Attitude

Dream

/ Tim / Leave a comment

A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown. -Denis Waitley

Dream! Plan! See a future that you want for yourself! What are your hopes and aspirations? What are your goals? Where would you like to see yourself in five years? Ten years?

What? You don’t see it as possible? Then you haven’t looked around you. Miracles happen, wishes come true and dreams are realized because people make them. I sit in a room full of people who had no dreams and little hope and here they are clean and sober and living lives beyond their wildest imagination. I can read online everyday success stories of people who came out of abject poverty and yet created a completely new world for themselves. The skyscraper you see glittering in the sun or the castle overlooking the valley were once dreams in the minds of their creators that have now been realized.

Not possible for you? Then you don’t know the process for fulfilling a dream. As addicts and alcoholics we spent hours solving the problems of the world and sharing with everyone who had the patience to hear what we might have done and what we were going to do. Unfortunately we never picked ourselves out of the gutter or got off of the barstools to make those ideas come true. We came back to the same place day after day and said the same things over and over again. If we do thing same things we get the same results. No one has ever married the person of their dreams, bought a house on a tropical island, written a book or fulfilled any dream by sitting on the barstool. You have to step away from what is and walk towards what can be.

Fulfilling a dream takes work. It takes patience. It takes humility. People often tell me that they wish they could live in the rainforest near the ocean as I do. I tell them that they can do so if they want to. “It’s not impossible.” They reply that they can’t, they have a job and family and a mortgage. What they are really saying is that they don’t want to risk a change of what they have to get what they want. They might like the idea of stepping out of their comfort zone, but they really don’t want to make the necessary changes. They don’t want to do the work needed or the time to do it so it’s all really just pie in the sky. What they are really dreaming about is finding a genie in a bottle or a visit from their fairy godmother.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Chinese proverb.

I’ve learned in my program of recovery to enjoy the moment, live in the present and trust the process. And I can still dream. I am learning not to live in the future, rather work toward it. If I want a sober and clean life it begins one day at a time and gradually the days begin to add up. At first it’s difficult. It’s change from the norm and out of my comfort zone.  With the Twelve Steps, it gets easier. I have to do the work. My dreams are the same. I have to work at them. I have to take that first step toward them today and another step tomorrow. And it all starts by stepping off the stool.

Became Entirely Ready

/ Tim / Leave a comment

I didn’t give much time to Step Six when I first went through the steps. I didn’t think it needed a whole lot of thought or discussion. I had discovered my defects of character in Step Four and shared them in Step Five. So yes, I was ready to have them removed and move on with the program. I was still, perhaps, in the mode of getting through the steps as fast as possible: quantity over quality.

A couple of years ago I went through Step Six and Seven again with my sponsor. As part of the process I read the book, “Drop the Rock”, a Hazelton Publication. Here I came to learn that I missed two fundamental parts of Step Six when I first went through it. I got being prepared to let my Higher Power remove my defects of character. But I totally missed that in order to have those removed, I had to let them go. And I wasn’t quite ready for the new person that would be created as a result of this transformation.

Going through the first five steps had changed me. I was starting to like who I was again. I had learned to look into the mirror and love who was looking back. I thought I was doing pretty good with the whole recovery thing. And after seven months in recovery, I was. I just didn’t have the depth necessary in order to understand what ‘entirely ready’ really meant. Yes, I wanted to be rid of those character defects of arrogance, perfectionism and entitlement, to name a few. I wanted them gone. But wanting them gone and letting them go? I didn’t realize that those were two different things. I had to open my hands and let those things go. As the book says, I had to drop those rocks that were weighing me down and holding me back.

The other thing I didn’t realize at the time is something that is sort of understood, but not stated in the step.  In the same way that ‘could restore us to sanity’ in Step Two tells us that we were insane, here too there’s an understanding that I am going to be a different person when I have my defects of character removed. This I really didn’t consider the first time through the step. My character was made up partly by those defects of character that I wanted gone, so it made sense that I would be a different person at the end of this. But: I had to be willing to let go of the ‘me’ I knew for a ‘me’ that was new. In this step, I can’t hold onto the old me, I have to release it in the same way that I release the rest of the ‘rocks’ that hold me back and, at the same time, trust my Higher Power and the process of going through the steps would create a new and improved Tim.

Letting go of who and how I am still proves to be difficult. Every once in a while I find another part of me that needs to be worked on. It comes with living the Steps. I must be willing to leave behind as well as move forward. I am grateful that I have many examples of others who also live the steps and I can see the results in them. I know that my Higher Power will do the same for me.

 

Focus

/ Tim / 2 Comments

“Turn your face toward the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.” ~Māori Proverb

There was a stretch of lawn that ran alongside our gravel driveway on the farm. It’s here I learned to ride a bike. My father supported me and got me to pedal and my mother was several yards ahead of me encouraging me. ‘Don’t look down. Look at me,’ my mother encouraged. And when I finally stopped worrying about falling over and focused on my mother, where I was heading to, I learned to ride a bike.

I remember when I first heard someone say that we need to stop calling things problems and start calling them challenges. Ha! I thought, as if changing the word will change the reality of the situation. If I don’t have money to pay the electric bill, that’s a problem. Calling it a ‘challenge’ isn’t going to get the bills paid. I’ve since learned I was wrong.

Wherever I focus my thoughts, that’s where I end up. Focusing on the problem, the fact that I didn’t have the money to pay my bills, created a useless vortex spiraling downward. When I shift my focus to finding ways to get my bills paid, it creates a mental shift toward the solution and away from the problem. It’s like learning to ride a bike: I need to focus on where I wish to go, not be afraid of where I am. I look ahead to where I am going. If I focus on my feet I won’t see what’s ahead.

Focusing on the solution doesn’t change facts, but it can alter my mental ability to work with those facts. A problem is the tree in the path of my bike. Focusing on the problem only, I am going to hit the tree. Shifting focus to a solution is finding a way to avoid the tree.

It’s not easy to make the shift in perspective. There’s a lot of negativity in the world that focuses on darkness and shadows. News media might throw in a ‘feel good’ story into their reports once in a while, but it’s blood and guts that more often make the cut and ‘entertain’. I have learned that if I continually say how hard something will be to accomplish, or how much trouble it will be, or how many ways I can fail at it, I won’t even take the first step toward the solution. I have to focus on success, on resolving the challenge if I have any hope of getting off the ground.

Look toward the sun. See the realm of possibilities. Focus on the positive. Doing this might not change the facts of a situation, but they will change my mental outlook toward a solution and there’s a greater likelihood that I will take the first step.

Where do you want to go in life?