Long lifeOnce when I was little, my grandmother told me a story. It’s a story that has been passed down through my family for generations. She first heard it when she was a small child, and one day, I’m gonna tell it to my children. It’s an allegory—a story with a hidden lesson—which are pretty common in the African American community. It goes something like this:
There were two entities. One was called the Truth and the other was called the Lie. Now the Truth and the Lie decided to go skinny-dipping in a nearby pond. It was a hot day, and they knew the swim would cut the heat. So they took off from work and headed toward the local pond. When they got to the pond’s bank, they took off all of their clothes and folded them up into two nice little bundles. They both jumped into the water and they started doing the backstroke and the sidestroke. They were having water fights and dunking each other. They were playing games like Marco Polo and having a great afternoon together in the pond.
Eventually the Truth decided it was time to go back to work. He looked around and realized that the Lie has disappeared. So the Truth waded over to the edge of the pond to put his clothes back on and discovered that they had been stolen.
Everything from his Fruit-of-the-Looms to his jock strap—and even the bundle belonging to the Lies—was gone. This brotha was hot! He was not a happy camper.
Truth stormed back into town buck-naked, looking for his clothes. He always knew where the Lie hung out, so he boldly walked up to the steps and began banging on the door of Deception. That’s where the Lie usually hung out.
When Lie stepped out on the porch, they erupted into a huge argument. Truth and Lie were so loud that all of the townspeople spilled out into the streets to see what the commotion was all about. And this is what they heard:
Truth confronted the Lie and demanded, “Why did you steal my clothes?”
The Lie said, “I didn’t steal your clothes.”
“What do you mean you didn’t steal my clothes?” Truth asked. “You got my khakis, my FuBu, my Sean John, and my Phat Farm!”
The Lie looked at him and said, “My friend, these have always been my clothes.”
The townspeople were confronted with the exact same question that you are confronted with right now, and it is this: Who are you going to believe, a lie in truth’s clothing or The Naked Truth?
This is what The Naked Truth is all about! We’re going to uncover the buck-naked truth about sex. Along the way, we’ll undress some lies in truth’s clothing that we’ve all heard and discover The Naked Truth.
Who are you going to believe, a lie in truth’s clothing or The Naked Truth?
Are you ready?
The first step in uncovering The Naked Truth is to know the four steps of good decision making. These steps are not only applicable to the issue of sex, but they also will work for every decision you must make: the issues of drugs, alcohol, peer pressure, college, career and even marriage.
Step One: Know your options and their consequences.
Step Two: Make a decision.
Step Three: Find other people who support your decision.
Step Four: Take practical steps to achieve your goals.
This is the first step in decision making. Now I know that we live in a culture that divorces consequences from actions—many people think that they can do what they want and nothing will happen to them, because somebody else will clean up their mess. But guess what? That’s not The Naked Truth.
Nobody’s born a loser, but everybody’s born a chooser. Either you’re going to benefit or you’re going to suffer from every decision you make in this lifetime. You may not see the consequences of your actions by the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the semester, the time you graduate or even in five or ten years … but rest assured: What goes around comes around, and you will reap what you sow.
This is the second step in the decision-making process. The act of making a decision means that you have a timeline in mind to reach your goals, that you’ve drawn the boundaries that will help you get there, and that you’ve planned to regularly reassess your progress, all in order to obtain your goals.
You just can’t do it on your own. Once you make a decision, you need people in your life who have your back. You’ve got to have people who will not just support you but also help you stay committed to your decision. The company you keep says a whole lot about just how much you want to reach your goal.
I’ve had a lot of great friends in my life, but one of the best was my college roommate. We had a lot in common when it came to our goals and our values—not just for school but in our relationships, too. We didn’t do that thing where one person puts a handkerchief outside the door to tell the other person “Me and my boyfriend are getting busy, so don’t come in.” We didn’t do that. Instead, we held each other accountable to our commitment. Whenever there were issues and we were struggling with something—whether it was a guy or whatever—we told each other. We were open about it. And you know what? We stayed roommates for all four years of college. To this day, we’re still friends. Finding other people who will support your decisions is very important.
