Whole & One
With Síle
Voice America Empowerment Channel
How many Day 1s do you want to subject yourself to?
ANY pleasure pursued to excess can become addictive!
It only takes ONE day to change your life.
Feeling the badass of DAY 1?
Alternating… between the Momentum… of Day 1
And
the White Knuckle Ride… of Day 1,
as morning, becomes evening, becomes night time?
Notice how the mood board of your day changes colour, tone and texture as the day progresses.
What seemed non-negotiable on rising, can become prey to the amygdala as your day unfolds and unfurls and you stop paying attention…
…watch out for the PAWS!
How many DAY 1s are you going to subject yourself to?
Addiction is any pleasure pursued to excess…substances, religion, sex, food, gambling…
Addictions are an attempt to get needs met.
Today, do that emotional needs audit and contemplate how you can get your emotional needs met healthily, so you don’t need the pain relief / instant gratification/ numbing out/ quick fix…
of over eating, eating the wrong foods, drinking hazardously, abusing substances, to name but a few of the destructive habits we can build into the tapestry of our lives, however mindlessly at first. Pursued to excess, addictive life styles, hijack a very natural process: our natural sense of curiosity –
We are all vulnerable to addictions when our basic emotional needs are not being met.
We have evolved to be curious so that we will do whatever it takes in order to get our needs met. In order to stretch ourselves, to awaken and expand, we have a natural propensity for trying out new things, often involving an element of risk. This natural curiosity is adaptive when the carrot and stick of this so called expectancy pathway, encourage us to go from couch to 5km for example, to learn something new; sign up for a course or read a book, to eat more healthily, join a group like a choir for example. Meeting our needs for connection, achievement, meaning and purpose and so on through constant improvement of personal best, is carrot and stick, at its very best.
Addiction on the other hand is a conditioned expectation that
- The addictive activity will give a feeling of pleasure
- The addictive activity will alleviate cravings
- The addictive activity will keep us flexible; as tolerance levels increase and we have to do more of the same, for the same level of pleasure.
When applied to adaptive habits and practices, this expectancy theory would serve our growth and restoration extremely well. The infiltration of this pleasure circuit however, by quick fixes in the form of exogenous substances and toxic practices, as opposed to things which take effort to pursue (like exercise for a natural high as opposed to drugs of any kind, for a quick fix) only serve to weaken our strength and function as balanced human beings.
KICK IT
1)Get power over that expectation of pleasure, that addiction fools us into thinking we will derive from engagement with it.
2)Overwrite the misguided euphoric memories in the filing room of your brain, with truths.
It wasn’t the best night of your life, you puked your ring up, spent the night fighting off demons and battled anxiety for days afterwards until you did it all over again. Rinse and repeat.
FACT
Hijacked.
Addiction does not allow us to remember negative feelings during the craving.
Addiction stimulates dopamine; feel good messages in the brain. If you can manage the distortion of those ‘feel good’ chemicals and keep your pleasure circuit oiled on truths not misguided euphoric memory, you can control so called cravings.
Dopamine soaked memories are the illusion that fuel cravings.
FACT
We have evolved to produce good feelings in our brain when we are getting our needs met. Our brain will serve our need to survive and thrive, by producing bad feelings when we are not getting our needs met.
If you replace this neuropharmacology with drugs from without often enough, endogenous production of same will down regulate accordingly. Result, you will not get natural highs anymore. Achievement will not produce good feelings.
Activities that produce natural highs will be dropped over time.
It’s a vicious circle.
FACT
It only takes ONE day to change your life.
Get ready,
to be ready,
to be ready
to do
just
ONE more
DAY 1.
WHOLE & ONE.
You’ve got this!!!
