Podcast 005: Putting Your Addictions in Their Place

Show Notes

As I mentioned in the podcast, there is a natural symbiosis between the approach to compulsive behaviors that I discussed—namely, practicing turning toward, accepting, and investigating the cravings you feel with an attitude of curiosity—and mindfulness meditation practice.

Mindfulness in general has to do with cultivating that sort of relationship to all aspects of your experience of life and, of course, that includes cravings. There is even an “official” intervention called Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention that is based on these principles.

(By the way, if you aren’t an email list subscriber, I urge you to subscribe or take advantage of one of my free downloads, so I can provide more guidance on implementing mindfulness in your life, and how it fits into your overall desire to thrive.)

So, it would be good for you to begin a mindfulness meditation practice, if you haven’t already. You can also visit the Meditate page on this website to begin to dip your toes in the water.

It’s also important to try to practice out in the real world, when you don’t have a recording to guide you. Just start small, with little practices anywhere you can fit them in to your daily activities.

For instance, paying attention to the sensations on the soles of your feet as you walk from your car to the front door of a store. Or the physical sensations you can detect while you’re talking to someone, or, as I discussed in the podcast, when you’re faced with the object of your craving.

One of the nice things about mindfulness is that no matter how you practice, improvements in your ability to be mindful are generalizable to other areas of your life. It’s a lot like physical exercise: if you go to the gym, exercise, and are in good physical condition, you carry that around with you—you’re not healthy only in the gym.

So just start practicing being more mindful in any way you can, as often as you can.