Author: Tim

Right-Size Me, Please

/ Tim / 2 Comments

Being the seventh month, we often focus on the seventh step: Humbly asked Him to remove all our shortcomings.  The principle of this step is humility.

Humble, as an adjective is defined as meekness, lacking pride, arrogance or assertiveness.  As a verb it is defined as the destroying the power, independence or prestige of something or someone.  I believe that in being humble we accept that we are not all powerful, not completely independent nor do we possess advantage over others. It is being in a state of acceptance of what is, and not what was or could be.  I don’t compare myself to others as being better, or worse.  I see things as they are.  Like the inventory I took in Step Four, I look at what is there, without judgement as to its quality. I don’t need to be supersized; that’s been my problem.  I need to be ‘right-sized’.

Last year, after being in the program for several years it became apparent to me that I could use a bit, no, a lot more work on Steps Six and Seven.  I worked with my sponsor, used the book: Drop the Rock, published by Hazelden along with my program literature. During my first go around with the steps  I had spent about as much time on these two steps as Bill Wilson did in writing about them in the two short paragraphs on page 76 of Alcoholics Anonymous:  ‘I am willing.  Here they are.  Please take them away.’  The second time around truly was an eye opener for me.  What does it mean to humbly ask my Higher Power to remove my shortcomings?

I have come to discover that it means taking step three to a whole new level.  Not only do I put my will and my life into the care of my higher power, I now allow that Higher Power to modify me in such a way that I must let go of what I know about who I am today.  A lot of my character defects made up who I was.  I was a perfectionist who would rather do it myself than watch someone else do it wrong. (And then I would have to do it over to do it right.)  I had an arrogance about me because I had studied hard and have two post secondary degrees and one diploma. I suffered because others didn’t understand my importance.  I had a sense of entitlement: I worked hard so I deserved my time to relax however I wished.  I could go on, but you get the picture.  These shortcomings were who I was, part of my personality.  On my second time through these two steps I found out what the verb humble meant in my life; if I was truly going to have these shortcomings removed, I had to destroy them.  The ‘me’ at the end of the experience would be very different from the ‘me’ I started as.

You see, I kind of liked who I was, what I did, where I was in life.  I don’t like a lot of change.  My character defects were defining me, telling me who I was, where I should be, how I should act and react.  Without them I feared that I might become the proverbial ‘hole in the donut’.  I had a big fight with Ego about that!

Humility in Step Seven takes courage.  It isn’t easy to say: “Okay H.P., here I am, take away who and what I always thought I was and remake me”.  I needed to trust that my Higher Power knows what he’s doing.  I had to accept what is and what will come.  Could I have handled this in early recovery the first time I did this step?  I don’t know.  It was difficult enough with five years behind me. The difference this time though, is that I had evidence that my life really is in the care of a Higher Power. I knew and could point out how I had changed for the better.  I was no longer the sorry soul that walked into a meeting for the first time.  I am light years away from that Tim.  I am now able to understand that I still have a lot to learn about life.

Fortunately, when I completed Step Seven, my H.P. didn’t remove those defects of character right away and all at once.  This is a process that takes time.  Every once in a while the perfectionist gives his opinion about how things should be done.  Periodically the arrogant S.O.B. walks past the addict sleeping on the street without compassion.  Yes, I take my shortcomings back with regularity.  I am grateful though, that slowly I am recognizing them as they are showing themselves. I am learning to listen to another’s method of doing a task. I can look on with love at someone who on a different journey than I am now.  Slowly my Higher Power is doing for me what I could not do for myself: grow and blossom into a whole new being.

♥  ♥  ♥

I have been receiving lots of positive comments from you, my readers in the short time I’ve been writing this blog. If you think it can help someone, please share it with them in what ever way is most convenient:  Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. or good ol’ copy and paste.  I would appreciate it if you would sign up and follow the blog as well.  My intention is to post Mondays and Thursdays.  Meanwhile, I am enjoying this process immensely.  There’s the whole new back end of the website and how it works that I’m learning as well as the research and thoughts that go into the finished entry.  Please comment.  I’d love to hear from you.

Once again, please like and share, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River.

Peace.

Principles before Personalities

/ Tim / 1 Comment

I have a buddy in the program who has stopped going to meetings.  He’s returning to his program after just under ten years in and another four years out again.  Right now he has under six months.  He says he is fine.  He’s doing his readings and studying his books at home and he’s doing daily meditation.  He told me he has stopped going to meetings because his former sponsor is there, and he feels that the former sponsor is looking at him ‘funny’.  The community is very small here.  There isn’t an option for him to go to other groups.

I heard from another friend, a recovering alcoholic with well over twenty years in the program.  He has stopped going to meetings because there is too much discussion about drugs along with the alcohol.  He’d like to go back to the old times with completely closed meetings and no mention of any drug.  “There are other groups for that.”

I have been hearing similar and other gripes since I became a 12 step member.  Both AA’s and NA’s twelfth tradition reminds us to: “…place principles before personalities.”   What does that mean?  To me, it suggests that I remember the principles of the program: recovery, unity, service, honesty, humility, forgiveness, hope, integrity, love, discipline, perseverance and spirituality.  Not everyone is going to have all of these principles down cold.  (I had to look them up, to be sure, while writing because I couldn’t have named them all.) Some days I’m more honest or forgiving than others.  This tradition tells us that these principle are far more important than the defects of character in those who impart them to us.

