by Peter Hendsbee

Created on: April 29, 2009

The modern world is full of temptation, thrust upon you from every angle, and overcoming it takes diligent effort and will power. Fortunately, there are ways in which you can resist and overcome temptation.

What Is Temptation

Temptation is the act of enticing someone to take action by promising pleasure or gain. Therefore, to be tempted, there must be a source of enticement and an object of desire. Ultimately, the source of temptation is found in human nature, whereby every human has an innate desire for pleasure and gain, but there are also powerful catalysts, such as peer pressure, media advertising and unnatural physical urges that can be considered sources of temptation.

Virtually everyone deals with temptation, in some form, on a daily basis. Some are successful at overcoming it, while others succumb to its influence. Those that are successful are typically those that have found ways to lessen the effect of temptation and to overcome it.

How Temptation Attacks

To consistently overcome temptation, it is important to understand how it attacks so that a defense can be established. It strikes in various ways and to effectively resist it you must be aware of these. Temptation can be overt or it can be subtle.

Overt temptation targets your desire for pleasure and gain. It tries to present the object of your desire as being so incredibly pleasurable, or the gain of obtaining it so great, that your will power is defeated. This approach, though very powerful, is more obvious and with a bit of time and a proper perspective you can usually discern that the value placed on the object is blown out of proportion.

Temptation can also take a more subtle approach, which is usually more successful, and can pose a greater danger. Rather than working to increase the promise of pleasure or gain, it works to alter your sense of right and wrong, good and bad, safe and dangerous. If it can alter your perception to minimize the consequences, then your own human nature will likely cause you to act.

Overcoming Temptation

Except in extreme cases, such as prolonged substance abuse where the physical body has become dependent, temptation is an attack on your mind. It makes you think that the object of desire has a greater value than you would normally attribute to it. It causes your focus to be drawn to a certain object and manipulates your senses so that the object becomes more appealing.

Fortunately, the subconscious mind has its own defense mechanisms requiring a certain amount of time to

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