The parental voice with traditionally female energy encourages us to remember to provision ourselves and to ask for help if we need it. When we spend some of our time and energy gathering supplies and mentors that ease our way, we are proving to ourselves that we matter. Kindness toward ourselves bolsters our self-esteem and unleashes a verve that fuels that vital resistance movement relative to temptations.

Additionally, shared burdens connect us to the resources and energy that relationships make available to us and put us in contact with the metacognitive strengths of many human brains. We receive cognitive support as our thoughts are enlarged and transformed by discussion and consensus building. When we do so, our emotional energy becomes supercharged by the experience of participation in Jean Baker Miller’s concept of “agency-in-community.” What she describes is a collective experience that fosters comfort and inspiration when individuals are “engaged in an emotional relationship that is moving toward greater well-being” for all participants. (I have to say here that I am coming to believe more and more that the whole point of humanity is to aggregate in community in order to fight back against the fickleness of Fate.) Finally, the power of being recognized, valued and chosen by others refreshes our resolve to self-create which connects us back into our will to power.

How to access a little feminist pep talk: When it comes to organizing support, nobody beats the feminists. Why? Because they so firmly believe that humans are designed to work together to achieve greatness. Writers in this field can be as abstruse as the existentialists, see for example Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex or Judith Butler’s text Gender Trouble. But much of the original writing is quite accessible – from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique to Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia. Here is a link to an excellent feminist reading list from the New York Public Library: Know Your Feminisms.

When you watch movies or read novels, pay attention to the attachment patterns being represented. Notice how some clever people gather support from their social environment as they move through life’s dilemmas. Notice, also, how it often goes for those who try to go it alone.

In your personal life, prioritize relationships with people who take your relationship with them seriously, hold themselves accountable, find you delightful, work on their own existential challenges and are willing to meet you halfway in the maintenance of the relationship.

The dialectic attitude I've described in this section – the competing voices of challenge and support – sets the stage for utilizing all our know-how to be proof against the daily parade we face of enticements toward sloppiness. That is to say, it is nearly impossible to resist temptation without invoking the life skills described below and it is nearly impossible to invoke them absent a healthy internal discussion as described above. Inside your skull kingdom should be the ruler (your self or your executive functioning or your ego – whichever term you prefer) and your advisors (ideally the voice of expectation and the voice of support). Put these identities in place in your mind and learn to use them. They are all on your side. Make it so the bulk of your brain is rooting for you to succeed.

Life skills

To some extent, every skill described on this website is valuable when fighting temptation. I’ve gathered the most salient to review here. I expect that you already know most of this. The material is organized for you to review, to refresh your memory and to fill in any blanks.

Understand the neurology of temptation

Neurologically, when we are tempted, our attention has been captured by one or more of our senses telling us something desirable has appeared and it is within our reach. The amygdalae – the little twin emotion centers of our brain – send messages to the neocortex labeled “Urgent” describing the tasty option in glowing terms and recommending instant capitulation. (The amygdalae are greedy little bastards.)

What receives that message is the prefrontal cortex, that part of the human brain that runs our quintessentially human capabilities such as planning, maintaining goals, directing attention and assigning working memory. While this top-down system has an arsenal of weapons with which to fight off those temptations, the neocortex has to choose to do so. It will try to do so in one of two ways: ignore the call for indulgence or recruit other parts of the brain to defeat the temptation.

If it takes the first option, it is utilizing the willpower system to keep the door closed on the enticement. This works very well for brief temptations such as walking by a store window with stunning fall coats on display (and on sale!) Unfortunately, as long as our senses are detecting the option as still being accessible, the amygdalae will continue sending insistent messages forward, forcing the prefrontal cortex to engage willpower again and again. This quickly becomes an uncomfortable – and quite probably futile – state. Most of us recognize the imprudence of working in a candy store if we have the slightest sweet tooth. The psychological reasons that make this white-knuckle state problematic are described in the next section.

If, on the other hand, the prefrontal cortex takes the second option, it will need to draft a powerful neural subroutine to help fight off the temptation. The subroutine to activate is curiosity about why it seems to be so hard not to scratch a particular itch. The very act of engaging curiosity will take you out of the gravitational pull of most temptations to create just enough space to shift the brain from the content-based strategy of "resist the ______________" (insert enticement of choice into the blank) to the process-based strategy of thinking about how the temptation is worming its way into your forebrain. Once your curiosity has alerted you to a possible reason for the temptation, the neocortex can design an elimination strategy to target it specifically.