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This applies to every single area of your life. If you set a goal, you’re not just going to wake up one day and find that it’s magically happened. It’s going to take planning, work and follow-through. For instance, once I made the decision to make abstinence a lifestyle, I had to do something about it. Right after I graduated from college, I went out and bought a purity ring. It was a promise ring that represented my commitment to wait to have sex until I got married.
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
The ring would go everywhere I went, into every situation and every relationship. I still have that ring, and I met that goal by waiting until I said “I do” to do it.
A number of years back, Stanford University conducted an interesting study. They took a group of kids around five years old from a wide variety of socio-economic and racial backgrounds, and then gave them a marshmallow.
The researcher then told the kids, “I’ve given you one marsh-mallow, and now I’m going to leave. I’ll be gone for 20 minutes, and if you can wait until I get back to eat the marshmallow, I’ll give you two more.”
They captured the kids’ behavior on camera and I watched it on Oprah a while back. (You know if it’s on Oprah, it must be true.) Anyway, they showed how these kids responded. Some of them burst into tears because they couldn’t get their way—they wanted to eat their one marshmallow right now and also get two more. It was too much pressure. There were others who—as soon as the researcher left—licked the bottom of their marsh-mallows and then stuck them back on the plate. A few other kids just sat there and tormented themselves, staring at their marshmallow with mouths watering. And then there were the kids who just couldn’t wait. They picked at their marshmallows and nibbled off little pieces. A few kids even tried to hollow out their marshmallows, hoping the researcher wouldn’t notice! And finally, there was a small number of kids who occupied themselves with a toy or a book, or by looking out the window. They totally forgot the marshmallow was in the room.
When the researcher came back, she rewarded each of the kids. Those who had waited got more marshmallows, while the ones who didn’t wait didn’t get any more.
But that wasn’t the end of the experiment! The researchers tracked down the exact same kids 10 years later. They discovered that the kids who had the ability to wait scored an average of more than 200 points higher on their SATs. The kids who waited for their rewards had lower occurrences of juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, alcohol abuse and other risky behaviors.
What they found out is that some of the kids had developed a high emotional quotient. It’s like an emotional IQ, and those who have a high emotional IQ have figured out self-mastery. In other words, those who have the ability to exercise self-control, self-discipline and delayed gratification are the ones who have mastered the art of achieving success, because they know how to work for it and they know how to wait for it.1
You may be wondering, What’s my emotional IQ? I can’t tell you. But I can tell you this: No matter what your emotional IQ is today, it can be higher tomorrow. You see, while a regular IQ doesn’t usually change over a lifetime, your emotional quotient can change at any time.
It doesn’t matter what you did yesterday; it matters what you’re going to do today. Your future and your ability to achieve sustained success in life are based on your ability to master the skills of self-control, self-discipline and delayed gratification.
You cannot achieve sustained success in life unless you have mastered these three skills. I say sustained success because our culture often tells us that true success, like sex, should come quick, fast and in a hurry. The reality is that true success—sustained success and a great sex life—doesn’t come in an instant. It comes with endurance.
Abstinence is mastering the art of self-control, self-discipline and delayed gratification. It’s not just something you do or don’t do: It’s a lifestyle. So let’s talk about the three components of that lifestyle.
The Three Components of the Abstinent Lifestyle
1. Self-control
2. Self-discipline
3. Delayed gratification
The first component of an abstinent lifestyle is self-control. Self-control is not doing something you want to do when you want to do it. Like eating. Have you seen the Lays ad that says, “You can’t just eat one”? Well, self-control says, “Yes, I can eat just one. In fact, I can take it to the next level and not eat any at all if I don’t want to! Just watch me!”
Now it’s not just food where we must exercise self-control. We can learn to do it in many areas of our lives, including what comes out of our mouths. Yeah, some people can’t stop running their mouths and talking all the time … and it gets them in trouble. Self-control knows when to speak up and when to stay silent.
Self-control is not doing something you want to do when you want to do it.
