Impulsivity is the Rejection of the Present Moment
How excessive impulsivity can lead to the self-sabotage of your own life
I have been a very, very impulsive person most of my adult life. I would tell people that I was impulsive almost as a bragging right or badge of honor, while not realizing that this trait, taken to its extreme (which it often was or bordered on in my case), is actually a toxic signal of inner-brokenness.
Sometimes I feel like such a broken person, and that I can never make good decisions whether I am making them consciously or unconsciously. I consciously know that this is just a negative story that I tell myself. I’ve made plenty of bad decisions, but important decisions that were good as well. For example, I’ve made the decisions in life that led me to graduating college with a double major, getting into and graduating business school with an MBA (which I actually undertook on impulse), starting a multi-million dollar company, and retiring by 33.
However, my life has also been plagued with plenty of bad decisions, and most of these can be traced to impulsivity. Whether it be gambling, taking risks with my life and health, decisions in relationships, or selling all of my Tesla stock for crypto right before the 2018 crash (a decision that cost me in the millions).
At the heart of impulsivity is an addictive personality (which I talk about here in this article on Addiction). Each indulgence to an addictive substance or behavior is driven by an impulse to feel okay. It is doing things which bring pleasure or satisfaction in the moment, yet harbor negative consequences eventually. We have impulsive and addictive personalities because the present moment is never good enough — and not only that it is never good enough, but subconsciously in many cases, the present moment is actually unbearable such that we will leap towards and latch onto anything that will take us out of it…like a stowaway grabbing onto a departing train.
At times it feels like, if given the chance to fail I will 100% take it and sometimes — despite my best conscious efforts — will take every single wrong turn or make every single wrong move. It is textbook self-sabotage, despite even being conscious of it while it’s happening. I actually believe that being conscious of the self-sabotage even as it is happening makes it worse, because that puts you even further into your own head and out of the moment.
One problem with excessive impulsivity is that, instead of being calm in the moment and letting things naturally settle, I want to adjust and change and tinker with something that may very well already be on its way to success. For an example, when I was 17 working at my first hourly job, I thought it would have been a good idea to call my boss at home one evening to tell him that he should consider me for a promotion, and I just went ahead and did it without any regard for how distasteful or detrimental it might look to anyone besides myself. Or, in relationships, something might feel like it is going wrong and I might create 10 different scenarios and try to jump on and attack each one before eventually deciding to just run as a defense mechanism — often before the other person even knows what happened or has a say. All of it driven by impulse — seeing a shiny action that I can jump myself into because I’m currently standing on a platform that feels like it is going to fall at any moment, like in a Mario game. Often, that shiny object is fool’s gold that I leap onto without any critical thought or observation (or in conscious ignorance of thought and observation), and it takes me away from the previous position I was in which often turns out to be safe and the best spot I could’ve been in.
I never thought of myself as an anxious person, and someone observing me in a neutral state may never suspect it. I look and often am quite calm, and very rarely disturbed…at least on the surface levels. Most things that others might consider extreme or traumatic hardly bother me, because I’ve already been exposed to so much. However, when I feel like I am lacking the most basic of needs, I feel like there is like a thorn in my mind that keeps digging and digging below the surface telling me that I need to move and find something new and shiny because I am currently unsafe and unloved and am headed for a certain lonely doom if I stay where I’m at.
The funny thing about the present moment is that there is actually no running from it. The temporary relief that an addictive or impulsive behavior provides is actually an illusion. The moment is always with you…it is like in a chase scene in a horror movie where the victim runs and runs from the bad guy and thinks they’re safe for a moment, only to look around the corner and see that Freddy Krueger or Jason is right there.
Alan Watts had brilliantly stated:
“There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it is not impermanent. Though moving, it is always still. When we try to catch it, it seems to run away, and yet it is always here and there is no escape from it.”
Our addictions and impulses come from an inner desire to control the moment and the future, yet this is a fool’s errand. The only true relief that doesn’t end in disaster or overdose is a complete surrendering to the present moment. One of the hallmarks of the 12 Step Program (and a reason why it can be so effective) is the acknowledgment of a higher power that is greater than yourself. The key is surrender, because none of us are truly in control of anything if we zoom out to the grand scheme of things. An asteroid could hit tomorrow, a drunk driver could kill you or a loved one, you could be diagnosed with cancer, and all of your plans for the future can go out the window in an instant. Surrendering to this truth brings a real sense of relief because you are no longer fooling yourself with the illusion that you are in control of your own destiny — your destiny is as much a product of the divine workings of the universe as much as it is the day to day decisions that you make. Surrender and trust lead to a calm mind.
The core desire driving these impulses is a wanting to feel validated, loved, and warm. When you see a drug addict shoot up heroin, you usually see a sense of calm and inner-warmth on their face, with a smile as if they are being tucked in at home in their bed by their loving parents as a child before anything had ever gone wrong in life.
The sad fact of the matter is that we are so identified with our thoughts, that if a thought touches a deep part of us, we not only feel like the thought is true but we identify with the content of that thought. For instance, if you feel uncomfortable in the present moment and you see something shiny, a natural thought would be, “I need to latch onto that shiny thing and get out of here.” That thought resonates deep within us because we do in fact feel uncomfortable. However, that mere fact doesn’t make the thought that we need to latch onto the thing true. Moreover, it doesn’t make it true that we are someone who is in a position that needs to be escaped. It is possible to feel something and yet still not identify with that feeling as a core aspect of your true self.
All of our social and psychological conditioning from the past primes us in this moment to have the thoughts or attachments that we have. Those experiences are the creative force behind the thoughts and the stories that we tell ourselves, as well as our models of the world and the models we have of who we in fact are as a person. Now this has served us well in the realms of survival and evolution, however, in the realms of emotion and interpersonal connection, it often falls short and in many cases can be misleading. If you are in the bush and a rustle signals a dangerous predator nearby, the impulse to take flight is probably a good one. However, if a loved one neglects to respond to a text message, the impulse to go out and get wasted and hook up with the first willing random person you meet may not have the same probability of being a wise choice.
Many of us who are or have been impulsive/addicts believe that we are inherently incomplete, and that we need love or validation or some kind of fulfillment — otherwise we are starving and on the brink. Ram Dass had said:
“As long as you think that what you are looking for is outside yourself, it will never be enough. That’s the way it works.
What do you need? What do you need to make it all alright? Do you need a companion? You need some stimulation? You need something to turn you on? You need groovy food? Is that what you need?
What do you need?
Every label you have of what you think you need is all a statement of who you think you are, and that all turns out to be wrong. That’s the predicament we find ourselves in.”
Who do you believe yourself to be? What story are you telling yourself about who you are and what you need? What if you stop, surrender to the feeling of being uncomfortable, and listen to the voice that comes out of the deep silences of mediation? What if you make friends with the parts of yourself that you feel are unwanted?
What if you start to become comfortable being uncomfortable?
Then what can stop you?
