Taking Care of Myself: Outgrowing Fear

When I first read about "outgrowing fear," I thought it was a crazy idea.  I believed that fear was more or less an instinct and had an important purpose in keeping me alive and out of trouble.  But my dear first sponsor in recovery assured me that letting go of fear by relying on God was essential to sobriety.

Of course, it's true that some fears do help me stay out of trouble.  I have a healthy fear of running red lights, for example.  But most of the fears that were running my life were actually just mental - ideas I had that I was scaring myself with.

I had a big fear of being judged by other people.  I don't know what I thought would happen to me if I were judged.  Of course, I thought people that loved me would stop loving me.  But the thing is, if I pretend to be something I'm not, I'm not actually being loved because those people don't even really know who I am.

So I learned that pretense would just create a life where I never really knew how I stood with anybody.  Little by little I learned to just be who I am.  I tell the truth about who I am, what I think and how I feel.  I don't hide my mistakes.  Every once in awhile I get mad because someone judges me, but I get over it pretty quickly.  I do my best.  If that's not okay with them...well, what can I do about that?

Most of my other fears were about what might happen in the future.  I didn't think good things were going to happen - just stuff I was sure was going to be terrible and cause me great emotional pain.  Some stuff like that did happen and sure enough I had pain.  But all the worry ahead of time didn't make it hurt less.  Besides, a lot of the things I feared never happened.

The bottom line was that fear was not all that useful.  So I was more willing to consider the possibility of outgrowing it in favor of reliance on God.  Stuff does happen that I don't like, but my job is to let go of my resistance and be willing to let God be in charge.

Dream Hangovers

I dreamed last night that my dearly departed husband had left me for another woman.  I was devastated and tried to talk him into coming back.  He was mad at me for refusing to do something he wanted me to do so I guess he found someone else to do it.  I really wanted to give in so that he would come back but I didn't.  I just tried to explain why I said, "no" and that I loved him very much.  He was hugging me but I got the impression he wasn't coming back when I woke up.  I remember feeling very, very sad that he was leaving but a little bit proud that I didn't sacrifice what I believed was right to keep him.

I've been up three hours now and I still feel really sad.  I hate dream hangovers.

Taking Care of Myself: Getting Rid of Resentment

After she taught me the basics of physical self-care, my dear spiritual mother began to show me the next vital responsibilities I had - taking care of myself mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  At that time I was prey to intense fear, anger and guilt.  I was in emotional pain pretty much all the time.  I seemed to have been born that way (me and Lady Gaga).  So she taught me the tools for dealing with myself.

We started with the resentments (coming from chronic anger) that were torturing me.  She told me to pray for the people I resented every single day until I didn't resent them any more.  She said to pray for them even though I didn't mean it and to pray that they have everything I wanted for myself.  And that helped - a lot. 

Next she pointed out that my thinking patterns were really what caused resentment - not the actual behavior of other people.  That seemed incredibly obscure to me.  So we took specific incidents that had caused me to resent someone - incidents where I felt victimized - and looked for ways that I could use the new information, support, and spiritual help I had recently acquired but didn't have at that time in the past.

In every one of those incidents, we were able to identify several ways the problem could have been solved without having to try to make someone else change their behavior.  A very simple example is that when someone is talking to you in a negative, critical, hurtful way, you can just excuse yourself politely and go to the bathroom.  If they persist, you can leave the whole area.  If you don't stay there and listen, you are taking care of yourself and don't need to get a resentment.

This strategy will work on bigger problems too.  Talking to a wise person when you lack ideas will work too.  It is never necessary to try to protect myself by getting resentments.

Little by little I learned how to take care of myself.  By doing that I stopped blaming other people for my problems and began solving them myself. 

