Discover how love, grace, and self-belief can help overcome addiction and build lasting change in this powerful message.
Overcoming Addiction: A Message of Love and Grace
Welcome to this week's You Are Destined for Greatness. Appreciate you taking your time to be here with me today.
This week I've got a big subject and a serious subject, and that is addiction. You know, addiction seems like it's everywhere. It seems like it's affecting so much and so much of us. I mean, if you are not addicted yourself, or been addicted, or know somebody, or are related to somebody closely who’s addicted or has an addiction challenge, I don’t even know who you are.
It seems like it’s just so much, so much of the time. And I mean, why wouldn’t it be? All these behaviors that we do make us feel better. So, naturally, you know, you would think that, I mean, naturally, that’s why addiction is so prevalent and why it’s so commonplace.
What Addiction Really Is
When I talk about addiction, I’m talking about any of the behaviors that we do. And not, you know, drugs and alcohol are a couple of them, but I’m talking about all the behaviors that we do as human beings in an effort to change our state, to feel better because we don’t like the way we’re feeling.
We want to feel better. We do this activity that causes us to feel better, we get this shot of dopamine, we feel better, okay? But as a result of doing this behavior, we have a net negative result or a long-term negative impact on our life, okay?
That’s what I’m calling an addiction.
And I thought about, what in such a big subject, first of all, I recommend that you check out this week’s podcast on addiction. But I thought, what is even useful in two or three minutes about addiction? And here’s what I got, okay?
How to Help Someone Struggling with Addiction
The one thing that we can do, is that we can, for people or for yourselves, if you’re struggling with an addiction, or if you know someone that’s experimenting, or, you know, with a substance, or that is addicted, the first thing that we can do is, well, one of the things that we can do, a big thing, is to love them, you know?
A lot of times we look at addiction, and we look at these things, and we just kind of, you know, we, “an addict,” well, you’re an addict, or you’re addicted, and we just kind of shun them. We just look at them with disdain, and we don’t want to talk about it. We kind of whisper about it, and we kind of keep it down on the down low. You know what I’m talking about?
And they know all that. They feel it. They see it. They know what’s going on. And my, my recommendation is to love them and not give them disdain and not condemn them and let them, not let them feel that way. Give them love is what I’m saying.
Because here’s the thing, they already feel bad enough. They didn’t set out to be an addict or to have a negative impact on their lives. They set out to feel better. Of course they would want to feel better.
Most of us haven’t been taught or have learned how to handle negative emotion, or that to feel bad isn’t always going to be the goal, and things like that. And we don’t know what to believe about ourselves, so we’re just like trying to navigate this world, and that’s where we end up.
Love them. That’s the best thing that we can do. Because at the core of this is what they believe, or you believe, about ourselves, okay? That’s at the core of any addiction.
My Personal Experience with Addiction
And I know I’m coming to you with flat-ass knowledge from my own experience and from the experience of helping with people through addictions, out of addictions, and from preventing addictions for a lot of years. Okay.
In my own experience, I was addicted to alcohol and nicotine for decades. Okay. Over 20 years I drank to excess. I drank alcohol, I don’t mean a little bit extra, okay?
And the pain and the suffering and the permanent damage that I caused. The lives, the permanent things that can’t be undone, when I look at that, there’s only one word I have for it, and that is, it was so sad. Okay, just so sad.
The negative impact that I had on so many people’s lives, not to mention myself, and my time in prison, and all the things that I did that impacted what I believed about me. That impacted the world in a negative way, until I found, after over 20 years, almost 23 actually, what needed to happen to make the change to end it.
How Change Becomes Possible
And I encourage you, I mean, that is the system that I have about self-belief is what allows people to be able to make changes that they haven’t been able to do before, okay?
And so that’s why I’m talking about addiction today. But to begin, okay, that requires desire, and that requires a system. Okay. I have the system. If somebody has a desire, we can help them through any of that.
But what we can’t do is we can’t change other people, and we can’t give them desire. So, in the meantime, there’s multiple things that we can do, but one of the most important things that we can do for anyone, and I’m going to say this again because it’s important, including you. If you’re struggling with a habit, if you’re struggling with addiction, if you’re struggling with any behavior that you do, or someone that you love does, in an effort to feel better that has a net negative result in your life, the first thing that you can do is give yourself grace, and to love yourself, and to love them, and have them be okay.
That doesn’t mean that you accept the behavior. That doesn’t mean that the behavior is okay. It doesn’t mean any of that. It means that you separate the behavior from the individual, and you love the individual, and especially if that individual is you.
Final Thoughts: You Are Destined for Greatness
All right, more on this to come. Thanks for being with me. You Are Destined For Greatness.
