Did you know that temptations are just thoughts in your mind? At any time, you can choose to believe or discard the thoughts that come up in your mind. Today, I’m sharing practical ways to say no to temptation and drop the dead weight of tempting thoughts.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Brain Evidence Episode: https://ashleyvarner.com/brain-evidence 

The Power of Asking Questions: https://ashleyvarner.com/questions 

The Mindset Reset: https://ashleyvarner.com/mindset 

Get Ashley’s ground breaking program The Mindset Reset. It is a self-paced program made to guide you to taking your thoughts captive and finally control your emotions, so they stop controlling you!

Highlights from the Episode:

I had so much feed back from the power of questions episode where I talked about temptation that I wanted to follow up with an episode all about withstanding temptation.

So today, I’m sharing 4 ways you can be temptation!

Fix 1: Remember temptation is just a thought and a thought is just a sentence in your mind.

Too often, we give temptation too much credit.

Let’s start thinking of tempting thoughts as thoughts that we can change.

As you are tempted, you may not be ready to believe the thought, “I’m not tempted”, but you can think, “I know this temptation is nothing more than a thought in my mind.”

This kind of thinking knocks temptation down a notch because we take away its power.

Remember, a tempting thought is still just a thought.

Fix 2: Ask yourself an Open Ended Question

Change your tempting thoughts to open ended questions.

Remember in the Questions episode, I encouraged you to ask questions when a particular thought comes into your mind. And with temptation, really try to use open ended questions.

Your brain wants to find solutions, so if you in the middle of temptation, and you think, “I want (Fill in the blank)” your brain is going to work to get you that cupcake.

Your can use this power of asking questions and get your brain off of the temptation track.

You can ask yourself:

• How will I feel about myself if I give in to this temptation?
• How did I feel the last time I gave in to this temptation?

Those open ended questions are great for stopping us in our tracks when we’re tempted.

Recalling past negative feelings of regret about giving in to temptation really works because remember (from our brain motivation episode) that your brain wants to avoid pain. So if you remember the pain that came along the last time you maxed our your credit card, your brain won’t want to do that again.

Fix 3: Build your confidence to withstand temptation with God’s thoughts

The way that our brain works is it looks for things to affirm what we already believe.

If you think that there’s no way that you can withstand temptation, your brain is going to start looking for things that match up with that.

So your brain is going to start looking for those temptations that feel like there’s no way that you can stand up to it.

But if you feel your mind with God’s word and you begin to affirm what God’s word says, what it is all about is it’s getting God’s word in our mind, because then we start to see, we become aware of what he’s doing.

If you believe that God is going to make a way for you. And you know that there is a way out of the temptations that you face, then way that God made your brain is going to start looking for evidence of that fact.

So when those temptations come right away, you can see where God is moving right away. You can see where there’s a way that is being made for you to get out of that temptation.

Fix 4: Practice thinking no

You get good at what you practice – and that includes your thinking.

We all know the areas where we are tempted the most. We know where we personally struggle. So plan ahead to say no.

Take a minute to look up some verses dealing with temptation. You can even shorten these verses into quick mental reminders that you can say when you’re tempted.

Practice thinking no.

Imagine yourself being tempted and you just batting it down.

One phrase that helps me is: do the next thing.

When we’re tempted, it’s usually in the middle of something else we were already doing, right?

So when I’m tempted, I think: Ashley, just do the next thing. I don’t have to believe anything about the temptation to think that thought. I just have to move forward and as I “do the next thing” it feels my mind with different thoughts.

You may want to think something like “God said He would make a way out” and then pray that God shows you that way out.

Conclusion

We all have areas where we struggle, but as we get control of our thinking, those temptations will start to have less and less power over us.

As we say no, those temptations are less and less convincing. We don’t want to shop as much, we don’t want to gossip as much, we don’t need that soda every afternoon, or want to look at that website.

We take the power out of the temptation, ask ourselves questions to move forward, feel our minds with confidence from God’s Word, and practice saying no.