Tuning in to Inner Peace: The Surprisingly Fun Way to Transform Your Life (8 page)

If you’re continually hungry, thin and weak, you don’t
know how to feed yourself properly. Your decisions and calculations about what and how much you need to eat are flawed. If you’re feeling constant drama around food choices, but insist you’re okay, you’re stuck.

If you’ve smoked or drank every day for years, and still attest that it’s not affecting your health or that it doesn’t matter, you’re stuck in the mindset of an 18-year-old Jimmy Dean character.

When you feel depressed or bored, do you have the habit of turning to alcohol to ‘drown your sorrows’? Has that ever actually worked? Would you advise your best friend to follow your routine? Or, when you’re talking to your friend, would you let the grown-up do the talking?

If you think you have to work long hours, day and night, year after year, and leave your young children at home, you haven’t accepted the fact that you are your boss in life. You’re letting your life be ruled by the logic of a 12-year-old who acts as if he has no choice. A mature adult person can consider the precious time a family has together when the kids are young, and plan to optimize this time. To hold your workaholic line, you have to ignore every parenting book, every major religion’s and culture’s view of the value of parenting. Defending your workaholic stance will be a full-time argument in your head.

If you feel the need to be critical and controlling to your kids and spouse, you’re probably really tired about now. It’s destroying your relationships, but you rationalize that you have to do it. Another part of you, just as relentless, keeps piping up, begging you to stop.

If your stance about your own addiction or compulsive behavior is not exactly the same advice you’d give to a friend with the same dilemma, you’re going to be embroiled in an exhausting inner argument against the truth.

Recognizing a Weakness and Admitting the Need for Help

Most of us have a go-to addiction or compulsive behavior, or a list of them. The point is not to declare that you don’t have that tendency. The point is to figure out a way to keep them in check, to grow through, and eventually, past them.

If I’m habitually staying late at work, starting to put on weight, or obsessing about a new person in my life, I know that I’m regressing into one of those self-sabotaging ruts from my past.

I’ll see the mental chatter of rationalization ramp up, and hear the soothsayer part of me speak up, saying, “You don’t have good judgment about this. You need help.”

The immature response can be dramatic and quick, “What? How dare you? You have no idea how busy I am and all I have to do! This place would go to hell in a handbasket without me!...”, and on and on.

Distance yourself from this internal arguing, and instead keep a pulse on your inner peace. From there, you can evaluate the truth of the situation. Easily. Instantly. When your inner peace is running low, it’s likely that you’ve let an argument against the truth go unchecked. Once you notice this, it only takes a minute to tidy up.

Addiction Recovery Research and Support… Easier than You Think

People often think that addictions are just a curse you have to live with. The shame and the guilt of living a life of self-sabotage is not something most people want to bring out into the open. And thus it remains… that one container we can’t bear to open up or throw away, and it’s starting to smell!

But there is a wide body of knowledge about what perpetuates addiction, how to kick an addiction, or minimize the negative impacts on the addicts and their circle of family and friends. No one said it was easy to kick an addiction, but you know, it’s not easy living life as an addict either. In many cases, huge progress can be made with some simple, doable steps.

When I was first out of college, I fell into the workaholic rut quickly. Smugly, I’d joked to myself and others about being a workaholic. But one day when I left the office at 6:30 am, as another colleague was arriving to start the day, I realized, “Wow, that’s crazy! I have a problem.”

I found a book called, “Confessions of a Workaholic” and checked it out of the library. Within a few pages, I found wisdom and insights that seemed to be directly written for me. I was blown away that a condition I’d barely acknowledged could be so easily explained and dissected by someone I’d never met.

That book and others I’ve read name every feeling and rationale I’d used to spend my time at work, and the common time management problems that compound the addiction:

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perfectionist tendencies that increased the scope of work beyond what I’d been asked to do,

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assuming I had to work longer to cover up how slow or inexperienced I actually was,

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wasting time during regular work hours so I’d be ‘forced’ to work late, thus appearing more diligent,

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difficulty making progress on projects because I was hesitant to ask for clarification,

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procrastinating making important phone calls due to fear or embarrassment for having to ‘bother’ someone again,

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the natural tendency of projects to expand to fit the time given,

and on and on.

The shame and confusion evaporated as I learned what was happening. It was like learning about the digestive system. It changed an emotional, confusing embarrassing situation into a natural process. (Yep, a lot like the digestive system!)

