11 KEYS
TO OVERCOMING BAD HABITS
Copyright
1996 By
ROUGH
DRAFT
I have learned that there are many keys that
are helpful to most people in overcoming any bad habit. Here are some of those
keys:
KEY #1: You have
to want to quit the habit more than you want to keep doing it.
Now that sounds pretty simple. But
you see that is one of the actual real problems of overcoming any habit. We all
want to overcome the bad habits of our life. But for some reason we do not have
the self control to do it. That lack of self control often comes because we do
not have clear in our minds that we also WANT TO KEEP
DOING IT TOO. That is why we keep doing it even when we want to stop. We want
to do it! We enjoy it. So we have to get clear in our mind that there are actually
two wants here. We want to quit and we want to keep doing it. And they are both
a strong pull to our emotions. And which one of the two wants is the strongest
is the one that will win out. The following diagram illustrates this principal:
It is true that we have the desire to stop
doing the thing that we perceive as being bad. But the reason we normally can
not break the habit, and the real problem is, we have
another desire that is even greater than our desire to break the bad habit.
That is our desire to continue to do it. And the reason we normally want to
continue to do it is because it brings enjoyment or pleasure of some kind. We
would not do it if we did not like it. Some habits like drinking are formed as
a means of escaping from the pains of reality. Other habits like over eating
may bring us a sense of false satisfaction or momentary relief from stress.
Some habits like pornography even bring us substitute feelings of pleasure to
replace the ones we really want but can not have. Many habits are combined with
other habit like temper and swearing. We can not control our temper so we swear
to try to vent the feelings of the anger. The habits we have do not come by
some accident. Each one has its purpose in our lives. That is why we start
these habits in the first place.
As we resolve to stop these "BAD"
habits, we find ourselves caught in a war of emotions between the two desires.
And the stronger of the two desires within us will always win out. When we
resolve to quit, then fall back into the habit, all we have actually done
is just let the desire to do over power the desire to not do.
KEY #2: Every little
child has to gain experience by the "TOUCH BURN RELATIONSHIP".
It has been said that when a child is born,
about the only natural fears they have are a fear of falling and a fear of
loud noises. Other than that they are almost fearless. Have you ever watched
a little child sitting in a high chair with a bowl of baby food.
And they put their hands into it and feel it. Why do they do that.
It is because children are fascinated by their new sensations of feel. They
want to see what the baby food feels like. It is a new sensation to their
fingers to feel the slick smooth cool feeling of the food between their fingers.
Then what do they do. They daub it in their hair. Why do they do that. Did they want the food in their hair? No. They did it
because they did not realize that they had food on their hands and that if
they put their hand on their head that it would get in their hair. That is
why. They have no experience. They do not know the relationship between food covered hands and mess in the hair.
The real question here is why don’t you do that. Why don’t you feel your tapioca pudding
and then daub it in your hair. The reason is because you have learned that if
you put pudding in your hair that it makes you feel bad AFTER. It makes a mess
and you don’t like the feeling of a mess. So you don’t do it. You never put the
butter from your bread on your face instead of in your mouth because YOU DON’T
LIKE THE FEELING OF IT AFTER. You have experience. You don’t touch a hot stove
because when you were young, some where in your life’s experience, you had a
touch burn experience where you touched something hot and it burned you and
then it hurt after. That is the "touch burn relationship". We all
learn from our experiences. We could list thousands of them. Why don’t you pet
a growling dog like a little child would try to do. Experience. You have gained so much experience in your life
that now, you don’t even have to have had the
experience to know the results and not want them. You can perceive that if you
pet a growling dog, it will bite you and it will hurt. You have never been
bitten by a growling dog, but you don’t pet it. You don’t even have to have had
a touch burn experience to know not to do it.
