DYL_Ep90_Temptation
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode 90 of the Decide Your Legacy podcast. Today, I'm going to talk about power to resist temptation. You have the power to resist the temptations in your life. If you found the Decide Your Legacy podcast helpful, subscribe so you won't ever miss another episode. Pull out your phone. Give me a rating and review on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast content.

This helps the Decide Your [00:01:00] Legacy podcast grow organically. It reaches people in their feeds and it helps more people. I'm your host, Adam Gragg. I have been a coach, writer, speaker, and licensed clinical family therapist for over 20 years. My passion is to help others find the confidence and clarity to face their biggest fears, to live their desired legacy.

I talk about stuff I struggle with myself. I don't have it all figured out. I'm a fellow traveler. I make these podcasts for me as well as for you. Something uncomfortable, a risk I took recently, and I share this scary thing because nothing is more important to your mental health than facing your fears, and nothing is more damaging to your mental health than playing it safe, staying stuck.

What I did is I called someone who I usually and haven't reached out for for support. about advice in a specific area. And it was awkward, but they loved it, actually, and found it helpful. I found it helpful. I got some great [00:02:00] advice. I have been reaching out to more people. That is letting go of the outcome.

It's risky. This is the podcast you do not just listen to, so my listeners get uncomfortable too. So let's start with an action. What temptations do you struggle with? A temptation is a behavior you engage in that you don't want to engage in because you know it is harmful. Deep down you know what is harmful.

So, we think of using substances. Nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, food. We can also think of behaviors. Isolation, selfishness, materialism, laziness, worry, workaholism, staying stuck in the past, staying stuck in our heads, talking too much, neglecting ourselves, neglecting our self care, sabotaging our success, gossip, drama, and then modern day temptations.

Social media, YouTube, binge watching write that down or speak in your phone, speak that temptation. What are those? Maybe you have two, maybe you have three, maybe you have one, but you just think, what is it [00:03:00] that you know you don't want to do, but you continue to do and you want to stop and think about that.

Keep it in mind through this entire podcast. So. Two biggest battles you're going to face in life, I'm convinced, are your thinking, your perspective, and fighting that, and knowing that it's not true. Much of what your mind tells you, that inner critic, is not true. And then your feelings, your emotions, how to handle them.

How to be emotionally intelligent. We waste so much time when we give in to temptation. We lose our creativity. We are not feeling productive with our lives and we end up beating ourselves up because we continue to engage these behaviors that we know we don't want to engage in. We sabotage our success.

Sometimes, in fact, I had a client tell me just recently that he's late because he doesn't believe he's worthy of the success that he has in front of him with his career. And so he can be late to meetings, maybe just five minutes late. I can do that as well. And I thought as I was talking to him that I probably do that as well.

At [00:04:00] times I sabotage my success because I'm late too often. You figure this stuff out. And you stop getting sidetracked. You start feeling productive. I mean, imagine at the end of the day, you crawl into bed and you feel great about your day. You reflect on the decisions you make, the actions you took, and you feel great about your day.

What is it that you have done? One of those things that you've engaged is most is fighting temptation because you're going to have it. That voice is going to pop up and say you deserve it. You need a break. Come on. Other people are doing it. There's no need for you to be different than other people. It's going to talk to you consistently.

So you have these four powers that you can actually engage in. And don't give away your power. There's no reason to ever give a person, place, or thing the power that is only rightfully yours to manage. Responsibility is yours to grasp if you want it. Which I believe you do. Because it makes life so much better.

You have, number one, you have power over your behaviors. Not complete control, but you have power. And one of the places to start is, [00:05:00] what are the replacement behaviors that you can engage in when you are being tempted? So when you create that vision for your life, that one year goal, that, I'm sorry, that one year vision, that picture in your mind, what is it a year from now that you're engaging in consistently when you're feeling tempted to engage in one of these harmful behaviors?

Imagine yourself, get a picture of that. Get a picture of who you are, how you turn from these things, even physically turn your body, I mean, away from whatever those things are. Those are actions, these are behaviors that you know you can engage in that are not going to be fun in the initial engagement. I mean, when you know that you want to go ahead and eat that dessert before bed, or you want to go ahead and engage in something that you know is harmful, smoke that next cigarette.

Drink that next drink. Just hide out from people and isolate, which is a temptation that I have when I feel insecure about myself. I just want to isolate and hide out. So that's why reaching out to people for help is a risk. It's a behavior that I can engage in that I know helps me. So what are those replacement behaviors for you?

