I once had an old car that I drove back and forth to work. It was pretty beat-up, but it got me where I wanted to go. One day I noticed that the engine was getting awfully loud. So I climbed underneath the car to see what the trouble was and found the muffler pipe had rusted through. Instead of fixing it correctly by taking it into a muffler shop and having a new pipe welded on, I decided to be clever and patch the hole in the pipe myself.

I took an empty tin can and cut both ends out and split it on the side. I wrapped it around the rusted hole in the exhaust pipe and clamped it on with hose clamps. I started the car up and it sounded so much better. I was so proud of myself for fixing my car with very little cost or effort. My worries were over – or so I thought!

The next day as I was driving to work I began to smell a strange odor in the car. It got worse and worse and suddenly I realized it was smoke. I looked down to see where it was coming from and saw smoke coming from the carpet on the floor between the two front seats. Read the rest of this entry »

I once heard a story about two brothers who lived in a small town in the country. The story goes that both of these brothers were caught stealing sheep. For their punishment they were branded on the forehead with the letters “ST,” for “Sheep Thief.”

One brother was so ashamed that he left the community. Everywhere he went he had to constantly explain the letters on his forehead. He remained bitter about the whole thing and always felt he had been treated unfairly. He eventually died a lonely man and was buried in an unknown grave.

His brother, on the other hand, stayed in the community and tried to win back his neighbors’ trust. He did everything he could to show the people of the town that he was a changed man. He volunteered for community service projects, helped his neighbors when he saw the need, and did all he could to become the kind of man that he knew he ought to be.

Many years later a visitor came to town. He asked a local resident about the strange letters on the old man’s forehead. The resident replied that he had forgotten exactly why the letters were there, but that he thought “ST” most likely was an abbreviation for the word “Saint.”

Like the brothers in this story, each of us makes mistakes in our lives – sometimes big ones and sometimes little ones. And like the brothers in this story we can choose what we do about the mistakes we make. We are the ones that decide how our mistakes are going to affect us.

May each of us choose the good path and become the person we know we ought to be so that perhaps someday we may be known as a “Saint” and not a “Sheep Thief.” Thank you.

Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson

(NOTE: This article is a roughly edited version of an audio tape I recorded two years ago. Over the last few years I have worked with individuals who struggle with the problem of pornography addiction. The recording was made basically “off the top of my head” so the organization is not the best nor is it all-encompassing. It has religious overtones because it was intended to use in counseling members of my church. Pornography, in my opinion, is one of the ultimate Self Mastery destroyers. What follows is the text from my recording with very little editing.)

My intent is to give counsel to a person who has a problem with pornography. If a person came to me and was having struggles with pornography and wanted very much to stop, but was having difficulty with it – what would my counsel be to that person? That is the purpose of this article. So I am going to direct this article as if I were talking to you.

How Do You Begin?

Many solutions to this problem go into great detail about internet and computer technology and the use of filters and other similar methods to block out the unwanted content. Dealing with the technology and installing safeguards are important, but if someone really wants to find pornography they will find a way – it doesn’t even have to be on the internet. So the real goal would be to take away all desire for it in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »

Everything is this life has a price tag. It’s up to you to read it correctly and decide whether you want to invest in it or not. You are the one who does the buying and selling. There are no special bargains or half-off sales. You reap all the profit or loss. Nature never fails. It always has and always will reward you for your right choices and punish you for your wrong choices.

What I’m talking about are The Price Tags of Life. What this means is that everything we do, every habit that we have, every action we perform, has a price tag attached to it. If you think about it and examine your actions and habits closely you will discover what their price tags are. We need to examine the price tags of life and see what it really costs us to do the things that we do. After we count what it costs and add up what we gain and then strike a balance, we can see if we are coming out ahead or not. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I read of a man who had tried for years to overcome his drinking habit. He knew his drinking was taking a toll on his life and was costing him many opportunities. He tried every way he could think of to quit and failed each time. Finally he developed a habit, whenever he was offered a drink or when temptation arose, to say firmly, “I have quit.”

It wasn’t “I’m trying to quit” or “I’m going to quit.” It was “I have quit.” End of discussion. There was no more deliberation or debate after that. The decision was already made that “I have quit drinking.” He didn’t have to think about whether he should take the drink or not. He simply said, “I have quit” as if it were a simple, ordinary fact of life. As a result of using this method, the man hasn’t taken another drink in twenty years.

You can use the same technique for a number of obstacles in your life that you are trying to overcome, whether it’s smoking, overeating, lack of exercise, cutting out fat in your diet, overcoming pornography or drugs or any challenge you are dealing with. You don’t have to deliberate or debate it any more. You can simply say, “I have quit!”

Thank you.

