I remember going to the doctors having my bloods taken and they were that of a 70 year old mans… The first doctor I saw was going to just give me a testosterone booster at the time and it’s funny I remember thinking, ‘yep, shoot me up and let me get on with this’
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Are you an addict?
When that word addict pops into your mind, what does your mind project? I imagine a heroin user shooting up in a dingy run down house… We don’t think of the person that wakes in fight or flight mode having to look at their phone, rather than checking in to how they’re feeling first. Or the person heading out for a run with there knee heavily strapped, on there 7th run of the week. What a lot of people don’t know is that firstly is that they are addicted. Secondly why they are addicted. We are chasing the same thing as the heroin addict or in fact like the last example running away from it.
It’s true some addictions on the surface seem better for you. For a certain amount of time… But then they turn damaging. And you come back to the same point…
The Running Addiction
Let’s take running for example, I hear this a lot from people that when they started running they were flooded with a sense of freedom and elation. So they run more and more… And more. Unknowingly addicted to the sense of peace it creates inside of them. Ultimately it turns into their meditation. Just being present. When the running stops and you don’t have an all consuming action that pulls your whole attention into the now, you are still faced with the same mind.
It then becomes the thing that you need to go, to feel at peace, a reliance, an addiction. What happens when you get injured or exhausted and you can’t run. The sense of peace evades you and you are left with yourself…
My Addiction. My lesson
I know this very well as I was this person above, 7-8 years ago. I ended up turning my release to freedom, into a stress and exhaustion. I was used to hammering my body and looking back now, I saw my body as a total separate entity to that of my mind. I can push myself to the limits, training, I know this. Past the mind when it tells you to stop. If the body faltered, the body was the issue. Not the actions that preceded it.
I was in total denial and training for the World age group triathlon championship in London. I was training hard, about 25 hours a week, at the end of a long race season! My performance was getting worse…
I remember going to the doctors having my bloods taken and they were that of a 70 year old mans… Testosterone levels were sooo low. The first doctor was going to just give me a testosterone booster at the time and it’s funny I remember thinking, ‘yep, shoot me up and let me get on with this’
However, she decided to send me to see another doctor, a fatigue specialist and this guy asked how much training I was doing. I told him and he just simply said, ‘Your training too much’. Of which I replied, ‘I’m used to this, training isn’t the issue’. Of course I didn’t take the time off. I thought, ‘The issue isn’t that simple, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about’. Where as he was probably thinking, The issue is this simple and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about’ Haha! Anyway, I trained hard, raced poorly at the world championships and felt disappointed. Then had the time off afterwards, my bloods returned to normal. He was right…
What are you looking for?
What’s my point here… Let’s dissect the above. I started triathlon just for the love of it and the sense of freedom it gave me. It was stress relief at the time, a sense of being. What’s more important is what was I looking for from triathlon? To escape myself…
It was an invasive way of pulling me away from dealing with the shit underneath the surface. It became the addiction that blocked out the true reality. That reality was that I wasn’t at peace with myself. But the universe will transpire to push you down the path of facing yourself at some point. It was here I went down a path of self-discovery. I tried to understand my motives. The way I lived my life. My recurring patterns…
How did I do this… I sat with myself and listened… Instead of running away.
Through Meditation.
Learn to be
There is a lot more to be learnt through being rather than doing. More than you could ever imagine. And I know if you have read this far, you can relate to the story above. You feel it and at a deep level, know it.
Rather than feed an addiction, or find another.
Start to get to know yourself and then you can run with true freedom…
If you enjoyed this post try reading – ‘Stepping Into Fear’
If you want a step by step process sheet and loads more transformative practices for both body & mind then subscribe to the ‘SOULVISION’ human growth platform.
