EP# What’s your addiction? I know what mine is.

00:00 Chadwick Sapenter: Welcome to The Art of Hope podcast with your host Chadwick Sapenter. If you're willing to dream bigger than whatever your environment is, then anything is possible. It's time to create the path to your success by overcoming your past, embracing your present and outlining your future. Today that goal becomes a reality. Every journey begins with the first step. So let's begin. The Art of Hope podcast.

00:32 CS: Welcome to The Art Of Hope show. My name is Chadwick Sapenter. This is episode 1.3. At some point, I'm gonna call it episode three. Thank you guys for tuning in. It's gonna be a great show. So let me ask you, are you an addict? Are you an addict? Do you struggle with addiction? For all of my life, pretty much every day, I'm battling addiction. Now, I don't use drugs. If you do, that's your thing, that's just not my thing. I hate the thought of my mind being controlled by something else. And then I watched my father die addicted to heroin, using other drugs. I've seen it just destroy lives. So I don't wanna start. I don't wanna start because I just don't know how far it's gonna go, and some of that stuff looks way too fun. It just looks like, man, they're having a really good time, and then they end up with no teeth. So I'm like, no, no, no. I'm gonna chill. I will lose my teeth another way, but it won't be 'cause of crack or meth or whatever it is.

01:48 CS: Well, anyway, even though I don't struggle with "drug addiction," that's a lie, because I think caffeine's a drug. And I don't never crave coffee, that's never my thing. I'll drink some Bulletproof coffee in the morning, but that's more so for breakfast and get me through fasting in the morning, but I don't sleep enough. And so when I'm tired throughout the day, I'll go grab a Yerba mate shot or some type of shot of something to, oh, I got a little pep, but it's fake, it's caffeine. It's drug induced, it's what it is. But then, it really hit me that I struggled with addiction when I went full-on keto. Man, it really let me know how addicted to sugar that I am. I craved it, sweated, all of the withdrawal effects that you have. I was an addict. So even though I had been pretty intentional about not succumbing to some of the other temptations, whether it be marijuana and other drugs, alcohol. And again, I ain't judging nobody. If that's you, do your thing. You gotta live your life, right? I'm living mine. But what I'm saying is, is that although I'd overcome those things, I still had addictive behavior. So a lot of that addiction, it was, I noticed this. When I kicked the sugar, and that's kind of went up and down, if I'm being honest. It bothered me. I hated it. Food didn't even taste good anymore, but I still want that sugar crack, right.

03:40 CS: When I kicked the sugar, and even the caffeine, it's like, I don't worry about it anymore, you know what I mean, 'cause I know it's nonsense, and there's other ways for me to get energy. But when I really got intentional about that, you know what increased? My phone. My phone usage became insane. And listen, I'm not talking about productive phone use. It's literally trap after trap after trap. I will open up Twitter on my web browser on my computer and then turn away and while it's open on my computer just involuntarily open it on my phone. I rarely post on Instagram, but I'll scroll through there for no reason, looking at nothing, knowing I'm not looking for anything, I'm not searching for anything, I'm just flipping my thumb. And then I realized, this is when I realized that I really had an addiction problem because my battery would be dead on my phone and I would still be reaching and flicking through my phone. That's a problem. That's a problem.

04:58 CS: So I had saw this article, it was on Quartz, qz.com. The title was called Kicking the Habit. I Quit my iPhone Habit Using WebMD's Advice For Dealing With Drug Addiction. So let me find the author. The author of this article is a person... I think it originally appeared on Nathan's blog. I don't know, go to Quartz, Nathan's blog. I don't know who the author is, I'm sorry. Nathan Toups, there we go. So, Kicking the Habit. I Quit my iPhone Habit Using WebMD's Advice for Dealing with Drug Addiction by Nathan Toups, TOUPS. This is a May 2nd article of last year. And so basically what he did is took the Signs of Drug Addiction, it's an article on WebMD, I'm sure you can Google that title. And then he just modified the word and just put smartphone. Just modified the key signature behaviors outlined to describe smartphone usage addiction.

06:00 CS: So here are some signs that you should ask yourself, am I addicted to my smartphone? Number one, you keep using your phone after it's no longer needed to solve a problem. Yes, that's me. You spend more and more of your time on your phone to get the same effects. I don't really know what that means, but I do it. You feel strange when you don't have your phone. Strange, lost.