An example of how this would work might be: You are tempted to let another day go by without reaching out to a good friend who has called you twice in the last week. If you can sidestep the negative emotional response to the truth that you have let too much time go by (guilt, annoyance, embarrassment and so on) and instead activate a curiosity about why you’ve done that, you may be surprised to find that the temptation to not reach out has its roots in a bit of phone phobia. Phone phobia is actually quite common and is a function of how oddly complicated making a phone call is socially. For a phone call to work well, the timing has to allow for the two participants to simultaneously have time and social energy available to engage in an interpersonal interaction. When the timing is off and the person you are calling doesn’t have one or both, then you are intruding into their day. Since our culture isn’t good at teaching us how to assert and still stay attached, some awkwardness may ensue. You will each need to be able to handle that reality without any hurt feelings. So a simple phone call is often not so simple. Once your neocortex understands that, the problem can be dealt with more directly. You could simply soothe yourself before making the call with the reminder that "phone calls are often difficult to make." Or the focus could be on how to enhance the odds of alignment so that the phone call lands. Now with texting – a much less intrusive way to make contact – we all have an efficient way to check in to see if a person is up to receiving a call.

Or perhaps your curiosity leads you to the understanding that you yourself don't have the energy for this friendship right now. If that is the case you will have to balance the temptation to delay against your wish to be kind.

Or, sometimes putting off a phone call is simply a matter of dilly-dallying. If this is the case, procrastination is the obstacle and a well-trained brain knows how to fight back against that.

If you understand that your prefrontal cortex needs to be intentional about how it handles messages of wanting (to do and to not do), you can understand how discussing things within yourself can be prudent in order to avoid the breakdown of the top-down control system. Very often we can control the amygdalae with a firm "No, thank you!" Other times we need to evoke that distinctly emphasized question: "What is the problem here?" (carefully avoiding the snarky "What is the problem here?") For a very readable paper on the neurology of temptation see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3062191/.

Understand the psychology of temptation

People often erroneously think that resisting temptation is the same as delay of gratification. There is some overlap between the two, but delay of gratification means that you get to have something wonderful at some point in the future if you can put off seeking gratification now, while resisting temptation very often means you have to accept the fact that you will not ever get something that part of you wants. While it is true that there is satisfaction in being the kind of person who can routinely resist temptation, there is no mediating biochemistry that rewards successful resistance. What this means is that our only reward for resistance comes from the psychological skill of intentionally harvesting the feelings of serenity that are accessible to us when we have accumulated enough successes that they are noticeable. Unfortunately, due to the hurry sickness that infects our lives, few of us remember to take the time to swirl the serenity of our successes in the brandy snifter we keep tucked away in the china cabinet of our minds.

People also think that willpower is the best way to resist temptation. This is also not true. As was alluded to above, resistance requires sustained effort and willpower is a finite resource. Imagine trying to hold a door closed against a seemingly tireless force trying to push it open. You will pretty quickly tire out. Willpower is designed to provide a short burst of energy to initiate behaviors and it will deplete rapidly if overused. In fact, using willpower to resist temptation in one area of our lives drains our ability to initiate mature behavior across the board. This means that keeping a bowl of Reese’s Pieces on your desk at work can make it more difficult for you to stop at the gym on the way home.

To varying degrees, temptations all involve a wish for contingent-free indulgence. To return to the examples in the opening paragraph, we want to be able to holler our unedited anger at someone without precipitating a social disaster; lie about why we are late with no chance of getting caught; skip a workout with no consequential loss of motivation; or use alcohol to numb ourselves with no ensuing physical or psychological harm. We need to recognize that whatever fantasy is underlying our temptation, it is neither helpful nor possible. If we understand this psychological tendency to mislead ourselves, we will be better able to intentionally activate cognitive strategies to corral our wayward – and likely somewhat delusional – desires.

One way to fight back against a fantasy that our minds have uncovered is to inoculate ourselves against it with the reminder: life simply doesn’t work that way! This surprisingly effective mantra is, however, extremely difficult to utter. We only need to mutter it to ourselves, but that's only possible if our petulant side has agreed to cooperate with our piety when tough decisions need to be made. But it does strengthen with use, making the mantra muscle more and more potent as well as more and more generalizable. I see that phrase as a perfect example of blending the mother and father voices into a united message that both supports and challenges you. When the childish yet endearing part of your personality tries to sell you on succumbing to a temptation with the self-deceiving argument that this time there will be no piper to pay, let the adults on duty within gently call the kid out. "This plainly doesn't work" contains, in my mind, both the wish for you to stop torturing yourself with false hopes and a demand that you stop lying to yourself. Try it out and let me know if it works for you.

Environmental control

If you remember that temptation starts with one or more of our senses recognizing something desirable out there in the world, it will be obvious that the more we can protect our senses from noticing things we don’t want them to notice, the easier our lives will be. Like those three little monkeys, we want to see no temptations, smell no temptations, hear no temptations. Plus, it is much easier to use willpower once at the grocery store to not buy an indulgence than to resist it dozens of times a day when a treat is sitting there in front of you, smelling all delicious and looking so delectable. So be alert to the stimulus potential of things in your surroundings – from enticing groceries to advertisements on television to on-line shopping to an unmade bed inviting you to hop back in – and practice keeping seductive invitations to indulgence at a minimum in your environment.

