The Hidden Reason We Stay Addicted | Kevin Cornelius
Discover the reason we stay addicted with Kevin Cornelius, and learn TEAM-CBT techniques to take your first step toward recovery.
Creating a balanced life can be a challenge. Luckily, there are tools that you can use to achieve balance, such as the one you will discover here in this article.
Let me introduce you to the Wheel of Life!
The Wheel of Life is an extremely powerful tool you can use to get an overview of your life. It will help you to take a good look at all areas of your life at once to see where you most need improvement and help you find balance.
Now, how does this work? Well, it’s quite simple.
Now, before we continue onward, understand that you aren’t just going to sit there and read this article. You are also going to fill in the components of your own Wheel of Life!
Creating a balanced life doesn’t just happen overnight. If you are truly looking for change to happen and find balance in your life, it’s essential to do something for the long term. Here is your window – your chance to start doing it.
If you click ‘here’, you’ll be directed to a Google Drive link where you can download a high-resolution image of the Wheel of Life. Print it out, or if you don’t have a printer, you can use a program like Photoshop, Paint, etc. to digitally fill it in.
Of course, you can also take a piece of paper and draw something similar to the wheel of life as illustrated here.
Now, once you are settled and have your Wheel of Life in front of you, look here at an example of a filled-in version of the Wheel of Life.
The exercise itself is, in fact, very simple. How would you rate each slice of the pie on the wheel, from 1 being the lowest to 10 being the highest?
It’s as simple as that.
Put the Wheel of Life by your side and let us start you on the road to creating a balanced life. Read onward to read a more in-depth description of each slice of the pie on the wheel.
While reading each description, think for yourself how high you would rate that piece of pie in your life and fill it in.
How satisfied are you with your job? Is it the job that you had imagined or dreamed of doing, or would you rather pursue another career? Is your career where you want it to be by now? Are you heading in the right direction?
What you do for a living is a major contributor to happiness and matters a lot in creating a balanced life. Give yourself a rating from 1-10 on how much the job you do brings you happiness and satisfaction.
Finances is not about your career or business. Finances refers to your personal management of money.
Living in a capitalist society, most of us equate security with money. Since security is at the base of our hierarchy of needs (just above the basics of food, shelter, and clothing), how we perceive our financial state influences how happy we are.
Are you earning enough income to satisfy those current needs?
Give yourself a rating from 1-10.
How healthy are you, physically and mentally? How do you feel? Are you satisfied with your appearance and weight? Do you have any physical or mental discomforts?
Your commitment to self-care has a direct impact on your life satisfaction, so it’s of the utmost importance to know where you stand in this particular area.
Once again, give yourself a rating from 1-10 to see if it’s an area in your life that either needs improving or not when you are creating a balanced life for yourself.
Is your family supportive of you? Are you supportive of your family? And are your friends supportive of you? Are you engaging with friends and socializing to your level of satisfaction?
An 80-year Harvard study shows that the quality of relationships is one of the most significant contributors to feelings of life satisfaction.
From 1-10, to what extent do you like the time you spend with family and friends?
Side note: Meaningful conversations and knowing how to have them is an essential skill for improving your relationships with friends, family members, romantic partners, strangers, etc. If you’d like to know the three golden rules of how to have more meaningful conversations, do check out the video we uploaded on the YouTube channel of The IPS Project.
Whether you’re dating or married, how is the romance in your life? Have you found happiness in love? Do you feel loved? How satisfied do you feel in this area of your life?
On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the overall quality of your current intimate relationship? If you are not currently in an intimate relationship, rate your past or most recent relationships.
Side note: If you’d like to learn more about relationships, do check out the interview we did on The IPS Podcast with certified sexologist and relationship expert Shan Boodram. Also, the video we posted on our YouTube channel about the four different stages of a romantic relationship and why they matter is a great watch!
How do you deal with personal growth? Are you open to new experiences and eager to learn? Are you spiritually connected to both the inner and outer worlds?
This is a broad category that’s related to your overall feelings of progress. Many people have a purpose in life and equate growth with how well they are manifesting that purpose.
Others equate growth with their spiritual or philosophical beliefs and their ability to deepen their knowledge and practice the ideals they garner from these doctrines.
From 1-10, how much do you feel you are growing in life? Whether or not you believe you are progressing influences your level of satisfaction and your success in creating a balanced life.
Are you enjoying life? Do you engage in hobbies or sports? Do you take vacations now and then? How do you spend your free time? Are you satisfied with the level of activity that you do and the amount of fun you have in your life?
Go ahead and give yourself a rating from 1-10. How much would you rate your level of commitment to pursuing personal interests and fun experiences?
The obvious area this refers to is your home. How is it set up? Does it give you a nice feeling? Is it conducive to productivity, to satisfaction, to realization? Does your home support you in your goals? Is it a place you are proud of, that makes you feel good?