How does this relate to breaking a bad habit. When we have a habit that makes us feel bad after, we
consider it to be a bad habit. If we are always feeling bad after we do it,
then we gain a touch burn relationship experience and we want to stop the
habit. That is where the desire to stop comes from. The
bad feeling that comes after we do it. But as stated above, sometimes
the pleasure that comes from doing it is greater than the "PAIN"
that comes after. Many times the pain is not as great as the pleasure and
so the touch burn relationship is not enough to make us stop. This applies
to many habits. Swearing seems to relieve anger so we do it even though it
makes us feel a little guilty after or feel sorry. But in the heat of anger,
the desire to relieve the feeling of anger through swearing is greater than
the fear of the little feeling of guilt or remorse that comes after. So our
desire to do is greater than our desire to stop. When we smoke, the pleasure
of the effects of the smoke on our body is greater than our fear of the long
range loss of our health. It doesn’t hurt yet, so we don’t associate the pain
of loss of health with the pleasure of the high that comes from then nicotine
as we inhale the smoke. So we keep on smoking. If we are over weight, our
discomfort from not being able to do the things we want, the tiredness, the
embarrassment from peoples rude remarks, none of them produce sufficient pain
within us to cause a greater desire to quit than the desire to eat within
us that is created by the feelings of loneliness, frustration, or what ever
it is that is causing you to eat to try to find a "replacement feeling"
with the pleasure from eating the food. We could list most any habit that
is hard to break here. They all fall basically into this same category. The
touch burn relationship does not create sufficient pain to cause us to stop
the habit. It only causes us to want to stop, but our greater desire to continue
keeps "MAKING US DO IT".
KEY #3 When we are entrapped by a bad habit, it does not come into
our life by a blow out but by a series of slow leaks.
If we were to define the word "ADDICTION"
the desire to do being greater than the desire not to do is exactly what it
is. It is a habit that creates such a strong desire to do, that this desire
to do is so much more powerful than the pain that comes as a result of it
that we can not quit. That almost seems crazy to even think about when we
look at an alcoholic bum laying in the street, so drunk that he can not even
get up. There he or she is sick, throwing up, totally out of control and delirious.
How could that pain not be worse than the desire to have a feeling that comes
from drinking. That may only be possible to understand
by someone who has been in the situation. How could some one be so addicted
to drugs, gambling or even pornography to such a degree that the desire to
experience it is so great that it totally overpowers the pain experienced
by it? These pains can become so powerful that they can actually end up destroying
a marriage or causing the person to be excommunicated from the church. In
some cases the person even looses all hope of going to the
The answer to that question lies in
feelings. We base much of what we do on feelings. The Holy Ghost Himself is a
feeling. When we do something that is not right, we experience a feeling of
withdrawal of the spirit. An emptiness. That is the
first indications of the loss of the Holy Ghost. He withdraws from us to warn
us that what we have just done is not in keeping with His sprit. And by
withdrawing from us and giving us the empty feeling, we know that what we have
done is wrong. And in many instances that is enough to make us repent and come
back to the straight and narrow path. But as President Hinckley said in a talk he
gave at a BYU devotional on
When the Holy Ghost warns us and we do not
listen it brings a change in us. We
start to dull our senses and our ability to listen to or feel that prompting.
Then as we persist in not listening we start to feel an
emptiness inside. If continue on down that wrong path past that
“switch in the tracks of life” and we do not retreat back, the emptiness turns
to numbness. And if we then continue on in that course the numbness takes
us past feeling. We get to where we are so used to the pain that we do not
notice it as being different from normal.
We adjust to the bad feeling. And that leads us into a vicious circle downward.
A pit so deep that when some are in it they see no hope
to return. The numbness turns to hopelessness. And in that state of
hopelessness the desire to not do the wrong thing any more is totally done
away and the desire to continue to do takes almost complete control. That
is how you could see a bum lay in the street in a total drunken stupor. He
has fallen into total helplessness. He has no hope in his heart to quit. He
thinks that he can not quit. And in that state he is a far cry from that first
feeling of emptiness that came to warn him not to start to do that. Alexander
Pope said:
Vice is a
monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Essay on Man. Epistle ii. Line 217.
Many habits lay us in waist and give us the
feeling of total helplessness and loss of hope. Serious things like moral
sin, gambling, pornography, smoking, theft or other like addictive habits
that effect our standing in life have such power of control over us that if
we do not retreat at the first throwing of the switch when we first feel the
emptiness, we give over to Satan and his power. And in some cases people are
not able to come back from those dregs of Hell with out help from others.
In the Book of Mormon,
And if
ye have no hope ye must needs be in despair; and despair
cometh because of iniquity.
