Tag: life choices

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Context

As I walked out of my office to my car, I picked up my dog to put her in the backseat and I noticed someone had smacked into my rear bumper.  There was plastic on the ground from my headlight and my bumper was dented .  I walked around to in hopes of finding a note from the person who hit my unattended car.  I wasn’t shocked when when I didn’t find one.

Now I’m sitting at the auto body shop at 2:30 on a Thursday, waiting for the guy to come out of his meeting and give me an estimate.  I’m bored and annoyed because I have to be here dealing with this.  I had to come in here to do a bunch of shit I could have easily done over the phone with them.  My day could be filled with way more productive activities; who’s the asshole that decided this ridiculous process was worth anyone’s time?

Then it hit me. Why the fuck am I complaining about some first world problems?  My life’s real hard.  I’m getting an estimate for damage on my car when most people would be working.  My life allows me the freedom to take care of life’s annoying little inconveniences whenever I choose.  I make those decisions for me.

At face value, I should be super grateful and realize how fortunate I am to have the time and resources to take care of mishaps like this when they occur.  Others aren’t always that lucky.  My life’s a cakewalk in a lot of ways.

It’s all this kind of bullshit that so many people, including myself, allow to ruin our day or frustrate us.  But life happens, that’s just the way it is.  The sooner we learn that lesson and roll with the bullshit we’re dealt, the sooner we can get on with focusing on how great life is.

A couple of years ago I would have been pissed off and argued with the people at the shop for wasting my time.  Now I accept it and go about my day.  I’m not telling this to prove how mature and well balanced I am, because I’m certainly neither of those things.  I’m saying this to create perspective.

18 months ago I was laying in a hospital bed cut open from my sternum to my stomach, worrying if my cancer had spread.  Now im blessed enough to be here today being annoyed because I lost 20 minutes of my day.  Seems crazy to let this bother me when I frame the situation in that context.

Life’s bullshit will always get in our way, there’s no way around it.  Our problems scale depending on how severe they are and how capable we are of handling them.  The thing to remember is every problem is temporary, even the most serious ones.  Eventually circumstances will change and those problems will no longer be an issue.  Even the sickest person’s problems end once they pass on and become energy again.  That’s the cycle of life.

Stressing and being angry only robs any chance of happiness in the present and possibly the future depending on how we deal with it  Whatever it is, it will pass.  I forget all to often I had cancer 18 months ago.  Sometimes it’s nice to remind myself I’m going to die one day.  It forces me to live and experience all I can today.  That’s the purpose of life, to experience all that we can in the short time we have.  Good and bad, it all writes our story, it’s how life works.

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Learning to Understand and Deal with Pain Without Painkillers

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If someone else treated me the way I treated myself I would’ve had to kill them. The massive amount of mental and emotional suffering I brought upon myself throughout my life has been insane. At 35 I am realizing that even though I have experienced a tremendous amount of pain, I never learned how to process and deal with it. I didn’t understand how the grieving process works and what steps should occur in a healthy mourning period.

In the past, when my skin started to crawl and my mind wouldn’t stop replaying the same thoughts, I was lost with how to interpret and handle those feelings. My therapist recently brought this fact to my attention.

For as long as I can remember I used foreign substances to cope with the pain I was going through. I stuffed whatever I didn’t want to face deep down inside of me. I numbed my senses with opiates, cocaine, women, money and alcohol. I used anything that allowed me to get out of “myself”. For that brief moment in time it would my fill my void and bring me some small, but fleeting period of happiness.

My life had become a vicious cycle of chaos and pain. A considerable portion of my pain was due to my inability to allow myself to be happy and content. I struggled to accept happiness and success; even when I had fought so hard to achieve them.

Something inside of me kept telling me I wasn’t allowed to be happy. I didn’t deserve it. If I continued to stay optimistic something bad would surely occur. I didn’t understand that it was ok to allow the good to come into my life without fear of repercussions. I continuously self-sabotaged my life and created chaos.

There’s truly a sick sense of comfort in chaos for someone like me. It’s very familiar and I understand how it works. I was fearful of what life would look like without chaos. What would it’s replacement look and feel like? This thought process caused me to stay sick mentally and live in my own turmoil.

When I decided to make a change I looked at my life and decided that I had two choices. I could either stop taking painkillers or I could kill myself. There was no middle ground for me at that point. Those were the only viable options for my life.

I was able to associate the feeling of such overwhelming pain with the use of opiates that I kicked cold turkey. My mind finally got to the point where the pain and suffering of withdraw, as well as having to deal with my emotions, were not nearly as great as continuing to use. That was the key for me. Forging a mental association that linked taking painkillers to creating more pain in my life, rather than taking the pain away.

