In this episode, we unpack the essence of addiction: the relentless pursuit of immediate gratification at the expense of our future selves. From the allure of that tempting cookie to the allure of fleeting distractions like pornography, we confront the harsh reality of our choices and their repercussions. Join us as we explore the profound impact of prioritizing our present desires over our future well-being, and discover actionable steps towards reclaiming our lives from the grips of addiction. Stay tuned as we unravel the complexities of this journey towards true contentment.
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ABOUT JEREMY LIPKOWTZ
JEREMY IS A MEDITATION TEACHER, LIFE COACH, AND DIGITAL HABITS EXPERT WHO WORKS WITH ENTREPRENEURS, EXECUTIVES, AND LEADERS.
Jeremy overcame addiction, shame, self-judgement, and depression in his early twenties with the help of mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness not only helped him let go of destructive behaviors, it also allowed him to connect with deeper meaning and purpose in his life.
For the past 10 years Jeremy has been teaching mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices at universities, recovery centers, and companies throughout Asia and the US. He holds a Bachelors and Master’s degree in Genetics and Genomics, and spent several years at Duke University working towards a PhD in Genetics & Systems Biology before he turned full-time to teaching mindfulness.
Jeremy is also an ICF certified Executive Coach. As a former scientist and academic, Jeremy has a great passion for bringing his EI based coaching skills into the corporate and professional world. He realizes how powerful & transformative these practices can be for skeptics and senior-level managers. He is known for his calm and grounded demeanor, his expertise in habits and high-performance, and his compassionate approach to transformation.
Coaching Certifications
* CPCC, Co-Active Training Institute
* ICF Member
* ACC International Coaching Federation
Jeremy is a Certified Teacher with the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence program initially developed at Google. He also spent time living and training as a fully-ordained Buddhist monk in Myanmar. He now combines his science-based expertise with a hunger for personal development to help others discipline their minds and achieve genuine inner- peace and fulfillment.
You're listening to Unhooked, welcome back to the show. On today's episode, the most important thing you can do for your recovery. The simple but not so easy mindset shift that you can make that will determine your success in recovery and whether or not you keep falling back into addiction. So if you keep relapsing or feel like you are staying stuck in bad habits, this is the episode for you.
So stay tuned.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, back to the show. Before we dive into today's content, a few announcements about the show and about my coaching programs. First, I am almost full with coaching clients. I feel very blessed that I'm almost full of coaching clients. But what that means is that I have just one or two spots left for clients.
So if you're interested in getting support with your recovery, if you're interested in working with me personally, one on one, then you can apply now for a free discovery call. This is a call where we explore what's going on in your life. What are you stuck on? What are you dealing with? And we chat about what the coaching.
Program and the coaching process looks like so you can see if it's the right fit for you. And so I can see if you are a good fit for the coaching program as well. So if you're interested in working with me, then hop onto my website and check out the application for a free discovery call. Second announcement, if you want to support the show here at Unhooked, and if you want to do us a solid, you can support the show in a big, big way simply by leaving a review.
That really is the best way to support the show for now. Uh, only second to sharing the show with a friend. I know that is actually And even better ways, if you can share the show with your community, with someone who you think might need to hear some of the stuff we're talking about, that is another great way to support the show.
So with that, I thank you in advance and now on to today's content. So on a coaching call today, I was talking to a client and we were talking about This one aspect that I realized is one of the most important things for recovery. And here's the thing. Addiction really boils down to this one simple concept.
It is so much about short term pleasure versus long term happiness. Short term gratification seeking, you know, wanting that quick fix in the moment, wanting to feel good right now, versus long term contentment, fulfillment, and Being happy in the long term. And this is what addiction really is, right? We want to feel good in the moment, even if it means making our future miserable.
We want the cookie and the sugar now. We want the porn and the masturbation now. We want to feel numb, to feel excited, to feel distracted now. Even though we know we're going to have to deal with the consequences in the future. Maybe the consequences are a couple hours from now, maybe they're in a few days or weeks, or possibly the consequences are coming a few years or more down the road.
But what's happening is we end up prioritizing our present moment feelings and sacrificing our deeper happiness and contentment of our future selves. So, for example, with porn, some of the long term consequences that we are heaping onto our future self are things like relationship dissatisfaction, screwing with our dopamine system, and our ability to take joy in simple pleasures.
