It may be controversial to say that the key to success in spiritual life mirrors the key to

success in many aspects of our material lives.

Both largely have to do with delaying gratification and resisting temptation.

A lot of struggles in one’s spiritual life has to do with overcoming the animal or “base”
self, that is selfish, and concerned only with the immediate needs of our ego self; comfort,
security, food, money, and sex.

It is ironic that a lot of the struggles we face in attaining our material goals also have to
do with lack of self control in some of these areas

If we want to be successful in our endeavors, we are usually advised to restrict over indulgence
of short term pleasures to accomplish more beneficial long term goals.

In both our spiritual and material lives, we always want to aspire to the highest ideal, to our
divine self, our best self, we want to be able to control our base emotions that oppose love and
understanding and we want to be able to control the base desires for immediate gratification
that oppose our progress toward our highest potential of health, peace, vitality and prosperity.

If we are not controlling our emotions and desires, we must realize we are being controlled by
them.

This self control or will power is an attribute itself that requires lots of energy to sustain and
we’ll find if we’re doing sapping our energy doing things that are not fulfilling to us, pointless,
stressful or unhealthy activities, we will have less and less will power or self control to do get to
where we want to be.

Restrict activities that sap your energy.

Kind of the reason for the emotional eating argument.

During times of extreme stress, changing your eating habits will be very difficult.

The take away is,

always PRIORITIZE THINGS THAT BOOSTS YOUR ENERGY;

Prayer/ meditation, spending time with people that make you feel good, exercise, fix your
eating habits, engage things that make you laugh, dance, sing, draw, read uplifting material,
watch uplifting programs, etc.

Motivating activities make you motivated.

Being motivated gives you more will power

1 + 1 =2