This attention to environmental control is also germane with respect to the environment within your mind. The remainder of the skills addressed here are ideas for keeping your mental living space free from unnecessary stimuli. You will more easily maintain good environmental control when you understand that it is simply sadistic to have something in front of you that you cannot have…be it chocolate, a forbidden person, a revenge fantasy or junk thoughts.

Pre-decide to limit attention

Since not even noticing the temptation is the best strategy, decide to resist something beforehand whenever possible so you can just ignore it. If you can get that philosophical part of your brain willing to think things through before you engage in an activity that may contain temptations, you can have a thorough discussion within yourself to decide what behaviors you would like to not even consider once you are participating in the activity. Obvious examples are deciding not to drink at a wedding or to have only one turn at the food table at a party. Choosing to choose ahead of time frees your mind to focus on other things and prevents your senses from over-stimulating you with temptations. Budgets, wake-up calls, and a gym membership are all types of pre-decisions that save us from losing focus.

Prepare yourself

There are many ways to prepare yourself throughout your day to enhance the top-down strength of your prefrontal cortex.

• Scheduling: If you understand that willpower is depleted over the course of the day, you can try to schedule those activities that involve temptations as early as possible. Your willpower is then available to initiate one or many of these temptation-thumping skills.

• Deprivation level: We all have a petulant side that gets activated when we feel deprived. It is important to monitor your overall well-being to determine if your inner sinner is getting enough swag. Put another way, frequent resignation into temptation is diagnostic of being under-rewarded by life. It makes sense to correct this condition.

• Brain chemistry: Lifestyle choices that prevent you from routinely feeling hungry, tired or intoxicated will help tremendously when you are wishing to hold out against an alluring but unwise hankering. You know that fatigue and intoxicating substances lower inhibitions, so be extra careful when in these vulnerable states. Drinking buddies, for example, if wisely chosen can assist you through temptation alley. Blood glucose buffers our tendency to suffer from willpower depletion. But that doesn’t mean you should simply eat a piece of fudge every time you feel tempted by something. Keeping your blood glucose level steady is accomplished through exercise, sleep, nutrition, careful imbibing and stress reduction. No matter how much we wish it was otherwise, good mental health is dependent on good lifestyle choices. Bummer, eh?

• Mood states: Angry, lonely or bored individuals have very little incentive to resist temptation. Use those internal parental voices to discourage fleeting feelings of anger, loneliness or boredom from taking hold and putting you in the mood to indulge. Once established, these moods require overt self-construction work to resolve. And, of course, it is best to prevent them altogether. A person with a well-oiled will to power is a person who is seldom moody.

• Tricks: Figure out what behaviors make it easier for you to resist temptation and practice them. This is the hallmark of a good parental unit – one that works hard to proactively help us run our lives well by training us to preempt temptation. A classic example is to get ready for bed before you watch TV in order to resist staying up too late.

Distract

Temptations create cognitive tensions that gradually draw and hold our attention. What grows isn’t the need, but the tension as, over time, we become more and more aware of using our limited, precious willpower to hold the door closed on whatever behavior is trying to force its way in. Loop by loop, the message of temptation comes forward from the back of the brain only to be sent back from the front of the brain with a missive of rejection. After a while, all you can think about is the ongoing conversation between the childlike part of your brain that wants you to indulge and your small army fighting back.

A wise person has an assortment of short, medium and long-range distractions available for instant implementation. These need to be custom-made by you, for you and should include novel thoughts, rituals, activities and movement. (Movement is a powerful distractor which also stabilizes your blood glucose, which, in turn, supports your willpower.) Examples would include:

• Thoughts: Because your mind won’t accept the order “Don’t think about ‘X’,” you have to train it to think about ‘Y’ instead using topics such as planning an upcoming event, practicing multiplication tables, running through a to-do list or replaying a happy memory.

• Rituals: brewing a cup of tea, reading a favorite poem, checking your e-mail, or changing into a well-worn sweatshirt.

• Activities: strolling through your garden, making a phone call to a friend, listening to rock and roll, or solving a crossword puzzle.

• Movement: walking around the block, going for a run, two trips up and down the stairs, or stretching.

You probably already engage in many distracting techniques, but, as with people in recovery, it is enormously smart to practice whipping out a distraction to use as early in the temptation looping process as possible.

