetizing pieces of the whole; those pieces of the whole which offer short term gratification. If, however, they considered some of the longer term, negative consequences of performing some of these actions, they might decide to mindfully forgo some of these short term pleasures or choose healthier alternatives instead of mindlessly engaging in these. For example, some of the affected individuals might realize that engaging in such behaviors might cause additional pain in their lives to themselves and to others that they love and appreciate. They might come to the realization that their overall health might decline which could result in missing time from work, having to see a doctor more frequently and accumulating additional medical bills, or having fewer days available for going on that wonderful vacation they were planning to take. They might realize that the toxins or lack of nutritional value of what they put into our bodies (for food related temptations) would make them feel tired and sluggish and that they would not have as much energy as they would like for doing some of what they enjoy in life. In the overall sense, they might come to realize that the vision they have of who they might aspire to become, or what they truly desire in their lives, would not be realized by engaging in their temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions. As such, if they considered the fuller and more complete picture they might mindfully decide to choose differently instead of mindlessly engaging in their temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions. For example, they might instead mindfully choose to go for a walk, work on some project, connect with others that they love and appreciate, go to the gym, or perform some other healthier activity when their temptations begin calling.

By focusing on the fuller and more complete picture of their lives, and the associated impacts, this can help affected individuals to gain power over their temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions. This same idea holds true for all types of temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions such as those involving personal relationships, drugs and alcohol, shopping, entertainment, nicotine, food, wants and desires, workaholism, “cleanaholism”, and other forms of perfectionism, and repeatedly sacrificing the present for short-term, perceived, future “rewards”.

Below are three approaches which can be helpful if you, or others you are providing assistance to, struggle with temptations, addictions, compulsions, and/or distractions in your life:

(1) Positive Visualization Approach. This is primarily a positive oriented motivational approach which essentially involves visualizing the ideal person that you, or someone you are providing assistance to, would greatly aspire to become and/or the ideal life that you would greatly desire to live and collecting reminders of these. By developing a positive means in which to visualize success and then proceeding to visualize, or remind yourself of, this success on a regular basis progress can be made towards achieving this success.

(2) Negative Visualization Approach. This is primarily a fear oriented motivational approach which essentially involves visualizing the person that you, or someone you are providing assistance to, would most not like to become and/or the life that you would most not like to live and collecting reminders of these. For example, perhaps images of someone who is homeless and suffering the effects of a prolonged addiction problem or a character in a movie who played such a role would serve this purpose. Another approach might be collecting reminders of those that you love and appreciate who might be greatly affected by your temptation, addiction, compulsion, and distraction episodes. For example, a good friend of mine, who has suffered from addictions from time to time, loves his dogs more than anything in his life and the thing that concerns him most is the stress and anxiety his addiction episodes have caused his pets; recently indicating that, due to their age and health status, he does not believe they will be able to survive another such episode. So his pets might be one area he can focus on which could provide him with the strength he needs to resist future episodes. By developing a negative means in which to provide reminders of your life fears and/or the negative implications and consequences of engaging in your temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions these can help to provide the strength and the motivation to resist or avoid these. The negative oriented visualization approach should primarily be used for those temptations, addictions, and compulsions which tend to be highly detrimental towards you or towards the lives of others when they come to pass. In addition, this negative oriented approach typically only works effectively for the short term. As such, it is recommended that the positive oriented approach be primarily pursued for the temptation, addiction, compulsion, and/or distraction challenges you, or others you are providing assistance to, are seeking to moderate or overcome in your life and that these be augmented temporarily, as needed, with the negative oriented approach for use during those times when these challenges become more threatening or more frequent in nature.

(3)  Combined Positive/Negative Visualization Approach. This approach essentially involves two contrasting visualizations: One which represents the positive aspects of the choice you, or someone you are providing assistance to, would most like to make and another which represents the negative aspects associated with the choice you would most not like to make such as those indicated in the other two approaches above. These contrasting visualizations can provide constant reminders that if you, or someone you are providing assistance to, refrain from engaging in your temptations, addictions, compulsions, and/or distractions you will progress towards the life represented by the positive visualization while if you engage in these temptations, addictions, compulsions, and/or distractions you will converge towards the life represented by the negative visualization.

In some situations people achieve better results using positive oriented techniques while in others they achieve better results using negative oriented techniques or by combining the two approaches. Often it depends on the situation, the time frame, and the person involved. Just going through these steps alone, however, can be enough to empower, provide focus, strengthen resolve, and improve progress.

