Living Lucky® Podcast with Jason and Jana Banana

Exploring Our Addiction to Negativity: Turning the Doom Loop into a Success Spiral

• Jana and Jason Shelfer • Season 5 • Episode 30

Share episode

Unhealthy social circles and their role in fostering addiction to despair.

Join hosts Jana and Jason Shelfer on the "Living Lucky" podcast as they delve into a thought-provoking conversation about the addiction to despair. In this episode titled "Addicted to Despair," they explore how society has become hooked on dwelling in negative emotions, rather than seeking solutions and celebrating their joys. 

Jana and Jason challenge the norm of bonding over struggles, offering insights into why we addict ourselves to problems and how it ultimately hinders our growth. With their signature humor and personal anecdotes, they explore the psychology behind this addiction and the need for genuine connection and celebration of life's accomplishments. 

Tune in as they navigate the fine line between acknowledging our challenges and embracing the power of positivity. The "Living Lucky" podcast invites you to spin the doom loop of negativity into an upward success cycle, guiding you towards a life you truly crave.

[00:01:03] Addiction to problems fuels need for attention.

[00:04:00] Fear of judgment inhibits celebration and comparison.

[00:07:16] Connecting through shared hardships at the watercooler.

[00:10:56] Small wins bring closer to achieving goals.

[00:13:52] Disempowering questions, accident, and ugly baby.



#addictions #alcohol #drugs #sex #overeat #problemaddiction #victimhood #despair #socialcircle #gossip #struggles #dreams #goals #joys #laughter #celebrations #accomplishments #worries #judgments #bunkoparties #lockerroomTalk #lowvibrationemotions #psychologicalreasons #feelingalive #connection #habit #emotionalfilling #painandsuffering 

TEXT US DIRECTLY

For mind-blowing inspirational content that we implement ourselves, join us by subscribing and connecting to our private community.

Thanks for joining us.
CONNECT with us in our PRIVATE COMMUNITY

*** The Living Lucky Community is experiencing what it feels like to create a life of inspiration where dreams come true. Check it out HERE *** or at https://www.startlivinglucky.com/sendusyourdreams

!!! SEND US A MESSAGE: Are you ready to unlock your path to a more inspired life where you're Living Lucky®? Email me directly and let's chart your course toward realizing your dreams and creating a life that fills you with daily inspiration.
Email Jason Shelfer HERE

The 4 pillars of Living Lucky
Believe in yourself
Believe in the people around you
Believe in your circumstances and
Believe that God is working through you, for you, and always conspiring in your favor.

*Previously Recorded

Speaker 1:

Are you ready to create a life you crave? Let's spin that doom loop of negativity into an upward success cycle and start living lucky. Good morning, I'm Jana, I'm Jason and we are living lucky. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 3:

We're talking about addictions today. We just talked about alcohol in the last episode.

Speaker 2:

This is a whole new kind of addiction.

Speaker 3:

And we're not talking about drugs. If that's where your mind went, shame on you this is a, I think, and it's not sex either.

Speaker 2:

This is an addiction that it's not shopping more people are involved in and they don't have enough shame about it.

Speaker 3:

I bet you're thinking that we overeat.

Speaker 2:

That's not it either.

Speaker 3:

What is your guess? What kind of addiction do you think Jana and Jason are thinking about right now?

Speaker 2:

I'm going to tell you, it's one that we all have when we meet at the coffee cooler, when we are gathering over a glass of wine. It's the addiction to our problems, our troubles, our struggles, oh, and that just fosters kind of that feeling that we're not dealing with, and it's like guess what happened to me today.

Speaker 3:

Addicted to? Is it victimhood? Addicted to despair?

Speaker 1:

It's just addicted to all your.

Speaker 2:

All the Addicted to crap Things you had to get through, but you're addicted to the problem instead of the solution.

Speaker 3:

But why? Why do we do that to ourselves? It's only causing more problems.

Speaker 2:

Well, I feel like what happens in a lot of social circles, if you're in an unhealthy social circle, is that you Did you just say social circle An unhealthy social circle. Yeah, when you get together, people tend to bond over gossip. Wait, I have to tell this story real quick.

Speaker 3:

I have to tell this story. I'm so sorry. One time, Jason, we saw this. We happened to witness a beautiful sunset. It was so gorgeous.

Speaker 2:

We were out on the boat. It was when we actually take a picture of it, and this was before.

