Our culture values sloth and hedonistic pleasures above all else. Many so called achievements by most peoples standards revolve around the ability to do nothing of value. I used to be addicted to these types of distractions. A few of my distractions were video games, sports, and tv/movies. Video games were by far the worst, I would spend every moment I could playing. It got to a point were it was not relaxing and I didn’t even enjoy it. I needed to play just so I didn’t have to pay attention to the decaying situation I had my life in. I knew I was addicted but didn’t recognize that my dopamine receptors were completely messed up and needed to be reset. When you are depressed and dig yourself into a hole it is extremely overwhelming to get out of. It feels like being at the base of a mountain knowing you have to scale the entire thing to fix yourself. Part of the issue is that even though your behavior is self-destructive, no one can stop or save you. Once we get to a certain age we are solely responsible for what we continue to do and accept for ourselves.
When you are stuck it’s easy to fall for the “one more day” reasoning pattern. The hit of dopamine from playing video games and eating junk foods blurs out the problems… temporarily. Then they are back and you’ve lost even more time, time that you will never get back. There is a real problem with more and more people refusing to take on their burden of responsibility and grow up. Like I once was, they are obsessed with video games, sports, and hero movies that were designed for kids. There are more adults than ever that are also obsessed with toys both from their childhood and modern toys. They live vicariously through sports “heroes” instead of living dreams out in their own lives. Some are obsessed with Star Wars or Marvel and talk about nothing but the fiction of those movies. They use these things to temporarily distract themselves from the challenges and problems in their lives. It is incredibly foolish to let such things control your life and how you feel, let alone try to live through them. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t have entertainment at all. This should be likened to alcohol, it is perfectly fine in moderation. If it is limiting you or you are using it as a coping mechanism in life then some serious thought must be given to the damaging effects it is having.
For myself, it took getting to such a low feeling and lack of self-worth to realize something had to be done because my former life was not worth living. I started to control what went into my body and my mind. Changing how you think and behave is possibly the hardest thing you can do. I know that if I hadn’t changed my course, the road I was on was leading me down to a living embodiment of hell.
I started to progressively shorten the amount of time playing video games and well as cut sports off. That was so hard to do at first, because the body doesn’t want to break from the habit even if it is for the better. I kept at it over a long period of time and now I don’t play video games or watch sports. It’s not that I wouldn’t play or watch but it’s that I don’t include them in my daily life. This change has allowed my mind to be freed up to focus on my goals and dreams, instead of just seeing others achieve theirs.
Although I am far from where I want to be now, I have gotten myself far from where I don’t want to be. I believe that is also part of the struggle in life. We may not get to have everything but we can get enough to justify the suffering and find at least some happiness. I think we can. In order to get a clear enough vision to do so, we need to eliminate distraction from our minds and recalibrate our dopamine receptors so that we feel good when we achieve something worthwhile. It feels much better now to worry about living my own life instead of existing as a husk while others live their lives.