Taking Care of Myself Physically

The first things I learned about taking care of myself were extremely basic.  The beautiful lady I call my spiritual mother explained to me that to start with, my responsibilities to myself were things like going to the doctor for annual check ups, going to the dentist twice a year, eating nutritious food, getting as much sleep as I needed, keeping myself reasonably clean and pleasantly dressed.  I really don't remember ever having focused my attention on those things before and I was in my early 40s. 

I vaguely knew that those things were supposed to be done, but I had no idea that putting them first was my responsibility.  It took a long time before I was consistent at carrying them out.  I usually waited a long time before going to the doctor when I was sick, for example.  It seemed to me that other things were more important. 

It wasn't until I consistently went to the doctor when I was sick, that he figured out I had such severe allergies that early every winter I got upper respiratory infections which started with fall allergies.  Now it's been years since I have had the upper respiratory problems that used to start in late November and last until February.

I just ate whatever was handy and slept as little as I possibly could.  I was very thin and chronically sleep deprived.  If I sat down, I usually fell asleep.  I lost a few teeth before I learned to get myself to the dentist on a regular basis.

I still track my nutrition, exercise and rest to keep myself conscious of what I'm doing and whether I'm being responsible for myself.  I'm still a little slow about getting to the doctor, but I get myself to the dentist three times a year instead of two to prevent problems.

I still have a ways to go with nutrition and exercise before I can say I'm truly taking care of my physical self.  But I am a very long way from where I was.

Taking Care of Myself

Taking care of myself was not a concept I had ever heard of, let alone practiced when I entered adulthood.  In fact, I am still learning how to do it. 

I think that our parents and teachers believed that the way to bring children up in the right way and teach them what they needed to know, was to constantly point out what we were doing wrong.  Some of us, like me, had our spirits pretty bruised by all the negative input.  The result was that I came to believe that I was a very defective person, unworthy, and basically deserved every bad thing that could happen to me.

That way of thinking led me to never really thinking about what I needed to do to take care of myself.  I was halfway through adulthood before I even came across the idea of self-care.

With the help of a recovery program, some really good therapy, and lots of reading on the subject, I've arrived at a point where I take the idea very seriously.  When I fall back, I usually get bruised, so I work at taking care of myself every day.

As I visit with others who are using me as a sponsor in their recovery programs, I've noticed that we all have something in common when we haven't learned how to take care of ourselves - big fat ugly resentments against other people - sometimes very old ones that we've been carrying around for years.  We have chronic anger.  We're very judgmental of other people (a great way of distracting ourselves from the judgments we have about ourselves).  We complain a lot about everything.  None of this makes for anything like a great life!

Learning how to take care of myself (and I'm still learning), has taken years and years.  I'm hardly ever angry or upset about anything anymore.  That is NOT because I've found a way to make everything go my way, but because I've practiced acceptance of life on life's terms and because I do my best to carry out my responsibilities to myself instead of expecting other people/the world to do it for me.

Sunday School Ideas

I don't watch the news very much because there's so much trouble in the world I can't do anything about.  I do try to catch up on what's going on every few days, though.

There's so much carrying on about the religious ideas regarding sex and sexuality that I am constantly amazed.  How that gets all mixed up with politics I'm not sure.  I read that Texas passed a law outlawing male masturbation (pro-life).  I wonder if that could actually be true.

Anyway, none of this stuff was in my Sunday school lessons.  What I heard was stuff like: love your neighbor as yourself, forgive others 70 times 7, turn the other cheek, feed people who are hungry, take care of the sick, visit people in prison, take care of children, God is love.  I wonder why none of that has snuck into politics.

I Didn't Have Any Trouble Stopping Believing in Santa

In recent years I've realized that I had a lot of beliefs that I acquired as a child that are not true at all.  I doubt that anyone actually taught them to me.  It was just stuff I picked up that my child's mind formed into a belief.  It turns out that none of it is true.  And because it's not true, trying to live by those beliefs made my life very difficult and often painful.

