Spirituality

It’s Not the End of the World!

/ Tim / Leave a comment

How bad things may look right now means nothing.  It’s how good you know they can look with God’s help that counts. Life has a habit of changing itself completely around in 24 hours. Heck, in 24 minutes sometimes. Don’t you dare give up on Tomorrow because of the way things look Today. Don’t even think about it… Neale Donald Walsch

For all of us, times will arise when life seems impossible and difficult and totally unmanageable. It doesn’t matter if we’re in recovery or not. It’s life. It’s how things go from time to time. Regardless, it’s important to keep in mind a few things to help us to get through this challenge.

Whatever is happening, it won’t last forever. Things will turn around and get better. I know that when you’re in the thick of it, time drags and it seems that this will never end. And it will. Don’t quit because you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. It will appear, it always does. I have learned that I can get through everything that life throws at me: death, ending relationships, depression, a broken leg, accidents, arguments and anything else comes along. The pain of today will transform into the joy of tomorrow.  That break-up seems to cause the whole world to crash down. But it will get better. And the idea of using or drinking again? Really? Is that what’s going through your mind? If you want to make things even worse than they are, drink or use.  That will really drag out your difficulties. Time heals

My perspective is a limited perspective. I can only see one side of anything until I stretch my mind to consider other perspectives. How is this affecting other people? I took to heart many years ago the idea to look at the best possible intentions of others. When someone does something that affects me, say, your boss gives a promotion to someone else. From my perspective, it’s the worst possible thing to happen to me right now. It could turn me into a tailspin if I let it. What’s the best possible intention of my boss? It probably wasn’t to make me angry or make me feel I should quit this lousy job. Your boss was probably looking for the best interest of the company. Were you? Perhaps there’s another, more suitable promotion for me, or perhaps work performance is lacking and I’m not really the best person for that promotion. I need to remember that it’s not all about me all of the time (though my Ego would tell you otherwise). There are other factors and other perspective that come into play.  Look for the best intention of others and even if that wasn’t their real intention, it doesn’t matter. I have a positive or at minimum, a neutral thought about it.

What I resist will persist. If I want to get through the worst of things, I need to accept it. I stop fighting it, blocking it, avoiding it. I accept it. This doesn’t mean that I like it, or that there’s nothing I can do about it. It means that I acknowledge its presence and that I will deal with it. Here, the Serenity Prayer comes into play. Acceptance allows me to discern whether it is something that I can change or not change. I can’t change people, places or things, but I can work on me. “Resistance is futile,” say the Borg in Star Trek. It is. Once I stop resisting and accept, I can do something about the situation; I stop swimming against the current.

H.O.P.E. Hear Other People’s Experience. When times are bad, it helps to talk to others and listen to their stories. Perhaps they went through a similar problem. Perhaps they have information that could be helpful. Their example will give me hope if I let it. Many times this happens in meetings. We hear something either in the literature of the program or the shares of other members. Often they aren’t even aware of what we are going through right now, but their experience, strength and hope help us along. We all have our Higher Power. Opening my ears to hear other people is also opening my ears to my Higher Power.

Pray about it. In the eleventh step we ask for two things in prayer: to know what our Higher Power’s will is for us and for the power to carry out that will. If I stop putting my expectations of the outcome of things, if I stop telling my Higher Power just how things should be resolved, I have a better chance of hearing what that ‘will’ is for me.

Difficult times come to everyone. It’s life. I love the line from the movie The Most Exotic Marigold Hotel: “It will all work out in the end. If it’s not working out, it’s not the end.” Trust yourself, trust your Higher Power and give time, time. I can live one day at a time because tomorrow is another day.  I am grateful.

Faith Over Fear

/ Tim / Leave a comment

Fear. It paralyzes us. It oppresses us. It looms over our whole being. Fear of our future. Fear of illness and death. Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. I could go on and on. Fear is something that keeps us cowering, immobile in the corner, unable to come out. It is pervasive in our disease of addiction. We fear we won’t have enough, we fear we will have too much. We fear the opinion of other and we fear our own thoughts about ourselves.  Addicts and alcoholics don’t have the monopoly on fear, but we do have an unhealthy dose of it in our lives.

F.E.A.R. There are two acronyms that we use for fear in the groups I belong to.  One is F*** Everything And Run, which is what I usually did. I couldn’t deal with the muddle of my life. I couldn’t handle confrontation. I didn’t even want to open the mail and I screened most of my calls. Running to my addiction gave me the illusion of safety; at least I didn’t have to deal with the stuff that was going on around me for now. I didn’t know how to face things. I didn’t know how others would react to what I was doing so I thought it better to do nothing.

The other acronym is Face Everything And Recover. This took me quite a while to understand and put into practice. To be honest, I’m still working on it. I am certainly a whole lot better at facing those fears I have about life. In facing them, I have discovered something for myself: discussed fears dwindle in size and intensity. If I talk to my sponsor or another member about what I fear, the very act of talking brings it down in size from the paralyzing monster that my brain had made it, to a manageable point of discussion that doesn’t seem so big any more.  My brain makes mountains out of mole hills and tempests in teapots. Talking makes it right sized.  I try to remember that it’s not the end of the world until it’s really the end of the world.

