The Surprising Truth About the Most Common Addictions

So this is a topic that I've been thinking about for over a year and a half at this point, and I didn't want to share it because I didn't know exactly how I was going to cover it. And my thoughts in many ways are still unclear. But I recently heard a podcast from Tim Ferriss with Dr. Gabor mate, and they talked about addiction and new paradigms around it. So I feel like it's the right time at this point to talk about my experience and what I think might as well be your experience, too. Now, before I get into this, let me just say, A, this is very different from a lot of the videos that I've done, so if I'm railing, I apologize. B, I expect that there are points where you might not agree with me, which leads me to C, please, after you've watched it, get in there in the comments and let me know what you think. This is a conversation I've been having with myself and my friends for a long time, and I really want to hear if it's resonating with other people. So let me know in the comments. I'll just start with my general idea, which is that I think that addiction is one of the major driving forces in our society. I think it's the major driving force in most people. People's life. And I include myself in that category. And probably you, if you're listening now, when I tell this to people, they go, what are you talking about? Like addiction. That's a pretty harsh word. When I think of an addict, I think of somebody who has destroyed their life with drugs and alcohol, right? Who has alienated friends, maybe can't hold down a job and has just ruined things. That's not me. And to that I say, of course that's not. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the pattern of behavior that that addict is exhibits is probably very similar to patterns that you have as well. And that specific thing that I'm talking about is this compulsive, escapist desire to do something that you know and have evidence doesn't make you happy, but you keep doing it anyway. And not only do you keep doing it, you deny that it's a negative in your life in the first place. So when we think of the alcoholic, we can sort of see this play out, right? First he starts drinking because he's in pain. Sometimes something isn't working. And the alcohol, like every other addictive substance, is an escape, right? It's not about what it is it can be alcohol, it can be pills, it can be anything that lets him just get away from the pain that he feels. Now, it starts off as a solution to a problem, but very quickly it creates more problems in his life. He starts alienating his family. Maybe he's unkind or hurtful to the people around him. Maybe he can't keep his job. He loses his job and now money is an issue. It starts to destroy things. Even though it was intended at the beginning, at least to be an escape from pain, it creates more. But he can't stop. And when people start saying you have an issue, he's very likely to say, I don't have a problem. This isn't an addiction. I could stop if I wanted. Please leave me alone, because I'm not going to stop. So that's very common to what I see in other people. Take for instance, social media. This is something in addiction that I would say, I don't know, most Americans experience. And it's got the very same characteristics, though perhaps not to the same destructive capacity is alcohol or drugs. But when you think about it, how does social media make you feel if you pay attention to your mood when you use it? Yes, sometimes you feel good when you get the likes, but mostly it creates anxiety. Anxiety that you don't look the way you should, that you don't have the status in life that you should, that you're not doing enough, or that you weren't invited to the right place, you're not traveling enough. Whatever it is, it creates this low level anxiety. But we keep going back, we keep wanting more of it. And in fact, I have found myself in the past just like mindlessly typing in facebook.com into the URL or just clicking my phone unthinkingly and all of a sudden I'm on Instagram. How did I wind up there? When I understand, after I've looked at this, that this stuff doesn't make me feel good, I would say that what I experience and most people experience with social media is an addictive cycle. Now when I start to explain it like this, and I encourage you if you don't think that social media has these negative consequences on your life, all that I would suggest is a try separating from it for seven days. See if you develop withdrawal symptoms, if you start reaching for your phone when you're in public places, if you want to go on and you can't stop yourself and then notice after those seven days, do you enjoy getting back on or is it almost just more tension and stress than you Experienced without it. And I think you'll find that it's oftentimes limiting it or cutting it all together really increases your quality of life. But that's for you to experience. Most people get on board for this, right? These are the soft addictions that I think when I talk about it like this, people go, okay, I can see it, I can see it with television, I can see it with social media. I, I could see it with food, I could see it with the news. Being addicted to that outrage culture. But, you know, I'll cut those things off and then it won't play such a huge role in my life. But I think that there is another category of addictions, and this is one that successful people, the most are subject to. In fact, it's almost what defines their success. And these are the quote, unquote, things that are good for you, that are good for you. But very quickly the relationship turns negative. And in fact, it doesn't have to be quickly. I just want to cover what these things are before I sort of break it down. I'm talking about money and work, I'm talking about fitness, I'm talking about relationships, Whether you're talking about friendships or an intimate relationship, and just the entire idea of personal growth and self development in the first place. When I say all of those, you're probably going, well, those are amazing addictions to have. Those are great obsessions. And in fact, we live in a society where, where we venerate people who say that they're obsessed with their job or obsessed in the gym. And I'm suggesting that while that might have started out as a really positive thing, when you get into a dependent relationship with any sort of behavior, it starts to have negative consequences on your life. And not only that, it masks a deeper issue. And I want to just break down