Balance and Addiction

I've had a number of thoughts kicking around my head for the last six months on these topics. Some of the e-mail that I have been receiving lately spurred me into action. As well, a lot of the people close to me are having a little difficulty figuring out "what's got into me". This might clear up a few things.

If you can't relate to this stuff then, in a sense, you are lucky. Of course, we psychos are proud of the way we are and probably wouldn't want to change - even if we could. I am taking the time to write this out in the hope that it gets through to at least one person who finds themselves at the wrong end of this puzzle. Many will argue that there is no "right" end but I have found increasing peace using some of the techniques that I'll run through.

I see balance and addiction as intertwined. What I plan on doing is kicking some ideas around separately and then hopefully my thoughts will merge into some sort of conclusion. If not, then I hope you find some of this interesting.

Thinking about balance, I can come up with two main types: external and internal.

External balance is between the trilogy of Family, Work and Self. Picture a triangle with these words on each corner. We ran through this at a recent conference. Most professional people end up with the vast majority of their energy being taken by Work, then a little by Family and next to nothing for themselves. I've said it before on RST, but I think it bears repeating. The world will take as much as you are willing to give. If we do not fight for time to ourselves then we will not end up with any. The key for external balance appears to be knowing where to draw the line and frequent communication with the people who are impacted by that line.

I see internal balance as a trilogy of Body, Mind and Spirit. Just so happens to be the YMCA moto. Also appears in just about every religion that I know a little about - even the Eastern ones.

So where am I right now? Well, I feel like I have achieved pretty good internal balance over the last few months. The IM training has my body in shape, my mind is stimulated from writing/coaching/training and my spiritual side is growing - albeit in strange ways and in fits & starts. External balance? I have to admit that it is totally out of whack. So, I did a little bit of thinking about my adult life. Allow me to share.

Now this touches on what some of you may call addiction. I really don't like that word because it has such a negative connotation and also because it gives the impression of being out of control. I feel that I have been in perfect control of a lot of the things to which I have been "addicted" - sound familiar? To make me feel a little more comfortable about sharing, let's talk about my "interests" instead. Since I finished University, I have had an active interest in drinking, sex, work, exercise and food. Just about everything! To help give you an idea on the profile - I'll give an example of each.

Drinking - Well, as any one who knew me around 1990-1994 can vouch, I did have a fair old appetite for the booze. What was the attraction? I guess the main attraction for me is no different from anyone. Alcohol allowed me to cut through the introverted part of my personality straight to the extroverted part of me. There is a certain mania when you are completely hammered and that sensation is a lot of fun. Kind of like being in control of "being out of control". We had a lot of fun times but, just like in the Sun Also Rises, every fiesta comes to an end. I often felt like that there was a little gremlin inside me. He wanted to rock! To party! I used to feed the gremlin parties and that would chill him out. Once I started to feed my soul, he disappeared. I am scared of his return.

Ultimately, (for me) getting hammered all the time lost its appeal. The negatives started to outweigh the positives and I just woke up one morning sick of that life. I was very lucky in that my girlfriend at the time was happy to bag it as well. Probably the toughest part of that period was: trying to relate to your drinking buddies when they are all still into getting lit; and dealing with a huge amount of time that suddenly appears in your life when you stop partying. I filled the time with exercise and road trips.

As an aside, I was recently in Vegas and that town brought back all the cravings. As soon as I arrived, I just wanted to head out and get slaughtered. Fortunately, I went for a run and sightseeing at the Hoover Dam instead. Maybe a little partying would have been good for me but I always worry about getting back on it.

Sex - Names withheld to protect the guilty. I don't really want to go into much here but I will share a story about how I met my ex-wife. I met Angela in Hong Kong and decided that I would like to go out with her. So, I found out who all her friends were, where she worked and what she did outside of work... I would make an excellent stalker. Networked all the buddies so when she asked about this gordo-guy she would get a good reference. Headed out to the same places as her to ensure we would meet. Even used her for a due diligence source for my work. I had faith that if I was around a lot then we would end up together. Sure enough we did. Only one catch... it was not to be. Still, I learned the power of a well-constructed and executed plan!

Work - Just like a lot of people starting in finance, I did the psycho hours thing and loved it. My record was 21 sixteen hour days straight. As could be expected, at the end of that stint I was having trouble getting to sleep and generally a little frayed around the edges. It also coincided with my partying so it was one hell of a bash at the end of the 21st day. Problem was, it was at an office function. Oh that wasn't pretty. Ten years later, they are still talking about it.

Exercise - On reflection, this goes back further than I expected. Here is the progression. Walking in the UK, hiking in Hong Kong, trekking in Asia, high altitude trekking in Africa and global mountaineering. Before I had even put on a pair of crampons, I had decided that it would be very cool to climb Everest and that was my overriding goal. If you are going to go, then go big! It wasn't until after I had climbed Denali and the Eiger that I realised that by combining the two (technical rock and altitude) there was a very good chance that I could kill myself. So it wasn't with total grief that I gave up my high altitude ambitions. I am sure that I will return to the mountains, but I will probably keep it under 6,000m. Then again, I hear Cho Oyu is a relatively straightforward climb. Going up to 8,000m once would be interesting from a life experience point of view. You can see that this one is not completely gone. The mountains exert a powerful magnetism to the soul.