06:56 CS: I have to go back, give me a loaner phone. You can't stop yourself from using your phone even if you don't want to. This is tough to admit. I pick my phone... I have so much stuff to do, so much stuff to do. I gotta put this phone down. You can't stop yourself from using your phone, even if you don't want to, just read that one. You have a hard time giving yourself limits. You might say you only use so much, but then can't stop and end up using twice that amount. Or you use it more often than you meant to. Yeah, we're not talking about cocaine, crack, we're talking about your phone. Yes, that's me. Right now, I have limits set on my phone, violated every last one of them. Why am I being this way? I don't know. Maybe I'm not perfect. Next one, you've begun having trouble doing normal daily things without your phone. Next one, you drive or do other dangerous things like use heavy machinery while using... While you are on your phone. Next one, you borrow money to pay for your phone. I ain't broke so that ain't me. You hide some phone use or the effect it is having on you from others. So I'm looking at all of those steps right now. Keep in mind, Nathan modified these from drug addiction and just put some behaviors for phone and just to all but one, I can check those off.

08:30 CS: I can check each of those off. So what is that... What is that? Have we escaped some other addiction only to have one that that may be equally dangerous? We have no idea what these things are doing to our brain, or what they're gonna mean in the long term, we just use them or whatever. So my question is, is, how are you battling your addiction? So one of the things that my goal, this is my goal. Today is... I'm falling short of the goal. I'ma fix this shit, but I'm just being honest, right? Because you can labor with me, right? Not perfection, execution though. We just want to keep taking steps. So I have some big things that I'm working on and so I said, "Okay until I get these things accomplished, I'm leaving social media alone." It's pretty difficult because I run a couple of organizations which require me to be online and respond to things sometimes, so I get caught up in it, but what I gotta do is I gotta get an assistant that handles the responses or really gets serious about boundaries. So it's not about me not knowing what I need to do to actually beat this addiction. That would be a lie.

09:55 CS: I know exactly what I need to do. It's about doing it, which is why it's an addiction because you can't stop doing something even though you know how and what you should be doing. So here's the thing. I'm asking you to labor with me in this battle. And every week, I'm just gonna kinda give a report on my screen usage, right? Specifically social media usage. And I'm counting YouTube on there, right? It's almost like we like being distracted so much, like me I just need the background noise. I need something in the background or else I get too far alone in my thoughts. When I know the best thing that I can do is sit quite still. Now, I protect my mornings for the most part. But the real trouble is this, is that in the evenings, if you don't guard your evenings, it's going to affect your morning. If you're on your phone all night before bed, it's gonna cause a problem. Like the Model Health Show. He talks a lot about the blue light and the effects that it has on our brain.

10:58 CS: And I don't remember the exact quote. It was something like for every 30 minutes that we spend with that light, it's like our body loses a hour of REM sleep. Don't quote me on it, I'll find it. The episode that it was on, but it was... He's a beast, so of course. But my point is, is that this phone addiction, this thing that we carry around, that's a beautiful tool, that is so helpful, that has just made our lives so connected, made us so much more knowledgeable, about so many more things. Like for example, when I was in college, I used to be able to go to parties and... Or to the club and I could pretend like I was in the NFL and girls would start liking you and would be nice to you because they thought you were in the NFL. And they had no way of validating it. And I would give 'em a fake name. I think Champ Jones, that was my name. Champ Jones, that was my go to. It just sounds like somebody who's playing in the league. And they couldn't look it up and it worked out beautiful.

12:00 CS: But today, that whole hustle is done. That whole hustle is done. Because real quick, pull up this person. "You're not on NFL.com. I'm hitting search, you're not nowhere on Google," none of that stuff, right? Yeah, now in hindsight, that's... It's a pretty lame scam, right? To be trying to get girls 'cause I ain't have to do all that. But I was trying to get some of these, whatever. But anyway, this thing, this beautiful tool that's changed our lives has also created an obstacle to our progress. What if I cut my phone usage time in half. Let me pull it up right now. I'm ashamed to do this, but I'ma do it right now, so my phone usage for the last week, if I'm going to my screen time on my iPhone, so for the last...

13:07 CS: So for today, I've spent nine hours and 25 minutes on my phone. I woke up at about 5:00 this morning, it's 10 o'clock PM, I've been on my phone a lot. Now, of that time, one hour and 41 minutes of that was spent social networking. Let me dig into see, but see, some of this is false because I deleted the Twitter and Instagram Apps from my phone, so it's probably not as accurate as it can be, an hour and 32 in text messages, hour and 19 minutes in my email. Productivity is just very little. Here's my point. Now let's go compare that to the last seven days. So over the last seven days, my usage is, it's calculating... So looks like it's down a little bit, but here's my point, my point is this, is that, well, no, I'm actually, I'm 55 minutes above my average as of today, so it's just ridiculous. Now today's been a busy day, there's been a lot going on, but point being, what if instead of that nine and a half hours using my phone, I was working on this book that I need to get finished, I was mapping out the staff that I need to get hired for this new business. All of these things that I'm like, that are really, really important?

