Control your Desires

It’s fun to do what you want, but if you do it all the time, or exceed certain limits, it may become a problem. For example:

• If you spend all your money on impulsive shopping.
• If you become violent when you get angry.
• If you are addicted to tobacco, alcohol, drugs, gambling, sugars etc.

Then it might be an idea to ‘fitness-train’ how to control your desires.

This is one method:

Here we use candy as an example. However you can practice with any desire that might dominate your thinking too much. The only thing you need is paper, pencil and your watch. This exercise is good because you decide yourself how quickly you want to be better!

Imagine not being able to leave a bag of sweets alone – your desire makes you eat all of them one aften the other.

Place the bag on a piece of paper and write on the paper what time it is.
Do not touch the bag for as long time as possible!
When you start eating the sweets, please write again what time it is.
Calculate how long time you were able to leave it (seconds, minutes, hours, days?)

Try the exercise again and again – and see whether you are able to improve gradually.

The paper should be located in a place where you notice it frequently.