those four things that I talked about to sort of dig into this. The first one, money work. Of course, there's a million reasons why you would want to make money and contribute valuable work to society. But what I often see happen, especially in my successful friends, is the goalpost just keeps moving. What was, first they wanted to have X amount of money. Now they need the next promotion and the next promotion. And then they quit their job and they start a business and they need the next big deal or the next subscriber count if they're YouTubers. And all of a sudden, what was this thing that was to contribute to the world, maybe to make enough money to pay their rent, becomes this validation driven again. Validation being what they really are desiring behind the work. The second thing, fitness. Same sort of thing happens. Starts off, maybe you're not in shape and it's a way to develop self confidence, to establish a goal and hit a goal to prove to yourself that you can do it. But then after time, very quickly, what was about health and feeling better internally becomes about being recognized by other people. By receiving compliments in the form of likes or just words of praise from other people, telling you that you look good to the degree that your body isn't any, it's no longer for you, it's for other people to look at. It's not about how you internally feel, whether you have high energy or whether you're in pain or whether you're hurting. It's whether other people recognize it and think highly of you. I would say that's crossed the line at that point into an addictive threshold. Third thing, relationships. I've experienced all of these, but this is the one that kind of really got me started is I recognize that that what had started out as a relationship that was positive, where this woman, my ex girlfriend, was bringing all these wonderful feelings into my life. She became the only place that I started to feel really joyful and peaceful. To the degree that all of the other things in my life that I used to love doing just sort of seemed less bright and I wanted to spend all my time with her again. Very common of addictions is that it becomes this obsession where you cannot feel good without it. So that happens with friendships. It can happen especially in intimate relationships. Underlying all of these is this idea of growth. This idea that if you grow more, then you will feel good. And I think this addiction is ultimately to validation. It's a feeling like right now, the way you are, you're not enough. But if you were wealthier, if you had more muscles or the perfect shaped body or the the most healthy thing, or somebody reflected positively upon you on social media, or you had a significant other that was amazing and other people realized how amazing you were together, then you would be enough. And I'm here to tell you there's nothing that you can acquire outside of yourself that is going to deal with that deep seated problem of wondering if you are good enough. And I've made a lot of videos on this. I'm going to create a playlist at the end of this one. But that's what drives the addictive cycle. And I think while it's wonderful to maybe get your journey started, if you've never done any of this, right? If I'm talking to you and you're a person who hasn't hit that part in their life where they scrape themselves off the couch and start to take the bull by the horns, if you will, and start to take control of their life. Great. Pursue these kinds of things. Go get fit, build a business, get a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Have your heart broken. That's all fantastic. But what I see, at least in my circle, these people who are quote unquote successful who have become obsessive. And that's really what this Tim Ferriss podcast reminded me of, because I think that he recognized the same sort of pattern in his own life, which is why he started to converse with people like Dr. Gabor Mate who study addiction. But all of this is to say that I see this as a fundamental issue in society. But I didn't make the video because I didn't really have the solution until I feel recently with all this research now I've made a course on it. If you're interested in that, you can check it out below. But I don't want to leave you without anything because I think that there is something very quickly that you can do to start to decrease the hold that some of the addictions in your life might have. Whether we're talking about television, pornography or fitness, work relationships, and that's connect. There's a fantastic kyrgyzstadt video which is on a TED Talk that I'm going to put into the playlist. But it talks about how connection is the antidote to addiction. Oftentimes we think that sobriety is the opposite of addiction. Right? All you have to do is not use drugs or not watch tv. But what we see happen with every single addiction is the cycle just takes over again with a different object. So you stop smoking, but you start eating. I personally have kicked one social media app like no more Instagram. And all of a sudden I find myself on some other website that I'm now addicted to. That cycle will continue to kick in if you don't deal with that underlying problem, which is a feeling of disconnection. And I believe every single human has to grapple with this. And it's not something that you're just born with. You're probably not going to be lucky enough to just have this fixed. It's something you need to look internally to work on. How do you do that? I think there's five important ways which we all can do a better job of connecting. The first one is with your community. Now, I think this is a way that our society does A bad job. A lot of us, sometimes, myself included, don't know the people who live on the floor of our apartment building. I know the guy across, but I don't actually know the person who lives to my right. And I think this is incredibly common. How do you fix this? Well, one, you introduce yourself, but two, you go out. If you're at a Starbucks and there's somebody there who serves you every day, get their name, ask them a question, find out what's going on in their life. Just that little connection. If there's a homeless person, you have extra food, hand it to them. A great way to do this is by volunteering. Connecting to the broader community and feeling like you are contributing is so important. The second thing, moving more interior is to your immediate social circle. We do a decent job of this. One of the things that contributes most to your general level of well being is the