HOW TO HANDLE YOUR LIFE'S DESIRES.

Make a list of your desires, thoughts & expectations

1. Find out if these needs can be fulfilled by Right Understanding, Relationship, Physical Facility or something else (specify)
2. Categorize them as need of Self (I) or need of body
3. Categorize them based on source of motivation – Preconditioning, Sensation or Natural Acceptance
You can do this practical exercise with your family

Are desires unlimited (or they are continuous?)
If these are unlimited ,you have to controll yourself because your the leader of your desire as lead yourself.... so divide your desires and work on it...

some desires are thought by mentally and some are physically. Activities of desire, thought & expectation are going on in the Self (I) These activities are continuously going on. I can see this within myself also..Some of these are related to needs of the Body and some are related to the needs of circumstances . you have to manage with these two and have to distinguish between two in time to time.

Preconditioning, Sensation and Natural Acceptance;
Preconditioning: Assuming without knowing. Depends on something or someone outside, keeps changing. Not sure it leads to harmony or contradiction.
Sensation: taste of sound, touch, sight, taste, smell, 4 topics: food, sleep, fear/security, sex (samvedna – shabd, sparsh, roop, ras, gandh, 4 vishay: ahar, nidra, bhay, maithun) tasty-necessary  tasty-unnecessary  tasteless-unnecessary  intolerable
Natural Acceptance: About meaning (sarthakta), Purpose or what to do as a human being. Leads to harmony (happiness) within, continuity is desirable, possible
1. Assurance (Ashwasti) – I am clear this is what I want to do
2. Satisfaction (Tripti) – I am sure that this will lead to harmony
3. Universal (Sarvbhaum) – It is same for all

How problematic desires can be regulated? The following describes a few evidence-based strategies to manage desire.

Situation selection. Situation selection refers to avoiding certain places or activities to limit one’s exposure to temptations. Proximity can increase the strength of desire for goods (a piece of a cake for a dieter). Relapses are frequently triggered by environmental cues (e.g watching others drinking alcohol).

Attention. Attention is a way of giving priority to information. In this strategy, people seek to direct their attention away from stimuli that give rise to unwanted desire. By diverting attention elsewhere, one may prevent full processing of the emotional aspects of a tempting stimulus and reduce the emotional impact.

Thought suppression. Thought suppression refers to the deliberate act of trying to force the unwanted information out of your awareness. Thought suppression is also a form of denial, which is the process of consciously trying to avoid certain thoughts. However, this is not an easy task. Like trying to sink a cork in water, the issue won’t go away. In a classic experiment, when the subjects were asked not think about white bear for few minutes, they failed to suppress their thought about white bear. The white bear doesn’t go away. It keeps intruding into your thought, a phenomenon the researchers referred to as a rebound effect. What we resist persist. For example, trying not to think of cupcake make you desire for it more.

Acceptance. Accepting desires and craving as temporary states instead of trying to suppress them may make it easier for people to disengage from the unwanted desire. The key is not to make effort to suppress your thought, just move on, and your thought will naturally move to other things. If you truly wanted to stop thinking of a white bear, you would be better off allowing yourself to think of one and then after a while the thought would naturally go away.

Cognitive re-framing. People can use strategies that modify how they view (value) tempting stimuli. Engaging in an abstract rather than concrete mindset appears to take the edge of temptation. For instance, in On Desire: Why We want What We Want, William Irvine (2006) relate advice provided by a Buddhist monk on how to deal with tantalizing sexual desire by thinking about the human body in less favorable terms: “don’t think about her full breasts and flaxen hair; think instead about her lungs,…phlegm, pus, spittle. By changing the focus you tip the balance away from the hot emotion to cold cognition (e.g., focus on the negative side of the chocolate cake—calories). You can attribute negative qualities and consequences to every temptation to offset its enticing features.

In sum, effective desire regulation can take place at various phases from exposure to desire, attention allocation to reappraisal that prevent a desire from becoming overly dominant.

Milan Tomic

Hi. I’m Designer of Blog Magic. I’m CEO/Founder of ThemeXpose. I’m Creative Art Director, Web Designer, UI/UX Designer, Interaction Designer, Industrial Designer, Web Developer, Business Enthusiast, StartUp Enthusiast, Speaker, Writer and Photographer. Inspired to make things looks better.