Overcoming Your Unhealthy Addictions

"Nature will teach you what the masters cannot."

Addiction is a powerful word full of emotion.

To me it is any unhealthy habit we do for a short term relief or pleasure that in the long term weighs negatively on our lives and despite this result we continue our active addiction.

I am by no means a doctor, clinical specialist or anything of the like. I have however lived with an addiction to alcohol and marijuana for several years and understand how powerful addictions can become.

Six months ago I had an epiphany while climbing South Sister in Central Oregon that has literally redirected my life.

Life had gotten out of control and I was falling deeper into my addiction. It was miserable, unbearable and I felt alone in a crowded room. In the days, weeks and now months that followed I took action to create a more fulfilling life. A life that I had only dreamed of.

I am here to give you some hope. Whether you or a family member are struggling with an addiction to drugs, sex, shopping, consumerism, video games, TV, food or anything else; freedom is possible.

My goal is to help you create healthy habits and break the pattern of unhealthy habits in your life so you can begin truly experiencing your full potential.

I have begun to understand what led to this horrible but necessary life experience and more importantly how to replace my unhealthy habits with healthy inspiring daily habits.

Remember, we are trying to retrain our brain to follow healthy lifestyle changes in an effort to replace unhealthy habits. These are some but not all of the steps I have taken to manage this deadly, draining disease known as addiction.

"The secret to changing is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." - Socrates

Start with the Five I’s

1. Identify - Specifically, what do you want to change? Write this down on paper, share it with family and friends you trust.
2. Impact - In order to really change a bad habit we must reach a point where it is more painful to go on the way we are then it is to make a change. What is going to be the long term impact of not breaking this unhealthy habit that you are currently living? What pain has this habit caused in your life? What will be the positive impact of making the change?
3. Interrupt - Set a date that you are going to interrupt your unhealthy habit. Create a solid plan so that when you do stop and start your new habit you have something to follow. Write the date on your kitchen calendar, notebook, on a sticky note stuck to your bathroom mirror or wherever you need in order to engrain this day in your mind. Most importantly - Stop the unhealthy habit that is causing pain in your life.
4. Insert - Begin a new healthy habit that you enjoy. Think about this habit each time that you get the urge to act on your unhealthy addiction or better yet go spend some time actually doing this. It is much harder to break an old habit that filled a certain emptiness in us without replacing it with something else. For example - When I stopped drinking and smoking I started running, hiking, yoga, writing, reading about others going through the same situation, meeting with people and a number of other things.
5. Improve - Remember this process is constant. We never break the neural pathway in our mind that has developed out of old habits, but we can weaken it and begin to build new ones. It is important that we refresh our commitment to change often.

Additional Tools to Create Positive LIfestyle Changes
There are other things I have done to overcome my unhealthy addictions. Many of which Leo Babauta wrote about in his article The Habit of Change Cheat Sheet. The ones that I have found most useful and imperative to my success are the following:

1. Ask For Help: Ask and you shall receive! Having a helping hand from someone or a group that is going through the same challenge in life is a great tool and it will help strengthen your desire for change.
2. 30 Day Challenges: I like to refer to these as 30 Day Opportunities. Yes, they are a challenge to stick to, but we are really creating new opportunities to to live healthier and happier lives.
3. Build a Support System: Who are you going to call when the going gets tough? This is similar to having a group to help build your strength and courage, but who specifically are you going to be able to call on when you are going through a rough patch?
4. Have Fun:  In every negative situation look for what is positive and good. What kind of reward are you going to give yourself after 1 week, 30 days, 2 months and beyond? What can you learn from this experience? Why did this happen? What are you doing now to create the life you want? There is no point in leaving one miserable mind state for another. Find ways to truly enjoy life and make the most of every situation. If Scott can break old habits then so can you.
5. Build a + Memory Bank: When the going gets tough a positive memory bank is a great tool to have. I choose to fill a notebook with positive experiences and quotes that always uplift me.
6. Prepare for Wrong Doers: You will always run across people that are still living a life full of unhealthy habits and these people may try to pull you down. For these times you will need what I refer to as double courage. These are the times when you are presented with an opportunity to go the right way or the easy way.
7. Change Your Environment: For some of us this might mean the extreme of getting a new group of friends, new job, leaving our spouse or moving out of our current living situation. I suggest you check in with your environment and take a good hard look at how it is supporting your current habit. Is the same environment going to be supporting of your new healthy habit? Will it support you through breaking old habits?
8. Be conscious of self talk especially the (-) kind: I fill my head with self defeating thoughts from time to time and seemingly cannot get out of a low place. During times like these I turn to my support system and ask for direction from someone that has been there. Often times we are just being hard on ourselves and need to take a reality check. Write down what is causing the negative self talk and begin filling yourself with positive self talk. This is a great time to look back at your + Memory Bank.
9. Identify your triggers: What people, places or things trigger your old habit? What do you need to replace these triggers with? For every trigger you should have some kind of new healthy habit that you can fall back on. Some things that used to trigger me were - parties, 5PM, people, places and stress. I have replaced these with a number of new activities - simply do not go some places anymore, read, write, meet with new friends and call my support system.
10. If I were to fail: Remember, we only truly fail if we chose that to be our destiny. If you relapse to an old habit then take some time to reflect on why. What caused the relapse? How did it make me feel? How am I going to be stronger tomorrow because of this? What situations, people or places do I need to avoid in order to prevent this in the future?

“My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.” Dr. Steve Maraboli

If we truly want to stop an unhealthy habit then we must begin paving new neural pathways in our minds one small step at a time. Start today by taking the first right step. Identify what you want to change.

This is by no means an exhaustive article on how to cope with what you may be dealing with, but I hope you found it enlightening and inspiring.

Fear not change, fear no change at all.

If you are struggling with an addiction at this time and would like to talk then please feel welcome to contact me. I would be happy to share more tools that might be of help to you.

Summit as Friends!
Scott

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