I believed that:

• it was possible to make other people happy.
• I was supposed to do everything "right" and then I would have no problems.
• the way to solve problems was to find out who was to blame and yell at them and complain to other people.
• the way to get people to like me was to always do everything they wanted me to do.
• the way to have prestige was to dress perfectly and look perfect.
• I would be happy as soon as I got everything I wanted.
• Being single meant you were unwanted.
• The purpose of life was to acquire as much money as possible.

There are so many other beliefs that were kind of unconscious but ran my life that I can't possibly list them all.  It has been extraordinarily hard to get rid of them.  Which is kind of odd since they are so clearly wrong.  Just like it's really clear that there's no such thing as Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, and I let go of those beliefs without any trouble as soon as I got old enough to think clearly.

Beginning to Do My Part

It's been a long time since I've written a letter to an elected official.  I live in a state where all the elected officials think entirely differently than I do, so I've told myself there's no use in communicating.

However, a recent news item changed my mind.  The more I think about it, it's my duty as a citizen to speak up even if I think they will disagree.

After the Moore, Oklahoma, tornado one of our senators was interviewed about the possibility of having safe rooms built in schools.  He said safe rooms can collapse.

This worried me.  So I researched it.  It seems there's a project run by the University of Texas that tests safe rooms and checks on safe rooms after tornados.  They checked all the safe rooms in Moore and none of them collapsed.

So I'm going to write my senator and ask him if he will also check the truth of his statement and if he finds he was incorrect, make a public statement to that effect. 

His earlier statement might have stopped people from building safe rooms.  He is seen as an authority and people will believe him.  So I think he owes it to his constituents to be accurate and I'm going to encourage him to do so.

Reading Has Saved My Life

Amazon.com has read my mind.  I get emails every few days, letting me know about books I might want to read based on what I've purchased in the past.  They are almost always right.  I have a stack of books almost as tall as I am that I haven't read yet.  I am excited.

Most of them are very serious stuff - about health and spirituality.  A few of these new ones are novels - humorous science fiction.  I realize I am a bit odd to still be reading everything I can find on how to improve my life, but since I've learned things in the past that have literally saved my life, I probably will never quit.

Making New Memories

It seems so strange to me how my mind wants to be so passive.  Maybe it's the character defect of sloth.  I made no plans for my birthday (I'm 72 today) and in my mind I was just going to act like it was just another day. 

Well, what I really believe is that there's no such thing as just another day.  It's up to me to make every day count and what's a better day than my birthday to do that?

Too bad it was almost noon before I caught on!  But it's never too late.  So, I'm going to go to a meeting in a few minutes (and another one tonight), get a massage and read a little bit in all the new books I've accumulated.  I might also go over to the Woodward Park rose garden and see how the roses are doing!

1964

I think it was 1964.  I had a baby and a two year old.  It was early in the morning and I wasn't all the way awake.  I had just changed the baby's poopy diaper and went into the bathroom to rinse it out (no disposable diapers in that time).  I saw that my two year old and done a nice poop in the potty chair. 

This presented me with a dilemma - the toilet would only flush once and then you had to wait for the tank to fill up.  So, I thought about the best way to go about this and decided to rinse the diaper first, not flush and then dump the potty.  I was thrilled that I had figured out the most efficient way of taking care of this chore.

Then I thought to myself that it was pretty weird that a smart gal like me had no better use for her mind than figuring out the most efficient way to dispose of poop.  I laughed to myself.

Later in the 60s  when I read Betty Friedan's, The Feminine Mystique, about how motherhood and housewifeing might be too little for all women to spend their lives doing - that all humans had a contribution to make and it surely must be possible for women to be good mothers, homemakers, and still contribute other things to the world, I remembered that morning when I was thrilled about efficiently disposing of poop and understood what Betty meant.