The first couple of weeks I was physically sick from withdraw. However, the next several months of having to deal with all the mental and emotion pain was far worse. I had to face what I had created in my life and it wasn’t pretty. I had to accept that I had lost relationships, business opportunities, money and most importantly time because of my actions.

Occasionally I felt that I couldn’t handle all the mental anguish. I thought It may be too much and it would consume me. I’ve seen people experience tragic events in their live’s and never came out of it the same. They stay stuck in a rut with their past haunting them forever. Continually living out the same patterns ad nauseam, only replacing the characters in their story.

I’m only seven months removed from that life, but writing about it now seems foreign to me. It’s as if I’m not writing about my own life. When I replay my past actions in my head it’s like seeing a bad movie that so embarrassing to watch it makes you cringe. It’s unfathomable to me that I lived that way for so long.

I’ve learned dealing with pain is supposed to hurt. Allowing myself to feel whatever pain comes into my life and learning from it is necessary. Pain is the most powerful teacher we have in this world. It is the cornerstone of growth and change. It has taught me many of my greatest lessons; as well as evoked the most change in my life. Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.

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The Opportunity Costs of Life

Every action we take in life has a cost.  The currency we pay in may be time, money, health, sanity or relationships.  Most people never think about this until they get a little older in life and reflect back on past years. They come to the understanding that all of their actions have put them in their current situation; whether it’s fortuitous or tumultuous.

Every choice we make takes away from another opportunity that could have been.  Sometimes the costs are so great that looking back on them drums up great pain in our souls.  For the intelligent, wise, or possibly just lucky; their opportunity costs have been low. They have lived their lives in a very fruitful manner where the gains have exceeded their losses.

I struggle with judging the costs of my actions and how they affected my life.  At a cursory glance I immediately think I paid a heavy price.  I have made decisions with my life that have been very costly to my health and well-being.  My lifestyle, career choices and rampant drug use and abuse throughout much of my life has had a profound impact on my present situation.

I’m fortunate to be as healthy as I am.  I’ve done a massive amount of damage to my body and been lucky enough to avoid extremely serious issues.  I believe these were bumps in the road that God or the universe has thrown in my way to wake me up and correct the path I was on.

Five to six years ago I was using coke and painkillers very heavily.  I also drank and used steroids.  During this time I contracted a virus that attacked my heart and I was hospitalized.

After a couple days at the hospital I was diagnosed with a viral cardiomyopathy.  The doctors were uncertain whether my heart would get back to normal, stay the same or get worse.  They covered all the possible options with their amazingly vague prognosis.

Over the next two years my heart recovered.  I was on ACE inhibitors and beta blockers to control my blood pressure and hopefully prevent my heart from further damage.  I never stopped using opiates, even while in the hospital.  Two weeks out of the hospital I was back in the gym. Three to Four months after that I was back on a low dose of steroids.  A couple weeks after starting back on steroids I was using coke again.

My bill for that life experience was rather steep.  However, without batting an eye, I continued on the road I was on.  They say pain is the cornerstone of growth and change.   For much of my life the pain had to become unbearable for me to make changes.

Less than a year after my cardiomyopathy I ended up in rehab for the second time in my life.  I was clean and sober for about 6 months.  I met a ton of good people in the program.  I learned valuable tools and truths about life that I will never forget.

Unfortunately, I didn’t always put these tools to use.  Once I stopped going to meetings I was back to using pretty quickly.   Then, for some reason I just decided I couldn’t use coke anymore.  I hated it and what it had done to my life.  I just got to a point where enough was enough and I couldn’t stand the pain any longer.  On the 4th of July in 2012 I quit using cocaine and have not used it to this day.

I continued to use low doses of steroids until the summer of 2013, when I was 33.  I always looked at steroids as being rather benign, unless you use absurd physiological doses.  Even after what I am about to tell you, I still have that opinion of testosterone in small dosages.

I had just gotten back together with my ex girlfriend.  We spent the majority of the summer at her parent’s beach house.  I wasn’t using pain killers or coke.   I was in love with the woman I thought I would marry.  I was preparing to quit my illegitimate business ventures and I had plenty of money. Life was pretty damn great.

Then I started having some pain in the lower right side of my abdomen.  My doctor thought it could be a hernia so he sent me for CT scan.   I was at my ex’s beach house eating dinner with her when I received a life changing phone call from my doctor.  He told me the scan showed I had two pool ball size lesions on my liver that were more than likely Hepatocellular Carcinomas (Liver cancer).

I went through a gamut of tests over the next couple of weeks.  Including several liver biopsies, which were possibly the most physically painful experiences of my life.  When all the smoke cleared I had gotten lucky again.  The lesions turned out to be Hepatic Adenomas.  The doctors diagnosed my steroid use as the cause for these lesions.

