Hey SLAYERS! I’m on location shooting a new project so here’s a Flashback Friday post of a popular blog from the past. Happy Fri-Yay SLAYERS!
Are You Addicted To Excitement
Does the thought of your life calm, quiet, and drama-free make your skin crawl? Does it send a panic, or chill down your spine? Does a stress-free existence sound like a four letter word? You may be addicted to excitement. For many people, the idea of living a peaceful life is so repelling or frightening they create problems and chaos to feel alive, but at what cost? It is common for those who have lived in an unpredictable environment to continue creating unpredictability after they’ve left it to mimic the feelings of their past and link them to those of being alive because that is what they’ve known or have grown accustomed to. It can also come from a place of low self-esteem and ego run wild, that nasty combo I know all too well from my own past. That feeling of not deserving the good, and the good never being enough. A viscous cycle of damage, of adding unnecessary wreckage in your path and a never-ending desire to find the next big thing worthy of your unrealistic expectations. At the end of the day, it’s doing ourselves harm, or putting a band-aid over a wound that can’t be healed by outside things. That wound will never heal, because we will never allow it to, that wound is what we’ve chosen to give us purpose, and without it, what would our purpose be?
What if we made our purpose living a life full of love, of beautiful healthy things, and by beautiful healthy things I mean beautiful healthy for us, not what our family thinks they should be, or kids, or friends, co-workers, neighbors, just us. We get to decide, or discover what those are. It took some work for me to find a way to be comfortable without drama, or something “big” to look forward to that was going to give me that rush of adrenaline I had been seeking out like a junkie. I thought I needed that to feel alive, so I was always searching for it, whether it was an event, shopping, a night out, or just being a part of something that made me feel, well, a part of something. What I didn’t realize, or couldn’t realize living in a world of more, was I needed to make sure I felt a part of my own life, and I didn’t. I felt like life was going on and I was constantly trying to catch up to it, like it was a runaway train, and I didn’t have a ticket, so even if it did stop long enough for me to catch up, I always felt like I was left standing on the platform with my suitcase watching it leave the station again. The problem was, I didn’t even know where that train was going, I just wanted to get on to escape myself, and escape the messes I had created trying to give myself a purpose or shot of adrenaline to add some excitement to my life.
I do really believe it’s two-fold with a lot of us. Always looking for excitement, and coming from an environment where we may have been in a constant state of fear, we tend to link fear to excitement. So creating circumstances in our lives that lead us to be fearful we get that same rush of excitement and jolt, that we associate with being alive. We can procrastinate to feel stress, pick unhealthy relationships that trigger us from our past. We might lie, cheat, steal, not because of bad decisions, but because we’re looking for that drug, that hit of excitement that we’re getting away with something, or might be found out. We may even put ourselves in dangerous situations to feed into this addiction. But it doesn’t serve us, it doesn’t help us, and ultimately can do a lot of damage to our lives. The first step to finding a better healthier way to live is to identify what we’re doing, and then finding out why. Many times it’s a feeling of abandonment from the past, it can come from growing up in a house with addiction issues, mental health issues, or perhaps from our own past relationships or own mental health and addiction issues. Whatever the source, once you’ve labelled it, you can start to make healthier choices for yourself. Identifying each time a choice is made that is meant to produce a sense of fear or excitement, and taking a more loving choice for yourself. For me it was a lot of contrary action, of doing the opposite of what I wanted to do, or had been doing, and learning to comfortable in the uncomfortableness of not thriving off of the hit of drama. Of learning to breathe through the moments when I felt I should stir some things up and create trouble or plan something to run away from my feelings and thoughts. Of learning just to be, and learning to trust and love myself, and accepting that that was enough. Look, it’s always great to have things to look forward to, but not when it becomes a replacement for living your life, and to fill a void that really is an inside job. Only you can fill that void, and it won’t come from outside things. SLAY on.
SLAY OF THE DAY: Do you feel like your life has no meaning if there isn’t drama or the excitement of an upcoming event? What makes you think that? If you took those things out of your life, what would you be left with? How could you fill your life up without using those things to distract yourself? What are some more loving ways you could fill your life up, for you? What can you work on, within yourself, so you don’t feel so alone, abandoned, or left out? Look at your life SLAYER, really look, at it’s core, what do you have, and who are you? What do you know to be true? Build from there. If there are things you don’t like, change them, but change them for you, and make changes that honor and show yourself that you love yourself, and that you will never abandon you and your life. SLAY on.
S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you
State Of Slay™ 