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The seven deadly sins or seven deadly traps, as I like to think of them, prevent us from being our best.  I call them traps instead of sins because I don't see them as being about divine judgement but about how we misuse our energy and focus.

Let's go over the seven deadly sins for a moment.  They've been written different ways, but I'll go with these:

Avarice - Greed, money obsessed
Envy - Jealousy, inferiority
Wrath - Anger, righteousness, fury, displeasure
Sloth - Laziness, procrastination, apathy, idleness, hopelessness
Gluttony - Overindulgence in food, alcohol or drugs
Lust - Base-level sexual gratification, seeing people as sexual objects
Pride - Arrogance, self-importance, superiority

​We use these ways of being to get some relief from our suffering, but by engaging in these behaviors and attitudes we get trapped in the cycle of suffering.  Like putting gasoline on a fire, these will temporarily douse the flame before exploding into a deadly inferno. And since nearly every person on the planet is indulging in at least one of these, and for most of us, many more, we are all in a constant state of suffering.  

Being ensnared in these negative cycles can be debilitating and damaging to every aspect of our lives.  When we engage in these seven traps, we do so as a coping mechanism.  We feel bad in some way, so we participate in one of these behaviors as a way to feel better about our lives but that only causes us to feel worse.  Often we are not consciously aware of how we are doing this. 

We tend to think that worldly attainments will satisfy us.  They can satisfy us temporarily but eventually give way to dissatisfaction and cause us to go more deeply into the traps.  Think about your greatest fantasy of attainment: living in luxury, having a "perfect" job or business, family or lifestyle, becoming popular or famous for doing something cool or having gratifying, mind-blowing sexual experiences. Would that lift you out of suffering?  Would it satisfy you? Temporarily it might feel like you were on top of the world, but eventually all of it would change or fade away and give way to feelings of wanting more.  That type of need can never be fully satisfied.

We regard outwardly successful people as having attained the Holy Grail, but we can see from tragic examples like Whitney Houston, Heath Ledger, Robin Williams, Ernest Hemingway and Howard Hughes (just to name a few) that money, success, adulation, fame and achievement do not end suffering.  So what does?  I'll come back to that.

When we engage in one or more of these seven traps, we are using it as a band-aid for feeling uneasy or unfulfilled in our lives.  It's like any addiction: we do things we know we shouldn't in order to feel better, but of course, in the long run we feel worse.  We try to alleviate suffering by adding more suffering.  Like using credit cards to pay off other credit cards, it's not a sustainable strategy.  Eventually we must stop engaging these traps if we ever want to get true and lasting relief. 

Most of us engage in all seven at one time or another in different ways.  I think most of us have a primary trap that pulls us back in over and over again.  I have dealt with all of these from time to time but lust, wrath and pride are the ones I most want to transcend.  I know these are the issues hold me back from living my best life.  I will be writing about these issues more in future posts.

Which ones do you engage in the most?  When you determine that, then you will know what the primary cause of your suffering is.  And when you decide that living your best life is more important than using that crutch, then you will be at the starting line for living your best possible life.  Not the appearance of a good life, but the real thing. 

Once you have identified your primary traps, you may want to formulate a battle plan for overcoming them.  It may be in the form of a support group, a best friend you can confide in or simply a hyper-focused clarity and determination to eradicate it from your life. 

I believe this step is essential for living a great life.  You can suffer privately or you can transcend suffering but you can't do both.  You can either indulge your trap or you can have your dreams, but you can't have both.  At least not on more than a superficial level. 

How do we transcend suffering?  By not identifying with fear and weakness that cause us to indulge these things.  These traps are borne of fear of our mortality and the scarcity that it implies.  When we identify more closely with the immortal soul and less with human frailties, the need to engage these harmful energies will dissipate.  Having faith that there is more for us than our perceived physical limitations frees us to focus our energy on the true source of life, which is abundant.  Put another way, when we focus on love instead of fear, we thrive.

Dan Galperin
- See more at: http://www.manpowerproject.com/blog/the-seven-deadly-sins#sthash.yD8cXXvk.dpuf