I begrudgingly stopped using steroids when I first got the news that it could be cancer. I lost a good deal of my size, my dick didn’t work right for 6 months, and mentally I was a wreck.  I started using painkillers again during this time and ultimately my actions from that point on cost me my relationship.

Looking back on how I handled these changes I feel very foolish and ungrateful.  I had just been giving a new chance at life being told I did NOT have liver cancer.  I had the opportunity to move to a new area with my girlfriend and her son and start a new life.  I had given up my previous life, without having to go to jail.  I had saved up more than enough money to live off of for several years. But I couldn’t see past the pain of the change.

I decided to choose being stuck.  I was sulking and trying to bring back the past instead of looking towards the future and being open about the possibilities.  I lost two people I loved and a future I hoped for in this process.  It was a heavy price I had to pay for the choices I made.

It’s easy for me to see what my actions have cost me.  It’s much more difficult for me express gratitude for all of the lessons life has taught me that I never wanted to learn.  I have lived an awful lot in my 35 years.  I have done and seen things the majority of people I know have not. I have the ability to enjoy my life with many comforts that I take for granted.  I am able to learn, grow and start over with a new found self.  I have friends and family that love me despite my actions.

My life has lead me to this point where I’m comfortable enough with myself to share my experiences.  I have faith that my words may resonate with others and help them choose life.  That I can create a better world for myself and those around me.

If I had never have paid these opportunity costs in pain, I wouldn’t be where I am today.  I may never have felt this sense of purpose in my life.  I have so much good surrounding me.  Good I may never have discovered had I not made decisions that took me to a point that I had no choice but to make a change.

Life changes.  The reality is the only way to be comfortable is to accept change.  Stop fighting the old and looking for comfort.  Nothing ever stays the same.  People go in and out of our lives.  We change jobs.  Our looks change.  Feelings change.  The only constant in life is change.  Embrace the change.

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Coming From a Place of Abundance

For many years my life seemed to work off feast or famine.  I  got nervous and felt the need to hold onto things so tightly because I feared I may never be able to create more in my life.  It was as if I feel that I didn’t deserve money, happiness or women.  I haven’t felt like I was enough in so many ways.  I’m not smart enough, good looking enough, funny enough; so I certainly can’t ever attain what other people have.  That mentality caused me to lose out on many opportunity before I even attempted them.  I forced myself to be a beggar and took what I could get.

This attitude and perspective of not being enough has cost me greatly in life.  I have talked myself out of getting the girl I wanted or the financial success I envisioned without ever making the attempt to go for it.  The fear of failure and self doubt clouded my vision of who I really am.  My jaded view of my abilities and attractiveness have been self sabotaging.

Now there has been times where the opposite is true.   I have been too full of myself and cocky.  I projected arrogance and a false sense of confidence.  My weaknesses were exposed quickly in those cases and I had my ass handed to me.

Coming from a place of abundance isn’t about cockiness or a false sense of self esteem.  It is the understanding of my capabilities and how to make them work to best suit my needs to accomplish a goal.  It’s something I have done many times in my life, but never really understood what it was or what I should call it.  I just always told myself I was “on a roll.”   That feeling like no matter what I touched it turned to gold.

It’s the mindset that my livelihood and happiness does not have to be contingent upon a singular achievement.  Whether that be a business, a woman, or a dollar figure.  Being aware that there are numerous opportunities out there to create success in my life.  I just have to keep trying new things and keep looking until I find what works. Then once that no longer works, either tweak it or move on to the next opportunity.

The abundance mentality is the opposite of desperate.  I have allowed myself to act desperate so often in life when I did not need to.  There’s been times in my life that I have had 100’s of thousands of dollars sitting in a bank account, but I chose to skip out on amazing opportunities because I didn’t want to spend $1000 to invest in me.  I have had situations where multiple women were chasing after me.  But I decided to keep chasing the one that it didn’t work out with time and time again because “she was the one.”

These are all acts of desperation.  I was clinging onto what I had for dear life.  Hoping and praying it would last or come back to me.  I would squeeze every last ounce out of a person or opportunity because I feared not being able to find more.  Even when the well had run dry I would keep going back, instead of focusing my efforts on new ventures that could make the future more fruitful.

So many times in life I have settled when I know I could have done better.  This behavior makes me unattractive to the world.  The universe senses that and it pushes opportunities away from me.  The abundance mindset is the ability to value myself accurately and appropriately so that I can let go of things and people that no longer serve me in a positive manner.  Because I know that I can find someone or something else that will better suit me and my needs.