Visitors

I love company.  I love solitude.  In the past week I've had both.  First my daughter and her oldest son and his wife were here, and we took a tour of local restaurants.  We also went to the Farmer's Market and Whole Foods.  Since my dear grandson and his dear wife are "foodies," we had fun.  AND as nearly as I can tell, I'm not any larger.

Then my dearest friend, Eric, was here and our first order of business was to eat at our favorite restaurants.

My treasured departed husband introduced me to the concept of food as entertainment.  I guess before that I thought that it was a good thing to like what you ate but it never occurred to me to raise food to the level of entertainment.  Of course, in my case, there's a downside.  I'm larger than I need to be!

How to Never, Ever be Bored

The last time I was bored I was about four years old and in church with my parents.  There was not one single thing for a four year old to do.  Soon after that my mother taught me to read and I've never been bored since.

So my first recommendation for never, ever being bored would be to read.  If you don't like to read, it's probably because you've not read anything you liked.  If you actually have trouble reading, get audio books.  Libraries are full of them!

I suggest you secrete reading materials in your pockets, your car, your briefcase, purse or whatever.  You never know when you'll have an extra minute with nothing to do.  Never let it go to waste just sitting and listening to your thoughts.

Speaking of thoughts - if you're tired of reading and/or didn't bring any reading material with you, organize your thoughts.  Why let boring repetitive thinking go unchecked.  Think up interesting and new things to do on holidays, new and interesting things to do on weekends.  Make mental lists of people you know that could use a blessing of some kind - babysitting, hedge trimming, flowers, a basket of fruit, etc.  Those are just to get started with.  Once you get in the swing of thinking creatively you won't be able to stop.  And you will never, ever be bored.

A Gift of Recovery for Mother's Day

A couple of my friends were disappointed with what their children did for Mother's Day.  It occurred to me that I have never been disappointed on Mother's Day, Christmas or my birthday or any other day since my early days in recovery.

I don't really remember how this happened - probably my dear first sponsor taught me - but I decided to have no expectations of anybody.  The saying is, "Expectations are premeditated resentments (or disappointments)."  For one thing I think our consumer culture puts pressure on us to outdo ourselves for the people in our lives on these holidays.  If you don't conform, they tell you you are communicating a lack of love.  Crap!

So if I have no expectations, anything that happens is wonderful. 

My mother, on the other hand, was fixated on being critical of everybody's efforts to show their love for her on those "special " days.  She griped all the time.  Nothing was ever good enough and she let you know if incessantly.  The result was that I disliked her more and more.  If you want to get people to dislike you, accuse them of not treating you right.

I think holidays should be spent in enjoyment that I create for myself.  If someone else shows up, that's great. 

For whatever reason, somehow the thought came to me this year that Mother's Day would be a good day to find ways to mother mothers and to reach out to all the children in the world that don't have what they need.  Cards, flowers, eating out - that's all fine.  But mothers need support all year round.  Plus we have a world where there are millions of children that don't even have enough to eat.  What better way to celebrate than to contribute to solutions. 

Mixed Feelings on Mother's Day

Anne Lamott wrote an article titled, "Why I Hate Mother's Day" on Salon.com.  I thought about my own mixed feelings about Mother's Day when I read it.  Anne thinks it singles out mothers as some sort of super heroes which some deserve and a lot more don't.  She doesn't like it.  I don't either but I wouldn't say I hate Mother's Day even though I realize it was probably invented to sell greeting cards, flowers and restaurant meals.

I've given birth to three children, only one of which is still on the earth.  The other two died at early ages in confusing, tragic circumstances.  I will always feel guilty and sad that I wasn't able to fulfill the most basic of motherly duties - keeping my children alive.  I really don't know if I had done something differently that they would have lived, so I just live with a certain amount of guilt.  It's always food for thought on mother's day.  I miss them both every day but especially on mother's day.

My two youngest are very disabled.  I had no idea when they came into our family through the foster care system that it would have such a negative impact on our family.  Once they were with us, they had nowhere else to go.  They are adults now and, for the most part, have the care they need.  But I will always be sad for the hardship for us all.

