Reclaim your story. You are the best one to write it.

​Many of my unhealthy habits are rooted in my past. They are activities I chose to help me feel better about life when for many reasons, my life didn't feel well.

It often didn't feel much like life at all.

It's the cruel nature of unhealthy choices or habits or addictions. They unapologetically use our unwellness against us. They show up, promise to make us feel better, then once we take their hand, they lead us into a dungeon where they become obsessed with trying to destroy us.

Not a lot of people understand that about unhealthy choices or habits or addictions. They don't understand how one could choose a path of destruction not out of a desire to destroy their life, but actually in a desperate attempt to save it.

We often don't understand one's choices because we've not experienced their desperation.

In a moment of clarity, though, at least in my own moments of clarity, you come to realize your life has not been saved at all. You come to realize you had given up on life, and have now adopted habits that actually make you believe that was the absolute right choice for you.

Habits that make you believe giving up was the very best you were ever going to do, so relatively speaking, destruction isn't such a bad outcome in your little corner of the world.

And deeper and deeper you sink into your destroyed little corner of the world.

Until you take back your story. Until you turn your attention to a narrative that recognizes everybody's life is worth more than giving up. Everybody's life is worth reconstructing no matter how deep or painful the destruction.

I assure you, that is no easy turn. It's the nature of our brains. They are quite lazy. They are far more comfortable relying on old thought patterns, telling old stories, than they are writing a brand new one.

But not easy is not the same as impossible.

I love the image of that green shoot held hostage by the weight of the concrete hanging over its head. Held hostage, that is, until it sets its focus on the sun.

It's easy to believe I'll never overcome the concrete in my life. Until I become obsessed with the sun.

Maybe like me, you are ready to reclaim the power of your own attention. Maybe it's time to recognize you've given up on this place you want to go because your lazy brain has convinced you buried beneath the concrete is the best you'll ever do.

Well it's not.

Turn your gaze upon the sun. Fight off everything that's grabbing your head, fighting with all their might to forbid you to gaze, and gaze anyway.

Break free of those things holding your head. And every day, remind them; I am on to you.

In a moment of unwellness, you fooled me once. But never again.

Forevermore, my gaze is on the sun.