The greatest enemy in modern life is that of distraction. There are just so many things that will take up all your time, and more. It's very difficult to avoid being trapped by this. Probably completely impossible unless you make a deliberate and ongoing effort to exercise self-discipline.

These kinds of things will take away from your ability to succeed in life, and especially in prepping, more than anything else. The bottom line is that if you want to make prepping work, you'll have to cut back on some of these things. As much as you can.

Because stress itself is one of the things on this list, don't stress about cutting back. Just be aware of what needs to be done, and let your new interest and new life provide the motivation. The main thing to remember here - and this is really important - is knowing that these things take away from your enjoyment of life, rather than add it. In fact that's one way to define an addiction. Something where the craving is created by the thing that's addictive, while at the same time that thing tricks you into thinking the craving is created by the lack of having that thing. Really think about that for a while.

Smoking cigarettes is a good example. Most smokers think that they smoke because having a smoke takes away the craving. But in fact the complete opposite is true. When you were born, and (for almost everyone) when you were a young child, you never craved cigarettes. It's having cigarettes that makes you crave cigarettes. It's not the lack of cigarettes that makes you crave cigarettes. Yet that is how it seems when you're addicted. The addiction is a mind trick that fools you into thinking the complete opposite of reality. As you read this page, think about this idea with each of the six things mentioned. At first, it will seem like a massive sacrifice to cut back on these things. But keep thinking - it's not the lack of having these things that makes you long for them. It's having the things.

It's also being shown artificiallly enhanced images, on which billions of dollars have been spent, to make you believe that these things are what life is all about. Either way, it's a mind trick and just knowing that, and thinking about it often enough, can really help you to no longer fall for the trick, allowing you to escape the trap.

Just prune these things. As much as you can.

Junk food

Some text this is really bad

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You can add alcohol, smoking, and recreational drugs to this category too.

Entertainment

This is a huge one. "Try and avoid entertainment", you say?!? What kind of lifestyle is that?? In the modern world we've got so used to living for entertainment that we equate it with pleasure and enjoyment of life. In our modern world it's almost implied that entertainment is the point of life.

It's addictive. It makes you want more. It stops you from thinking about or doing productive and useful things. Worst of all, it actually takes away from your capacity for enjoyment. "People must have been so bored back in the old days". What does "bored" even mean? Usually it's a word that's used to mean having withdrawal symptoms from the high intensity addictive entertainment that we've gotten used to thinking of as completely normal activities. Yet these activities did not even exist for the vast majority of the history of the human race.

When a song came out in 1992 that told us about "Television, the drug of the Nation - Breeding ignorance, and feeding radiation", it was bad enough even then. But we had absolutely no idea how much more advanced and addictive the electronic screen would later become.

Lust

Every day we're bombarded with thousands of images, songs, and ideas getting us all fired up to think that sex and romance are the main things to value in life.

Luxury

This is a difficut one to avoid. Luxury is so endemic to modern life in the rich Western countries (and even other countries) that we think of it as normal. The way most of us live materially was only available to royalty throughout most of the history of the human race. In fact much of what average people take for granted now as part of their lifestyle was unavailable even to royalty.

You're supposed to spend nearly the whole of your life paying off an average suburban McMansion. And even then, the whole time you know deep inside that it's nothing like the fancy upmarket property you really want.

The bottom line here is, like all the points in this article you don't need nearly as much as what you think you need.

Sloth

The poor and much maligned sloth, one of the so-called "seven deadly sins" cops it again. I actually really like sloths. They look so cute and friendly. Sometimes I used to wish that I was one. (I bet they smell really bad, though). But the thing is, we're not sloths, we're human beings.

The sloth is at home in its natural environement of the tree. Out of that environment it really stuggles. Similarly, the slothful human is at home in its natural environment of the lounge suite and large screen. For prepping that's not the kind of lifestyle you want to become too well adapted to.

The kind of sloth I'm talking about here is a complacency and a lack of self-discipline. It can also mean just going along with whatever everyone else is doing, because that seems like the easiest thing to do.

Stress

Stress is what happens when we try, impossibly, to achieve all of these "great" things that moden life promises will bring such satisfaction. Most people justify this behaviour as "just being normal", because they look around and see that everyone else is doing the same thing. What better reason to try that for yourself, then. And of course once you begin, you get a hint of the taste of "success", the promise of "success", and you're hooked. Often hooked for the rest of your life. Viewed in this way, these kinds of things are a life sentence. One that you're not supposed to escape from.

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When you're trying to achieve satisfaction through chemical addiction in food and other substances, entertainment, lust, luxurious living, and lack of self-discipline in the name of "relaxation", you won't even be able to imagine how you could find the time for something like prepping.

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