Reality Check: Making the Best of The Situation - How I Overcame Addiction, Loss, and Prison

by Mike Sorrentino

You see, I finally realized what the problem was: me. I had an obsessive personality, and nothing was going to change that. But what if I embraced that character trait and used it for good? I realized the only way I would find success was if I could harness and redirect that obsessiveness to feed myself only positive behaviors. The easiest way to explain it is that we all have a good wolf and a bad wolf inside us. The wolf you feed always wins. For years, I’d only fed the bad wolf—ego, money, drugs, sex, material items. When you do bad, you get bad. I had to reverse that and only feed myself positive behaviors and mindsets. Slowly, over time, I began to remove anything negative from my life in an attempt to only feed the good wolf. I created a list in my head. Anything unconstructive got eliminated. I stayed away from the people, places, and things that didn’t align with where I wanted my life to go. I knew these corrections wouldn’t happen all at once, but by making small changes one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time, I began to remove those negative influences and distance myself from problems, drama, and temptation.