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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about overcoming addiction and I'm going to tell you the deepest root cause at the bottom of every addiction listen up because this information I'm going to give you here is not just for hardcore drug addicts this is something that's going to be useful for everybody I'm going to share with you some deep insights that I got from my own food addiction and overcoming my food addiction earlier in my life and what that's going to give you is it's going to give you a really deep high-level understanding of what addictions are and why they exist and where they ultimately stem from because every addiction stems from the exact same deep place firstly though how do we tell that we have an addiction there's a great limit s --t that I can give you which I got from gay Hendricks I really love this and what he basically says is if you stop doing the behavior that you suspect that you're addicted to if you stop doing it for one week and cravings arise then that means that you're addicted and if you stop doing it and no cravings arise that means you're not addicted so this is a very simple rule of thumb you can run this test on any behavior you have that you suspect of being an addiction and if you actually do this and try this out you might be shocked at what you surprised at how many things you're addicted to you might discover that you're addicted to things that you wouldn't even have normally thought or addictions these days in modern society almost everyone is an addict the only question is to what degree how severe is it and how many addictions do you have most of us have not one or two addictions but at least half a dozen if not a dozen or more the most common addictions are of course drugs but also food porn tobacco alcohol TV and Internet videogames very common these days also socialization chit-chatting and partying with your friends shopping work gossip and thinking now thinking is a really interesting one you might think that you're not addicted to thinking and that thinking doesn't really qualify as an addiction but man actually thinking is the number one thing that most people are addicted to and they don't even know it now that's a tangent that I can't go into here it's a very deep rabbit hole that I talk about in my enlightenment videos and in my meditation video so I will cover it here but what I want to do here is I want to talk about the root cause of all of these addictions because they only have one ultimate root cause and that is fear of emptiness fear of emptiness sounds kind of weird fear of emptiness how does this create addiction well it's really the fear of the emptiness that you experience when you are alone with nothing to do so if you just sit in a room and don't do anything for an extended period of time you will notice this fear of emptiness come up and it comes up in many different ways and what addictions are is they're distractions and escapes from this existential emptiness fear that all of us have who have not faced it head-on the way that I discovered this is with my food addiction I don't know if you notice about me but I used to be overweight quite heavily overweight for most of my life since I was about ten years old until I was about 21 or 20 two years old all through school and through the first half of college I was quite overweight and not just overweight but I was really obsessed with food and I over ate a lot of food and just ate terrible food and then when I got into college finally I decided that this is something I need to change and over the course of about six months I put a stop to all of it and I got myself in shape and I've stayed pretty lean ever since ah now the thing that I discovered though in those first few days when I started to make that transformation with my diet and with my fitness is I discovered this root cause of addiction I didn't realize that it was all addictions I thought it was just food but what I realized and I remember this very vividly as I was sitting there at home it was late at night and usually I would go grab a snack some candy or some some soda or some ice cream or whatever while I was uh just relaxing after college but what happened here is that I committed to eating cleaner so I made a commitment not to eat any dessert or to drink any soda or any sugary type products and I had some ice cream in the refrigerator and I was sitting there just watching some TV and I really got this craving for some ice cream I wanted to go great grab some the way I normally would but then I remembered that no I can't do that because I've made this commitment to clean up my diet and so what I did is this was a decisive moment for me I just sat there i sat there and didn't move didn't do anything just sat there the TV was playing and I just watched this craving for ice cream course through my body and it was a whole physical reaction right the whole physical reaction as you know with addictions if you've ever tried to quit something like smoking or drinking or porn or whatever is that you have this whole craving that your body goes through is not just a mental thing it's also a physiological thing and so what I did is I just I force myself to sit there and just to experience it and that was the decisive moment for me from then on my whole diet got a lot easier because I was able to crack that uh that really difficult the most emotionally challenging moment in this whole phase of changing my diet was just to sit there and to not give in to this craving and just kind of observe it more or less mindfully so that's what I did uh so I'm going to use food as the kind of prototypical example throughout the discussion here in this episode but of course you can replace food with any addiction it doesn't matter what I'm talking about food you replace it