Also
we find in the Bible
Proverbs 13:12
Hope
deferred maketh the heart sick; but when the desire
cometh, it is a tree of life.
We can not free ourselves of
the chains of a bad habit if it is causing us to live in sin, as long as we
continue to ignore the feelings or warnings to stop. If we start to accept the feelings of
hopelessness, numbness, or even emptiness we will bound by the powers of Satan
and the chains of bad habits. To free ourselves we first must resolve to live
the commandments. To listen to the feelings within us.
And take faith in the hope that we can change. In the Book of Mormon Alma said:
But
behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon
my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than
desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a
manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
The road back from the grip
of a habit has to start with a hope that you can come back. It has to begin
with the faith that the Lord will provide the way if you are willing to do the
work.
KEY #4: The human mind
is extremely subject to conditioning and triggers.
The experiment by the Russian Scientist Ivan
Petrovich Pavlov,
a Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology and Medicine with his dogs is a very
famous study. Who has not heard of Pavlov’s dogs. Pavlov published his findings in 1903 which he called
"conditioned reflex".
Conditional reflex is different from an innate reflex, (which would be
like yanking a hand back from a hot fire), in that “conditional reflex” is learned
by repletion not avoidance of pain. Pavlov’s learning process is now just called
“conditioning”. That is the process in which the
nervous system comes to associate the action with some stimulus over a period
of time until the actual event is not needed to stimulate our nervous
system. The bell brings hunger not the
need for food. Pavlov also demonstrated that conditioned
reflex will stop if
the stimulus is removed over a period of time.
That is a key point of his study related to what we are trying to learn
here. If you start feeding the dogs long
enough with out the bell eventually they forget and ringing the bell no longer
makes them hungry. That is what we have
to learn to overcome a habit. Stop
allowing the trigger or stimulus to set off our emotions creating the desire to
continue with that habit.
What a powerful concept – “Conditioning”
a learned behavior. We could all learn a great lesson from that famous
experiment. It has a great bearing on human behavior especially as it relates
to habits. We are all very prone to develop a habit that is done is a certain
time and a certain place. Then when we enter that place, we feel the urge to do
that thing even if we don’t really want to. Ask any smoker and they will tell
you about that. If they smoke every time the stop at a red light while driving
the car, try to get them to come to a red light and not light up. The urge is
triggered by the light not the need for the smoking.
I
had a friend that used to eat dinner every night and then go down stairs and
watch TV. He always lit up when he sat down to watch the TV. I was with him one
day, over 5 years after he had joined the church. He had not smoked even once
in all that time. We ate dinner and went down to the TV room. When he sat down
he kept putting his hand into his shirt pocket where the cigarettes used to be
kept. He was not even aware that he kept reaching into his pocket. When I
mentioned it to him we both had a good laugh. He was psychologically
conditioned to reach for the pocket when he had eaten and was now watching TV.
Conditioning is a powerful thing. And it is normally associated with a time and
a place. Any good student will tell you that they study at the same time and in
the same place every day, and they never study in their bedroom. They have
conditioned themselves to sleep when they go into the bedroom. So if they study
there too, especially on the bed, they start to send mixed signals to their
body and find they can not do either very well in the bed. That is
conditioning.
When we have a habit, especially a very addictive
habit that seems almost impossible to break, we will notice that we normally
are taken into the performance of that habit in the same “conditions” every
time, and normally under the same circumstances. So if we honestly want to
break the habit, we will almost certainly have to change our habit by not
putting ourselves in that circumstance any more. If you want to stop swearing
you first have to stop losing your temper for example.
That is no easy thing to do. But again, if
we take our alcoholic example, if a person has been addicted to drinking, and
they always drank in some certain bar, it would be very dangerous for them to
go to that very same bar again and sit at the same stool and just smell the
froth of the beer. If you honestly want to quit a habit, you have to change the
conditioning. When you go into that circumstance, it sets off a trigger inside
you. The psychological triggering in your brain can actually be much stronger
than the psychological triggering. You can be trained to be hungry by a bell
more than by hunger from not eating for a long time. In fact if you go without
eating for a couple of days you actually stop being hungry. We have to remove
the triggers from our lives. Discover where it is that you do what you do that
is the habit. Watch for what sets you off and causes that pulling feeling or
desire to do it. Then start to avoid it.