[00:06:00] You know, for me, I text friends at times, reach out. I attend 12 step meetings at times. I replace my temptation with reading, sometimes taking a nap, although sometimes taking the nap is the temptation I need to fight because it's one of my behaviors to. I engage in to procrastinate so we can get in touch with that intuitively so we can turn from that temptation and engage something that is helpful and productive.

Maybe it's watching a documentary or reading a book that you read before because you know it's actually helpful. So some actions you can take to have power over these behaviors because you know they're not pulling you. The temptation is not pulling you. in the direction that you want to head. You want to head and you know you want to head towards your goals and towards more confidence and towards better relationships.

Well, hey, what are the replacement behaviors that you know intuitively will lead you towards your goals? Is it going to the gym? Is it calling a friend? Is it going to a 12 step meeting? Is it going to a nutrition support group? Is it reading something productive [00:07:00] and healthy, inspiring? Is it listening to a podcast or a book?

Is it getting some exercise and going to the gym, just getting through the door at the YMCA? Maybe that's the behavior that you need because you won't feel like doing it in the moment. And you know that in advance, but it's how you feel afterwards because you have some victory over this temptation that's going to start creating a new habit for you to engage in.

So that's number one. You have power over your behaviors. Select and seek replacement behaviors. And ask other people what they do. That's another action you can take. What do they do? You know, that call that I made that was risky to somebody asking for help with productivity, staying focused. I was really surprised by their answer because they told me that the behavior that they engage in consistently is swimming every other day.

And they don't have any music going. It's just them and the pool. And they swim for half an hour to 45 minutes. And they said that this helps them decide how to organize their day. and helps them to say [00:08:00] no and to get some insight, some inspiration on how to structure things and what they should face. So I was, I was shocked by it.

I was inspired by it. Second power that you have is you have power over your emotions. You don't have control over your emotions. Control is different. Control is an anxiety producing mentality. We can't control it. We're going to feel things that we don't want to feel at times because your emotions. are a compass.

They give you insight, direction, but they can be a broken compass because often our feelings are unfounded and they're coming from a source of our, of thought that's not healthy. So the second step of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

And so we're admitting we're not sane when we're not sober. Emotional sobriety is we're becoming sober. Or somebody that is insane is all over the place. They don't have any [00:09:00] structure. You don't know what's gonna happen next in their life. You don't know whether they're gonna have an angry outburst or they're gonna give you a big hug when you come home from school or when you come home from work.

You don't know. But a sober person, they have the ability to have, to engage in intentional behaviors. Not just succumb and wallow and feed their emotions, but they seek out sobriety. For many... It's tempting to get stuck in our emotions, and to wallow in our emotions, and to say that they're factual, when if we recognize the source of our emotions, it's often something that isn't true, and so getting some space and stepping back from it is essential and understanding that you can own your emotions.

The only person to blame for your emotions is yourself. Let me say that again. The only person to blame for your emotions is yourself because you're the one that's letting them stick or you're the one that's rising above them and saying to yourself, Hey, I don't have to go ahead [00:10:00] and go and do that thing that I'm tempted to do, because I have some power in this situation.

I don't have to isolate. I don't have to worry about the same thing again and again. I don't have to believe that this embarrassment feeling that I have is. Going to stick forever and never go away because we can look at our feelings as being permanent. We're not going to get out of this. I don't have to believe that I'm going to be depressed for the rest of my life.

Although I may be tempted to believe that I can start creating a vision and that's emotional sobriety. So what actions can you take? Well, let me give you an example. First of all, so I had a client that told me that he was uncomfortable with small talk. I've had a number of clients tell me that. And so they are in the business world and they don't like to go to these networking events where they have to make small talk with people, which means asking them about their kids or their business or whether they are enjoying the event.

It's this small kind of stuff. And what we find is that when there's emotional, Intoxication, when someone is not emotionally sober, they have [00:11:00] this either or thinking. So someone that tells me, hey, I'm uncomfortable with small talk. I want to avoid these situations. Well, one of my questions is how is that either or thinking?

And they may need my help on that, but it's either or thinking because I'm saying that it's going to be miserable or it's going to be great. In that case, you're saying it's, it's going to be miserable because it's either or. It's black and white thinking. And so I challenge them to think, well, what is a both and perspective?

So it can be both difficult and uncomfortable and a growth opportunity and an opportunity to meet new people and an opportunity to feel great. When I'm done, because I met some new positive people and an opportunity to feel embarrassed because it might be difficult to have some of these conversations.

So that's a shift in your perspective. And so actions you can take is first recognize when something is anxiety, because I have seen that I would say most people that I interact with, they don't recognize when something is anxiety in their [00:12:00] lives. And when that's the emotional state that they're actually in.

