So as I get off my soapbox now, I believe it's nurture, but I also believe that it being nurture, it being nurture means that you have some level of control of it. No, I don't know if that's true. I can't prove it, but you can't prove to me it's nature either. And when it's nurture, it gives you, it gives me some level of control about how I navigate around the world, and how I live my life, and how you live your life, and what you do. You might not be responsible for your thoughts, because your thoughts come and go automatically like bubbles that rise from a fizzy glass of sparkling water or champagne, but you can absolutely unequivocally fucking control what you do in the real world. So you can't use that as an excuse anymore. There's programs like AA or NA out there, and I'm sure that they were developed to help people overcome these addictions. I get that. I like to believe that on some level they were developed to help people. I don't believe it takes 12 steps to fix you if you are addicted to something, because guess what? I don't think you're broken, I just think you're doing something stupid and you need to change your behavior. That's it. You're not broken. You need to have some more connection with people, you need to identify why you're using that addiction, whatever it may be, as a crutch in your life. What's absent in your life? What you need to face, what you're trying to mask that addiction by taking those extra pills, by watching too much porn, by being on too much internet. What are you avoiding in your life? What's so scary that you're trying distraction to keep yourself away from it? Because as soon as you face that thing that you need to face, oftentimes that addiction goes by the wayside, especially when you've got connection with people.
There's different types of addictions. There's addiction to your thoughts, addictions to feelings, addictions to sort of the feeling of comfort, addiction to the feeling of love, addiction to narcotics, as we mentioned, addiction to foods. There's many different types of addiction. But really all we're ever doing with the addiction, whether it's the cocaine, the Coca-Cola, the food, the sex, the porn, the gambling is there's some kind of empty vessel inside you you're trying to fill. And guess what? You never get to fill it because there's no amount of this addiction that will ever make you feel full. The only way, the only thing that you can do to get rid of that addiction is, because it's an itch you'll never be able to scratch, the only thing you can do is break that fucking vessel to smash that glass, that glass ceiling, that glass window so there is no more vessel that you need to fill and realize you're fucking enough. You're enough then, you're enough now, you're doing something stupid, stop it. You don't even need to hire me, you don't need to buy another personal development book, or $2,000 course, or go to another conference where you masturbate over the notes inside your mind. Just stop it. Go and get some real connection. Start with a connection to yourself and make real authentic connections with other people. Stop blaming everybody else. "Well, I'm this way because..." I already covered that in depth. Stop it. It weakens you. It victimize you. You're better than that. Stop with the bullshit. Face what it is.
I'll give you a story, right? I used to be a fat bastard. You know what my addiction was? No, it wasn't cigarettes. No, it wasn't alcohol. No, it wasn't crystal meth. No, it wasn't cocaine. No, it wasn't marijuana. What my addiction was was sugar for a long time, all right? And I used to tell myself the lie that if I ate sugar it would make me feel good. And I was personal trainer, fitness coach, very successful for many, many years and I was fat a lot of it. I'd gain 50 pounds, lose 50 pounds, gain 50 pounds, lose 50 pounds, gain 50 pounds, lose 50 pounds. You know the yo-yo diet. And then one day a few years ago, I had this battle on my whole life, I'm like, "I'm done. I'm just fucking done with this bullshit. Give me some new problems in my life, but I'm fucking done with this one." And I remember walking around Downtown Toronto, and I'm walking around and I just resign myself to the fact that no matter how shitty I was gonna feel, I wasn't gonna overmedicate with sugar. That was what I'd do, too much candy, or sweets, as I use to call them as a kid, being from the UK, candies for our North American comrades. I used to tell myself that I'm feeling shit, I'm feeling sad, I'm feeling angry, I'm feeling overwhelmed. Let me have a bunch of sugar and it'll make me feel better. I told myself that lie for many, many, many years, until one day I questioned it. I'm like, "Does it really make me feel better?" And I'm like, "You know what, that first sip of a Frappuccino, that first bite of a Snickers bar, that first bite of the donut is orgasmic in my mouth, it feels fucking amazing. Second bite, not so good but still enjoyable. That third bite, that third sip, diminishing returns, diminishing returns, diminishing returns." And so I would have a whole day where I overmedicate myself with sugar and shit. Not literally shit, that would be a different type of problem and we ain't gonna go there.