Triggers can be subtle things. If you are
addicted to pornography and you watch a TV program that has immoral scenes in
it, you will almost certainly feel the urge within you to fall back to the old
habit. If that is the case, you may have to stop watching TV all together. With
movies and TV, you never know when you will all of the sudden be placed in
sight of a scene you do not want to see. You have almost no control over it. By
the time you close your eyes, even if you could, or try to turn off your
attention span, it is too late. You have seen it. If you are addicted to
pornography on the internet and you feel that urge to click on the porno sites
then you may have to leave the internet alone. You have to change the
environment. You may have to give up some friends. You may have to stop going
certain places. You may have to take a shower in a different place, or take
your date to a different kind of activity. If you keep going back to the same circumstances
and letting the triggers be set off, you have little hope of quitting the
habit. You will feel the emptiness, then the numbness than the hopelessness and
finally totally lose the desire to quit.
There is another side to this kind of feedback that works
in a opposite way. Almost in a negative way. It
is more of the innate reflex (pulling your hand away from a hot fire). It is actually the same as Pavlov’s “conditioning”
but it is negative feedback instead of positive feed back like food when the
bell rings. It is still the same form
of conditioning .
It was first taught by Mat Oxley at the University in
KEY #5 When you do quit, you have to take it one step at a time
with a time frame.
Very few people ever fell
into an addictive habit by a blow out. Almost no one became a smoker over
night. Very few people are immoral on the first date. It normally comes by a
series of slow leaks. One step builds on another. There never is a day when you
can say that is enough. I am hooked. I have to quit. In the Book of Mormon that Satan will
"Carefully lead us down to hell".
2 Nephi 28: 21
And
others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will
say: All is well in
He knows that we will not
come if we saw how bad it was to lay in the street as a drunk. He does not
start with total loss of virtue in the first night. He knows that we do what we
think. So first He start
with our thoughts. He will first expose
you to little things then build upon them and build upon them until you have
gone from the emptiness to the numbness. Then he can tempt you to give up and
just give in. To come back from such habits also does not come with one quick
explosion. We have to build one step at a time. We have to regain the touch
burn relationship in our minds. We have to start to build a desire not to that
can finally exceed our desire to. It is helpful if we will take those steps in
a time frame. If we will say to our selves, " I
can quit for one day". Then do it for one day. Then with that success, go
for two days and then three. And finally a week at a time
then a month. And finally a permanent solution will have been
reached.
KEY #6 Report back to
someone.
Many habits are just too addictive to overcome alone. But even little ones can be overcome easier if we have a family member, friend or religious leader to help us. It makes a great difference in your hour of temptation when you are there alone and can not stand to not do it, but then you realize that someone you know is depending on you and believing in you. It will give you great strength to “stay straight” if you know that you have to report back to someone. It is a great tool in over coming any habit to have someone you can report back to and share you success or failure with. Someone you can gain strength from. The more serious or powerful the habit the more often you need to report back. That is why they started the Alcoholics Anonymous. It gave recovering alcoholics someone to report back to. You can create your own Habit breaking Anonymous club. It only takes one friend who is willing to help you and let you report back to them on a regular basis. Even by phone. It is the embarrassment of having to report back when you have given in that will give you the strength to not do it again next time. It is so important to report back to your friend especially when you have failed so you start to “condition” your mind to know you will have to report failures as well as successes.
KEY #7 You have to believe that oil and water do not mix.
Quite some time ago I found that oil and
water do not mix. It became apparent to me that there were not two sets of
rules in life. If I wanted the spirit of revelation and I was a thief, one
or the other had to go. This is pointed
out in the Bible quite clearly.
James 3: 10
Out
of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing,
which ought not so to be
If I wanted to give healing blessings and
liked to swear, I will discover that the scripture has quite a literal meaning, Blessing and cursing
can not come from the same mouth. I have many times had people tell me that
I was too fanatical about keeping the commandments. My reply to them is always
the same. How financial is the Savior. How financial is the Savior in keeping
the commandments. Should I be any less careful? Oil and water do not mix.