I rock climbed to aid my mountaineering and really wanted to get myself in condition for a big wall ascent. However, I never had enough time to do one. Maybe that is something for the future. I wanted to build strength for the climbing, so I started weightlifting. That quickly escalated to full-on bodybuilding (no drugs just a lot of iron). I managed to put 25 pounds of muscle onto my frame in 18 months. That's focus.

December 97, I binned the weights when my gym went bust and started running. Running turned into ultramarathoning very quickly and that led to my eventual completion of the HK Trailwalker - man did that hurt. The pain of that race put me off ultrarunning. I have never been so completely destroyed as when I finished. In fact, the only reason that I finished was so that I wouldn't have to do it again.

Triathlon is my latest sporting passion. This one will hang around for a while. It has several advantages. Multisport so you don't burn your body out. Lots of different races, many complex skills to perfect, lots of cool people and training locations that are the most beautiful places in the world.

Food - With the partying, I had really crappy eating habits. You can get away with that in your 20s but my body shape started to bug me so I did something about it. It took a while but I was lucky in that my focus enabled me to get results fairly quickly which reinforced my commitment. Food was a big issue in my short marriage. There was a conflict because we wanted to eat different things. As well, going out was tough. If I ate like a "normal" person then I would end up internalizing all this stress over the food. If I ate "weird" then I would come under pressure. Now that I am single, I eat the way I want all the time and things are much more relaxed. Of course, I am not sure if being by oneself is the best answer for this one!

With the exception of food - all of the above (to a certain degree) gave me feelings of clarity, of purpose, of pure joy. I have been reading a book about "flow" by a guy called Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - thanks Dooger. Very interesting and it has helped me understand the source of a lot of the joy in my life. Only one problem, the guy seems like a scientific atheist so it is creating some conflict with my spiritual side. Well, you can't have it all and at least it is making me think. Flow is his word for "optimal experience", what we would call joy. He has a number of criteria for achieving flow and maybe I'll write a summary some time. Basically, flow is achieved when we are involved in a skill oriented task, with challenging goals, where we need to concentrate so much we are able to forget about the "psychic noise" that constantly bombards our brain. Athletes would call it being in the Zone. Later in the book he is going to talk about steps to achieving flow in daily life. I am looking forward to that part!

So how did I pull myself out of the liquor trap - I see that as the most dangerous out of the issues above. Here are some things that I think I did, consciously or unconsciously.

Accept the situation - I have always known that I have an addictive personality. I think I recognized it early in my teens. I don't care if the cause is nurture or nature. I have it, I know it and I take precautions to avoid hurting myself because of it. The real paradox, as I see it, is that the profile of the person likely to be hit is "the least likely". Perhaps that it why most of us go relatively undetected. We are so "functional".

Accept yourself - I know that I have a few flaws but generally I have come to peace with them. That doesn't mean that I have given up working on them and I appreciate it when my pals take me to one side for a few words (very occasionally, OK boys). Athletics really helped here. As I managed to get myself more fit, my self-image was strengthened. I also think that this might be why I am so goal oriented/achievement oriented. A constant process of self-validation. Of course, Mihaly would say that it is due to my search for Flow requiring tough but achievable goals.

Avoid your old life, initially - My road trips were extremely helpful in the early days. They got me out of town, out of the pub, out in the fresh air. Having time to think is very valuable. I also did a number of hikes and treks solo. The locals thought I was pretty strange and I nearly killed myself once in the Philippines but three days on your own can be quite useful when life seems a little confusing. I still use time alone to work through issues.

Channel that energy - I put a huge amount of energy into all of the above at one time or another. Again, exercise was the perfect outlet for me. It gave me structure, endorphins and challenges. When I had spare time on my hands, it was real tempting to get back into my old ways. Still is for me. I like to keep active.

Communicate - When you make a radical change in your life (signing up for IM, stopping the juice with your pals, whatever), the people closest to you are going to worry. At least they did/are with me. I have found that by sitting people down and explaining what you are doing and why, you get a lot more support. You also get some great ideas to consider. I have found that the ideas that hurt the most to consider appear to contain the best information for thought.

So all of these are situations where my life was (or is) out of external balance. Seeing as I always appear to be out of external balance, I started to question whether it is really necessary (or better) to be in balance. I mean, I tend to think I am an OK guy, my heart is in the right place and, aside from a recent speeding ticket, am very law abiding.

What are the benefits of either type of balance? The most attractive seems to be harmony. Oh, harmony is pure bliss. My issue has tended to be that I can achieve harmony with work/family/friends but it leaves my soul so fried I have zero harmony within myself. These last few weeks have been a bit of a test for me. All I did was write, train, race and offer advice to folks. Not particularly balanced but with a little effort I can see carving some external balance into the equation. I am still kicking this one around but so far I am leaning towards, achieving internal balance (self) first and then adding the external slowly. Many of us would find this method tough due to our current circumstances. To them I might recommend carving out some self time. Hold this time sacred, communicate and don't let anyone get in the way of the self time. I would be willing to wager that any increase would lead to an improvement in quality of life.

A question I have been asking myself for the last month.

I think you know which way I am leaning. Time will tell if I am making the right decisions.

gordo- 15 August 2000