In either of the three approaches presented above there are multiple techniques which can be used to create the associated visualization material and/or reminders of intentions to include: (1) identifying role model(s) of people which represent who you most want to become or who you most do not want to become (for the negative visualization approach), (2) gathering a collection of images of people, objects, and symbols, (3) writing one or more paragraphs which can be reviewed and/or visualized on a regular basis, (4) writing notes, ideas, and reminders to aid in remembering your intentions, and (5) gathering or developing a collection of images and/or descriptions of those that you greatly love and appreciate in your life who will benefit from your success (i.e., reminders of others you are doing this for in addition to yourself). Visualization material can be readily created and serve as constant reminders of who we aspire to become or how we desire to improve in our lives. We can carry around images in our purses, wallets, computers, and mobile devices. We can frame pictures and put them up in our places of work or at home. We can create visualization boards or use journals, notebooks, and notes and reminders to ourselves. We can also create visualization material by scrapbooking or via miniature objects that we can carry around with us on a regular basis as constant reminders to ourselves. I recommend, as a minimum, having such reminders readily available via your mobile devices such that they are always with you. I also recommend that you try out each of the techniques presented throughout this paragraph and use those that most strongly resonate with you and which provide powerful reminders to you. Sometimes choosing the right approaches, the right phrases, the right images, the right visions, or the right visualizations for yourself, or someone else you are providing assistance to, can make all the difference so try various approaches until you find that which strongly resonates with you or the person you are providing assistance to. Choose something which powerfully inspires, excites, and motivates you. If you do this you will greatly accelerate your progress towards achieving the success you desire.

Once a means has been determined by which to visualize success then you can regularly visualize or remind yourself of the success you are seeking to achieve perhaps on a daily basis, as well as anytime the temptation, addiction, compulsion, and/or distraction challenges begin to become threatening or frequent in nature. Significant progress can be made by visualizing or reminding yourself of the success you are seeking for yourself a few minutes every day; upon waking, at various points throughout the day, and prior to going to sleep. By regularly providing reminders of your positive intentions of being healthy, successful, confident, or anything else that your visualization material represents you will gain strength towards moderating or overcoming your temptation, addiction, compulsion, and distraction challenges. So do this for yourself if you can.

Sometimes, in our lives, we have a tendency to focus on, and perhaps even magnify, our areas of discontent, or the negative aspects, of our lives to the extent that we become so focused on the negative that even minor issues and annoyances can appear to us, through these negative perceptions, to be nearly the whole of our entire existences when, in actuality, they might represent only a very small aspect of our lives and be temporary in nature. By focusing our attention on that which we dislike in our lives we often create distance, pain, and isolation when we might otherwise prefer to create closeness, love, and community. We can create greater peace, warmth, harmony, and happiness by focusing on the positive aspects of, or that which we love and appreciate about, our lives and reinforcing these instead of focusing on the negative. Anytime we focus on the negative aspects this can hinder us from seeing and acknowledging what is wonderful in our lives. In contrast, whenever we focus our attention on the positive aspects it can fill our lives with love, warmth, joy, peace, appreciation, fulfillment, and contentment and is something which affects not only the way that we feel about ourselves, but also the way others feel whenever they are in our presence.

This article describes one way in which to create greater peace, harmony, and happiness in your life by challenging and overcoming temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions. I encourage you, or others you are providing assistance to, to give these techniques a try.

This and other happiness and self-improvement related tips are provided throughout my self-help oriented books: https://brighterdayslifecoaching.com/published-books-and-life-coaching-services/ 

#selfimprovement #selfhelp #selfdevelopment #intention #fulfillment #success #inspiration #happiness

One advantage of being well-versed in multiple life coaching areas is being able to recognize and capitalize on synergies between the various areas. Some techniques which work well in addressing one area works well in supporting other areas as well. For example, the approaches I described throughout this article work well not only for the topic of this article, temptations, addictions, compulsions, and distractions, but also for motivating and accelerating progress in other aspects of one’s life such as job changes, relationship changes, financial discipline, and achieving new goals and greater happiness in life. So give these techniques a try for these and other aspects of your life.

To date I’ve written several articles related to creating and living a happier life. These include the following:

(1) A Quick and Easy Technique For Creating Happiness, Peace, and Relaxation

(2) Creating Healthy Boundaries in Relationship Situations

(3) Living Mindfully and Intentionally, Being Clear Headed and Open-Minded, and Releasing the Need to be Right or Defensive

(4) Keeping Life Enjoyable, Interesting, and Fun By Breaking Out of the Routine of Things

(5) Achieving Greater Peace and Happiness By Evaluating, Prioritizing, and Adjusting Life Activities

(6) A Wonderful Way to Gain a Greater Appreciation of Others

Feel free to read some of these other articles if you think they might be helpful in helping you to experience greater warmth, peace, harmony, and happiness in your life. For those that do not know, I generally perform life coaching and training services in two primary areas: 1) Personal and Professional Improvement, Development, and Growth, and 2) Financial Planning, Management, and Investing. As such, I generally alternate the articles that I write via my blogs between these two topic areas. This particular article is associated with the first area that I life coach in. So if you don’t have much interest in personal and professional improvement, development, and growth, rest assured that the next article that I write will be in the area that you might have greater interest in; the financial planning, management, and investing area. You can also follow me on Twitter if you like at: Joseph M Brennan Jr @ BrighterDaysLC

Please contact me if you, or someone else in your life, could use some assistance with personal improvement, development, or growth as this is one of the areas that I actively perform life coaching in. Also feel free to click on “Personal Improvement, Development, and Growth Related Posts” on the sidebar to the right or below (depending upon which device you are using) for helpful tips on how to create greater peace, happiness, and progress in your life.

Joseph M. Brennan Jr. CEO/Life Coach – Brighter Days Life Coaching

“Your Brighter Days Life Coach for Life”

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