Speaker 3:

Everybody was posting them every single day and so Jason took a gorgeous photo of this sunset, and he happened to Sunrise oh, sunrise, that's right. Oh yeah, because we were out skiing early in the morning, and so then he thought you know what? I'm going to send this to our good friend who's a meteorologist here in Orlando, florida, mr Tom Sorrells.

Speaker 2:

That's right.

Speaker 3:

He sent it to our friend Tom Sorrells so that Tom could show it on his morning newscast.

Speaker 2:

And he's never had to say my whole name.

Speaker 3:

And so he shows this beautiful picture that Jason takes, and then he says thanks to my good friend Jason Shelford. Jason Shelford, and he can't say Jason's full name.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's a Jason. He gets caught in the shh shh, shh shh shh. Jason Shelford. You can say Jason, just fine, but it's Jason Shelford.

Speaker 3:

And for a broadcaster who just speaks seamlessly day after day, elecler. I mean he is a professional that's right Been doing it for years. We just busted out laughing as we were watching.

Speaker 2:

My good friend Jason.

Speaker 3:

As we were watching him in our living room. He's funny. Anyway, so what you were saying.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so we gather around and we start talking about, we bond over the gossip, we bond over the struggles, like it's a. It's one of those things that raise people in, and why is?

Speaker 3:

that, though, because it feels like we would have such a better energy if we would bond over our dreams, our goals, our joys, our laughter, our celebrations.

Speaker 2:

So I think one of the big things is is we place thoughts and judgments on our accomplishments and so we worry that other people are going to place thoughts and judgments on our accomplishments. So if I came in and said, oh my gosh, I just won the gold cup, they're like oh I won the world cup, you know. So we're like is someone going to be the one upper, or can we just all celebrate our joys and our the wonderful things in life?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, because you think, oh my gosh, someone in their head is like well, good for you, jason Chalford, right, mr Gold Cup winner.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's the thing is. So we start worrying about because we do the same thing, though on the opposite side we're like I don't think your day was bad. No I guess how bad my day was.

Speaker 3:

Oh. Now I know what you're thinking when I speak to you every day.

Speaker 2:

My husband does this. Well, he's not as bad as my husband. Guess what my husband does.

Speaker 1:

I don't say that you don't do that.

Speaker 2:

But tell me you haven't heard of it. Bunko parties or anything.

Speaker 1:

Oh, listen to you, listen to you.

Speaker 2:

Because guys hear it in the locker room, I mean it's there's, there's the guys that?

Speaker 3:

talk about the.

Speaker 2:

Let's talk about locker room talk and if they're doing that, then they say well, I scored 30. I scored 40.

Speaker 3:

Well, you missed so and so Slow down, slow down. You're going a million miles a minute. What is really said in the locker room? Let's just go there.

Speaker 2:

I honestly I couldn't tell you there's. It depends on which locker room you're in and it also depends on I want to know. But I can tell you it's a lot of lies.

Speaker 3:

I want to know what goes on in the locker room that Jason Choffers it.

Speaker 2:

I don't spend a lot of time in the locker rooms. No, I didn't. I honestly I didn't spend a lot of time in locker rooms in high school because I was like I'm not showering with a bunch of dudes.

Speaker 3:

You didn't show her Heck. No, you were the smelly boy.

Speaker 2:

I wasn't the smelly boy, I was like I'll sign up for sports that are happening after school or none of them. That happened before school. And because I'm not going, I'm not a group shower guy.

Speaker 3:

No, no, that's just not you.

Speaker 2:

No, I don't. It's just not my thing. Don't be looking at my thing.

Speaker 3:

All right. Well, today we're talking about being addicted to our low vibration emotions.

Speaker 2:

It's almost like you're kind of petting it and stroking it when you talk about your problems.

Speaker 3:

Whoa whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 2:

I'm not talking about the thing anymore. I'm talking about your addiction.

Speaker 3:

Okay, well, your addiction Shut up, okay. Okay, here's my okay so here's my my best guess scenario at this, because I'm thinking the reason. Maybe there is a psychological reason of why we are addicted to those emotions, and the one thing that comes to mind is that it makes us feel alive.

Speaker 2:

I think it makes us also feel connected because everybody you know everybody has troubles and we don't want to talk about the heart, the real troubles, but we do want to make sure that we're not experiencing hardship alone. So we get to the water cooler and we say you know what? I feel like I didn't accomplish much today. I feel like I'm not enough. I'm going to express some of my troubles and then.

Speaker 2:

I'm. Hopefully someone else is going to say, well, I've got troubles too, right, so how can we connect and bond over this? However, we don't look at if you, if you made it to the water cooler, you've accomplished something, even if it's just making it to the water cooler. If you're having a conversation with someone, or someone is available to have a conversation with, there's a when. There as well, I have there is connection. You don't have to force a connection over the drama, but I hear you fall into that.