If I break the commandments I loose the spirit. There are no exceptions. There
is only one set of rules, and we all play on the same playing field.
If we blame our misconduct on having a bad
habit, then the keys found in this paper should be of great interest to us. If
we keep the commandments strictly we will be the recipients of the great
promise in the scriptures
Matthew 7: 14
Because
strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth
unto life, and few there be that find it.
I hope that is a promise to us all and not
a threat. It is important when you read this scripture
to notice the spelling of the word “STRAIT”.
Strait is not spelled straight (like not crooked). The word “STRAIT”
means narrow, like the straits of
Joseph Smith said that one of the saddest
things he had ever witnessed was the resurrection of the Latter-day saints
who came forth to a resurrection lower than they had taken for granted they
would receive. (Quoted by President Marion G. Romney, XXX conference talk
XXX 196x)
If
we say we did it because the Devil made us do it, will we be excused? If our Mother abused us or we did it because
our friends made us, what ear will be turned to hear us? Who can offer a reason
that will stand as we are resurrected into a kingdom lower than we took for
granted that we would receive? When will we say that the pain is bad enough
that we will stop this habit and start over? What day will we say that is
enough?
KEY #8 Find something
else that you want more than what you are doing that will overshadow your
desire “to do”.
It is easy to say, why don’t you just stop
eating to an over weight person. Have you ever tried it? It is easy to say
how can you smoke when you know that it will kill
you. Have you ever tried to stop smoking? Anyone can look at a person hooked
on pornography and say to them, "cant you see
that you have lost the spirit from doing that?" Before you point a finger,
let him that is without sin cast the first stone. May we all look at the beam
in our own eye before attempting to remove the mote from our brothers eye. Every weakness has its cause. Every person chained
to a habit has a reason, not an excuse, why they were entrapped. Our best
hope is to help them not to criticize them.
English Protestant martyr John Bradford's famous words "There But For The Grace Of
God Go I" are very fitting here (he actually said: "There but for the
grace of God, goes John Bradford.’ ) From the "Encyclopedia
of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson, Facts on File,
The slavery of an addictive habit is
understood by very few, save they have been enslaved themselves. And to just
say, why don’t you stop has little or no value to that
person. There has to be a reason to stop. There has to be something that they
want worse than the pain that they have become numb to. Something
that will pull them up and out of the mire. A person who is so starved
for affection which the are unable to find within
their own marriage may turn to someone outside the marriage to receive that
emotional and physical love. And in that instance the person would have to
decide if they wanted the joy and pleasures of the emotional and physical love
more than they wanted to have the glory of eternal life. You can not have both.
XXXX said that the reason
As a student at BYU years ago, one of the
general authorities came and spoke to us. I do not remember who now. But he
told us that we need to find one goal in our life that was a central goal. A goal that transcended all other goals. Then having set
that goal, make every other goal in our lives stepping stones to that goal. I
remember distinctly that he did not tell us what that goal was to be. For days,
I examined my most dominant thoughts. I searched for what I wanted more than
anything in life. I remember well the flurry of thoughts. A
perfect wife. Lots of money. A
good job. Positions in the Church. What silly
things some of those thoughts were as I look back on them now. But finally one
day as I was walking along, it dawned on me what he had said. There is only one
goal in this life of any value. If we do not make it back to live with God in
the highest degree of the
I had found my higher strength that
overshadowed all my desires to do anything bad. And to this day when Satan
comes tempting and I look at what he offers, I ask myself, "If I do that,
can I still go back to live with God in the
This
concept has been interesting to over the years as I have counseled with people
who are trying to overcome serious
addictive habits. One of the most fascinating excuses that I have heard from
members of the church is that they believe that they are doing what they are
doing because of a revelation they received. This has especially been true
in the case of immorality. Many times people feel that the Lord told them
it was OK for them to have an affair outside their marriage because they were
so lonely, or the other person involved need their help. But in each instance,
as I have gotten more involved and been able to get to the true issues that
were at stake, the thing that had actually happened was that Satan had convinced
them that doing what they were doing would not effect their eternal salvation.
