Fantasy or Vision

Hi Everyone,
As some of you know I lead a group of men that are working towards living a life of sexual purity. We study through 7 principles to help overcome our bad habits. From time to time, I write things specifically to that group on another blog. Here is one of them that I thought might be beneficial to someone else out there so I decided to post it here as well.

I was watching an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond last night (it was hilarious). In this episode Raymond and Debra face the prospect of going to marital counseling. The entire episode played on the discomfort we would all feel in that situation (and Ray's efforts to avoid it). So today I'm asking myself, 'Why are we so scared of counseling?' I think we're scared because in general we don't like to face the facts about ourselves. We'd rather deal with fantasy than reality.

The first principle most experts suggest to overcome our issues is to admit to having them. Face it, we all have issues! Before any healing is possible we must admit to the fact that we don't always live life like we wish we would ... that there are parts of our life we'd rather not talk about - parts where we've lost control and don't live like we want to. If we don't start in the rather uncomfortable place of admitting our issues, we stand very little chance of changing.

This is our choice. We can start from a mindset of fantasy where we make up our own reality to be whatever we want it to be. Or we can start from a mindset of vision where we view our self accurately and have a vision of what the future may hold for us. Our mindset will go a long way to determining how we live. A mindset of fantasy leads to drifting wherever our mind takes us, making decisions that satisfy the moment but may have negative long-term consequences, and developing undesirable habits that are hard to break. A mindset of vision leads us to taking control of our mind, making decisions that take us where we want to go, and developing habits that will shape us into people we can be proud of.

So step one: Will you choose fantasy or vision? Will you take time to discover your issues or continue through life with your head in the sand? Everything else depends on this decision.