You can't have your cake and eat it too. To get some outcomes you will have to sacrifice others. So:

• What Do You Really Want?
• What is most important to you? What is second?
• Have you developed a relationship with an incentive [drug, food, sex, etc.] that will cost you something of value in order to maintain access to the trivial [but immediate] payoff the incentive offers?

Going for what you really want inevitably produces conflict, because you may want different things at different times. For example, it may now seem like a good idea to resist temptation, but when the opportunity next presents itself you might prefer the ease of following the path of least resistance.

Nothing of value comes without a price. The path of greatest advantage is a toll road; it requires that you pay attention during the critical moments of decision, and that you invest the energy required to over-ride the local stressors and temptations that would motivate relapse. The alternative is to continue to follow your path of least resistance, which evidently has led you to the point where you are reading about how to follow a more self-serving path.

Coincidently, the text recommends that you take the time to make decisions about what you really want. If you are ready to change your ways, but not sure about what you really want [that is, what is so important to you that you are willing to invest energy to get it], Ask Alice. If you already know, click here to begin your path of greatest advantage.