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My addiction was a curse! I wasted my life! So on and so forth.

I like to think of my addiction as having made me into a warrior. The pain I had to travel through and all of the life lessons I had to learn to travel through and dissolve, it made me a better person.

I had to learn so many healing techniques, patience with myself, trial and error so many times. I had to make so many mistakes (all the mistakes) and pick myself up again and again.

You start to become resilient. You start to find inner strength to keep going. And along the journey we find pieces don’t we?

My recovery was not like some sort of holy grail and once I drank from it I was magically cured and a light shot across the land and all the peasants rejoiced! No, it was more like, wow, when I do yoga I feel 3% better and then when I eat better I feel 5% better. Boy, when I coach myself I have 40% less anxiety. So on and so forth.

In each little puzzle piece I rediscovered a piece of myself. I learned to tune into my intuition. Not because I wanted to cosmically connect with angels or higher power even. I wanted to feel better. I was in so much constant aching pain all the time. It was relentless. Just imagine the feeling of rolling around in broken glass, which sadly I know what that feels like from late night punk rock debauchery.

Now imagine that broken glass on the inside constantly. Everywhere you look, every slight turn of your head or comment stabs you. That was my life.

The pain became too much and I had sabotaged just about everything in my life at that point. So for me, that was my bottom. That’s where I needed to go to so I could desperately claw my way back up, but I went beyond that.

The perspective you approach your addiction with can determine how you funnel your energy forward. If it’s a point of shame for you and makes you hang your head and shrink, then you’ll keep shrinking.

If though, you recognize that at the time you were doing the best you could in the insanity as it were, and now you are making a conscious effort to funnel that self hate and destruction and transmute it into self love and service to the world, there is no shame in that. That is a complete life lesson. That is what the best stories are made of.

My karate sensei took pride in getting punks off the street and molding them into champions. He took me who was so angry and hateful and he taught me how to funnel my anger into martial arts. I wound up getting my black belt.

So if we can take all the reserve of built up energy we have and find a way to soften it and then funnel it, we actually have an edge on others. We have so much fire in our bellies that passion will pour out of us like an endless well.

How do we do this? First, get super clear on who you want to be. You’ll probably blow the roof off of that dream, but just to get started. Who do you want to be? How do you want to show up in the world?

When you come up with that, allow the feeling of when you do become that person to pulse through you. Are you filled with pride? Happiness? Joy?

Then from that vibration/emotion allow it to move through you. Sit with it as long as you can and adopt that vibration often. Practice sitting with it in meditation. Start with 5 minutes and then work up to 20 minutes and then throughout the day.

The more you allow it, the better you will feel. In addition, you can follow the Thriving After Addiction program which is available on kindle and amazon tomorrow!