By and large, the easy way out… sucks.

But being addicted to it, to the pint where you can’t imagine taking any other route, is even worse.

It’s not hard to see how the easy way out becomes addictive. Laziness is an instinct, despite what some gym teacher types might think. We would be inefficient creatures indeed if we did not have an instinct for conserving effort.

This instinct makes avoiding effort inherently pleasurable. We get a nice buzz of electricity in the reward center of our brains when we successfully avoid “unnecessary” effort.

Throw in an element of feeling clever and smart that you came up with an easier way to do something (or avoid doing), and you have a recipe for addiction right there. Two kinds of reward means twice as addictive.

Then add in a third reward : relief of fear or panic. If the effort involved, even in something extremely minor, is also something which causes panic in you, then escaping the situation will make you feel like you just escaped a predator.

And our wonderfully plastic minds are perfectly capable of increasing our tendency to panic in order to get those three rewards. There you are, feeling efficient, smart, and relieved, and even proud of yourself, when all you have really done is reinforced the behaviour pattern that is ruining your life.

When you always, compulsively, take the easiest way out of a situation, you become a very weak and fearful person. Your list of options in life gets smaller and smaller with every easy way out you take, and soon you are effectively almost immobile because your addiction has hollowed you our and made you blind both to the damage you are doing to yourself and the possibilities that lie outside your proscribed low-panic area of comfort.

The easy way out of the situation is rarely ever the best choice. It precludes you actually dealing with situations, only escaping them, and so your problems only get worse over time and, of course, the worse they get, the more you want to escape them and the worse you get at actually dealing with them.

And you have to ask yourself : why am I looking for a way out all the time anyhow? What’s wrong with staying in? Surely there has got to be things out there that are worth staying in for. Only a fool would think that they can somehow know enough about the world to say that there is nothing worth sticking around for.

The truth is that it is the addiction that tells you that nothing is worth the cost of avoiding or even just delaying taking that easy way out exit. As long as you believe that, the addiction remains in your control. You are its prisoner. And if you dare to start looking outside those prison walls, it will enforce its will via fear.

But think about it. What is so bad about staying in? It’s not like you are trapped. The easy way out is still there. You could stay in the situation just to see if maybe it gets better. Maybe it won’t seem so scary if you just hang around. Maybe you will start to get curious. Maybe you will find your motivation to go forward.

And could it really be true that no situation is worth the cost? Not even extremely wonderful ones? Winning a million bucks? Meeting your favorite celebrity? Having the exact kind of sex that you have always wanted? Nothing?

Would you really turn down situations if they involved staying in an uncomfortable or scary situation for longer than you would like when there is an easy way to escape the whole thing?

No, right? So we have found that some things really are worth the cost of sticking around. It’s just a matter of degree.

Now think of those wonderful things, and imagine them happening. You’re in no danger… you are perfectly safe. It is just an exercise of the imagination.

Imagine them happening in as much detail as you can. It will help you to feel like it is a real possibility. Imagine them, then treasure the memory of that experience.

You will begin to get curious about the world. It doesn’t matter how probable the thing you imagined is, all that matters is believing that it is possible. That will provide you with the motivation to explore your life as it is now, and find possibilities that your addiction did not let you see before now.

Even finding one little thing that makes your life a little happier will do wonders for your outlook. You will begin to believe that there really IS happiness out there for you to find, and that if you just keep looking for it, you will find it.

And when the addiction senses it is dying and fights back with the fear and panic that has served it so well in the past, do not fight the fear. Fighting it only makes it stronger.

Instead, let the fear pass through you. Offer it absolutely no resistance. Let it pass through you like a crowd through the sky. And when it has passed through you, it will be gone… and you will still be there.

You can kill your addiction to the easy way out. It won’t be easy, but once you have the tools, victory is inevitable. Every time you hang in there and survive the panic without taking the easy way out, you will grow stronger and the addiction will grow weaker. Do this, and you can murder that evil addiction.

Soon, you will be able to look upon your addiction with amused pity. Oh, there’s that silly old addiction again, trying to scare me. What was once a mighty demon is now no more than a cranky kitten. You can keep it as a pet.

Don’t get trapped by the easy way out. Believe that there are things out there that make fighting the addiction worthwhile.

And someday, you will be able to leave the proscribed life behind.

I will talk to all of you nice folks again tomorrow.