It's 2pm. I crawl out of bed and stumble to the bathroom to use the toilet. As I wash my hands, I look in the mirror. The eyeliner from my recent, non-stop partying is smudged and my long hair is tangled, knotted and dirty. I walk outside and immediately light up my morning cigarette, vaguely recalling the recent alcohol and drug-induced experiences. I'd been out every night for the past four nights and my brain, slow and foggy from the night before, took a while to get going.
Sound like fun?
For a long time, it was.
But eventually, I started wondering, "Could I get any dumber?"
I was slowly killing myself, furiously digging my own grave and acting like I was having the time of my life doing it. I joked with my friends that I was going to go to rehab at least three times, because I thought it'd be cool.
My catchphrase became "Are you a fucking rockstar?" and if you asked me that a while ago, I probably would have done anything. Drink this, smoke that, take this.
For a while, I tried to drown out the realisation that I was being a complete idiot.
But it just grew and grew and sooner or later, I was thinking "This is a fucking stupid way to live".
So I stopped. It wasn't a lightning change and there were plenty of times when I fell flat on my face (sometimes literally).
Over time, I made some dramatic changes in my life. At first, it was like wearing a new set of clothes. I didn't feel right in my new skin, and most of my friends didn't understand and didn't really care to. But as time went on, I adjusted to the change and have become happier and more excited than ever.
This isn't a "holier than thou" story. I'm not going to sit here and preach to you why drinking and drugs are wrong, because they're not.
What's wrong is staying on a path that you know isn't right for you anymore. Right and wrong are nothing but ideas, and attaching labels like that to behaviour is a dead-end street.
Start thinking about what YOU want. Not what you should want, what your Mum thinks you should want or what your girlfriend/boyfriend wants.
What YOU want.
What do you want?
Self-improvement isn't about adhering to someone's idea of what it means to be good, right, moral, ethical or any other standard. It's not about conforming to society's ideas about what it means to be a good citizen, or even to necessarily contribute to the good of humanity. And it’s certainly not about feeling guilty for doing the things you enjoy.
In a nutshell, self-improvement and learning to make life go bang is about doing what you want.
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