I must remember that what is important is the message and not the messenger.  In our case, the medium is not the message.  Recovery is much deeper than those who present it.  Were it not so, for example, AA would have died out when Bill Wilson, the founder, passed on.  Something that is true doesn’t become false simply because I don’t like the person who is telling it to me.  Trust me, many people delivered a message to me that I needed help long before I began my trek in recovery.  Of course, in my sorry state I’d get angry with them and use even more ‘just to show them!’

We will always meet people who irritate or bother us in some way, in and out of our meeting room.  We don’t like to be told what to do and how to do it.  We don’t like to have to do anything.  When someone is sharing I can focus on their speech impediment or their ugly shirt, or their hot body,  instead of listening to what they are saying and that probably isn’t what the program is about.

Early on in my program I heard someone talk about the 70-20-10 Rule.  He said that seventy percent of the time, what you hear in a meeting is good solid stuff that can be stowed in your tool box and brought out later to help you through a difficult situation. Twenty percent of the time, what you hear will have you at the edge of your seat; it’s exactly what you need to hear at this time.  It is as if your higher power is speaking directly to you.  And ten percent of the time, what you hear is an opportunity to practice your patience and tolerance.  This rule has proven to be true for me, and others have told me so as well.  However, what is my twenty percent, may be your ten percent, and visa versa.  Our higher powers just works that way.

There’s an old joke in AA:  What do you need to start a new meeting?  A resentment, a coffee pot and a friend.  If your recovery is at risk because you can’t get around the personalities in the room or how things are managed or what people are doing, then find another meeting.  Try attending on-line meetings, start your own meeting, do anything that protects you from your disease.  If sobriety is my number one priority, then I don’t have the luxury of cherry picking.  I need the program more than it needs me.

Periodically I attend Al-Anon meetings.  These folks have a lot to teach me about life.  I particularly like a part of their closing statement:  In closing, we would like to say that the opinions expressed here were strictly those of the person who gave them.  Take what you liked and leave the rest….We aren’t perfect.  The welcome we give you may not show the warmth we have in our hearts for you.  The message delivered by the personalities around the table and the principles intertwined in that message are what keep me sober, not the personalities who deliver them.  Keep coming back.

Thoroughly Followed Our Path

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These words are in the first sentence of the chapter, “How it Works” in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, the grand daddy of all twelve step programs.  The author originally wrote: “Never have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.”  Those around him convinced him to change to ‘rarely‘, to soften the statement a bit.  However, the longer I have been on this path, my River of Recovery, the more I understand the truth in the original statement.  I have yet to hear a person who has relapsed claim that it happened while they were ‘thoroughly’ following the program.

The twelve steps are a recipe for recovery.  Each part is integral to the result.  If you don’t follow the recipe to bake a cake, you won’t get the cake you want.  It’s a matter of following the instructions, adding the ingredients in the manner described and baking, waiting patiently for the result.  Each ingredient is necessary.  Each action is necessary.  Whenever I say to myself, ‘Oh, I don’t need to find a higher power,’ I am not following the recipe.  If I tell myself, ‘I don’t need to look at myself in step four; it’s everyone around me that is the problem,’ then I won’t find the sobriety that has been found in twelve step programs since it began more than 82 years ago.  If I want the results that other have gotten,  I have to follow the recipe to the letter.

Discovering sobriety is not easy.  Those twelve steps seem simple enough, but their application takes time, practice, failure and success.  Like anything else in life, there is no short cut.  There is no ‘worm-hole’ that I can travel through to get sobriety.  I have to do the work.  No one ever got sober with a drink in their hand or half an eight ball up their nose.  It just won’t work.  I have to put down whatever I’m addicted to and make the change.

This is hard work.  Going through withdrawal, D.T.’s and all the other immediate consequences of no longer putting this substance into one’s body is damned hard. Fortunately, I don’t have to do it alone.  I have others in the program that I can lean on.  I may need professional help.  I may need to be in a detox or rehab centre for this process.  My disease doesn’t want me to change.  It likes having the booze or drugs in my body.  Addiction tells me that if I don’t have it, I will die; I know that if I do have it, I will die.  I make a change to survive.  This is change and for whatever reason, we resist change.  We want everything to stay the same.  But without change, everything will stay the same: an addict who is still using is still an addict.

I have to stick with it.  And yes, at first, it may be hard, and I may fall and I may struggle to quit again and again.  Through all of this I must remember I am not the first person who has struggled with this.  Other’s made it, I can to.  Giving into temptation is not an option this time.  I am following the recipe of the program.  I will not take a short cut.  I will do the work.  Over and over I tell myself this.  This is my mantra.  Others have done it, I can too!  Even if I fall, knowing that I had two weeks or two months of clean time before, means that I can do it again and maybe achieve more;  I get back up again.

The miracle of the program is that, very soon, thing do change and get better.  Soon I get over the physical effects of withdrawal.  Very soon I can see changes in how I feel when I wake up in the morning, how my health is improving and how it becomes easier to say no. The emotional, mental and spiritual effects of withdrawal still need a pile of work, but at least my head is clear enough to make a start on those changes.  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  In order to take the journey, I have to take the journey.  Thoroughly following the path of my twelve step program is the recipe that has worked for me.  I am grateful for where I am today: and my journey continues.  I am grateful that the program will continue to work for me as I continue to “…trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.”