Issues with our self confidence and our self worth, developing procrastination habits, and not making meaningful progress on work that we care about, increasing our appetite for distraction, increasing our objectification of women, poorer focus and the ability to do deep work, also possible sexual performance issues like erectile dysfunction, and on and on and on.
There are so many long term consequences that might come from our porn addiction. But instead, we are focused on the short term gratification. We want to feel good in this moment right now, and we don't care about what it's going to do to our future self. So in order to recover, we have to start prioritizing our future self.
We have to start caring about what our future self is going to experience. We have to care more about real happiness and long term happiness than we do about short term pleasure. And let me tell you, it is not easy. I will be honest with you. We are hardwired to seek short term pleasure. We are hardwired for pleasure in the moment, in the now.
You know, we want that quick fix. We want the sugar in our mouth. We want the sex in the moment. We want the pleasure, the excitement. And so how to break this cycle? We actually have to be intentional about doing this, because left to our own devices, left to our physiology, left to how we are evolutionarily hardwired, we will continue to prioritize immediate gratification in the moment.
But we have to be smarter than that. So there's a few things you can do to help you get connected to that long term future, that long term happiness. The first thing you can do is to simply get clear on how fleeting and unsatisfactory Short term pleasure really is, you know, to ask yourself the question to what end am I doing this?
When will it actually be enough? You know, you can also just get curious about how you feel after really indulging in the short term pleasure So to practice mindfulness of how you're feeling what's going on in your body and in your mind, you know when you binge on that bag of cookies Do you actually feel better?
You might feel better in the moment, but if you keep paying attention, if you keep that mindfulness up, you'll notice, Ah, I'm starting to feel kind of sick. I also feel kind of bad about myself. I feel gross about my actions. I feel, you know, low self worth after I do this. So to really notice, okay, how unsatisfactory these behaviors really are, that can actually help you unhook from This trap of just seeking short term pleasure and thinking it's going to fix all your problems.
The second and probably more important thing you can do, thing you can do is to really get connected to your future self. To really start to have a relationship with your future self. Like, who is this person in the future? And do you actually care about them? And you can build up that sense of caring about your future self.
So one of the ways I talked with my client, today about is doing a love and kindness practice doing a Well wishing practice for your future self to envision yourself in the future and wish yourself happiness Take 10 years in the future five years in the future and say hey, may you be happy May you have deep and fulfilling relationships?
May you feel content? May you have healthy habits and behaviors? to actually get connected to that vision of yourself in the future. There was some interesting research, some, uh, social psychologists started studying this aspect of how can we connect with our future self. And they actually had the participants go through this software where it would take a picture of them and it would turn them into an older person.
It would kind of do some AI functioning and turn them to an older version of themselves. And seeing yourself as an older version of yourself actually helped these people make. better long term decisions. It helped them invest money for the future and make these healthy, long term, skillful decisions. And so that is another way you can do it is to actually envision yourself as an older person and develop that sense of care for your long term self.
The third thing you can do is to understand that it's all connected. What I mean by that is short term gratification, pleasure seeking. It's all the same on a neurological level. It doesn't matter if it's with porn, or with sugar, or social media, or you know, wanting someone to validate you at work. That pleasure seeking, that craving for feeling good, is all the same on an underlying neurological level.
So in your life, can you start unhooking from that need for pleasure? You know, can you start living with a little bit more renunciation and saying, oh, okay, I don't need everything to be pleasurable every single moment of the day. I can go without this. I can go without that. I can start focused on being focused on things that provide more meaning to my life, more satisfaction, like genuine satisfaction, not the short term pleasure satisfaction, but the sense of accomplishment, the sense of doing the right thing, of working on projects you care about.
Renunciation is a big part of this. You know, learning how to just unhook from needing things to be pleasurable, have all the creature comforts, to not overload yourself with pleasure all the time. So, that is it for today. You know, it's just a short one, but just such an important concept to notice that so much of this recovery is about this balance between short term pleasure and long term happiness.
The more that you can tip the scales on the side of long term happiness and get unhooked from this need to have short term pleasure all the time, the more successful your recovery is going to be. So, I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I would love for you to support the show by leaving a review if you're able to and get connected with me.
You know, send me a message on Instagram and just say hello and let me know what you think of these episodes. I love hearing from the listeners. It really means a lot to me. So that's it for today, signing off, we'll catch you guys on the next episode.