Hi, my name is James and I’m a workaholic.

It took me many years to realize this, and still I fight it.

I grew up watching my hard-working Dad put work first to support the family. He owned his own business – a corner grocery store – and it was a hard business. Most days he was up at 4am, not home until 10pm. He did well, but it ran him ragged. I remember waking up and he was already gone; and going to bed that night with him still at the store, working.

This archetype of the Hard-Working Dad was deeply ingrained in me and without even realizing it, I followed suit. In 2004 I quit a high-profile and well-paid job as a private chef to an A-lister celebrity to start a healthy meal delivery service. It was my own version of his corner grocery store. Little did I know that my entire being would be sucked into running my own business.

The first year, I had panic attacks weekly. As the business grew, I would stay up later and later prepping order sheets and adjusting recipes for the next day. Then, with only 4 hours sleep, I would start my next 20-hour shift. Any issue – and trust me there are lots in the service industry – required my immediate response. The fun loving, humorous, creative guy I had always been was gone; in his place was a stressed, stern, impatient person, always exhausted and always overwhelmed.

Moving from LA to Portland and selling the business forced me out of this particular work, but despite my best efforts my work-to-the-bone way of being snuck in. I’d stay up late, finishing emails or working on ideas for Margaret’s clients, squeezing every last drop of the day into some idea or another. Old habits die-hard.

Underneath this addiction to “being busy” is absolute fear that I don’t matter, that I am defined by what I do. As such, not doing means disappearing into obscurity.

I want to write that I’ve figured out how to put my health before my career. Truth is, I haven’t yet. I haven’t had that major ‘aha’ moment. Usually those moments come with a major health crisis, which I’ve fortunately not had.

I have had many micro-truths revealed though.

I’ve learned to be more and more present which allows for more breath and heart-centric moments.

I’ve learned not to be afraid of silence. Like not listening to music or anything when driving. Or reading a book in the evenings to decompress instead of watching a screen.

Yet, the biggest moment is the one I’m currently in. It’s the “doing” of my priority. Let’s face it; the majority of us know what healthy means. We know that we need to make it a priority to exercise, eat well, manage stress and get plenty of sleep, but are we doing it?

It’s the doing that makes the difference. As you read this you may have already fallen off your New Year’s resolution and have defaulted to what you know (which we all know wasn’t working, which is why you were trying to change it in the first place).

I’ve learned that it is the unrelenting, diligence of the doing that determines the result. No matter what the circumstances, we must put the same amount of extremity we gave to the addiction, to the change we are wanting.

If I want to go to bed by 9:30pm every night, then I must do so with vigilance. I must create a clear, realistic plan to achieve that goal and do it without any excuse. No different than an alcoholic never taking a drink….ever.

I’m currently wondering if addiction is just a human trait or if it is something we’ve acquired over time. I’ve yet to meet someone who’s not addicted to something. Maybe it’s not about trying “not” to be addicted, but more about shifting the addictive tendencies to “lesser evil” things like… your health.

For me, I’m stepping up and recognizing that I’m a workaholic. And instead of fighting these tendencies, I’m now putting that go, go, go into my health just as fiercely as I have to my work, protecting the time I invest into it just like I did my career.

Will it work? I don’t know. I’ll report back and share. In the meantime, I have a question for you: where does your addiction appear? And how can you redirect it into something more beneficial to you?