The second component of an abstinent lifestyle is self-discipline. It’s a little bit different than self-control. Self-discipline is doing something you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do it. Like taking out the trash. No one really likes taking out the trash, and if everybody refuses to do it, eventually you’ll see it piling up and climbing the walls. That’s when self-discipline kicks in. You don’t want to take out the trash, but you do it because you know that there is a future reward: Your parents will stop nagging you.
Or take something simple like homework. I never liked homework, but I did it so that I wouldn’t have to take the same class twice. I wanted to get out of high school. I wanted to go to college. And I didn’t want my momma bugging me. So I forced myself to do something that I really didn’t feel like doing, because I realized there was a future reward.
The third component of the abstinent lifestyle is delayed gratification. Delayed gratification is the consistent practice of both self-control and self-discipline, because you realize there is a future reward if you practice those skills on a regular basis. In fact, delayed gratification recognizes that the future reward is far greater than the fleeting thrill of instant gratification.
Self-discipline is doing something you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do it.
It wasn’t that long ago that I was a cheerleader. As a matter of fact, I was an All-American. After graduation, I modeled for some of the largest athletic apparel companies, like Nike and Reebok, and I also danced professionally. It was my job to stay in shape. (Obviously, that was a couple Krispy Kremes ago.) Basically, my job was to work out every day in order to get a job. Some of my former workout partners are people whose names you’d recognize. They play in the NFL and the NBA. We got up every morning at 4:30 A.M. and ran two miles, then rode our bikes for 10 miles. I’d come home and eat breakfast—which was usually scrambled egg whites and broccoli—and then read and pray for an hour before going back to the gym to lift weights. After weight training, I went to the dance studio to train for three more hours.
Do you know how much discipline it takes to be a model or dancer? Do you know how much discipline it takes to be a professional athlete? It takes a lot. It requires you to discipline everything, from your eating habits to your exercise habits to your sleeping habits.
It’s easy to give props to discipline in athletics or even academics, but it’s sad that we don’t applaud it in our personal lives. When I danced professionally, I was not a video ho-fessional. I didn’t do the bump ’n’ grind, because I made a decision that I would never take a job that would require me to compromise my beliefs or to prostitute myself. As a matter of fact, I turned down more jobs than I ever worked because I figured that if I wouldn’t want my mom to turn on the TV and see it, I shouldn’t be doing it.
Even if you’re not going to be in the NBA or NFL or on the cover of magazines, you can still be disciplined and motivated in your personal life. You may think there’s nothing to get jazzed about, but that just means that you’re focusing on the wrong thing. Don’t focus on the discipline. Find a vision or a goal that’s worthy enough of undivided attention, and it will motivate you to work toward that goal.
Even if you still can’t name your specific goal or vision, there are some things in life that almost everyone on the planet is striving for: a long, healthy, prosperous life; a sense of purpose and well being; and of course, a happy sex life.
Which of the following do you want? Check all that apply:
Long life
Health
Prosperity (a.k.a. “bling-bling”)
Sense of purpose
Happysex life
If you’re going to achieve any of the things on the list, then you have to begin with the end in mind. You have to begin making decisions today that will lead you toward your goal tomorrow. Success in these areas and others requires self-control, self-discipline and delayed gratification.
The entry on the checklist that probably caught your attention (and mine!) is a happy sex life. Who doesn’t want that? The fact is, the happiest sex lives are found among those who wait until marriage to have sex, which requires self-control, self-discipline and delayed gratification. But just like the kids with the marshmallows, those who wait are richly rewarded.
You have to begin with the end in mind.
How do I know? Because I waited, and believe me, it is oh-so-true! When I talk about abstinence or waiting to have sex, it’s not because I think sex is bad or sex is evil—just the opposite. Sex is a very, very good gift from God. Thank You, Lord!
• Make a list of your goals. Think big!
• Now make a list of the people supporting you as you reach those goals. Do you have any friends who are holding you back from reaching your goals?
• Now make a list of the steps you need to take to meet those goals. Save your list and begin checking off those steps as you get closer to meeting your goals.
• If you were taking the marshmallow test, what would you do with your marshmallow?
• What are some areas in your life where you can begin practicing delayed gratification?