Addiction and Discipline

My anger used to be explosive and uncontrollable. I never wanted to fight, not because I was scared of getting hurt, but because I was scared of hurting someone else.

My natural instinct is to go straight for the eyes or the groin and to completely incapacitate my opponent, without any regard for them whatsoever.

I probably should have trained in martial arts in order to learn to manage such instincts and develop control over them, but instead I shut them down and they turned into depression.

When you practice self-control without any kind of outlet, you end up directing all your negative emotions inward, and I knew that to allow those emotions to go wild without self discipline would have meant me getting in trouble, hurting someone or some other negative consequence, so I let those emotions bottle up.

I found an outlet in writing and in music but I never had much confidence to share my work with others, and so I never ended up developing my skills because I lacked confidence.

I ended up with anxiety and depression, neither of which anyone understood because so few people around me had the same kind of fire I had. The fire is the thing that drives the most famous entrepreneurs, skilled fighters, and criminals.

People with a fire so hot have 3 choices. Learn to wield it well, burn others or burn themselves. Even those who learn to wield it may end up burning others and burning themselves in more subtle ways, abusive relationships, ruthless disregard for others well being.

Those who turn that first outward and don’t learn self control become criminals at worst or angry complainers at best. And those who turn it inward become emotionally unstable, often depressed. Many artists who don’t reach a certain level of success fit into this category.

I wish someone had identified such patterns and shared them with me as a kid. Of course it’s not worth regretting something that is out of my control, but I imagine it would have helped me a lot, and so I hope I can help steer anyone with a similar fire in the right direction.

Eventually I turned to Buddhist and Taoist ideas in order to get out of my depression. It helped a lot but it also smothered out a fire that fueled me. I was influenced by people who seemed to have their shit together and functioned as monk like existences in the world, at least when other people are watching.

The concepts of duality and non-duality helped me find peace and joy and a connection with the universe. But I felt myself being watered down in a way that wasn’t healthy too. I don’t think we need to be like monks all the time unless it’s something that we feel called to do with all our being. But we can learn a monk mode to help us handle difficult moments.

And so I stopped trying to be monk-like except when it helped.

I realized my anger and my passion were one and the same and I just needed to turn myself into a vessel that could carry such fire.

Any kind of discipline helps with that and I’d recommend turning to whichever kind of discipline feels the best. Intermittent fasting and working out are one way. Practicing a skill every day without fail is another. Changing habits yo fit your ideal is another.

Becoming reliable to yourself is the goal. Show yourself that you don’t falter and you will have a place to store your fire that will not hurt yourself or others.

Recently I started being more mindful of my compulsive behaviors. I tell myself I will play games for 40 minutes and it turns into an hour and a half. Now I realize that by stopping at 40 minutes, I am training a muscle which will help balance my life and teach my subconscious that I can handle the life I desire.

And so stopping at 40 minutes becomes something I want to do, not just something I have to do. There is the positive reinforcement of knowing it is turning me into who I want to be and not just the negative reinforcement of feeling like crap about being a lazy bum.

I started practicing guitar every day without fail and focusing on the least fun aspect, drills. I gamified it by trying to play drills faster and faster. I’m building endurance by repeating a difficult drill for longer and longer.

My finger muscles could only handle 30 seconds of repeated difficult movement but now they can for 2 minutes. I could play most scales at 80-90 BPM (two notes per beat) if I wanted to play perfectly. Now I’ve gotten up to 150 BPM, Hoping to get to 180 BPM soon. I’ll practice some more difficult finger patterns from now on.

Every day for at least 20 minutes is what I say but somehow I find that I want to keep going because I know I’m making real progress towards becoming the player I want to be. The progress is so tangible.

For 15 years I just thought “I’m not that kind of technical player” but now in two months I’ve proved myself wrong. Now I am getting addicted to the progress.

That’s the point. We will get addicted to something either way, so discipline exists to help us channel our addictive tendencies so that we aren’t run by them.

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My music and fiction all available here

Posted Using INLEO