openness

H.O.W. to Recover

/ Tim / Leave a comment

How does one recover from addiction and alcoholism? This is the H.O.W. of recovery:  Honesty, Open-mindedness, Willingness. These attitudes go a long way toward a life that is happy, joyous and free. Without any of them, my chances at recovery are slim.

Honesty is an attitude of no more secrets. Revealing who I am, at least to myself, my Higher Power and another person is a necessary part of my recovery. I need to be accepting and true to who I am. Honesty is standing tall without pretending or pretense. It is humility: this is ‘me’, this is who I really am. I need not tell everyone everything about who I am, but if I want to live with integrity, I can no longer hide behind a curtain of half truths and false impressions.

Open-mindedness is that which allow me to seek answers and to step away from my comfort zone. It is a realization that I don’t know everything and that what I do know may not be correct or in need of a change or two. When I am open-minded I am asking questions and seeking answers. I am convinced that seeking the answers to new questions in life today is far more important to my personal growth than hanging onto the answers that solved yesterday’s question.

Willingness is the desire to move forward, do the work and put forth some elbow grease. It’s often easy to rest on yesterday’s laurels and take my comfort. But if I am to grow I have to be willing to move, to change and to expend the energy necessary to make changes in my life. It’s doing the work even when I don’t see the results right away. It’s following the recipe of recovery even when I don’t understand it or why I am doing it at the time. It is trusting the process and moving on.

Honesty, Open-mindedness and Willingness are H.O.W. I got sober and they are the attitude that keeps me that way. If I am lacking any of these attitudes I am taking steps away from my recovery. They form the foundation of a recovery that will allow me to grow and change and evolve. Who I was yesterday is not who I am today. I cannot cling to the self I started with in the program if I want to change. Believing that I’ve ‘got it’ leads to stagnation and decline. I have to keep it fresh.

I think these attitudes are absolutely necessary for people in recovery and I am quite sure they are absolutely necessary for people who aren’t. Honesty, open-mindedness and willingness are attitudes that allow for a life that is constantly growing, changing and evolving into a newness every day.

I am grateful to my sponsor Bob who reminded me of this acronym last week. ¡Gracias amigo!

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.

Paying Attention

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When I was looking for my first house I ‘knew’ which house it was from the time I saw it. It was a small cottage looking over the lake and it was ‘perfect’. I was in the village to look at a house with an agent. He mentioned another place that wasn’t listed on the market but whose owner was looking to sell ‘if the price was right’. I ‘knew’ that this was the house when he drove into the driveway. There’s a spot just below the sternum where I ‘felt’ it, and I ‘knew’. Two months later I was sitting on the deck of that house looking out over Lake Erie, a view that I would relish for the next nine years.

I got the same feeling one morning about seven years ago when I woke up one morning and I ‘knew’ that something had to give. My world was crumbling before me. I was losing the battle. I could feel it in that same place, just below the sternum. My guts were telling me that the show was over. I needed to make changes or I would be heading down a path I ‘knew’ I did not wish to tread.

I have no idea if everyone has that place in their body where they ‘know’.  It’s hard to describe. It’s almost as if knowledge becomes a physical sensation in the body. I’ve had this sensation various times in my life and I know now that it is one of the ways my Higher Power speaks to me. I suppose it had to be this way for me to pay attention. I wasn’t the most intuitive and sensing person.

Learning to listen, to follow one’s intuition is not easy, especially at first. When I began my journey in recovery, my thinking wasn’t my greatest asset: a good reason for me to work with my sponsor, go to meetings and listen. Going through the process of the steps I began to fathom the depths of what it really meant to ‘turn my will and my life over to the care of my Higher Power, a ‘God of my understanding’. And, if I’ve really done this, it only makes sense that he would communicate with me, right? How else will I know what my next step is to be? Slowly my trust of those feelings began to grow. I’ve learned that the more connected I am with myself and my Higher Power, the more aware I am of my intuition. I’m learning to pay attention to what’s happening around me.

It’s not always that physical sensation; it doesn’t have to be now. Most days I start off with a prayer. Most days I write. Most days I go to a meeting. These are the things that maintain my spiritual condition that keeps me in recovery. I’m able to see the patterns in my life and the mosaic of this world and I marvel. My life continues to evolve and morph into new experiences because I am open to them, I take the time to listen. I truly am grateful for my life today.