perserverance

Just Do It!

/ Tim / Leave a comment

If buying and reading self-help books and programs were the answer, I should be the most enlightened, most spiritual, and most informed guru on the planet.  I’m not.  Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins, Stephen Covey and Neale Donald Walsch are inspirational writers that I admire.  Each has a great message and each delivers it in his own way.  I also admire the stories of the Buddha, Mohammed and Jesus whose lives inspire and challenge me.  And yet, with all this information I was not spiritually awake, financially successful, influential or talking with God.  Why?  Because with all I had read, I had either failed to apply it to my life in order to achieve my goals or I had blamed someone or something else for my failure.

We all know the joke that, apparently, buying a membership to a gym won’t get  you the body you want.  If I desire to have a body like Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, reading his biography won’t get it for me.  I have to do the work.  (And also figure out how to grow six more inches!) There is no short cut, no magic pill; no easier, softer way.  Very often in life I see the end result and fail to appreciate and understand the difficult process of trial and error that was necessary to get there.  Picasso’s mother probably looked at his first drawing and said, “That’s nice dear.  Here’s some more paper.  Go draw some more.”  Gertrude Stein submitted poems for 22 years before having one published.  And Charles Atlas was a scrawny kid who got tired of being pushed around.  We focus on the end result of these people and have the expectation that I can achieve that too.  Well,  I can, only it’s not going to happen over night! 

In my teen years when my whole life was before me and there were so many choices, I wished I could be where I was supposed to be in my life, doing what I was supposed to be doing.  I didn’t want to go through all the intervening steps to get there. I wanted to get directly to the destination and skip the journey all together.  But few of us are born prodigies.  I had to do the work to get where I wanted to go.  If you want to get to Carnegie hall, you have to practice.

Along the way I have come to enjoy the journey.  I am learning to apply what I learn from the programs and books I read.  Through this process I have learned a very important lesson.  I am the one who is responsible.  I am the one who has to do the necessary work to get where I want to go.  I have often repeated, “Faith can move mountains, but bring a shovel and wheelbarrow.” If I fall short, or struggle along my journey I can’t blame others.  I can’t blame my addiction.  I can’t blame my parents or my sexuality or what country I was born in.  At some point I have to say: “Here I am with my shovel and wheelbarrow. From here on in, it’s my responsibility to move forward.”  I am responsible for this ship sinking or floating; me and no one else.

I recently heard this saying.  “In order to succeed, I only need to get up one more time than I fall down.”  Falling down is all part of the process.  I learn by applying what that fall has taught me and try not to let that happen again.  It is only a failure when I fail to apply what I have learned.  The nice part about all of this is that I don’t have to do it alone. Those who wrote those programs and books have learned a lot of lessons that I now don’t have to go through.  Ultimately though, I am the one who is responsible for the doing or not doing, for the applying or not applying this to my own life.

Sorry about that magic pill you were looking for.  I want to write; so I have to write. I want to paint; so I have to paint. It takes doing. It takes time.  Gradually I will become better and better at it.  And it takes responsibility to myself and to my goals to get to where I want to go. I guess I have learned from all those books I have read over the years.  It just took a really long time to sink in.

 

♥  ♥  ♥

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At the suggestion of a reader I have added a new page to the blog:  Recovery Resources. Here I have links to AA, NA, Al-Anon and other helpful resources for those just starting their journey as well as those who are already enjoying the river. I have also added a Google Translate link to the site on the right sidebar if you prefer to read this or share this in another language.   Let me know of your thoughts and possible additions that might be helpful.

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

/ Tim / Leave a comment

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.”