amount of time that you spend in meals with loved ones. So eat food with the people that you love. It makes you feel better, and again, it makes you feel more connected. Spend time with them, ask them what's going on in their life. And for a second, you don't have to do this all day, but consider the problems that they might be facing in their life. Step outside of yourself and try to help them. Because one of the best ways to feel connected is to help someone else overcome something they're struggling with. The third thing, and we do a terrible job in our society of connecting at this level is with ourselves. I want to pause here because when I used to hear the phrase connecting with myself or yourself, I would think, what the heck could that possibly mean? How can a person connect with themselves? It's the same thing. You can't connect with the same thing. But what I didn't realize is that there's this whole level of bodily connection. There's a connection with your intuition, there's that gut feeling that you get, there's knowing deeply what you want. And I think this is a plague in our society. There are so many people who are lost, who don't know what they want or who think they know what they want, but really they have a dream that is their dad's dream or their mom's dream. And they can't decipher what is their internal voice spurring them forward and what is just the nagging voice in their head that is their father. If you want to connect with yourself, the best way to do that is through the body. And there's a ton of ways to do this. You can Meditate, mindfulness meditation, where you focus on the sensations and just start to break through what I think is a lot of the numbness that people tend to feel in terms of sensation. Take walks, feel the sun on your body, see you, the wind in your face, the rain, whatever is going on, any amount of time to yourself, if you can afford it. I found that massages are also extremely useful periods of time for really connecting with yourself. Float tanks, those sorts of things. Anything that forces you to just go interior and feel how you feel, that's going to develop your intuition, that's going to let you know what it is that you want. And you will be so much more connected with yourself if you do that, which is really fundamental for connecting healthily with other people. The fourth thing I kind of mentioned, this is nature. I've been really anti this, I'm like not a hiker, but I found that some period of time outside connecting with nature in some way and is so positive for well being. And I'm not really an outdoorsy person in that regard. But walking outside in the sun, feeling the sun on your skin, amazing. Walking barefoot in the grass, looking up at a night sky in an area where there's not so much light pollution and seeing the Milky Way, that kind of stuff isn't just a nice to have. I believe that it is foundational in feeling connected to, to your community, to yourself and to the world. So make sure that you're getting some nature in your life. And then five is your work. I talked about work like it was this negative thing earlier and that's really not the impression that I want to leave you with because all the things I mentioned, relationships, the gym, fitness work, all of this stuff can be done in a fantastic, healthy way. But when it becomes an outlet for squeezing as much validation as we can, that's when we enter into this addictive cycle. Basically just trying to cover up some kind of deep seated feeling that we're not enough as we are and if only we could achieve more, if we could be all of these other things, then we would be better. But your work can be a really connective part of your life if you're connected to the mission of what you do, connected to how you're helping other people. And the part that I think gets left out if you're connected to the work itself, meaning if you get into flow when you're doing it. When I was thinking about this, all the time that I've spent has been time shifts. I love talking and thinking about this stuff. It is when I think about sharing this, my sense of being separate from you, from the world around me, disappears, at least internally. And then there's other times in my life where I have to do things like respond to email accounting. And I feel very separate from everything. I'm not suggesting that every moment of your work needs to be bliss and flow, but I am suggesting that if there's not an element of it that really does make you lose track of time, that you might want to consider doing something different. So this is just, I think, the beginning of sort of a foray into what I think is the biggest issue plaguing society at large, which is these cyclical, repetitive behaviors that are ultimately destructive, but which hide under the guise of being good for us. So if you're listening to this, hopefully you've identified one thing in your life which may be you would do be deader without which you could spend seven days not doing. And hopefully you also have some ways to connect with the world and the people around you and perhaps most importantly with yourself that is going to make it so you don't just disconnect from one app and connect to another. Right? So that you can actually break or decrease that addictive cycle. So I just got to say thank you to Tim Ferriss for putting out that podcast. I'm so happy that he is on the path that he is on because quite frankly, he's been someone that I've admired for a long time and I'm just really happy with the kind of content that he's been putting out lately. Thank you to you guys for listening. I hope that you decide to write in the comments and let me know what you think of this. And if you're more interested, I'm going to make a playlist that is about self love, that is about addiction. Some of my videos, some other people. I'll also link to that course that I mentioned if you are interested in it. So that is it for this video. Looking forward to interacting with you all in the comments. And last thing, we're going to be doing Charisma on command meetups. Really for this purpose. There's no financial point at this point in time. Maybe we'll do events one time but I am tremendously enjoying meeting you guys. So when I travel to a new city, join our email list. Right. I'll make announcements on the channel but that is when we will be having meetups and hopefully getting a chance just not to connect me to you, but you to everyone else who is watching these videos and is interested in this stuff. That's it for now. I'll see you in the next video.