Your Secret Power

A certain man was on a diet to lose weight. He even changed routes to work in order to avoid a particular bakery, which displayed scrumptious looking pastries in its window. But one day he arrived at the office carrying a beautiful, large coffee cake. His colleagues teased him about slipping off the diet. 

In reply, he smiled and said, “Today I accidentally drove by the bakery and looked in the window and saw a host of goodies. Now, I felt it was no accident, so I prayed, ‘Lord, if you want me to have one of these delicious coffee cakes, let me find a parking space in front of the bakery.’ And sure enough, the eighth time around the block, there it was!”

Addictions come in many shapes. They come in the shape of pills, powder and liquid. They come in the shape of video games. They may even come in the shape of food. Some are irritations. Some can ruin a life.

And that’s where willpower comes in. It may not be the whole answer, but nothing will change without it.

Sometimes willpower looks more like “won’t power.” It’s finding the inner power to say, “I won’t continue in this behavior or attitude.” 

And sometimes willpower looks more like “want power.” When I want a new me more than I want the person I am today, it’s easier to find the power to make it happen.

There’s something else about willpower, too. You can’t use it up. In fact, every time it’s used it grows stronger. It’s like a muscle growing stronger and stronger with exercise until what was once difficult is now simple.

Whether you call it willpower, won’t power or want power, it’s the secret power to a better life.

-- Steve Goodier

Ready to Grow a Little?

"The trouble with resisting temptation," says one woman, "is that it may never come again." Hmmm....

Mark Twain noted that “there are several good precautions against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.” And poet W. B. Yeats said this about those ever-present allurements: "My temptation is quiet." It’s true. They so often sneak up on us unawares.

Oscar Wilde quipped, "I can resist everything except temptation." Isn't that the way it is for most of us? 

Many folks pray, "Lead us not unto temptation." But the problem is ... we honestly don't need leading -- we can find the way there ourselves. And even enjoy the journey. 

It is not always possible to avoid that which is not in our best interest. We're enticed to spend money we don't have. We're lured to ingest something that we will later regret. We're pulled toward people who may not be good for us, and tempted to get back at those who've used or hurt us. Seductions of various kinds bait us at every opportunity.

One pet store owner learned a hard lesson about temptation. He bought a one-foot, three-pound grouper to add to his large saltwater aquarium. He knew that groupers tend to eat smaller fish, but he thought he could control what the fish ate by hand feeding it. In time, however, he noticed that the expensive, exotic fish in his tank had grown sparse.

After 18 months, he was out $5,000 worth of tropical fish. But he now had a three-and-a-half foot long, 35 pound grouper. And who can blame the culprit? Lots of us can’t resist fresh sea food!

But you and I aren't fish. We CAN do something about those temptations that assault us daily. And it’s not just about temptation. 

Maybe you want to change an attitude (control your anger?) or behave differently (eat healthier food?). Well, you can actually do something. You can make the decision, just this time, to act in your best interest, rather than on impulse. You can decide to come from a better place -- for just this moment. 

And that is all that usually matters: making the decision just once today. Just this time. We can always change a behavior or attitude just once. And there’s something powerful in doing it every day… even if it’s just once.

The fact is, you and I build fruitful and productive lives one little decision at a time. Every time we decide to act intentionally, we grow a little. 

Are you ready to grow a little today?

-- Steve Goodier

Image: flickr.com/vgm8383

Skunks I’ve Run With

Are you running with one of these?

Ever run with a skunk?

A newspaper story once related that a mother of eight from Darlington, Maryland, had been visiting next door. When she returned home she went into the living room where she saw her five youngest children huddled in the center of the floor -- on her new carpet -- very much involved with something wiggly and squirmy. The perplexed mother looked closer. To her total dismay, she discovered that the children were gathered around a family of skunks.

In her horror she screamed, “Run, children, run!”

They did. Each child grabbed a skunk and ran.

I know I've sometimes made the same mistake. Instead of leaving a potentially smelly situation alone, I decided to run with it. Many of my problems have been the result of my own poor choices and bad judgment, though I may have been tempted to blame someone else. One such skunk I have run with was “the easy way” when there clearly was a “better way” which seemed too much trouble to bother with at the time. Another skunk I've run with was “instant gratification” -- the I-want-it-now decision that I would be sure to regret in the long run. Another might be called “it's too good to be true!” At a deep level I know that when it seems too good to be true, it probably is. But I've been known to go for it anyway.

I've made a lot of stinky decisions along the way, though I knew better. And I really can’t blame anyone or anything else. I got seduced by a cute, furry, little bundle of temptation which was actually nothing more than a skunk in disguise. And instead of running AWAY from it, I picked it up and made it mine. I ran WITH it.

I don't know how often opportunity knocks, but temptations to make foul decisions bang on my door all day long. And smelly decisions make for smelly problems later on. A few little decisions, good or bad, can make a big difference in a life. Better to run from those skunks than with them.

Like me, have you ever run with skunks? Or the more important question is...if you’re running with one now, will you put it down? You will be glad you did and you’ll have no one to blame for the sudden improvement but yourself.

– Steve Goodier 

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Image by Torli Roberts

Keep on Swinging

They say that opportunity only knocks once. But temptation seems to pound on my door forever. Even opening up and letting it in doesn’t seem to make it go away. More temptations come along and the beating goes on.

Those temptations that cause me the most problems are those that pull me away from being my best self. So I can relate to the Swiss woman who was served dinner on a domestic American flight. She opened up her dessert – a delicious looking piece of chocolate cake – and immediately sprinkled a generous layer of salt and pepper over it. A shocked flight attendant exclaimed, “Oh! It’s not necessary to do that!”

“But it is,” the woman replied, smiling. “It keeps me from eating it.”

She found a way to drive temptation away from her doorstep, at least for a while.

The most persistent temptations in my life are distractions that keep me from doing what is in my best interest.

I forgo some much-needed exercise because I “just don’t feel like it” today. Have you ever felt like that?

You may want to quit that reading group, that difficult class or those music lessons. It’s easy to become distracted and get discouraged.

Or maybe we say we just “can’t find the time” to spend with those closest to us, such as family. We may want to do these things; it’s just that sometimes we need a nudge.

Something baseball great Hank Aaron once said can help out here. “My motto was to keep swinging,” he said. “Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was to keep swinging.”

Sometimes we just need to keep swinging. And if we tell ourselves that all we need to do today is to take one more swing, that may be enough. We can always take one more swing. And who knows…today we might hit a home run.

-- Steve Goodier

Image: Flickr.com/Linh Nguyen