They may recognize some of the behaviors that they engage in after they feel anxious because they pour another drink or they smoke another cigarette or they fantasize about something that's not healthy for them or they talk obsessively because, or they shut down or they get very deceptive and conniving when they're anxious.

But if you can call it anxiety, there it goes again. That's very powerful because you're recognizing this emotional state that you're in. As not actually being you, but being something outside of you. I'm being anxious, I am jealous, but it's not actually me, it's a feeling that I have. And then we can go and figure out, which is the second thing you can do, action you can take, is figuring out its source.

So what is true about this? What has caused this emotional state? Did I not get enough sleep? Did I not eat a good breakfast? Did I have a fight with my... Daughter on the way out to work or my son on the way out to work. And so we start to see that there are patterns in our lives that are creating this anxiety.

And so we're also starting to see that there are patterns in our [00:13:00] lives. There are habits that we form that create a sense of excitement and joy and passion and purposefulness. And we start engaging these new habits because we're recognizing that there is a source to this anxiety. There is a source to being consumed by our emotions.

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You don't want to miss the video and workbook. You only get access to it through this link. Check it out. So the third power that you have, and you may not realize you actually have, is you have power over your thoughts, over your thinking. Huge battle. It's never going to go away. There's always going to be fear.

You're always going to have times where you get stuck in your head. But, And, I should say, and you have the ability to [00:14:00] recognize your thinking and step back from it, and recognize that it's not true, and to step back from it, and to replace it with a new behavior, a new thought, something that's healthier, a both and perspective, rather than an either or perspective.

We're tempted to get stuck in our worries and in our fears. And we can feed our fears and our anxieties and our negative thoughts by being around other people who are also consumed with their thoughts. They're living, walking zombies. They're not aware. And they're just getting sucked into their own fears.

So if you have friends that are primarily listening to that inner critic, their psyche consistently, and they're critical of other people and critical of themselves, and they're driven by fear, well, they're going to feed your fears. They're going to feed your anxiety. And that is not going to help your thinking.

You can get mental perspective sobriety. That is possible for you. Not only possible, it's exactly the way you were meant to live. You were not meant to live and made to live in a constant [00:15:00] state of turmoil and fear and doubt and worry. Being critical. And by the way, criticism is always, from my opinion, based on fear.

I'm afraid to do something. So I'm gonna criticize it. I'm gonna criticize myself. I'm gonna say I am too good for that, or I'm a piece of crap and I'm no good for that situation. It's based on fear. Had a client who had a problematic career situation, okay? She moved to a city and took a job. in another city, dis moved her whole family and that job she thought was going to be great.

She was promised a whole bunch of things and realized that it was not a good work situation. She was misled, they didn't give a lot of accurate information about the situation and it didn't go well. But she had moved her whole family across the country for this new job. And she gets stuck in both and thinking, you know, it's a horrible situation.

I can't believe I did it. Look what I did to my family. And then I asked her, well, what's a both and perspective? It took some time to challenge her, but, you know, both hand perspective is I moved for this [00:16:00] job and got as a plan, and there are new things I can learn, and there's a reason for this challenge, and there's meaning behind what I'm going through, and there's opportunities ahead, and I've grown through this experience, and I'm going to take and look at opportunities in the future.

through a different lens. I'm going to ask different questions as I make these decisions. And so that shift is power over your thoughts. You're starting to see you don't have to get consumed by these emotions. You're starting to see that these thoughts are often lies and we don't have to give into the lies.

So something you can do to challenge yourself. Which I've thought of too, is you can just look at an object that you engage in on a consistent basis. Let's say your phone, for example. So you have an iPhone or you have an Android or whatever. So you see this phone, it has multiple purposes. This is challenging yourself to have a both and perspective.

So what other purposes besides a phone and a camera can this phone actually serve? So what are they? Maybe make a list of 10. [00:17:00] outside of being a phone and outside of being a camera. that's a challenge right there. It can be a paperweight, you know, it can actually maybe be a weapon where you smack somebody with it.

If you have to, it's kind of hard right here. So a way to kill a fly or a bug, it's on your desk, but you're starting to think both and not either or can be very helpful to you. And you can start engaging in interactions where you're expressing appreciation and admiration and gratitude towards other people.

That starts to shift your thinking about other people. If you start to see the good rather than the bad. You start to, instead of criticizing and getting stuck in the criticism, you see what the opportunity is. So how is this an opportunity? And you name and journal three ways that this thing that I feel is going bad is actually an opportunity.

The fourth power that you have is you have power. You have power in your relationships. And what I mean by that is you don't have to give your power away to these relationships. You have the ability to go ahead and get support, get the right support, build friendships with people that you know are nurturing, where they're not feeding their [00:18:00] inner critic, where they're not feeding their fears, where they're challenging you, where you're growing, where you're held accountable, and you want that accountability.