Feeling that your relationship with your boss or new lov
e is unhealthy? Need some ideas? Start by “Googling it!” Counselors who’ve spent their lives developing healthy skills for the area you’re struggling with are available at your fingertips. Give up the idea that you are unique and that you must hide in secret and in shame. It will give you some quick tips, as well as ideas of books to read and where to go for more in-depth support.

Believing that a compulsive or addictive behavior is a life-sentence will ensure that you are right. Get to a point where you can say, “Yep. This is an area of weakness for me. I am willing to let this pattern go. I’m probably going to need some help to do it.”

In many areas, a single book has been enough to turn the course of my life. For me, finding a weekly or more often support group, has been the most powerful key to change. But any change always starts with the recognition of the problem and the willingness to get help.

Let’s Pass Down the Best of our Family Values

Have you ever listened to a radio call in show? I used to listen to “Adam and Dr. Drew”. It was on late on weeknights, and teens and adults called in for help with sexual problems.

The first couple of times I listened, I was amazed. It was like listening to a fortuneteller, except that they could see the past rather than the future. The caller would hesitantly explain their current problem, then Dr. Drew would ask a few questions. “By any chance, did you have a parent that was extremely strict? Strongly religious perhaps? Controlling?” “By any chance, did you have brothers that teased you about your looks?” “By any chance, were you forced to have sex at an early age?” “By any chance, was one of your parents an alcoholic or drug addict?” “Do you remember being left alone much as a very small child?”

The callers and I were surprised when he hit the nail on the head, guessing exactly what had happened to them as young children. After listening to the program for awhile, I saw that he was less of a psychic and more of a data-
based analyst.

You’d be hard-pressed to find research that shows that addiction is not somehow related to our early childhood. Body composition, life experiences and many other complicating factors may dictate the details of how they play out, but addictions and compulsive behaviors are generally set up in our youth.

Flawed behavior in one generation sets up the next. We then pass on our version of flawed parenting, setting up our kids for flawed relationships. Okay, let’s accept that. Who among us can say that we would be able to be, or have been 100% right on target as the loving parents we feel every child deserves. So, chances are we picked up some crazy beliefs as kids.

But, we don’t have to pass on the whole package of what our parents gave us kit-and-caboodle, uninspected.

Tell me about your treasured family recipes. Do you follow your mom’s potato salad recipe exactly, or do you prefer less mayo? Just because your grandma was famous at potlucks for her jello with pimientos, are you?

When we look at our family beliefs and values as a step in evolution, we see clearly that it is our responsibility to tidy things up, to spruce up the good stuff, and to throw out the old useless stuff. Then, yes, we can proudly pass on the best of our family’s traditions and values.

Inner Peace Check

You can put your fingers in your ears and say, “Na na na na na na, I can’t hear you.” But truth doesn’t go away, so it won’t be long until you hear its voice bubble up again.

The truth is that we have a very short time on the planet, and that we will be fulfilled by being loving toward ourselves and others. The weaknesses in ourselves are not to be hidden, but to be admitted, and seen as challenges that present a way for us to grow into deeper, more compassionate people.

When you acknowledge that you have a problem and that help is likely available, you’ll feel a wave of peacefulness wash over you. Your peace meter will be pegged out
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Exercises

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What areas of your life are your go-to addictive or compulsive behaviors? Make a list.

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What areas used to be problems that are no longer? How did you move through them? What changes did you make? How?

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Listen to the mental chatter. Is there an area of a heated argument? What is the topic? Is a compulsive or addictive behavior involved?

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Instead of siding with the addict in your thinking, try to move to the middle. Are there arguments that come from that deeper place of truth you’ve been trying to dismiss? Acknowledge them.

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List the compulsive behaviors and addictions that you know of for the people nearest you when you were a child.

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Google it. Allow the possibility that there might be a solution for your problem. Then, google it. “What causes overeating?” “What are the best proven ways to stop smoking for people that have already tried everything?” “How can I stop nagging my kids?” After a week of research, hopefully you’re beginning to consider this more like you would approach a project at work, and less like a big pimple on your butt cheek.

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Write down a statement about a weakness. Can you honestly say something like, “_______ is an area that I’ve had troubles with. I can see how it is holding me back from my highest potential. I might need help to change and move through it.” Or simply, “I allow the possibility of change,” or “I release the need to hold on to this pattern,” as Louise Hay suggests. Work on variations of this statement daily. See how changing the wording registers with your inner peace meter.

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Formulate a plan for a first step. This could be as simple as reading a book that you’ve found recommended repeatedly for this problem or signing up for an email newsletter on the topic. It could be attending a support group meeting or contacting a friend that has overcome the problem.