Master Yourself, Master Your Life

Copyright © 2008 Garold N. Larson

Good morning! Well I’m learning already about obstacles to getting to bed on time. I came across an obstacle last night. As I analyze last night, in a nutshell I ended up getting to bed one hour later than I planned. My goal is to be in bed with lights out by 10:30 p.m. I should know ahead of time that that’s going to be a challenge with a family having three teenagers still living at home.

This is what I ran in to. I thought I had prepared well so I could get to bed on time. It was on my mind. I was conscious of it.

First of all Halloween is coming and our kids are actively working on their costumes. My son Preston and I had gone on what we call a daddy date. About once a month I take each of my children on a date. We call it a daddy date. We go out and do whatever it is they want to do. Typically we go eat at some fast food place and go to a movie. But these days it’s hard to find a decent movie that we haven’t already seen. So we couldn’t find a movie to go to, so I asked Preston what we should do. We decided to go to a couple of the local thrift stores and look for costumes. Preston was excited about that. He’s my thirteen year old son. Read the rest of this entry »

Good morning! I want to talk about how strict or rigid should you be in keeping goals. For example, in my case I set a goal to go to bed each night at 10:30 p.m. How rigid should I be with that and should there be exceptions?

My answer to that is that there has to be exceptions at times but they should be few and far between.

For me last night was one of those exceptions. The only time there should be an exception is if there is a higher priority at play here that supersedes the lower one. For example, a higher priority would be my family and my relationships with my children. In this case it was attending a performance that my son was in.

Let me just explain what it was about. My soon-to-be 17-year-old son is a member of the local high school marching band. He plays the sousaphone. (Yes, that’s him in the center of the photo.) I thought it was called a tuba but apparently a tuba is played sitting down such as in a concert. A sousaphone is simply a version of the tuba used by marching bands. Anyway, my son and his band have worked extremely hard on their performance. For those of you who have never been involved with marching bands, they actually have competitions where many marching bands get together and compete. Each band puts on a performance that includes a number of elements. They have judges who judge the competition and they give awards at the end. This is a huge event that begins in the early afternoon and goes on until after 10:00 at night. Read the rest of this entry »

Millions of people all over the world struggle with addictions every day. There are many kinds of addictions such as drugs, alcohol, smoking, pornography, or food. In this article I share a simple concept that can help in dealing with addictions.

Fire Analogy

When I was a kid I liked to play with matches. It was fun. I loved to watch things burn. But as you know, playing with matches can be very dangerous. Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that my family had two homes burn down during my growing up years. (I have solid alibis!)

I like to compare addictions to fire. Think about a match. You can strike a match and how hard is it to put out a match? One little puff of your breath and you can blow it out. No problem. Another match lights, puff, blow it out. No problem. However, when you let a fire go, it can quickly rage out of control where there is nothing you can do about it. At that point you’re basically lost, it’s out of control, and it’s beyond anything you can do about it.

I know about this concept personally. Let me share with you two stories from my life. Read the rest of this entry »

I want to talk a little bit about the power of decisions. When you think about any change that you’ve ever made in your life, didn’t it really happen the moment you made a decision? Now sometimes we say, “Oh it’s hard to change, it took me forever to change.” Usually what takes forever is getting yourself to the point of deciding. It’s the “getting ready to get ready to change” that’s takes so long. You really didn’t make any changes until you decided to change.

So you can say today, “That’s it! I’m done. I’m never going to do that again” or “this is the way I’m going to be from now on.” It’s the power of a decision. No change was ever made in anybody’s life without first deciding. Once you make a decision then you can move forward. A lot of times you say, “Oh it’s so hard to change, it’s so hard to do this, it’s so hard to do that” but really it’s not hard because you’re really not doing it yet, you’re really not making any effort until you decide.

The decision – when things begin to happen

Once you have made that decision, things start to happen in your life. Making that one single decision, saying from this point on, from this time, this minute, this second, I am going in that direction. I am no longer going in the direction I was going. I have turned my life. I am headed in a new direction and everything I do and everything I say and everything I feel is different. This gets you on the road. You won’t totally change your life in a day but you will be amazed at how quickly you move in that direction. Read the rest of this entry »

What if there was a key behavior that if you could master, would save you untold pain, worry, effort and time? What if this behavior could make your efforts to achieve total self-mastery ten times easier? Today I’m going to teach you a simple concept that seems to elude most people, yet is so simple.

One thing you share in common with nearly every one else is that your day is full of decisions. Dozens of times a day you are faced with a fork in the road and must decide which way to go. Humans are naturally lazy creatures so when you are faced with two choices you tend to gravitate toward the easiest path. Why choose the long, hard road when you can take the short, easy one? Or why do something when you just don’t feel like it? As you stand there at the fork in the road and evaluate the situation, the pull to the easy road becomes powerfully strong. More often than not, if you are like the average person, you are sucked into the easy road. Read the rest of this entry »