Speaker 3:

People are longing for connection and they don't know it's become a habit. They don't know how to connect you, just nailed it.

Speaker 2:

It's become a habit. They they got some type of emotional filling from the first time when they really needed it, when they expressed a hurt or a sorrow, and they're looking for that bonding, that togetherness, that connection of someone else's in this with me. Someone else is having the same issue.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Or or at least issues. I'm not the only one that's having issues.

Speaker 3:

I also feel that, as I started to say earlier, is it makes us feel alive. And I know that this, this may sound a little macabre I feel like when we are feeling pain and suffering and despair, we're at least feeling something.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's a great song. It's like I bleed just to know I'm alive. You know that's that's a great song. It's like when we go through a breakup, when we get let go from a job or fired from a job, you go and you just have this pity party and you're like crank up the music for my pity party.

Speaker 3:

Right.

Speaker 2:

I want to turn on the worst, the songs that really amp up that feeling of disgust I have for myself that life is horrible, my world's falling apart, and then then I, then I can come back and feel comforted again.

Speaker 3:

And for some reason we can look back in our life and we can really remember those times when we were hurt. However, the times where we got an A on our test, or the times when we won the spelling B, or the times when we were asked out by A surprise date or we know we want a race or something with those tend to fade away a little bit because you know we celebrate them in the moment and then we're like okay, move on.

Speaker 2:

Well, think about training for a marathon, and you're not a marathon runner. You go through months, or it minimum weeks, of grueling, practice and training and it hurts and it's lonely and it's like I don't want to do this anymore. And then you go run your race and you have the finish line and it's over right so it's a, it's a moment of accomplishment.

Speaker 2:

And if you haven't gotten to that point in that journey where the actual Training and the and all that part that you, instead of looking at it as hurting it's, you see it as your goal and like these are moving me closer to my goal, then it's a different perspective there. So it's a. You don't have to fall back on the hurt and the emotion and those things that normally we fall back on, because we have these small wins throughout the day and we have a, we have a good win, but a lot of times we just call that struggle the place marker in the day.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and then we become addicted to it because it's hard to let go of what's comfortable and Normal yeah you know it becomes, it becomes our comfort zone it's literally just a pattern that we live in and don't know our pattern it's.

Speaker 2:

It's trapping us in that.

Speaker 3:

And then when we let go of it all of a sudden is like, oh, wait a minute. It's kind of like I'm gonna use an example and you're gonna be like, oh, jenna, where are you using? This I love it's kind of like every time I clean out the garage.

Speaker 2:

I fill it right back up exactly.

Speaker 3:

It gets filled up within days, and I think you know what. I just cleaned out the garage and musical junk it is, it's. I kid you not, it is. It is very uncomfortable for Jason to have a clean garage.

Speaker 2:

That's where all my toys are and I need if I toys are not there. You feel like you don't have anything like I'm in lack and I don't know what it is, because I had A lot of the toys that I have in. There are things I'm not using, just like these emotions that we show up with are all in the past there, I mean, if you gotta feel it to heal it right. We've talked about that a couple episodes ago right.

Speaker 3:

But we're not healing it and they're not serving us, just bringing it up, they're not serving us. Yeah, in order to manifest, we need to be feeling joy and love and hope and peace and vitality well, so many times, like you see someone with a broken leg, you ask about what happened to them.

Speaker 2:

Not, you don't care about how they went through the healing process or how they're going through the healing process or how they, how they're Ca accomplishing things through it yeah, you ask what was the damaging part?

Speaker 3:

what damage?

Speaker 2:

what damaged you, so it back in my little lizard brain. I could be like, make sure I don't do that.

Speaker 3:

You know what? I'm never. That's a good Little tidbit. I mean, that's just like a slightly different perspective. I've always thought, you know, people always ask what's wrong with you, what's wrong with you or what happened to you. I always think that's a really terrible question because there's a no it's, it's very disempowering. It is very disempowering, she back to the accident, you and plus you would never go up to.

Speaker 2:

An ugly baby. Yeah, say it. Yeah, I'm not even Break the pattern, making that choice to say this habit does not serve me, or if it is serving me, how is it serving me? And is it serving me productively? Or is it keeping me stuck where I am?

Speaker 3:

And does that apply to a clean garage? I won't put you hit go out. All right guys. Thanks for joining us addiction.

Speaker 1:

Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time. Bye, bye.