From Sichos Yisroel, parsha sheet of R Yisroel Brog, Ki Seitzi, 5782 (copied with permission, and somewhat shortened)

I once had a guy, who I thought was in sha’ar shishim. Not sha’ar 49. The guy was beyond 49. The guy spent literally years destroying himself. . He was in the business of selling ta’avos. That’s what his business was. He was the shpitz ta’avah. He lived for one zach, to be memaleh his ta’avos. There wasn’t one day that he wasn’t memaleh his ta’avos. Not a day. I’m not talking about your ta’avos. The guy was serious about it. I thought to myself, “What is it? What motivates a person to get so dedicated?” You want to know the answer? Pure ta’avah. He got money for it. He sold himself. As I said, this is sha’ar shishim. This is absolutely sha’ar shishim. This is the worst. The guy considered himself the lord of ta’avos. That was his zach.
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          When I told him that Yiddishkeit demands no ta’avos, he said, “Will Hashem take two fingers in exchange?” That’s what he said. “I’ll be willing to cut off two fingers. I can’t give up the ta’avos in my life. That’s my metzius. It’s my mehus. It’s what I live for. I exercise. I put so much effort into this.”....

       
      I told the guy another thing - which he wasn’t maskim to me right away - but I told him, “I’m going to reveal something about yourself that I don’t know if you know, and that is, that you’re frightened that the ta’avah is starting to leave you. Even though you’re 27 years old, you’re getting frightened that the ta’avah doesn’t hold its allure to you anymore. You’re starting to burn out.” (He told me later that when I said that to him, he started to shake inside because he started to think that he’d been losing it lately). The only thing that kept him going were all his friends that would call him and ask him, “What are you doing today?” and they would go over and over his daily routine.
            I told him, “My friend, I’ll tell you another thing. I’m going to reveal to you a little future in your life. The next step is that you’re going to become interested in the same type as yourself. That’s where you’re headed.” He said, “No, no.” And I showed שיחות ישראל: פרשת כי תצא 3 him the Ramban (Devarim 29:18). That’s what the Ramban says.1 The Ramban says whenever a person is memaleh his ta’avos to the max, he gets so sick of it that he goes over to things that he never had a thirst for and never had a desire for and he starts to pursue that, to create a new venue, a new avenue for his ta’avos.
             I told him, “Did you ever wonder why the biggest movie stars, people who were gods in their world, lost their normal desires? They were memaleh their ta’avos to such a degree that now they’re moving on to the next thing.” It shook him up.
             I told this fellow, “ You are just not aware of who you are. Inside of you, there is a Jew. The yeitzer hara convinced you, like he convinced everyone else that you and him are one, that you are so tightly bound to him. You don’t chap there’s even a division! You think you do aveiros. You think you want to do aveiros.           I know people who tell me, “ I davened to Hashem to give me the opportunity to sin. But what can I tell you? I go out there and I can’t find any aveiros! When I go looking for them, they’re not there. I hear all the guys going out and having so much fun. The most I can get is a cigarette!”
            I told the guy, “I want to tell you a little secret. Everybody is doing the same thing out there. They’re all looking for action. Where is the action? There’s no action. It’s all the yeitzer hara. It’s all baloney. The action that’s out there is going to get you such illnesses and you’re going to end up with such diseases, that if you come out not having pimples on every part of your body, it’s going to be a miracle! You have to go to the ashpos, you have to go to the garage dump and look for the people picking out wheat kernels from the dung. Those are the people who are going to be available for you. The yeitzer hara fools you all the time. That’s what you have to understand.”

          I want to tell you what happened with this guy. The guy started to change. I didn’t believe it, but he started to change. It was unbelievable. I told him, “You’re going to be challenged. You’re going to be challenged big time. He said, “I’m going to stay right here. I’m not going anywhere. I have a job,” and this and that. One day he was challenged. He had a tremendous challenge, tremendous. A nisayon that we all daven for ניסיון לידי לא תביאנו אל ,the kind of nisayon that you read in the gemara. The yeitzer hara tried to challenge the tana’im and amora’im and Rabbi Akiva And he ran away. He went for a job interview. He walked into this place. He was all fixed up. He had that jelly stuck in his hair, and he had his nice shirt on. There were a lot of people at the interview. He goes in there and the yeitzer hara was waiting for him over there, and the person starts to look at his resume and says, “What school did you go to? You know what? I was in your class.”
He said, “I don’t remember you.”
She said, “ I always had a crush on you. You’ve got the job. Only one condition.  Let’s go to dinner.”
The guy said he started to shuckle. He said another time he wouldn’t have thought twice. “I just started to become frum. What is Hashem doing to me?!” He told the interviewer, “Let me just freshen up and go to the washroom.” He walked out and he ran here, pashut. I wasn’t home at the time. I was taking my family on a chol hamoed trip. I came home and he jumped on me and he grabbed me. “Where were you?!”
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       We came into the house. He told me the story. I said, “You realize the yeitzer hara was trying so hard to get you to go back there? You’re a tzaddik. Do you know what’s going on in shamayim now? They are asking: This guy?! He’a a shtick Bilam! You’re like Bilam and his chamor. You’re a shtick Bilam, a ba’al ta’avah, and you pashut ran away?! You’re a tzaddik!” I could tell that he was torn. He said that he almost fell. I said, “My friend, that’s how Hashem makes you aware that He is going to help you correct the behavior you did. But you’ve got to take איביך על למלחמה תצא כי - you’ve got to decide you’re taking on the battle. I don’t care what aveiros you did in the past. I don’t care how big of a rasha you are.” - and I’ve met the best of them.
        I said, “If you want to change and you want to do teshuvah, then you take the battle to the yeitzer hara; but if you’re going to do it half heartedly, if you’re going to do it with the ‘earbuds’ in your ear or you’re going to do it with partial challenges - i.e. I’ll do this, I won’t do that, I’ll play games, I won’t play games - then you’re going to lose.” I said, “And if you go out to war, then בידך אלקיך‘ ה ונתנו “,then Hashem will deliver your yeitzer - your worst enemy - right into your hands.” 
          But then everybody tells me, “But it’s so hard. The yeitzer hara is so hard.” And I tell them, “Duh. You know how hard it really is? It’s so hard you can’t beat the yeitzer hara. You don’t stand a chance against him. It’s not a fair fight. You know that?” The guy says, “What do you mean?” I say, “You know what the gemara says in Kiddushin (30b)? Every day, the yeitzer hara tries to kill a person, to destroy him, and you don’t stand a chance עוזרו ה“הקב אלמלא - if it wasn’t for Hashem helping you, לו יכול לא ,there’s no ability for you to overcome the yeitzer hara. But if you go out and take the battle to the yeitzer hara, Hashem is going to be לו עוזר .You’re going to win b’ezras Hashem. You’re going to win with the assistance of Hashem. I wanted to tell you that about a year ago, this young man from our story finished Shas! And he did a beautiful Siyum HaShas! And he wrote a few halacha seforim before that as well. And it all happened because he shechted his yeitzer hara on that fateful day.