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When fighting with sinful thoughts, also it can be useful to have a daily routine with alternating mental and physical work as it was shown by an Angel to St. [[Anthony the Great]].<ref>{{Ru icon}} [http://days.pravoslavie.ru/Life/life234.htm Living of St. Anthony the Great.] It is written that once in the beginning of his ascetic life St. Anthony was confused with different sinful thoughts and prayed to the Lord what to do with it. Then he saw an Angel nearby in a form of a man. The Angel showed to St. Anthony what to do: to alternate mental prayer with bodily labor.</ref>
It should be noted that though work therapy sometimes is very useful, the deluded person can become very lazy. While in delusion he could easily pray and do prostrations for hours, recovery from this state can be accompanied by strong relaxation of will, melancholy and laziness to the prayer and physical work. Archimandrite Ambrose (Yurasov) tells a story about a deluded woman who arbitrary increased her payer prayer rule to 1000 or more prostrations every day because of conceit. She was concealing it from her spiritual father. When the spiritual father revealed the delusion through her hidden anger and petulance, she no longer could execute even her initial smaller rule of prayer and prostrations, she could not fast at all and even could not read morning and evening prayers.<ref>{{Ru icon}}[http://lib.eparhia-saratov.ru/books/01a/amvrosii/amvrosii1/156.html Archimandrite Ambrose (Yurasov). Questions about Faith and Salvation. 156. How do people fall in delusion.]</ref>
Regarding the opposite form of prelest, which is associated not with the excessive zeal but with the lack of it, the delusion of carelessness, Schema-archimandrite Abraham (Reidman) notes<ref name="reidm1"/> that everyone should remember that a man can change and everyone, due to carelessness and self-justification, can quickly and unnoticeably change to their opposite. To prevent that, we need to gain a skill of self-restraint, in the first place, for the Jesus prayer. St. Anthony the Great names<ref>{{Ru icon}}[http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/?Dobrotoljubie/dobrotoljubie_tom_1=5_5 Sayings of St. Anthony and about him. 5. How to increase the zeal?]</ref> several means of increasing the zeal to virtues and fighting with carelessness: inner means include remembrance of death (i.e. living every day as the last day), thinking about the time after death, fear of God; external and more advanced means include: feeling of sweetness of living with God, love to God, love to do good and according to God. Elder Ephraim of Philotheou writes in a similar way that "you can conquer carelessness using constant prayer, with the mouth and mind, with the remembrance about possibility of sudden death, about the tortures of hell, about Heaven etc. We need to enforce ourselves to our spiritual duties and especially to silence and prayer".<ref>{{Ru icon}}[http://lib.eparhia-saratov.ru/books/06e/efrem_svatogor/advice/35.html Archimandrite Ephraim of the Holy Mountain. Fatherly Counsels. Ch. 8. On carelessness, fear, cowardice, betrayal and apostasy.]</ref>