The other day, I ran across an ancient proverb.  It read:

Good habits result from resisting temptation

There’s a great deal of truth in this, I believe.  We’re all human, and each of us faces temptation every day.  It comes at us in the form of food, shopping, credit/debt, envy, jealousy, alcohol – and that’s just to name a few.  We’re motivated to cave to temptation for a variety of reasons.  All of them understandable in their own 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 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 is applicable to each temptation, i.e. alcohol has its own 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

1. Acknowledge your weakness.  Most people over-estimate their capacity to resist temptation.
2. 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?
3. Find a replacement vice.  If you’re an ice cream addict, try to find a fruit or vegetable that you love to eat.
4. Develop a reward system.  When you’re successful at resisting temptation, you earn the reward.  Save it for exceptional times.
5. 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.
6. Don’t kid yourself.  Know those 100-calorie packs of food?  They just give you license to eat more packages.  After all, each package is small, right?
7. Don’t completely eliminate access to your temptation.  Simply reducing access provides the opportunity for success, which in turn, can build will power.
8. Remember your failures.  They will provide strength to make better choices in the future.
9. Surround yourself with those who you would like to emulate.  We are social creatures and its hard to go against the grain of the group.
10. Provide yourself with an immediate benefit for resisting temptation.  Pick out a smaller vice that’s an indulgence.
11. Don’t try going cold turkey.  Ever heard of the rebound effect?
12. Embrace guilt and fear.  Science tells us those emotions are better motivators than hope.
13. Pace yourself.  Most research agrees that our daily capacity for resisting temptation is finite.  Ever had to bite your tongue with a petulant boss and gone home to eat a whole gallon of ice cream?
14. Watch your heart rate.  It rises when you’re working to resist temptation.
15. Don’t fall for marketing tricks.  Example: Restaurants that serve salads increase their sale of less healthy options.
16. Know yourself.  Are you impulsive or prudent?  Impulsive people tend to feel less guilt when giving in to temptations.
17. Beware of “exclusivity.”  When our temptations are couched in a sense of immediacy, our tendency to indulge rises.

What other tools do you use to battle temptation?  Do you find that one of these works better than another?

Post from: Live Fit Blog

Harnessing The Power Of The Mind For Resisting Temptation

A few days ago, I got sucked into a conversation about the relative importance of fathers vs. mothers, and its been troubling me ever since.  I should have avoided it.  I know better.

The whole conversation started when a female friend made the assertion that “…yeah, but kids really need their mothers.”  The implication in her statement was that kids don’t need their fathers.  When pressed, she held firm to her statement.

Needless to say, I was offended.  And troubled.

Why Children Need Their Fathers

As a father, a statement like this really bothers me.  Moreso because I’ve heard similar comments echoed at other times.

Should we be assigning relative importance to mothers and fathers when it comes to their value in child-rearing?  I don’t think so.  And, perhaps more importantly, what are we teaching our boys if they hear us make statements like that?

Without a doubt, there was a time when fathers were less involved in child-rearing.  At one time, fathers were the sole source of income, and their role in raising children was primarily that of disciplinarian.  Men were taught to avoid displays of emotion, etc.  But, as women have moved into the workforce, and societal norms about the relationships fathers can have with their children have shifted, fathers have taken a more prominent role in raising and caring for their children.  And the truth of the matter is, having a father in the home enriches their children’s lives.

Don’t believe me?  The facts stand for themselves:

• In 2002, 7.8% of children in married-couple families lived in poverty, versus 38.4% of female-headed households.
• Children living in single-parent households are at twice the risk of suffering physical, emotional, or educational neglect as compared to two-parent households.
• Children living in two-parent households are less likely to have behavioral problems in school
• Girls without fathers in the home are more than twice as likely to engage in early sexual behavior

Admittedly, being a father makes me biased.  But I think the evidence supports the idea that children need their fathers.

Before I get attacked by the mothers wielding billy-clubs and machettes, I’m not saying that children don’t need their mothers.  In fact, they do.

The truth is that children need both their parents equally.  Mothers and fathers play different, yet equally important, roles in providing for, protecting, and nurturing their children.  They are the yin and the yang that provide the mold which shapes children into the adults they will become.

Research proves that which most of us already know.  Mothers and fathers interact differently with their children.  But that difference doesn’t make one parent more important than the other.

None of this is meant to suggest that children are always better off with both parents in the home.  But the assumption that, when forced into a single-parent situation, children will always be better off without the father is, in my opinion, patently false.  Without even trying hard, I can point to a dozen instances where children are either being raised in a single-parent household (headed by a father), or where the Dad is a stay-at-home parent.  And in every instance, the children are growing up under the tutelage of a loving, caring father.

I’ll end with this.

The mother that made this comment to me is a single parent, with four boys and one girl living in her household, all under the age of 18.  I didn’t go into this diatribe with her, but simply asked this:  ”If you say things like this to your boys, what do you think they’ll believe when they become fathers?”

Think about it.

Sources

• National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse
• NCES

Post from: Live Fit Blog

Why Children Need Fathers

When I was a teenager, one of the early science fiction books I read was a book titled Cobra, by Timothy Zahn.  He later published a second book, and they were released together under the title COBRAS TWO: Cobra – and – Cobra Strike.

This series has an inter-galactic setting.  Humanity has left Earth behind, and expanded our reach across the universe.  Then, we encounter a war-like species, bent on conquering all the worlds we’ve populated.  And they’re succeeding.

This leads the military to create the COBRA program, which merges cybernetics and weapons to create the ultimate guerilla soldier.  Men and women that can blend in with the population, armed with things like weapons-grade lasers in their pinky finger, sonic disruptor implants, arc throwers, reinforced bones, servos to augment running, etc.  And controlling it all is a computer implanted at the base of their brain.  The computer gives them the ability to survive in high combat situations, automating their response to threats.  They are the perfect weapons to use against these invaders.

Here’s the kicker, though.  What happens when they return home?  We have the perfect soldiers, responsible for freeing humanity from the threat of an outside invader, and they can not control their actions when faced with any situation that may be threatening.  More importantly, they respond with deadly force at each and every turn.

The populace is thankful for what they’ve done, yet fearful of their capabilities.  This is the real story.  How does a society go about re-integrating these hapless souls back into their midst?  The challenge is addressed in Cobra, and becomes more clear in Cobra Strike.  I believe this story formed the basis for a Star Trek:  The Next Generation episode, as well.

I only recently discovered that a third book was published, and all three books are being re-released in paperback under the single cover: The Cobra Trilogy.  This has made my list, to round out this series from my childhood.

This is a good read.  It won’t shake the foundations of your beliefs, but if you enjoy science fiction, it definitely makes the recommended list.

P.S. Have you gotten your free guest post from me yet?

Post from: Live Fit Blog

Book Review: Cobras Two — Books by Timothy Zahn