  The constraints imposed by the requirement that the scalar potential of
supersymmetric theories does not have unbounded directions and charge or color
breaking minima deeper than the usual electroweak breaking minimum (EWM) are
significantly relaxed if one just allows for a metastable EWM but with a
sufficiently long lifetime. For this to be acceptable one needs however to
explain how the vacuum state reaches this metastable configuration in the first
place. We discuss the implications for this issue of the inflaton induced
scalar masses, of the supersymmetry breaking effects generated during the
preheating stage as well as of the thermal corrections to the scalar potential
which appear after reheating. We show that their combined effects may
efficiently drive the scalar fields to the origin, allowing them to then evolve
naturally towards the EWM.