Reward yourself

Neither delay of gratification nor resisting temptation has biochemical rewards (i.e. happy brain juice) but instant gratification and submitting to temptation both do. What a pickle. Our own brains are selling us out. But if we realize that it is a primitive part of our brain that is trying to bribe us with endogenous opioids, we can more easily override it. (This is not to shame these primitive impulses. A behavior that may have been adaptive at some point in time simply is not so currently.) Just as we used the mantra “It simply doesn’t work that way.” before, we can now add another powerful reminder: “This indulgence is no longer helpful to this particular human.”

You can also counter the primitive pressure with intentional rewards. Positive reinforcement is only effective if it is designed along the lines of all good rewards: concrete, consistent, small, frequent, and rapidly implemented. Again, it is helpful to have small, medium and large rewards handy in your mind to allow for quick and appropriate rewarding.

Hold on to the big picture

Each temptation refusal stands alone, often with very little value in and of itself. It behooves us, therefore, to take the time to assess the patterns of behaviors that are coming to define us. Are we routinely managing to engage our psychological skills to thwart the twin amygdalae who are madly signaling us that there is something sexy that they want? If we are indeed putting together a string of good behavior, we need to focus on the value of the string. Like baseball fans, we root for our ability to do well statistically rather than episodically.

It is important to treat yourself with kind understanding when you do indulge. Don’t expect perfection and don’t shame the times you surrender. The emotional hangover of shame we feel from a binge leaves us less able to engage our frontal cortex the next time we are facing the urge to splurge. It also prevents us from gathering rich data that will help us continue to fine-tune all these resistance skills.

Recruit help

As I said above, our frontal cortex will draft other parts of the brain to assist in defending against the temptations that it wants to deny. Our sense of self needs to also reach out for help from others. This can be very difficult to do if we shame the fact that we have temptations.

I have tried over and over and over on this website to reassure you that everyone struggles with life. You need to believe me to a sufficient degree in order to overcome the shame around having myriad temptations. If you are unable to believe this, it may be time for you to consider individual counseling.

As described above, seeking help from those around us connects us to agency-in-community. Sometimes others will have good strategies to help us resist and sometimes they can only offer moral support. But wise people feel no compunction in reaching out to others for help. They will also pay attention to their social world, making sure that there is a growthful relational context available to them at a moment’s notice. If you struggle with this step, here is a pithy article about why it is difficult for some folks to ask for help: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/07/business/07shortcuts.html?pagewanted=all.

Use humor

As a last thought, humor is also a great weapon to use as we spar with existential challenges such as temptation. If we know that of course we are tempted, we can tease ourselves about how committed we are to pretending otherwise, or we can mock the clever way we try to fool ourselves into submitting to an indulgence. Haven't we all acted as if we were completely unaware that we are on our third helping of birthday cake or that we are letting the clock run out on any possibility of getting to work on time?

It can be also helpful to remember that many of the things we want to submit to are just a little silly. For example, to resist the urge to utter every thought that enters our heads, we can run through an imagined stand-up routine of doing just that and enjoy the act inside our head rather than enact it on the world.

As the anonymous quote on the Internet reminds us: Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.

Sometimes it just boils down to a battle of wit.

Addendum: When Petulance and Temptation Combine Forces

Sometimes petulance and temptation gang up on our prefrontal cortex.

When this happens to me, I generally lose without a shot being fired. In fact, I usually give up as soon as I realize that the childish part of me that is in league with my amygdalae has put her fingers in her ears and refuses to discuss anything. As long as she is blockading the conversation, she remains in control. And she is one powerful cookie. I cannot access any of my psychological skills if I can’t discuss things with myself. So, when I find I am indulging in a triple mocha latte chocolate fudge espresso deluxe with extra whipped cream and there is absolute silence in my head, I know that all I can do is wait. The little kid in me won’t be willing to listen until she is steeped in caffeine and sugar. Then it’s time for a little debriefing.

My first inclination is to let the voice of expectation lead the discussion because he carries the big guns and I’m feeling defeated and miffed. But that’s rarely a wise choice if it’s not an emergency situation. Experience has shown me that it’s better, but much more difficult, to lead with the prefrontal cortex. If I can get her to run the interrogation, I stand a much better chance of having both parental voices participate in the investigation. What I need to discover is why I was vulnerable to the petulant child at this time. I can do this when both the voice of expectation and the voice of support ask questions and when they both understand the mechanics of petulance and of temptation.

A successful debriefing results in two healthy outcomes. First, rather than weakening my sense of self with shame, I am able to utilize feelings of appropriate guilt to reinforce the need to learn from this experience. Second, I uncover the cascade of events that led to this emotional hijacking. With that understanding I can better design and practice proactive strategies to protect myself from defeat in similar circumstances in the future.

Sometimes it takes several episodes of loss and debriefing before I can mount an effective defense. And, of course, sometimes (albeit too rarely for my liking) the debriefing illustrates very clearly that my petulant side was right to indulge in this instance.