They felt they could do it and still live with god some day. They could not
use eternal life as a source of higher power to help them stop what they were
doing, because they already felt they could have both. Again I think the Book of Mormon so aptly describes
this condition:
2 Nephi 28: 21
And
others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will
say: All is well in
Many of these people have started their own
churches or joined groups that caused them to do more than just have a bad
habit. They had never yet learned that oil and water do not mix. There is
only one set of rules. There are many people who have lost their membership
in the church from the bad habits they have acquired, because they felt they
were an exception to the rules. They felt that the Lord would allow them to
have this particular thing in their life because of there special circumstances.
If you are going to use a thing to help you overcome a bad habit, you have
to know with all your heart that you can not have it if you persist with the
habit. You can not have your cake and eat it too.
There may be other goals that a person
could use besides the goal to live with God in the next life to help overcome
habits. That is just what helped me. That may be good for serious addictive
habits like pornography, adultery, drugs or the word of wisdom that effect our
standing in the kingdom, but in some instances it may be more helpful to have a
closer thing that you want worse than your habit to help you overcome a habit
that is not eternally threatening. For example a new dress or acceptance by
your friends may be more realistic as a goal in helping overcome being over
weight, or the ability to give blessings with the sprit to help overcome
swearing. You have to find the thing that works best for you, for the habit
that you want to overcome. What ever the habit is, you have to find something
that you want worse than you want the pleasure you get from the habit, and
believe with all your heart that you can not have “BOTH”. Oil and water do not mix. If you keep on with the habit you can not
have the goal. It has to be something that you can not have if you continue
that habit, even if it means that you just choose to not have that thing again
until you quit the habit. You have to find what works for you.
I have also found some other questions that
I can ask myself when faced with giving in to a bad habit that help me to
not give in to my base desires, or to even think about starting into a new
bad habit. I ask myself if I think the Savior would do that. Would He go into
that place? Would He be found in this situation? These questions of course
each depend on the circumstances. I ask my self if I would do that in church
or in front of my family or in the temple. If I would not do it in front of
my family then maybe I should not do it at all. I ask myself often, "what would my wife or my children think if they could be here
and see or hear me doing that?" I often think about deceased relatives who are
possibly watching me and would be disappointed in me. There are many such
questions that a person could ask themselves. The main question being, of
course, how bad do I want the thing that is better than the pleasure derived
from the habit. If the answer is not, "Much,
much more", then we need to find a new goal. It has to have the power
to make us want to stop the habit to have it.
KEY # 9 You
have to find a way to start caring
One of the reasons that we keep doing what
it is that we are doing is because we get so frustrated that you stop caring
and give up so when you are frustrated you don’t care and give in anyway. We get so discouraged that we don’t care so
when we are discouraged we do it again. We
give in and smoke or eat or look at pornography or become immoral again anyway.
We get so angry that we don’t care so when we loose our temper we swear
anyway. We get so depressed that we don’t care so when
we are depressed we do it anyway. The
feelings from the touch burn after we have done it again are not sufficiently
painful to make us resist before we give in.
We have to find a way to care. To
remember the jam in the hair bad feeling before we do it so we don’t have
the bad empty feeling after. That is
hard sometimes to remember the bad that comes after when we want the pleasure
we perceive before. Looking across
the bridge to the other side of the act is a great key in helping us quit
if we can do it.
I often think of what Anthony Robins said about losing weight. He said, “Nothing tastes so
good as thin feels”. I think that can
be applied to any habit breaking if we find the goal of what we want more
than having what we get from the pleasure or relief of frustration from the
bad habit.
KEY #10 Fasting and
Prayer
The very purpose of fasting is sacrifice something that we would really like to have in order
to get something that we want even more. It
is a key to building character. It
will help us to develop the feeling of humility within us and to bring an
inner strength that develops self control. Fasting can be one of the greatest
tools a person can use to help develop self control and overcome habits. Self
control is the very point of the central issue of habits. We have habits we
do not want because we do not have the self control to stop them, for what
ever reason. Fasting can help us to develop that self control. President Marion
G. Romney said concerning fasting:
(Need to find Marion G. Romney’s “FASTED
ONE DAY A WEEK OVER LONG PERIODS OF TIME” quote and put it here)
When we lived in
While I was a student at BYU we had a teacher
there who gave us some very good advice. She told us that if we would always fast for
24 hours before we took a test and then come to the test fasting we would
do better on the test. I tried it and
found it to be true. The feeling of
being focused while fasting helped me to concentrate on the materials that
I had learned. I always seemed to do
better on tests when I fasted first. I
have also found that when I am faced with problems in my life, if I will fast
for 24 hours it will help me focus my strength on being who I know I should
be. It has greatly helped me many times when I was
discouraged or needed strength. Fasting
brings moral strength to the soul.