And you know what? At the end of the day, I'd feel bloated. My problem was still there and I was about 10 pounds heavier. No lie. So I'm like, "Actually, it doesn't even make me feel better, so why do I do it?" It distracted me, it medicated me, it numbed me from feeling things that I didn't wanna feel. So I decided to feel the thing that I needed to feel, whatever it was, and honestly I didn't know what it was. So back to my story. I'm in Downtown Toronto a couple of years ago and suddenly I had that craving to eat sugar. I wasn't hungry, but I had a craving to eat sugar. I'm like, "Okay. You know what? I'm not gonna eat. I'm not gonna any sugar. Whatever this thing is, whatever's underneath this fake phony craving, I'm gonna let it come for me." And I ain't gonna use my hypnosis skills to banish it away, or my change transformation skills to make it disappear. "I'm gonna feel it. I'm gonna let it come for me, because I'm done. And however big or scary this thing is that I've been running from for my whole entire life, I'm done with it. Come get me. It can't be worse than re-living this pattern for another 36 years in my life."
So it came. It came for me. And I'm near City Hall in Downtown Toronto, and this darkness came, and I don't know what the darkness was. I don't know what it was about, but it literally bought me to my knees, I felt so sad, so deeply alone in this world. All I wanted to do was run home, cry, medicate myself with food, sit in a corner, distract myself from the world. And I took it, and it came, and it literally brought me to my knees. And it came and it was...and I don't know why it was there and I don't need to know why. Again, that's another fallacy, the insight, you have insight of why you have a problem and it makes it disappear. Yes, sometimes it works, about 5% of the cases I've found, but most people know why they're fucked up, yet they're still fucked up. So I didn't know what it was, I just know how it felt.
And this darkness lasted for exactly 75 minutes. And after 75 minutes, guess what happens? After I took it, it just dissipated, it just disappeared, and it never came back again, and I never had that problem again. I don't know why it was there, but I didn't distract myself. It was a message that was coming from my unconscious mind for many, many, many, many, many years, "Listen to me, feel me." And when I listened to it, when I felt it, it just disappeared and I never had a weight problem or a sugar problem after that time. You might say, "Oh, sugar. Sugar's not as addictive or as dangerous as heroin," and whatever else Class A drug you wanna put in there. Yeah, maybe I'm not gonna die, but I was a fat bastard that was miserable and depressed, walking around not having the kind of life that I wanted. I tried to kill myself a couple of times. I faced it, decided to stop distracting myself, to face the emptiness. It came, it went, problem was resolved. But I ran from it for 36 years. It was a gargoyle on my shoulder, a monkey on my back, and it wasn't until I decided to face it that it disappeared.
You can overcome everything in your life and it's simply by making a choice and by letting go. I don't subscribe to the concept that once an addict, you're always an addict. No. I hate that in AA, I hate that in NA. I hate the idea that Anthony Hopkins hasn't drank a lick of alcohol in over 30 years, yet he still goes to AA every day because he has a dogma that he's still an addict. He probably hasn't drunk for as long as he did drink, yet he's still been brainwashed that he's still an addict. No, you can change and not be an addict that fast by making a decision and living a new life. Yes, you can overcome your addiction. It's in your mind, it's in your body, and you can make that decision to overcome it immediately. I do not buy in to the concept that you're always an addict.
So let's recap, let's give you a summary of today. Addiction in any form, what is it at its core? It's a lack of connection with self, lack of connection with others. Nature versus nurture, you can choose which one you want, but nurture give you some level of control over it. Neither have been proven, but nurture gives you some level of navigate around your world. Why are you overmedicating with this drug? Because it's making you feel something, but yeah, underneath it there's some unresolved emotion. That as long as you keep doing the drug, you keep doing addictive the behavior, it's never gonna be resolved and it's always gonna be screaming and getting louder and louder, metaphorically, until you listen to it. There's different types of addiction, yeah, yet they're all the same on some level. There's something you're not facing, there's something you're running from, there's something you're distracting yourself from that when you face it, oftentimes, when you face it in a safe environment oftentimes, it just dissipates and self-corrects there. There's a level of emptiness that you're trying to fill in your life and no matter how much food, crack, heroin, insert the addictive behavior, if you will, gambling, porn, sex in there, it will never fill that vessel inside to you. Stop trying to fill the fucking vessel, smash the vessel and realize you are enough already. Can you be more? Oh yeah, yeah, totally. Should you stop striving for more? Oh no, you should keep growing, but you are enough right now.
Always Believe,
Luke
