When I come home from a hard day, I don’t sedate to the pain. I don’t turn on the TV, pour a glass of wine, roll a joint, smoke a cigarette, do a line, drink a coffee, pop a pill, call my doctor or plow myself full of sedative junk food. I sit there and take in my frustration, my fatigue, my fear that I’ll never truly be free and my disappointment in the cycles of futility we’ve all been tricked into participating in. I sit there and let the pain train run me over and then I let it back up and run me over again. I want to feel exactly how far away I am from where I really want and need to be. I let my inner pain punch me square in the face hard, no sedation. I want to feel every ounce of what’s really going on. I then use that pain to my advantage and that’s the big secret. I’m slowly building the life of my dreams by firming up what I don’t want and what I don’t enjoy. To do that, I need to feel everything.

If you don’t feel your pain, you don’t move and you never change. Sedative addictions are about disconnecting from the part of yourself that knows change is needed. Addiction is the act of self murdering the best part of ourselves. The healthier I get, the more I can’t stand my pain, so I use that tension energy inside my healthy body to actually change and do something about how I’m feeling…….instead of sitting in my jail cell pretending everything is OK and decorating my jail cell with more stuff, so it doesn’t look so much like a prison. Every day when I get home from work (and I put 100% effort into my work as well) I rush toward doing what ever is needed to remove myself from the pot of boiling water that I’m sitting in. To do that, you need to feel just how hot that water really is. Bravery and courage are the opposites of distraction and sedation.

Self sabotage is the process by which you don’t have enough time or energy to live the life you want because you’re too busy living the life you don’t want. If you want to break out of Shawshank Prison, step #1 is to get healthy and remove all sedation and distraction from your life. Swim in your pain, dive deep, don’t get out, soak it all in, look it in the eye. Pain is a guardian, not a goblin….so don’t avoid it. Feel the full sting of the life you don’t want and then make a move toward something you do want. Throw down the sedative pain killers and unslave. Feel the pain and gain the motivation to make a move on your best life. My dream life is coming together very quickly using this formula. Your pain is there to guide you to a better way of being. One life. One time at bat. Swing for the fences. You were born to do great things. Use baby steps. Start today. Get healthy first and then it all falls into place.