Ego

What’s My Part?

/ Tim / Leave a comment

How my ego likes to tell me that the things I do are justified. It’s a tit-for-tat world so if you did that to me, then I will retaliate. Of course, I’m a master at being passive aggressive, so you may not know I have ‘got you back’, but I’ll know. I’ll make you pay! You can’t do that to me! I have my pride and I will not take this sitting down!

Wow. I may not have put those words together in my head but that is the gist of what I often feel when I believe that I had been wronged. I have read in our recovery literature that whenever I am disturbed by something that happened to me, I need to look at my part in the matter and at my response to the other person involved.

I remember hearing a fellow talk at a meeting about holding a resentment for many years against a fellow in the program to whom he had lent $30,000. The man didn’t make payments, and as time went on it became apparent that he would probably never have the means to pay back the money. The fellow went on to say that he had to look at what ‘his part’ was in this situation because it was eating him up inside.  He felt anger and resentment every time he saw the other fellow. He had basically given it up as a bad investment, but he still carried a deep grudge against the fellow.  What was his part?

” I lent him the money,” he said. “I knew when I handed him the cheque that he had a history of bad debt, that his track record in business, even in sobriety was shaky, but I lent it to him anyway.” Once he saw his own part in the arrangement, he was able to let go of his resentment. He had made a big error in judgement by making the loan. He was honest enough to admit that he probably won’t ever be a good friend of this fellow again, but he could forgive the other guy and forgiven himself. And he no longer avoids him or refuses to say hello to him at meetings.

In my recovery things will happen that will disturb me, upset me, bother me. My program tells me, by using Step 10 and Step 11 to look at the situation in a way that I see the real ‘why’ I feel the way I do. For the fellow above it was a deep hit to his pride and ego to admit that he had made an mistake. I have to put pride and ego aside as well. Like the childhood saying that says when I point my finger at you there are three pointing back at me I need to shift the focus of my disturbance onto me. I am involved in every interaction with others. Admitting my part in it is a big step in my liberation from the poison of anger and resentment.

 

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Thank you.

Sixty Seconds of Woe

/ Tim / 2 Comments

We all do it. We look at the negative aspects of our lives and ask why me? Oh woe is me! Look at how bad things are. I can’t get past this. Why did this happen to me? How come it always goes bad for me? We end up focusing on those aspects of life that we don’t like. But while we do that, we sap our energy, waste it actually, because “woe is me” never contributes to a solution.

When I allow self pity to take my energy I am saying to myself that I can’t overcome whatever difficulty that might be present. I don’t look for a solution and I don’t take action. I am focused on the past, on what happened and I allow this to define me. This way of thinking can easily take me down a depressing path that leads me further into self loathing and self hatred. Self pity is just another form of an ego trip: cause it’s all about me and only me don’t you know!

I just can’t allow myself to go there.  It is too destructive.

Not long ago I read that when something happens that you wish hadn’t, you give yourself a minute to wallow in the self pity.  You can cry, pound your desk, shake your fist at the heaven, yell as loud as you want or whatever other non-destructive behaviour you wish; you have sixty seconds to complete this task. Once the time it up, it’s up. After one minute of lamentations it is time to move on.

We all want things to go well, to follow our plan. And they don’t always. I can embrace the failures of my past and learn from them to find a new solution. This time my solution might work, or it might not. There is no guarantee. So if it doesn’t work out a second time, I can give it one minute of sobbing into the wind and then back to seeking a solution. Then it is time to keep to the present and move forward, one step at a time.

Focusing on the past and on failures will never lead to solution. It’s okay to grieve over what didn’t go as planned, but it is important not to let myself become bogged down in that quicksand of self destruction.  I need to move forward. So I will try to remember that I can allow myself a minute of woe, and then it’s time to move on. There is a solution!

Returning to the River

/ Tim / 2 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, let alone sat down to write this blog. I’d like to say it’s because I was on vacation, too busy with a variety of projects or any other number of reasons other than the truth: I lost heart.

I lost heart because I allowed my ego to stand in my way, an ego that told me that what I do wasn’t making a difference.  It said that what I was doing in life was’t important and I didn’t matter. It said that I really don’t matter. My ego speaks to me in many different ways but usually it does so subtly, undermining my self esteem bit by bit and bringing me down lower with each nip. Slowly I start to believe that I am worth less than I was before until I start to see myself as unworthy and then, worthless.

We usually think of ego as bravado and pride and over rating ourselves: an ego trip is where we build ourselves up way above where we are. But the opposite is also true. An ego trip can also bring us down low and into depression and despair. In both cases I am thinking only about me; I’m better than everyone else–I’m worse than everyone else. Either way, I am deep within ‘self’. And in my case, when I get into ‘self’, that’s when my disease of addiction starts to make inroads to take over.

I am grateful that I am in a recovery program that helps me to recognize when I’ve pulled the plug on the sink and am heading down and circling the drain. I know I need to stop the stream of negativity and move forward. I can start thinking about myself as I am: neither perfection nor damnation. I can remind myself that I am on a journey and that it’s up to me to take the next step and move forward or wallow in the mire. I can make the allow myself to believe that I’m stuck in the mud at the edge of the river and that this is my destination and I don’t deserve any more. But I don’t have to stay here and wallow in the muck of my own making, believing that’s all there is to life.

And so, bit by bit, I am taking back what I allowed my ego to take from me. I don’t have to do it all in one day. All I need to do is stand up and look around at where I am; I don’t want to be here so I can step up out of the muck where the land meets the river and back onto the river. I don’t have to be success and perfection: I want to head toward a destination where I am true to myself, my heart. And it all begins with a decision and an action: returning to the river.