Improve your life by doing things in moderation.

Do you remember the old fable of the tortoise and the hare? In the story, the hare and tortoise set out for a race, and although everyone assumes the hare will be the winner because he is so fast, it is the tortoise who is victorious because he paces himself to the finish line, in comparison to the hare who overexerts himself and takes a nap in the middle of the race!

So what does this little tale have to do with temperance? When you look up the work temperance in the dictionary one definition you will find is habitual moderation. Temperance is just a fancy schmancy way of saying easy does it. Have you ever tried to do a dozen things at once, and while you manage to keep yourself busy, at the end of the day, you find that nothing has really been accomplished the way you had hoped? Maybe it's because you bit off more then you could chew and did not practice temperance.

At some point, most of us have overindulged or pushed ourselves to the extreme in one way or the other. For some of us, temperance is hard to practice when food is involved. Some of us have a hard time telling ourselves its time to turn off our laptops and put our paperwork to rest. It's hard not to push to the limit sometimes.

We live in a society that praises over achieving, which usually involves piling an excessive amount of work on our daily plates. Why bother trying to go to bed at a reasonable hour when we could stay up a little later and get a little more work done, right?

While it is important to work hard, it is even more important to remember that when we sacrifice things like sleep, exercise, good food, and other healthy habits all for the sake of time, convenience or because we think we can start fresh tomorrow, we really cheat ourselves by setting ourselves for future disappointment, stress and often guilt!

Are there times when its okay to splurge on that slice of cake or when we have to push ourselves a little past our usual limit? Yes, of course! But these times should be few and far in between, and we should always ask ourselves how will the choice we make today effect us tomorrow.

Temperance boils down to teaching ourselves how to make good decisions for ourselves and not for time being but the long haul. Believe it or not apart of making good decisions is taking your time and asking yourself what you are specifically setting out to do and how do you plan on attaining this goal.