Now, if you are location-independent or if you have the desire to live all over the world, then you can look at your physical environment in the bigger picture. As in: Do I like the current city and country I am living in?
Basically, your physical environment is about what is around you. In creating a balanced life, the things that are around us, whether it is a city, a home, or just our neighborhood, have a big impact on how we feel about life.
From 1-10, how would you rate your physical environment?
Now, after you are done, put your Wheel of Life right in front of you.
Take a good look at your Wheel of Life. Having this “helicopter” view of your life, you can easily identify where you excel and where there is room for improvement.
Consider each area like one spoke of a wheel: When one of the spokes is shorter than the others, it can throw the whole thing off-balance. Discover where the gaps are so you can start working on them and improve from where you are today to where you want to be.
If, for example, friends and family rank very low in your Wheel of Life, then you should start investing time in improving that ranking. You will soon gain a dramatic feeling of balance, resulting in contentment, and life satisfaction will start to happen.
Life is about balance. Through this tool called the Wheel of Life, we can find out where we need to focus our attention to help us in creating a balanced life and thus make this wheel roll forward much more smoothly.
Now, potentially, there will be more than one slice of this pie that will be ranked lower than the others, correct?
If that is the case, there is an interesting and easy way to increase the ranking of multiple slices in your Wheel of Life simultaneously.
You will increase your friends, experience personal growth and fun, and, who knows, maybe find a romantic partner.
It will help you increase spiritual and personal growth, as well as physical health, friends, and fun.
Doing this will improve your career, finances, personal growth, and even your physical environment. Possibly, it could help you to become location-independent.
Joining a support group and talking with others about mental health, for example, will improve your mental health, as well as add to your friends and spiritual and personal growth. Also, if you have a romantic partner and you go together, this could greatly improve that slice of the pie as well, since you are learning and being there for each other
You will soon see an improvement in the slices pertaining to finances and career.
Your personal and spiritual growth will increase, maybe even your career and finances, and for sure, the slice for friends will improve too.
Learning a new language will help your personal growth as well as add to your fun and recreation.
As you can see from these few examples, there are many activities that can simultaneously increase the ranking for multiple slices in the Wheel of Life. These activities help you bring balance to your life in multiple areas.
Try to look for or create activities that have wide-reaching effects on a combination of the slices in your life that are currently ranked on the low end.
Doing so will help balance out your Wheel of Life and result in creating a balanced life.
One last note I’d like to add here in this article: I would suggest you hang your Wheel of Life in your room, on your fridge, or someplace where you can easily see it, so that you can check on it often and remind yourself about where you should focus your attention.
This is a great exercise that you should do every six months or so. Update your Wheel of Life so you can see where you have improved and where else you need to pay attention.
Balance is not something permanent. Creating a balanced life is something that is up to us to maintain. Therefore, regularly checking on your Wheel of Life to see how balanced your life is will lead you to a happier, healthier, and more meaningful life.
Working on yourself can be scary, overwhelming, confusing, messy, challenging, and lonely. On this podcast, hosted by Jellis Vaes, an aspiring clinical psychologist who once battled severe emotional struggles, you’ll gain valuable insights from experts in psychology, neuroscience, and relationships, as well as people like you and me, to support you on your mental health journey, help you feel less alone, and untangle some of the complexity of mental health.
For more support, visit Inner Path Seekers.
Show notes can be found here:https://theipsproject.com/2026/04/reason-we-stay-addicted-kevin-cornelius/
Addiction is complex, deeply human, and often misunderstood.
In this episode, we take a grounded and practical look at what addiction really is and how it can be treated effectively.
I’m joined by Kevin Cornelius, a licensed marriage and family therapist and clinical director at the Feeling Good Institute Silicon Valley.
Kevin specializes in TEAM-CBT, a powerful and evolving therapeutic approach developed by psychiatrist David Burns.
What I am hoping you get out of this episode, besides learning some of the reasons why people stay addicted, is that you will learn some practical techniques to start taking a small step toward freeing yourself from whichever addiction you might be struggling with.
If, after this episode, you’d like to learn more about the effects addiction has on the brain, do have a listen to the episode I did with Dr. Grisel, titled The Brain on Addiction.
📚The IPS Academy📚
If you feel that you’ve gained some insights and lessons from this video, and you are curious to see what else we offer at The IPS Project, check out The IPS Academy, where we offer online courses taught by guests here on the podcast.
Simply go to https://theipsproject.com/academy. Each course has a few lessons to try for free, so you get a taste of what the course is like. We have countless reviews from other students so you can see what others think, and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee if you end up not liking the course.
Again, check them out at https://theipsproject.com/academy
Discover the reason we stay addicted with Kevin Cornelius, and learn TEAM-CBT techniques to take your first step toward recovery.
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