Every Time You Don’t Give into Temptation, You Win a Small Piece of Your Life Back

Photo by chester wade on Unsplash

As human beings, we are primed to be attracted to a Smorgy’s Boards of temptations. My own fine-dining menu of temptations includes social media, junk food, computer games (anything with Mario because it takes me back to childhood) and alcohol.

You are smoking crack and passing magic mushrooms under oakwood park benches if you think you are immune from temptation.

We can’t avoid temptation — but each time you avoid it, you win a small piece of your life back.

Right now, a few temptations have got the best of me and one of those is social media. You know when temptation is winning because you lose control. You set boundaries and then break those boundaries consistently.

But what if temptations have an upside?

That’s the question I pondered. What if there was a way to rig the system in your favor?

Discipline wins part of the battle. Each time you can demonstrate to yourself that you are disciplined, the power a temptation has over you becomes weaker. Using discipline, you can build a new habit that overrides the temptation you seek to eliminate.

The thing about temptations is that we know deep down that they are more of a problem in our lives than a positive effect (described as an escape, a vice, a distraction, etc).

For me, social media has its benefits, although right now those benefits are being overshadowed by the negative effects such as time being wasted, less time with my partner, the need to please and having my attention lured away from learning and into the instant gratification lobster net.

Enter Jerry Seinfeld

This is going to sound like the lamest, least badass solution to temptation. Stick with me.

While dealing with the problem of my social media temptation/addiction, I came across a story about Jerry Seinfeld. In it’s simplest version, Jerry said that he had a calendar where he’d cross off every day with a red pen if he wrote jokes on that day.