I also try to remember that fear is a product of my Ego.  I want things to go my way, but they might not go that way.  What then might I do? Then this will happen, then that and oh my, that surely won’t go my way either! You get the picture. I let my expectations of what I think should happen take over and fear tells me those expectations will miserably fail. Ego takes me for an unstoppable ride. Talking slows down the ride and helps me look at things realistically, not fantastically.

I also trust. I know that my Higher Power has always been there for me. I know that because I am here today. If that’s the case why would I think that my Higher Power will leave me hanging in the wind tomorrow? I will live through everything that comes my way until I don’t. I have faith that H.P. will be by my side even at that moment too. Besides, like worries, 95% of my fears have never materialized. I am finding that by living the program of recovery things have a way of working themselves out in ways that I could have never dreamed. Fears are fantasy. They don’t exist. Like the smoke and mirrors of a carnival, they have no substance. Permit me one final acronym? False Evidence Appearing Real. There is no reality in fear. It’s all in my head. It’s a future that I can neither know or predict.

We ask for courage in the Serenity Prayer. Courage is what we need when we still have fear. We go forward even though we don’t know what the next step might take us. We take the next step knowing that we have faith in whatever comes our way we will be able to handle. And we take another step in the knowledge fear is not conquering us, rather we are vanquishing it. Courage and faith conquer fear.

♥  ♥  ♥

Please like and share this blog. Perhaps it will give others the needed courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River. I would appreciate it if you would sign up and follow as well.  Please comment and offer suggestions.  I’d love to hear from you.

Peace

 

Pleasing Me

/ Tim / 2 Comments

My name is Tim and I am a people pleaser. I think I always have been. I want people to be happy. I want them to enjoy themselves. I don’t want the to have bad experiences and I want to help them avoid any type of unpleasantness.  For years I ran a small B&B and made sure that my guests were ‘happy’. I catered to their needs, indulged their whims, offered advice and went out of my way to make sure that they had a pleasant stay and a nice time in my town. That was my job. I enjoyed it and rightly so, people were paying for that service.

However, I suffer from the disease of more. I thought that without me, they couldn’t have a good vacation in my town. And of course, I didn’t stop with just guests. I was like this with everyone. I didn’t express how I was feeling.  I did ‘favours’ for folks when it really wasn’t convenient. My needs were set aside for the needs of others. I felt that your needs, feelings were more important than mine. I believed it was the right thing to do: suppress my needs because that was the ‘Christian’ thing to do, the ‘human’ thing to do. If I didn’t, what would people think about me? What would they say about me? I was always the nice, polite guy who went along with everyone and everything. Problem was, I still had my needs and desires. They became distorted by neglect and gave me one more excuse to indulge in my addiction. And I started to believe that I didn’t matter and neither did my needs, or wishes. I believed ‘Love thy neighbour, but deny thy self.’

‘What others think about me is none of my business!’

How difficult it was when I first arrived to hear and accept this radical idea, Wow, that was not how I was wired. I thought that it was my business, my only business. What will the neighbours think? What will the family think? What will my friends think? Those were the questions I worked with. What does Tim think? That didn’t matter all that much.

Through working the steps I learned that I do matter and that what I think is important and that I have self esteem, I value, I’m worth it. One of the ways I made that change in thinking is by ignoring what others ‘might’ be thinking about me, because there really was no way of knowing. As well, someone pointed out, other folks aren’t thinking about me, they are mostly thinking about what still others think about them. Finally, I was told that this attitude was an Ego trip.  I was doing it all for me, in a obtuse way, so that everyone would like me. I wasn’t doing it for you, I was doing it for me!!!!  Pow! Right in the kisser!!!!

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Dr. Seuss

It is difficult to climb down off this steep mountain of Ego. I’m learning to accept who I am with my faults and my merits. I am learning that while I am not “everything and a piece of cake”, I have value and so do my thoughts and ideas. I share my ideas. I try new things. I help out others, but not at my expense, and not just so that they will like me.  Well, okay, I’m working at it. Sometime quickly, sometimes slowly, as we hear in meetings. I work things out with me, my Higher Power and my sponsor and if others think that it is a good idea, great. If not, well, I’m learning to deal with that too.

I can’t please everyone every time and I don’t want to. I can do things that I know I need or want to do. I have no desire to be a bull in a china shop, but I will no longer stand aside and let the world trample on me because of what it ‘might’ be thinking about me. The happiness of the world doesn’t depend upon me. My happiness does. When I’m happy, I have a different perspective on the world out there and it makes my world in here a whole lot brighter! I’m working on it.

♥  ♥  ♥

Please like and share this blog, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River. I would appreciate it if you would sign up and follow as well.  My intention is to post Mondays and Thursdays.   Please comment and offer suggestions.  I’d love to hear from you.

Peace