how to get back on track

read this if you've fallen back into bad habits and need a change

Let’s say you’ve been on a roll lately.

Taking care of yourself. Reading. Cooking whole foods. Moving your body frequently and in challenging patterns that build muscle mass and skeletal resilience. Consciously advancing your mental facilities through self education and creative work. The good stuff.

Let’s say you’ve finally developed a powerhouse routine that encompasses all or some of these daily practices and you’re feeling better than ever. These habits are challenging, and you certainly feel that challenge every day, but that’s what makes them so rewarding.

On top of all of it, maybe you’re going through an important life transition like a college graduation, career change, or the end/beginning of a new relationship. Life is moving fast and it’s looking good for you. You worked hard to make it this way.

And then something peculiar happens.

You zag. You stumble. You crash. There’s a party, or a small gathering of old friends, or most threatening of all, a fully open day with absolutely no plans or structure.

Fundamentally, 3 things happen in close succession:

1. You are presented with a trigger.

   (a substance that you enjoy on a sensory level that typically leads to a spiral of consumption leaving you in a state of neurological fatigue and endless hunger for more of the thing. this trigger is usually something you smoke, or inhale, or watch, or eat, or take in through another bodily orifice until it is broken down into its smallest parts and distributed through your blood stream into your brain where it makes you feel happy chemicals)

2. You accept the trigger.

   (you smoke, or inhale, or watch, or eat, or otherwise ingest the substance and it is broken down into its smallest parts and distributed through your blood stream into your brain where it makes you feel happy chemicals)

3. Your sense of identity shifts back to an older, less focused, version of you.

   (shortly after consumption, you feel a dramatic shift. no longer do you feel like the purpose-driven, health-conscious, forward-moving protagonist like you were before accepting the trigger. suddenly, you feel like your old self. the version of you that wasn’t taking care of business ((or anything for that matter.))

This shift in identity makes it easy to continue consuming. So you do. The spiral (or dopamine hole) deepens and you sink into it — comfortably. At this point, the momentary release of continuous consumption of the trigger outweighs any natural, intrinsic motivation you had to remain on the focused path.

So then, after the party, the easiest way to keep your happy chemical receptors appeased is to continue engaging with the trigger, even though it’s no longer hitting you the same way. You find yourself stuck.

Metaphysically stuck: in the old habits that left you depleted and always hungry for more. Literally stuck: on the couch because it’s hard to move when you’re this tired.

The version of you that was ‘on point,’ that meal-prepped, and performed pushups after rising with your alarm, and journaled in the morning, and took decisive action towards a meaningful goal… that person feels far away. Betrayed, that ‘better self’ turns their back on you and leaves you in the dopamine hole.

Ok. Full stop.

You ready to turn things around?

There’s a few core truths we have to accept first.

1. There are not 2 you’s. There’s not a disciplined you, and a zombified you. There’s just you. Whether your daily lifestyle is designed around purpose or pleasure — this is all you, baby.

2. A self-directed narrative of endless guilt and shame (for falling off track) is a surefire way to remain in the dopamine hole. When we feel helpless, or worthless, or weak, we’re far more likely to turn to the self-soothing option again. And again. And again.

3. Positive momentum doesn’t have a shelf life. Whatever meaningful progress you’ve made in the past continues to serve you in the future — even after a temporary dopamine-crash. Even if your body composition declines, and your lungs inflame slightly, and you fall out of practice with your creative skill set, your past wins make it easier to generate that positivity again.

Getting back on track is its own skill.

Starting is a skill. It takes a great level of courage and determination to get yourself into the deep end to just start ‘doing the thing’ for the first time.

Consistency is a skill. Repeating the process takes patience and the ability to endure discomfort + boredom — a potent cocktail.

And getting yourself back on track after temporarily losing rhythm is a skill. I’d argue it’s one of the hardest ones. It’s hard to accept that even after getting yourself together and facing the challenge of ‘starting,’ you still don’t have it all figured out, and you’re still susceptible to the same triggers of the past.

But the actual process of getting back on track is shockingly simple, almost mechanical.

Let’s say it’s 11:30 PM on TikTok in the dopamine-hole.

You turn the lights off and call it a night. You need to sleep off the stimulation. You set an alarm for a specific time. You rise with that alarm. You make your bed. You stretch your body on the wood floor of your bedroom. You dress. You go to the bathroom (re-order this list as necessary.) You drink a glass of water. You look out the window at a sunny or overcast day. You drink a second glass of water. You sit at the kitchen or coffee or dining room table and pour your recent dopamine-hole experience into your journal. Tell the story. Explore the trigger and how it felt to engage with it again. Vomit your thoughts onto the page with zero judgment or blame or self criticism. Just observe. Then you stand up and you make a cup of coffee. You go through the rest of your day with a level of calm focus. Calm being the operative word here. There’s a certain detachment from the outcomes of your work. You’re just present. You breathe. You drink another glass of water. You type slowly and methodically. You take a walk between emails. You commute home in a state of near-meditation. You are here.

This is roughly what it looks like.

Now you might be thinking: seriously?!

“That’s the grand plan? Just get back into your routine and keep going… business as usual?”

Yes.

But you do it without the stress. Without the tension of needing to win it all back. Without the concern that you’re not who you used to be, and you’ve lost all the progress you worked so hard to achieve. You are still you.

You navigate through your previously established routine with an undeniable peace about you. You keep breathing through it. Because what you’ll find, is that as you sink back into the familiar positive habits with the same languid ease you applied to the recent dopamine hole… you get back on track without trying very hard at all.

And pretty soon you start feeling like that mission-aligned, focused version of yourself again.

(You can achieve this mental shift within a single day… I just did it in 49 minutes.)

But you have to consciously let go of the shame. The shadow of yourself that rails against the ‘bad habits.’ You have to show yourself love and grace and do the challenging stuff in the same breath. You have to do it imperfectly.

If you can separate yourself from the distractions, if you can step away from the high-powered glass rectangle filling your brain with a bizarre dichotomy of attention-atrophying noise and self improvement content, if you can just take a moment to appreciate the work you’ve already put into the project that is your life…

…you’d be surprised at how much you can enjoy getting back on track.

And the good news is: you can repeat this process infinitely. No stumble or harsh fall off the wagon or momentary loss of momentum is enough to keep you from rebooting.

A meaningful life is something you construct brick by brick. But you should expect to make minor repairs throughout the process. Nothing works perfectly. You build and rebuild.

There is no “arriving” at your life.

You are already here.

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Thanks for reading, my friend :)

I hope you found this helpful. Please share with me any and all thoughts/questions/ideas you have, I’d love to keep the conversation going.

I’ll catch you next time.

with love,

josh