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Easy Does It!

/ Tim / Leave a comment

When I first got to recovery I was told not try to do everything at once. This was a process that would take time and I needed time to heal. There was a lot to learn and to assimilate into my life. I wanted to my life to change but I didn’t have to do the whole program at once: there was no schedule and no test at the end. “Easy Does It,” was often said at meetings. But really what I heard was ‘do it later’.

I have always fluctuated between going at full speed or full stop. ‘Get ‘er done!’  or ‘I’ll get it later.” As time went on, I gradually slipped more into putting things off, telling myself that things would look after themselves. I got lazy, I put it off. Tomorrow would be a better day to do it. I just don’t have the energy to do that now I would say and I would pass my spare time with little accomplished.

I have always had a tendency to procrastination, of letting things be and let the ship sail where the wind might blow. Of course I complained bitterly when I didn’t arrive where I wanted to go, but ‘whatcha gonna do?’ Life is like this I thought: a series of lousy crap and something nice once in a while.

I carried these beliefs into recovery with me. I thought that my life was over and I would never enjoy life again. I didn’t understand that I needed some action in life  in order to balance my inertia. I learned that not doing anything was really a decision to let happen to me whatever came along. I was abdicating my ability to make decisions about my life. Coming into the rooms was a first step in changing the direction of my life but I had to do the work. I might not be able to control the wind but I could still steer by adjusting my sails.

I need balance in my life. I still have to fight against procrastination. I know that when I’m not doing something I need to do it’s because I fear things not turning our as I want them, not turning out perfect, of me falling short of what should be done. I know it’s all traceable back to my ego and things not going my way. So I am learning to push forward and do what I fear. Do what is beyond my comfort zone. Do it because the results will be more to my liking than if it just happens on its own. At the same time, I don’t have to do it all at once. Slow and steady is fine. I need to put one foot ahead of the other.

Easy does it Tim, but ‘do’ it!

Feelings

/ Tim / 1 Comment

“The great part about recovery is that you can feel again. The lousy part of recovery is that you can feel again.” 

My goal, when I was still in my disease, was to numb the feelings that flowed through my head. I wanted to escape how I felt about myself, about others and about situations. I couldn’t deal with how I was feeling so I tried to eliminate them completely. Loneliness, depression, fear, anger and resentment were some of the stronger feelings I felt more or less at any time and often in a combination of two or three. I had only one way to deal with them, and near the end, even that didn’t work. I didn’t know how to live with them. I guess I missed that course in life: Dealing with Feelings.

For the first three or four months in recovery I was on the proverbial ‘pink cloud’ where everything was wonderful. Then it hit me. I had started to work on Step Four and I was realizing all of my defects of character. As the saying goes, a sober horse thief is still a horse thief. I might have been in recovery, but I was now a ball of emotions and feelings that I had to learn to manage. I had begun to feel again. I remember going on a bit too long at one meeting. Afterward, another member asked me it I had a sponsor. “Of course I do!” I replied somewhat proudly. “Maybe you should use him,” suggested the member.

It was in the heart to heart discussions with my sponsor that I first started to learn that to deal with feelings I first had to accept them. Using examples of his own life, he showed me how he worked through those strong feelings in early recovery, just as I was doing: by working with his sponsor, by talking about them and by discovering their source, the ‘exact nature’ of those feelings. Why was I angry? Who or what was I angry at? Was there threat to me? What can I do to diminish my feelings of anger? I learned how to do the same with other feelings as well.

Analysing my feelings helped to diminish their strength and power. I learned that I needed to acknowledge what I was feeling and where it was taking me. I didn’t have to allow the feeling to take me into depression or loneliness, anger or fear. I had a choice. My feelings didn’t have to dictate my reaction. If I was lonely, I could go meet a friend or pick up the phone and call someone.  I  didn’t have to wallow in loneliness, allowing it to spiral me downward into deeper and deeper sadness. Often I would just get on my motorcycle and drive and drive and say the Serenity Prayer over and over until I felt peace replacing the strong feelings that threatened my recovery.

My life is manageable today and I lived more in tranquility than chaos. The frequency of those strong feelings is diminished. Strong feelings still do come up but not as often and I know that I can’t avoid them. I have to deal with them. It’s my choice when I do so, but sooner rather than later works for me and frees me to enjoy my life and not be burdened by it. I am grateful.

 

Life on Life’s Terms

/ Tim / 1 Comment

I grew up with my fair share of stubborness. After all, I used to say, I’m half Irish and half Dutch, so being stubborn is totally infused in my blood. If I knew something to be true, it was true and that was it. Period. It was important for others to understand my point of view, which I was quite sure, was the correct one. Like most people, I tried to live life on the terms dictate by my Ego.

My Ego gave me a sense of control over the people, places and things around me. I had an education, I was a quick thinker and I could resolve problems fairly easily, so I was pretty sure that I was right most of the time. Oh sure, once in a while I might make a mistake; I am human after all. I was pretty sure that I was doing fine and that the world was in the wrong in a lot of cases. But somehow, with my bright mind and sense of right and wrong I ended up at the doors of a meeting room looking for help.  Something was wrong and it had taken me a lot of years to realize it.

Living life on Life’s terms means two things for me today. First, this little gem reminds me that I am not in control of the people and events around me. I never was. My circle of control is about as large as I can swing my arms about myself, though in reality, I’m learning that it extends maybe to the tip of my nose. I can only control how I react and respond to the people, places and things around me. I’m learning that I can’t even control my thoughts. They just seem to pop into my head. What I do with those thoughts is up to me.

Life on Life’s terms is secondly, about acceptance. It is realizing that I am not right all of the time, probably most of the time. It is accepting that I can see only one facet of a situation. It is seeing that truth is fluid and changes with new discoveries in life. The only certainties in life are that there is no certainty, and that we don’t get out of here alive.

Acceptance of life on Life’s terms isn’t about being a door mat or about giving up on life because I can’t do anything about it. It’s about living a life of integrity with the realization that I have limited control and that I don’t have all of the answers. I go forward and I will make mistakes and I will learn. Things will happen to me and those I love that I won’t like and I can get through them.

Life is not perfect in the sense that everything isn’t rainbow, butterflies and unicorns. Life on Life’s terms gives me a perspective for living that make life easier to live. I can allow life to flow along and enjoy it as it happens. I can observe those things which interest me and stay more in the moment, dropping past resentments and fears of the future. I trust the process of life and know that the river of life will always let me float along.