with whatever you're addicted to internet porn videogames relationships love thinking anything it doesn't matter right it's all the same stuff basically so the problem that you have with whatever you're addicted to is that you're basically unable to sit alone in an empty room you can't stand it so what you do is you turn to blank as your distraction and fill in the blank with whatever you want so you turn to food as a distraction or you turn to drugs as a distraction or you turn to shopping as a distraction now you might wonder like what does this have to do with anything why is this this notion of sitting alone in an empty room why would that be important and why is this being used as kind of the metric to judge things isn't it sort of arbitrary and actually no it's not arbitrary it's a very special metric it's very important because in a sense the degree to which you are self developed and the degree to which you're emotionally mature and the degree to which you are capable as a human being is the degree to which you can sit alone in an empty room without any external stimulation see and the degree to which you need external stimulation to feel happy in your life is the degree to which you have of no mastery over your life it's the degree to which you are a slave to external reality it's the difference between being externally grounded and internally grounded and the whole aim of self-actualization is to ground yourself deeper and deeper into your own being internally and being internally means just being rather than doing rather than running around and stimulating yourself with television or food or anything else you see so this criteria of sitting alone in an empty room and being fulfilled or satisfied or at the very least not agitated and full of craving sensations is a very important metric it's a very important litmus test and you can try this by yourself just sit alone comfortably in a room for an hour or two doing nothing and see how you feel do you feel okay do you feel happy do you feel normal or do you feel antsy and bored and pissed off and frustrated and agitated and you can't even sit still for five minutes or you're lost in fantasies in your mind about stuff you're dreaming about sex and you're dreaming about food and you're dreaming about business and you're dreaming out work and all this other stuff but you can't just be present in the moment this is very very important a lot of people completely underestimate how important this is you can't really be satisfied in life if you can't sit alone in an empty room for a couple hours without cravings and most people can't do that and the reason that is is fundamentally that your life is hollow see your life is actually empty but you've been running away from that truth from that reality for most of your life ever since you were a child and you started playing video games or you started playing with toys or you started reading books or watching television or whatever you started doing eating food candy all that stuff was you getting attached to stimulation because you weren't able just to be present and satisfied with stillness and with being so what you started to do early on in your life and you continued to do it today and is very normal for you today you think that this is how life should run what you do is you stuff yourself until you're aching and you're guilty that should ring some bells for you think of all the times either recently or in the past where you stuffed yourself until you're aching and then you're guilty maybe you stuffed yourself with a Netflix marathon or you stuffed with yourself with a a porn marathon or you stuffed yourself with food at a buffet or some restaurant or backyard barbecue or you stuffed yourself with a reading or with knowledge or you stuffed yourself with work it's like work work work work work right what you did is you stuffed yourself think about the last time that you stuffed yourself and how you felt you felt very full but you also felt dirty and really even though you felt full on the surface deep down below the surface what happened is that you felt empty inside and no matter how much you consume that emptiness is never filled because this is the inescapable limit of hedonism and materialism is that you can't fill that emptiness of being with more doing or with material X colonel possessions or activities no matter how much you try you can't do it so the problem here is that you're running away from this existential emptiness and this existential emptiness usually most of us think of it as a problem something to avoid but actually is something that you need to open yourself up to and to face and to embrace and to accept and this is what most people do not do and by not doing this this leads to all manner of a dysfunctional addictive behaviors and it leads to just a dissatisfaction with life and then ultimately can lead to depression and even to suicide because being biased nature is empty that is the nature of being itself is emptiness but see most people don't like this idea at first it seems kind of negative and it seems depressing actually it's not it's a very beautiful and incredible experience to fully realize the emptiness of being and to be one with it this is a very profound experiences of what spirituality is based upon but most people aren't mature enough to grasp this and they're so busy running away from it because they've been running away from it since they were like 3 years old that now it seems like it's the normal thing to do it's fear of the void the existential void inside of you this is the void you feel when you start to think and contemplate about your own death have you ever just sat down and contemplated your own death do you realize that you will be dead within the next 20 30 50 years at most you'll be dead and you'll be dead forever never again in the billions of