I am a fan of Mr. Money Mustache. If you have never heard of him, he is a blogger that blogs about financial independence and early retirement and a bunch of other cool stuff. I know, I know, gambling therapy.org is a site dedicated to helping compulsive gamblers, not early retirement. In fact, compulsive gamblers for the most part would laugh and scoff at me for even mentioning the word “retirement”. Mountains of debt, are you kidding me? Retirement? Never happen in my lifetime! Get real they would say.
This may seem off topic, but I don’t think it’s off topic at all. Here’s why.
Compulsive gambling often is rooted in unhappiness, fear, and wanting to hide from problems. It generates intensely negative feelings. It generates hopelessness. It makes me feel like a complete failure. It traps me in a death spiral. It generates pessimism about me and my future. It forces me to think about horrible things I have done in my past. Negative to the max!
Training myself in optimism is one way to break the negative spell that gambling has cast on me. But how do I become optimistic? I am not an optimistic person! I need to work at it! As an example, if I catch myself feeling sorry for myself, I need to mentally pause, and reverse that thought. The more I am able to do this, the happier I will become. The happier I am, the better my life will seem, and the chances of me relapsing decrease. Sometimes it feels a little artificial, but that’s because I am not used to it. I have negative self talk all the time. I beat myself up, tell myself I can’t do it, etc.
Optimism is very hard to create when I am struggling with my gambling addiction. I need more of it, I know that for sure. It’s hard to set goals and begin doing the things to reach them if I am down, depressed and pessimistic. I get into ruts, and I can’t get out. And I think that human nature tends to lean towards pessimism rather than optimism. Therefore, I really need to practice and intentionally create optimism in my own life in order to become happier, it doesn’t just happen on its own.
If you have the inclination or curiosity, search up outrageous optimism and Mr. Money Mustache, and you will see a blog post that discusses the benefits of outrageous optimism, and offers some advice on how to implement it in your life. (and no I am not paid by him or affiliated with him in any way, I don’t even know him) I just happen to believe that what he says has a lot of merit and would help me if I used it more.
He has another blog post on Stoicism that is great. Teaches us how much more we have that we think we do, and how that can change how we view the world.
Anyway, I just finished up day 9, and I am also on day 9 of no alcohol and no marijuana. This is a tough time for me due to lack of sleep. I know that if I can make it through today, I have a shot at another day, and as each day passes, my sleep should start to improve. I am grateful. I have so much even though I have lost so much. What is past is beyond my control, so I’m not going to worry about it now. I am going to try to build optimism into my daily thinking! Cheers everyone and stay gambling free for another day!