Since our thoughts and opinions affect our actions, we must regulate our thoughts to regulate our behaviors and prevent relapse.

Pay attention to your thoughts. When your mind roams freely, you follow your impulses instead of reasoning.

Keep your internal thoughts pure from passion, thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction about external things. Don’t say more to yourself than the first appearances you see. Don’t imagine additional layers.

Be careful hanging out with other people while you are laying the foundations of sobriety. Others can rub off on you. If your surroundings are negative influences, it’s impossible to change.

Use role models as a standard against to measure your character.

Be an example for others so that when they are prone to behaving inappropriately, your behavior rubs off on them and helps them act right. Be a ruler they can use to set themselves straight.

Be especially careful at parties with crowds of people. The larger the crowd, the greater the danger. Don’t be influenced by society, because culture is usually corrupted.

Consider your old life to have ended and a new life is starting fresh with new principles. Tell yourself what kind of person you want to be first, then think and act accordingly in everything that you do. You are strengthened and preserved by your thoughts and actions.

Virtue is behavior showing high moral standards. Vice is immoral and wicked behavior. If you have vices, you will be prone to addiction. If you are virtuous, you will be able to stay sober more easily.

Whenever you find yourself in a thought, ask yourself, “is this one of those unnecessary thoughts?”

On the occasion of every act, ask yourself how you’re behaving and consider if you’ll repent for what you’re doing.

Be unable to get upset or excited, stay calm in all situations.

Show mercy to people. Be gentle and be inclined towards mildness.

Always say the truth and accept what happens.

Temperance is the habitual moderation of our actions, thoughts, and feelings. It allows us to have self-government and prevents us from being led aside by anything. Temperance opposes love of pleasure through self-control that takes command over pleasures.

Have courage. Don’t be one of those people who has one set back and then gives up completely and surrenders forever, like they were swept away by a flood. Be like a wrestling coach. When life wrestles you down, tell yourself to get up and resume the fight until you grow strong.

In the most tragic situation, you can have the greatest bravery. The sword of courage is sharpest when forged from utter desperation. Let the worst situations turn into the best ones.

You can endure anything if you think that it’s either in your interest or it’s your duty to do it. Be able to suffer and still be happy.

If you desire little, you will need little. If you wish to have only what is enough, your wish will be granted.