years that this universe will go through will you ever again be alive now sit with that and think about that for a moment and try to imagine what the experience of death is I don't mean going through death but I mean after you're dead what that is that lack of experience in other words there will not be no more colors or sounds or tastes there won't be sex there won't be entertainment there won't be porn there won't be videogames there won't be business activity there won't be money-making there won't be fun there won't be travel there won't be sadness there won't be anything there won't be fear there won't be uh you know bodily sensations of any kind it's going to be a complete void so empty that is not even going to be black and it's not even going to be silent because silence and darkness are actually phenomenon of life so it's going to be so empty that you're not even to have those things it's the same emptiness that you experience when you're in deep sleep not when you're dreaming but when you're in deep sleep and you have no sensations and no memories of anything you don't even know that you're alive that's what the void is like is what you were before you were born think back to what your life was before you were born it was a void right you have nothing you have zero experience of it so that's the thing you're ultimately running away from and that's something that you don't just I'm not just saying you're running away from death I mean you're running away from that sort of empty that's sort of emptiness it doesn't just exist after death it exists right now now in the reality of being itself so if you just sit and do nothing what you have is you just have raw experience and if you sit there long enough you start to realize that all this experience that's happening it's always changing it's always in flux and ultimately none of it means anything and this might start to make you depressed this might lead to an existential crisis but what has to happen is that you have to face this you have to face this void at one point in your life if you want to conquer addiction sustainably see a lot of people what they do when they have addiction is they look for kind of a a service level solution it's like well how do I change my behavior so I stop smoking or I stop overeating how do I go to the gym more and workout more all that stuff it can be useful to a degree but it will not really allow you to conquer addiction permanently sustainably because it doesn't get you looking at the void and accepting the void so how do we get you to conquer the void and to accept it well you can't really conquer it but you can come to peace with it and it's really simple if you permanently want to conquer any addiction that you have here's what you do is you just sit with emptiness and do nothing so if it's a food addiction you sit with an empty stomach and you don't do anything and if it's a drug addiction users sit there with you know a clean clean veins and you don't do anything you don't fill them with any addictive substances and if it's a video game addiction that you just sit there without any stimulating images or pixels moving in front of your eyes and so on and so forth right and as you do that don't go into fantasy but just sit there very mindfully don't distract yourself you're going to be very tempted to distract yourself with some book or call a friend or talk to your family or go to the park or whatever we have to notice that all those are distractions from just facing being itself and facing that emptiness of being and as you sit there and you face that emptiness what you have to do is you just have to surrender yourself to the purifying fire of emptiness where those cravings will come up in you and all your suffering will come up and all your desire for sex and for money and for food and for for fun and for socialization and for love and for for all this kind of stimulating exciting stuff all those cravings will come up and you're gonna have to suffer through all those and sort of face your inner demons and as you sit there and brace yourself you're going to have a psychosomatic reaction your mind is going to be going crazy and your body is going to be going crazy and you're going to feel uncomfortable and perhaps even ill and it's going to be emotionally challenging but what's going to happen is that the longer you sit there hour after hour after hour doing nothing that purifying fire will burn out all your inner demons and you can just imagine this all your inner demons are just kind of escaping you as every hour goes by and that's how you conquer every addiction if you don't do this then you don't really conquer the addiction you just find a short-term solution and usually what happens is that you're going to fall back into it if not in a week then in a month and if not in a month than in a year and if not in a year than in ten years you will fall back into it because you have it really faced the inner demons you've just sweep them under the rug so what I'm giving you here is a mature solution to addiction this is a very mature solution this is the ultimate solution and the way you tell it's but she is that it's very emotionally challenging this is not easy to do most people don't want to do this in fact this leads us to the catch-22 that every addict faces when they're going through recovery the catch-22 of addictions is that every addict when he tries to go through recovery wants to find a technique that will help him to avoid the emotional labor of recovery but it's that avoidance of emotional labor which created the addiction in the first place so if you notice those people that are really hardcore addicts in whatever field of life they are the ones who tend to avoid emotional labor the most that's basically what addiction is coming from it's the avoidance of emotional labor emotional labor one of