14:48 CS: And nobody made them important. These are things that I'm saying I wanna do and get done, but I'm allowing this damn phone to control me, it's bothering me, right? I'm gonna kick its ass, I'm gonna break this habit. This is not fixing to be something that rules me. 'cause the main thing with addiction is this, is that something is mastering you, something is controlling your mind, and controlling your actions. I don't want to be mastered by anything, and that's what addiction does, it gives our control over to something else. Listen, it's not just the drugs. Like I mentioned before, it could be caffeine, it could be sugar, our cell phones, it could be sex, it could be money, it could be the gym. We are saying, "Hey, I am giving myself over to this thing", and really, what I wanna be addicted to is being focused, I wanna be addicted to the grind, I wanna be addicted to thriving, to actually accomplishing my goals, that's the only addiction I want. Right now, I have to ask myself this because I wanna be a high achieving person, all right? I wanna be somebody that does, I wanna be one of these freaks.

16:12 CS: That's my standard, to be like the dude that's up at... Jacko, right? Like Jocko and, I don't know, name somebody else, right? Like I wanna be like a combination of these dudes that's just like super locked in and focused and that's my standard for myself. Nobody gave me that, right? Like nobody's gonna even hold me accountable to that. Nobody saying, "Chad, this is who you need to be", but for me, that's who I wanna be, I wanna be somebody that executes and gets the shit done that I say I'm gonna get done, it gets up when I say I get up, and it goes through all these things and it's discipline, right? Again, it's absolutely discipline, but time and time again, I give myself over to this addiction. It doesn't matter if it's sugar, it doesn't matter if it's caffeine, it doesn't matter if it's my phone, I'm allowing myself to be mastered by mediocrity and what about you? Like what's mastering you? Forget anybody else's expectations or standards, how are you doing when it comes to meeting your own expectations and standards? Are you living up to it? Like are you hitting your own metrics, your goals, like are you there?

17:22 CS: I'd like you to ask yourself, so leave a comment, tell me, what is the addiction that's driving you, how are you gonna fight it, what are you gonna do about it, when are you gonna say enough is enough? I'm gonna try to keep y'all updated on the progress and I'm saying trying, because I don't know if I'm gonna do it, I don't know, right? Like I gotta do this and it ain't about me, it's not about this telling you that I have this problem, this shit really bothers me, because I need to do what I need to do, and you need to do what you need to do. You have to ask yourself like, why are you not doing the shit that you say you wanna do? Not, nobody said you have to have goals! Like you could choose average all day long, and nobody is gonna have a problem because everybody wants to be average, but for those of you who like me, who wanna be a high achiever, who want to be like a somebody who executes, that gets your shit done, you gotta fight this, man, we gotta fight this. And man, you know the hardest part, it's not hard when you have nothing, it's not hard when all you have is the concrete, right?

18:24 CS: Like when I was there, man, I was locked in. I would get invited to these phenomenal opportunities with friends and then all of these things and I'm like, "No, I gotta work, I don't deserve it", but somehow right now because I've accomplished a little bit, no one near where I wanna be but so far from where I was, right? Like most people would say you're a success and you've made and you've achieved, but I'm so far, I am not 10% to where I plan on being, and so, but somehow I'm more comfortable now, right? I'm not as focused when in reality, I have more riding and at stake than I ever have. I should be more focused and so should you. Now's not the time to give in and now is not the time to give yourself over to comfort. So figure out what do you need to do to fight the addiction? Maybe it's going to AA, maybe it's finding like a Celebrate Recovery group at a church in your city, maybe whatever it is you need to do, I'm gonna fight mine, I'm gonna beat this like I refuse, like I refuse, I just refuse to be dominated and mastered by these things, by these low mediocre habits. I'm encouraging you to do the same thing.

19:05 CS: Thank you guys for tuning into the Art of Hope show. Again, this is persistence, not perfection. I'm just gonna get this shit done. I'm not worried about having it perfect, because it doesn't exist, and if I do that, I won't execute. I have to hit my goal, I can't lie to myself. So I hope you love it and I hope you keep tuning in, go on this journey with me. Leave me a five-star review, comment, do all of those things below. I'm looking forward to next time. Fight that addiction, get some help where you need it, don't be lying to yourself and go crush them damn goals. I'm out.