At my worst, this happened:
I drank all night until I would pass out.
I’d show up late for meetings, do deals with people who would rip me off, run away from good opportunities, invest in bad opportunities.
Have friends for what they can do for me rather than because I felt good to be around them.
Be consumed by money because I thought it could get me freedom.
Rather than the other way around – pursuing freedom and doing what I love in such a way that one (of many) byproducts would be money.
Now I know this.
One time I was in my hotel room by myself. I had hacked into my then-wife’s account, was reading her emails, had CNBC on while the market was crashing and I was literally watching myself lose my home.
I kept thinking, “I can’t believe I did this to myself again. What is wrong with me? What small thing can I start doing now to turn my life around?”
My only friends were all people who had borrowed money from me and never returned it. And other people I spoke to despised me.
I would eat junk all day long. I never wanted to leave the hotel room. I would work from there. Even worse, I paid a friend to do my work for me at my then-job.
Ugh. Forget it. It just gets worse and worse what I was going to say.
Much worse.
So then I stopped. I stopped because I wanted to believe “the body is a temple.” But unfortunately right then it was the vessel for all of this anger, jealousy, anxiety, fear.
It was the vessel for my hopes that had been twisted into despair.
There was no more rainbow, no more dream. Not like when I was a little kid.
Not like when I would go into the street as a kid after a downpour, the streets dusted with vapor and quiet, hoping to see a rainbow. Or a double rainbow.
Hoping to see a magic horse. Hoping to be a magic hero. With a magic sword. Riding into a fiery and alive sunset.