KEY #11 Make reporting back to yourself the final objective.
I have
tried to make saying the of Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet the motto of my
life,
William Shakespeare - Hamlet
Act 1 scene 3
This above all, to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man
I am the one that
I have to report back to in the end. It is me who will suffer for the pain of
bad habits if I acquire them. It is me, as well, who will enjoy the blessings
of a pure life and the opening of the windows of heaven if I do not acquire bad
habits. There are blessings that come from total self control that can not be
had if I am out of control. The choice is mine.
I
think of the Book of Mormon stories often when I am tempted to do something and
it seems that it would be wonderful to do it and hear Satan whisper to me,
"you will not get caught", or "you can change or repent
later". When I hear that little
voice whispering that in my mind, then I try to think of Alma and Corahor. Corahor said that an
angel had fooled him and convinced him he was right. After
And
thus we see the end of him who perverteth the ways of
the Lord; and thus we see that the devil will not support his children at the
last day, but doth speedily drag them down to hell.
When ever I think that the things of the
world would be wonderful, or exciting, I try to remember that. And many times
they do seem enticing. People would not look at pornographic things if they
did not bring pleasure to the person, or fulfill a need within them. Little
things can seem so innocent at the start. They seem so enticing. It is like
there are two great roads leading down the same path.
The power of the spirit and the enticing
of the world many times seem to almost be equal. But I must always remember
that oil and water do not mix. I must always remember that after the deed is
done, with one will come the feeling of light and with the other the emptiness.
To some people the beginning
enticement of anticipated feelings that will come from helping another person, fasting and praying, going to the temple,
giving or receiving a priesthood blessing or other spiritual
experiences can seem very equal to or even less enticing than the feeling that
comes from seeing a bad movie, looking at pornography, having an affair outside
their marriage, or other worldly experiences. It probably would not be possible
for someone who has not had the experience to understand that the feeling of
enticement before seems very equal. That is why it is called temptation. They
can seem equally enticing because the feelings that follow are hidden by our
desire to enjoy. We tend to forget the end result feelings. A person would not
commit adultery if they felt sick inside before instead of after. It is only
after the experience has been had that the realization of the
difference in feelings come. One is a feeling that comes after of joy
and light. The other is a feeling that comes after of darkness and guilt. For
some reason we sometimes have a very hard time remembering the feelings of
emptiness and guilt when being enticed by the pleasures of worldliness. Sometimes
we are like a little child and we don’t associate the “after”
feeling of the mess of jam in our
hair with the excitement of the “before
we do it” feelings in our life.
Some way we have to learn to remember that
we don’t like the feeling of jam in our hair before we do it and try to resist
the temptation to enjoy the pleasureful feelings of
the moment at the price of loosing the glories feelings of self worth and joy
afterwards. In many instances we are actually trading the pleasures of today
(worldliness) for the glories of eternity (salvation). That should be enough to
say no. That should be enough to say thank you, but no thank you. Oh that we
could always remember the wise counsel of President Harold B. Lee who said,
"Be loyal to the royal within you". (President Harold B. Lee, “Be Loyal to the Royal Within
You,” BYU Devotional,
Every one can obtain self control if they
will follow the correct course and use the above keys to help them stop bad
habits. Anyone who has an addictive habit that is too big for them to stop
alone can find a friend to help them. They can regain hope and gain self
control. The Lord never makes promises that he does not keep. In the Bible, the
Lord said that "Charity never faileth." (see 1 Cor 13:8 ) Remember that
word “NEVER”!
There is not an addictive habit that is so bad that you can not overcome it with the help of your friends. And you need to be sure that one of your friends is the Savior. You can stop breaking the commandments and live them one day and one commandment at a time by finding something higher that you want more. You can do it! Now do it.