the forms of emotional labor here is this emotional labor that comes when you sit there and do absolutely nothing it seems like doing absolutely nothing is simple and not laborious at all and actually for someone who's psychologically healthy and mature and not an addict it's the most pleasant thing ever but for someone who is an addict sitting and doing nothing is like torture it's really emotionally laborious which is kind of the paradox of it and most addicts they just want a quick fix solution they don't want to face their emotional labor but it's because they don't want to face their emotional labor that they're addicts you see so it's like a vicious cycle and at one point or another what's going to happen to you in your life is you're going to realize this you're really going to get it not just hearing it from me but you're really going to like feel it in your bones at one point and if you do then that will be the beginning of the end of your addictions and if you don't if you keep resisting and you keep running away from this and you just hear my words but you don't really get them to penetrate down into your bones then you're going to be an addict for the rest of your life in one form or another all addiction is basically emotional immaturity all addiction is basically childishness it's pretty profound to think of it that way let me give you my top three techniques for addicts for becoming a non addict for becoming a really psychologically stable and internally grounded human being this is what's necessary if you want to self actualize you can't be fully self actualized while at the same time holding a bunch of addictions it's just not going to work so my top three techniques number one is the do-nothing technique number two is mindfulness meditation number three is strong determination sitting and then a bonus number four is what I call existential investigation so let me just briefly cover these I actually have videos that cover most of these techniques in a lot of depth so I'm not going to go into the details here I have a video about technique number one which is to do nothing technique you can search for it I have a video for mindfulness meditation you can search for that I have a video for strong determination sitting you can search for that so that covers those three they're all really powerful and they're basically different ways of just sitting and doing nothing and paying attention to present experience to being and then the fourth bonus technique is the existential investigation and what that is is you sit down and you actually start to investigate who and what you are existentially and you face your inner demons really head-on you don't just sit there I mean sitting there is really good but you actually take out even more proactive approach you start to ask yourself okay what's going to happen when I'm dead you start to contemplate your own death you start to face your own death you start to face the insignificance of your existence and that's something that I actually want to cover in a new episode that I'll shoot soon I'll show you how to do this kind of existential investigation and I'll talk about existential crises so I don't want to go into that too deeply here I just as a very simple technique if you just want to start to break your addictions right now all you really have to do is just make some time sit in a room by yourself alone without any stimulation without any music without any books without any games or television or anything else and just sit there and do nothing it's really that simple addiction is a much bigger problem than we realize I mean I'm talking about here what I would call kind of like hard addictions even things like video games or even things like shopping I would call a hard addiction but actually there's a whole second category of addictions which I would call soft addictions or emotional addictions and this is something I want to cover again in a separate episode because it's going to take me a while to explain all this but basically soft addictions are things that you wouldn't even ever consider as an addiction for example criticism or judgment that might be an example of a soft addiction or an addiction to an addiction to love and validation from other people or an addiction for compliments from other people or an addiction for success these sorts of things most of us think that these are actually good things or if they're not good things we think that they're not really addictions but actually they are addictions and they're in fact some of the most important addictions that you have even besides your drug addiction or your porn addiction or your video game addiction and I'll talk more about that in the future with additional episodes so one way to look at self-actualization is you can think of it as the removal of addictions that's one way to to think of it there's a lot of different perspectives that you can take on self-actualization because it's a very deep and kind of high level abstract concept but that one is one that I really like because when I think of a self actualized human being one of the things that immediately comes to mind is that this person is totally internally grounded and not dependent on any particular form of stimulation at all now this doesn't mean this is an anal person that this person can't have fun or can't watch some TV once in a while or can't play a video game he can but he doesn't need it he doesn't crave it he's transcended all that stuff and in fact for him the thing that's most enjoyable is not watching TV or playing a video game or watching some porn the most enjoyable thing for him is just to sit and to be that's become more enjoyable now think about that how close are you to that ideal you might be very far off think about what it would take how you would have to structurally change your life to get to