I know there are many, many other mothers with mixed feelings on mother's day.  There are all kinds of reasons - some similar to mine, some different, but the mother's day cards don't address those situations. 

On the bright side, I have two fabulous adult daughters and four beautiful grandchildren who give me great delight on mother's day.  I focus always on them and the joy they are in my life.

Neighborhood Party

I finally made it to a neighborhood party.  They have one about every year but I am shy and stay home.  Today I went for about half an hour and did my best to socialize.  I found out that my neighbor across the street that was married to one of Ron's professors at the University of Tulsa, and whose second husband was killed in an accident in 2004 is getting married next year.  Hot neighborhood gossip. 

Every time they have one of these parties, I sneer at it and think how much better I could do.  This year I said nothing.  They were over the top.  They had a mobile Italian restaurant, music, a drawing for a prize (I don't know what it was), and were handing out a flyer with information about suspicious characters they had seen in the neighborhood since most of the people at the party were part of the neighborhood watch.  There were two giant friendly dogs in attendance.

I met my next door neighbor again who landscaped his yard elaborately when he moved in a couple of years ago.  I hate him and I always tell him.  He claims he gets all the trees and plants from his father-in-law who re-does his yard every year.  I said I was more in need than he was then.  He said his father in law had offered him a Japanese maple.  I've longed for a Japanese maple ever since I saw one but they are so expensive.  So he says he will bring me one.  Hope he really does.

A good day all around.

Habits

Just finished reading a book called, "The Power of Habit."   It's a best seller and goes nicely with my constant reading of the blog called, "Zen Habits."

A very long time ago I realized that I was terrible at making changes in my habits and that it caused me a lot of trouble.  So I'm in the middle of researching what scientific research is learning as well as what Leo of Zen Habits has learned and tried out on himself.

I've been working at this for several weeks.  One of the habit changes is exercise and I've done okay with that.  Not to the extent that I could say I've established a habit, but enough to have experienced some benefits. 

I feel better.  I have a tiny bit more energy.  I'm hoping that my lower back pain will go away like it did when I was in physical therapy.

Of course, the trick is to keep at it.  I have five priorities - things to do every morning.  I'm working at managing to do all of them the majority of the time.  I'm not even half way there yet, but I have achieved an average of three times a week.  Not too bad. 

It's making a big difference in my self-esteem and in my mood as well as creating a higher level of peace. 

I Wish I Had that Piece of My Mind Back Now

I wish I had that
piece of my mind
back now.
They didn't want it
anyway.
And now I just
feel foolish.
No wonder
with such a big
piece of my mind
missing.

Two Ding-a-Lings Don't Make a Bell!

Not only do two Ding-a-Lings not make a bell; a rooster and a hen don't make a farm.  I heard these sayings in a meeting the other night.  They are funny, easy to remember and most of all, TRUE!  I love it.  So here's another thing that it's really, really a bad idea to do in relationships:  go into a relationship with all your issues unresolved. 

In trying to remember what I thought about my problems that I knew I had going into relationships, I am a little stumped because I didn't really think about it at all.  I don't remember that I was ever taught or even heard that it would be a great idea to think about my issues and how they might affect the other person and the relationship as a whole.  I guess I thought it was the other person's job to be understanding and to put up with me.  It most certainly did not occur to me that the other person could have issues and that I would be called on to understand and put up with them.  Needless to say, that mind set did not work well at all.

It's been my observation of myself and others that there are issues that really have a big negative impact on relationships.  For example, I was a very fearful person and as soon as I was in a relationship a lot of my fears got transferred to the person I was with.  I was defensive, irritable, and suspicious.  I've noticed that I was not alone in this - that many people seem to have this problem.  Another example:  I was emotionally immature and thought that the other person was supposed to somehow be my unconditionally loving parent.  Oh boy!  That does not work!

