Your personal ecology is what or how you deal with the consequences of what you’re doing. You have to look at the consequences. Look at them from the point of view of everything that you do has got an effect. Cause and effect. Whatever you do in the moment has an effect either straight away, further down the line, or both.
You have to deal with your own personal ecology when you are trying to change any habit, no matter what the habit is:
- Drinking
- Smoking
- Stopping eating bad foods
- Bringing new habits into your life
When you drink alcohol you’ve got a singular effect that happens now. You get drunk, taste the alcohol whatever it is, you get the feelings that you want out of that, from that level. You also get the consequences of whatever you’ve been using alcohol as a tool for so you relax, fall asleep, forget about problems that you’ve been dealing with all day and forget about problems that you don’t want to deal with.
Then there’s the long term consequences, particularly of your drinking. You know the physical and mental consequences of your drinking.
Then the life consequences of taking all that time, energy and money and putting it, focusing them onto this one habit.
So, you know what’s the opportunity cost of all the things that you could have done and should have done. Things that you would have done or wanted to do have done. What’s the opportunity cost in terms in of money that you could have spent elsewhere and time you could have spent elsewhere with other people, on educating yourself, building up your intellect.
These are all areas that fall within your own personal ecology and there’s nobody else that’s going to deal with it. There are plenty of organisations out there to save the Panda, or save the Silver Back Gorilla or to stop the Icebergs from melting but there’s no organisation out there that is going to stop Deidre X from fucking up her own ecosystem.
Only you are going to do that.
There’s nobody else. There’s nobody else that’s going to say to you – yes you’ve got to eat the right foods if you want to say healthy, you’ve got to look after your health if you want to stay healthy, you’ve got to look after your exercise, get out there and move say active, you’ve got to look after and be active in your brain if you want to remain and be healthy in your brain.
I’m just saying that a lot of people have fallen out with Politicians and Politics in general because of the decision making process. Modern Politics is set up to satisfy short term gain to make the government at the time look good but there are always long term consequences to this and people have got to pay.
It’s like an addiction, it’s like this spiral that Alan Carr talks about. Once you get into it and you’re in this spiral, this out of control spiral of short term gain instead of looking at long term pain and consequences, it’s very difficult to get out of that cycle, because who’s going to do it? A Politician who’s only got four years to do his job, otherwise he gets kicks out if he is too harsh and he puts the measures that are necessary to change things and to put things right.
So, we’ve only got ourselves to blame really because we’ve allowed this situation to fester and come about in the long term anyway that’s a different story. I’m talking about from a personal stand point we do exactly the same thing.
It’s our decision making that fosters short term gain over long term gain and that short term gain is always going to give us long term consequences. You know the problem with this way of living is that we have to deal with that long term pain eventually. That long term pain is going to come about and going to bite us in the arse and if the only thing that you’ve got to deal with that, the only way you know how to deal with pain is through drinking or taking a drug, then guess what happens. You have to increase the drug to numb the pain.
The more the pain, the more severe the pain gets the more you have to increase the dosage of the drug. You have to increase the dosage because of the tolerance to the pain, the longer you do this the harder it is to get away from it.
That’s what I mean by your own personal ecology. You’ve got to think about the consequences, not only about tomorrow, which is about as far as most people go. It’s like, if I drink 20 pints tonight, I’m going to have a hangover tomorrow. If I drink 20 points tonight what the fuck am I doing to myself in ten years’ time. I might not even get to twenty years’ time so it’s no point talking about that.
What am I doing to myself in five years’ time, ten years’ time. What am I doing to myself with this accumulation of a bottle of wine a night, or two bottles of wine every second day or whatever it is, we try and justify ourselves by looking at things in the short term.
Short term gratification, short term consequences. This type of short term gratification where you are taking a toxin into your body in order to feel a buzz and we don’t really look at what’s going on beneath the surface in the short term.
We don’t look at what’s going to happen to us as people as individuals, in the long term and how that long term consequence is going to effect everything else in our lives. The people around us and our security, our health, our spirituality, everything.
So, that’s it for today. If you have any questions leave a comment down below. If you want me to make any videos on any subject at all just let me know in the comments and I’ll do my best or I’ll point you out to a video I’ve already done. Until next time.
Take care of yourself, keep safe, remember your personal ecology …
“Don’t exchange what you want the most for what you want at the moment”
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
I almost feel like i am forcing myself to drink. I dont want to drink and have reduced greatly over the past year. But i kind of feel i have to. I dont know how to explain it.
Hello Donna, I had that feeling and thought too for a long time, but it’s important to remember that you DO have a choice at any moment to stop. I don’t know your exact situation, but it might be useful to see your doctor and explain that you have the desire to quit drinking and he can help you or refer you. You have a choice, don’t forget that! Good luck.