the point where you can just sit and be as happy as you are playing video games let's say or watching a Netflix marathon without any stimulation at all do you believe that that's even possible can you see the power of that can you see why it would be powerful to just sit and do absolutely nothing and be just as satisfied as you are when you're stuffing yourself with food or when you're shopping or when you're gossiping with your friends you see why this is powerful if you can be happy doing nothing at all think about what happens when you actually are doing something wonderful like watching a beautiful sunset or hiking in the mountains or playing a fun video game or smoking some pot you can still do all those things but just think about how much more enjoyment you'll get if your baseline level of enjoyment is already at the maximum of where you currently are when you're doing all those activities you see it's like an overflow of internal wealth you might say you know external wealth is like money houses and yachts internal wealth is how happy you can be doing nothing and that's something that you would develop that's not something that comes to you by accident people don't just grow up with a lot of great internal wealth almost everybody starts with zero internal wealth and it has to be developed through self actualization work that's what this whole channel is about that's what this whole website is about that's what everything I tell you is leading you towards in one fashion or another so keep that in mind one last issue I want to address here before I go is 12-step programs so you might be wondering well Leo what about 12-step programs is this something I should do are they good what you're suggesting here is slightly different than most 12-step programs so here's a scoop on 12-step programs they can be very helpful and for many people who have hard addictions they need support from knowledgeable experts who have already gone through you know all this stuff and who can help them and hold their hand and guide you through all the steps so that can be very helpful but most 12-step programs lack the big picture you can enroll in a 12-step program and you'll go through and they'll give you a lot of different techniques and that stuff will be great but they won't give you the really big picture because they don't quite frankly understand it themselves right your mission is not to quit an addiction and that's the only real mission that a 12-step program will give you it'll just say okay let's have you quit this addiction and maybe they'll say let's replace this bad addiction with some good addictions but they won't give you the true mission that you need to have which is to become self actualized see there's a very big difference between what we might say playing defense versus playing offense in a 12-step program you're playing defense you're not playing offense you're not trying to become the best human being you can possibly be you're simply trying to overcome a deficiency or a dysfunction that you have and while that can be good it's better than nothing it's not as good as what I'm telling you here and really you can do both right you can take the techniques from the 12-step program but most importantly have the mission to become self actualized to become your greatest self to become the greatest that a human being can become and if you do that then that will be much more motivating for you than just to quit a drug or just to quit for basically a negative reason you need a positive reason and the most positive reason is to become self actualized alright that's it I'm done please click the like button on this post your comments down below I do read a majority of the comments share this episode with a friend and lastly come check out actualize that org it's my website I've got some free resources on there that will help you to self actualize I'm not really interested in just helping you overcome a little problem that you have in your life or even a big problem self-actualization is not about fixing problems it's about living life to its fullest right this is a very different attitude most people don't have this attitude in life and it takes a while before you can acquire this attitude you can understand all the facets of it there's a lot of conceptual frameworks that you need to really get on track with self-actualization also various techniques what I do every single week is I release new content through my newsletter and on my youtube channel that explains all this stuff this is all very practical stuff I'm a my approach to self-improvement is very hard-nosed no nonsense no new-age type of stuff I'm just really practical about the concepts and techniques that I find and how to apply it in my life and I love to share them with you and to show you the kind of results that you could get so go check that out if you sign up to the newsletter it's free and it'll keep you on track so you don't lose track of this you don't forget it's very easy to forget you might watch one of my episodes and then the next week it's as though you watch nothing it just kind of goes in one ear and out the other never to rebe remembered again in your life doesn't change and what I want for you is I want not just a change in your life I want to help you make a transformation in your life and that's possible but you have to stick around with me you have to learn some of the frameworks and that will take a while right my take is six twelve months to really sort of soak this stuff in and start to get on track so the newsletter is a really great way to do that outside of course I have a book list all those are great sources and I'm working to release more free resources and also paid courses in the future that will help you to do all that so sign up and check it out and stay tuned for more which I'll see you with real soon you