Avoid the Destroyer in You

We are all pulled towards destructive tendencies. I am not even referring to the extremes merely the draw we each experience towards self destruction. The draw to spend the whole day consuming content or food that is bad for you. I use to spend around five hours a day. A DAY watching TV. Now I barely watch that much in a week (lately I have not even been close). This time that I now have available I can now use to build my life instead of destroy it.

Is it a little extreme to say that watching that much TV is destructive. Perhaps it is not a direct cause of destruction like say heroin or some other drug. But it is an obstacle to your dreams. I spent years of my life enjoying TV and video games. Whilst carrying these deep feelings of failure as I continued seeing my dreams get no closer to becoming reality. It was after I began to deal with panic attacks related to this feeling that I finally began to change.

This change began small by just starting to spend five minutes a night before bed working to build the board game that I had always wanted to. This time was very rewarding and began to shake the cobwebs off of my creative centers. This resulted in ideas. Ideas that got me excited. Ideas that pushed me to implement and see to their fruition! It was at this point that I started to face some challenges.

I quickly realized the challenge of making a game with mechanics that makes sense and work together. I began to see the need in expanding my time spent on creative work. I only really had one bucket of time to pull from and it was of course the TV bucket. This led to some progress but also showed me some limitations that I had to work through with focusing on these difficult problems. My focus was not very well trained at this point. I also began to see the need for systems of iteration. A system that would allow me to update mechanics, implement the changes and test the results.

Going through this process has shown me something that I have always known but failed to recognize. I need to be creating to be a creator. To build anything you must invest the time and energy required to do so. This may sound obvious but we all tend to assume that things will be easier and go faster than they actually will. This assumption often leads us to starting to peel back the facade and see the true scope of work only to immediately return back to your comfort zone, right where your destroyer wants you.

Of course there is nothing wrong with enjoying the comforts of life. You just need to remain vigilant as the destroyer is always lurking around the corner waiting to draw you back in. Those who are ambitious are often more vulnerable to the destroyer once they have achieved some level of success. It is important to realize that the true meaning of success is maintaining all of the main pillars of life health, wealth, relationships and spirit. Your first job is to figure out what each of these mean to you and then work to tirelessly to improve on them.

Once you get the ball rolling on each of these it gets very difficult for the destroyer to touch you. Be prepared though when going through transitional periods the destroyer is looking for openings. Now understanding this you can catch yourself even sooner when you begin to feel drawn towards your old ways. Sometimes we all need a break and absolutely deserve to take them. Just be weary of getting sucked too deep into the Netflix binge of your bad habit.

We all have a builder inside of us who wants to have an impact on the world in a positive way. We need to each strive to overcome our bad habits and begin to leave our positive impacts on the world through self improvement and action towards your goals. The destroyer will never leave you so be sure that you equip yourself with the skills needed to overcome the draw and get back to building.

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