“What you resist tends to persist!”

A thought by David Jeremiah from his book, What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do (p. 54). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

Ok, did you get what you wanted for Christmas?  We were at our daughter, son-in-law and two granddaughters home for Christmas.  One morning I was out at Starbucks reading my newspapers and I got a call, my wife Margaret asked me to go to Dunkin Donuts and get a dozen donuts.  Now I love donuts, I don’t eat donuts anymore, I had at least two donuts.  Christmas is the time to get what we want but here comes New Years and that is a different story, isn’t it?  We now need to deal with temptation and how to handle it.

David says, “The way to deal with temptation is not to grit our teeth and make up our minds that we will not do a certain thing. The key is to fill our minds with other things.”

He continues, “Instead of resisting, refocus.  The more you fight a feeling, the more it grabs you. What you resist tends to persist! Since temptation begins with your inner thoughts, changing your thoughts is the key to victory. Mark McMinn, in his book Dealing with Desires You Can’t Control, writes:

‘The key is not eliminating temptation, but managing temptation. For example, pretend you’re on a diet. After you finish your chef salad with low-cal Italian dressing, the waiter returns with a tray of sumptuous desserts. You have an impulse to eat dessert, but your well-reasoned side insists on abstinence. How likely is it that any self-management strategy will eliminate that conflict? … Trying to eliminate temptation makes it harder to manage.’”

David goes on, “Anyone who has trained a dog to obey knows this scene. A bit of meat or bread is placed on the floor near the dog and the master says, ‘No!’ which the dog knows means that he must not touch it. The dog will usually take his eyes off the food, because the temptation to disobey would be too great otherwise, and instead will fix his eyes on the master’s face. That is the lesson of the dog. Always look to the Master’s face.”

Let’s do our best to fill our minds with other things.  So what is it you really want?