Having activities and hobbies you enjoy,from collecting stamps to ballroom dancing to hiking,will give you pleasure in noncompulsive ways that can reduce the edge on the other areas of your life.Being able to relax and be with yourself in ways that don’t even fit the label ‘activities’-such as just walking or sitting in your back yard or barbecuing-can be equally valuable.Spectator activities,like reading,following dance,drama and art,and sports also fall in this category(well sprts in fair moderation,not evenly can become addiction too !).
What you should find after you pursue these interests for a while is that you have develop a new area of competence and expertise.That is ,you know more than the average person about the activity and you can take pleasure in your mastery of this area.
Addiction is largery a matter of misplaced energy,in both physical and moral sense.Think of the addict hustlingfor drugs on the street,squandering real skills on antisocial pursuits.In the television program about shopping addiction somone in the audienceremarked that the ’shopaholicks’ on the panel appeared rather self-centered and ’should find something to do’.In other words,they were so busy trying to get their needs met through a futile compulsion that they missed obvious opportunities to redirect their energy more constructively.This observation, however uncongenial to the tlevision panelists,was very revealing about addictions of all kinds-and how they can be finish.
by enhancing yourself-discipline and self-esteem , physical mdiscipline can be a very strong first step away from addiction whatever you have .