And so do they, where they're vulnerable and where they're You're open and trustworthy and you're building these kinds of connections. You're around people who are emotionally sober or seeking emotional sobriety and seeking mental sobriety. You're putting yourself around people who you truly believe have some level of intentionality to their behaviors.

They can stick with a schedule at not a perfect level, but at a consistent level. They make decisions that are consistently for the best interests of others and themselves, first and foremost, and you're intentionally engaging them. So we know that people get, and they resist temptation with support. It's not something you can go at alone.

And think about it, people that get sober from alcohol, you know, they attend AA meetings or they attend Celebrate Recovery, some kind of 12 step meeting. I have friends that go to AA every single day. I have friends that I've had that I [00:19:00] know that attend Addiction support groups for sexual addiction consistently, weekly, and have done so for at least over a decade, and they've created these kind of habits in their lives.

So that support wraps it all up when you realize that you can set boundaries, although they are uncomfortable, you can establish the situation where you tell people that you're not comfortable talking about that, or you can walk away from the situation. Or you can change the subject. It doesn't have to be awkward.

There's a lot of times with family that political topics are brought up over the holidays, which are coming up, by the way. And my general go to is to go sit somewhere else or to not engage and to try to bring up a topic that is more positive for everybody, let's say, rather than engaging in something that is really leading to potential conflict.

And oftentimes they're bait. It's bait to get sucked into a situation. And I had that kind of situation just recently and I felt like I handled it pretty well. So I set a boundary, not. really this firm kind of crazy boundary. I mean, boundaries are not this ironclad fence. They're something that's [00:20:00] permeable, but you have influence over what gets through.

And you can say no to other people and situations and topics and drama and gossip, which you may be tempted. That may be your temptation. But the main reason I'm sharing this is when you have power in your relationships, you can elicit the support of others to help you with these temptations. So for me, With punctuality, for example, I will tell friends I want to work on this and let people know, and even have the commitment to text them if I'm late, or I pay my admins a dollar whenever I'm late, which has been helpful, but I've solicited this kind of accountability in my life, and If it's nicotine, for example, for you, or if it's something, food, for example, for you, and you start to tell people, this is something I want to work on in the next couple of months.

Can you ask me about it? Or can you support me with this? And they may ask you, how can I support you with this? And you can tell them specifically, well, just ask me, or just check in on me. Or when we go out to eat, just invite me to go somewhere, even though I don't want to, make a recommendation that we go somewhere that's healthy, like a place like [00:21:00] Doc Green's where I live, which is great.

So, um, a healthy restaurant. So there you go. Who can you enlist in your help and your battle to fight temptation? So there are the four things. Power over your behaviors and make a list of those replacement behaviors. Power over your, your emotions, not complete control, and figure out when you're feeling and why you're feeling certain negative emotions.

Remember, it's a compass, but It's often a broken compass. Power over your thoughts. Again, not complete control. Looking towards the truth. Because the truth will set you free. Right there. And if you seek emotional sobriety, you will find it. But it's going to be knocking. It's going to be seeking. It's going to be looking for it.

If you seek sobriety mentally, you're going to find it. It's going to be knocking. It's going to be looking for help. And the fourth... is you have power in your relationships. Get support, get help. So what resonated with you most today? Hopefully you listened as a teacher, not just as a student, because I want you to teach something that you learned to somebody else in the next 24 hours.

In fact, no, teach something that you [00:22:00] learned to somebody else by the end of the day today, by the end of the day today. My rule is that 20 percent of transformational change is insight. It's information that comes externally from you that's good and healthy. And there's a lot of crap out there. I try to give you some really great stuff every episode.

And there's 80 percent of transformational change is action. 80 percent or more, maybe 90%. I had a client tell me that today. He said, I think it's 90%. And I said, you know what? You're probably right. 80 percent is taking action. So what action are you going to take by the end of the day today? that is based on some insight that you gained today.

And most likely it's going to be an emotional risk. You're going to be uncomfortable. You could feel embarrassed. Feeling embarrassed does not mean it's fact. Emotional sobriety. What are you going to do by the end of the end of the day today? If you love this episode, tell someone else about the Decide Your Legacy podcast.

Share it with others so it grows. have me out to speak live or over zoom I'd love to talk to your team about mental health or productivity Topics I love Relationships one of my favorites [00:23:00] as well Or hire me or one of my legacy coaches to work with you or people on your team people that are ready to start their Legacy journey.

I'm gonna sign off today the way I always do make it your mission To live the life now that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone. People are hanging around at Christmas. What do you want them to remember about you? You decide your legacy, no one else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.