So, what to do?  Well, the only thing I know that will work is to get help to resolve fears and to grow up emotionally so that we can stand on our own two feet and be a contributing, loving member of a relationship.  Help comes in all sorts of ways - a good, professional counselor that will help us see ourselves in new ways, a program of spiritual growth that gives us trust in a power greater than ourselves so that we can stop trying to make other people our parents, and information about how to treat other people.

Becoming More Myself

I just realized today that my studies and my spiritual practices are coalescing into a pattern.  This happens all the time, but I'm always surprised!  I'm not sure how many years I've been "studying" now.  It's probably around 30 years.  I've always been a reader from the time I was a little kid.  Since my parents were big readers, I just accepted massive amounts of reading as the normal pastime. 

In the beginning I just read whatever seemed interesting and entertaining at the time.  After I came into recovery I began to notice that my reading gravitated, without my conscious thought, to whatever I seemed to need at the time.  When I came across something that really spoke to me, I read it several times and took notes - which is why I call it "studying." 

For a long time I read mostly about practical things like money and time management.  I had sooo much trouble with those things and needed education badly.  I probably read hundreds of books on organization, money and time management, how to clean a house, how to be a good, efficient cook, nutrition, etc.  I now feel, and have felt for quite awhile, very well educated in those areas.

In the past few years I've realized that I am drawn to information about the potential for growth we have as human beings.   Recently I've read several books on the mind/brain capability.  Famous ancient people have always said (without, of course, any scientific proof whatsoever) that we (humans) are capable of using our mind/brains to create our bodies, our lives and our experiences.  That we are not at the mercy of forces outside ourselves, that we are all connected so that how we think and behave affects the entire world.  Now there's a lot of scientific evidence to back this up.

I have a lot more studying to do before I can really put this information to work, but I have enough to make a start.  Condensing it into what I would need to do to put it into action, comes out that a very dedicated meditation practice would be the first thing.  It seems that all those scientists agree that meditation brings us into contact with the part of ourselves that can re-create ourselves, our lives and our connection with the world around us.

I've just entered the second month of a morning meditation practice that I've been consistent with.  I don't notice a lot of change but in small ways I feel more myself.  I realize "feeling more myself" is not a very clear description but it's the best I can do right now.  I have been through so many changes in the past 7 1/2 years that I have often not felt like myself.  The meditation seems to be restoring me to who I used to be or maybe just more in touch with who I am now.

How to Make Sure You Follow Through on Making Changes

This is so wild, so funny and so true.  My Zen Habits guy that I've been following for a few years now is all about leading a simpler, less stressful life.  The barrier to getting this done, for him and for me too and apparently for a lot of other people judging by the thousands of followers he has on his blog, is procrastination.  He posts articles every few days as well as links to other bloggers working on similar issues.

He has a Sea Change program that I signed up for to make 12 habit changes (one per month) in 2013.  The first thing we worked on was "unprocrastination" which was about choosing a "Most Important Task" (MIT) and establishing a habit of getting that done first.  The next was adding more nutritious food to your diet and this month it was establishing a meditation practice.  I did okay with the MIT thing (which was writing) although I'm not doing so hot now.  I did okay with the nutrition thing although I'm slacking on going to the store so I have what I need.  I've done really well with the meditation thing. 

A few days ago he posted a guest article on insuring success that knocked my socks off.  This guy hired a gal that he found on Craig's list (for $8.00 an hour) to sit with him while he wrote.  If he stopped writing, she was supposed to slap him.  According to the article, she did have to slap him a few times, but he managed to finish the project he was working on in record time!

This same guy had people take him to a cave in an isolated are where he camped for a month - no cell phone, no computer, etc.  He hand wrote an entire project during that month and was completely finished when the people came back to get him.

A long time ago I read a true story about a guy that was consistently late to work, to the unhappiness of his boss.  So he hired somebody to come into his house, wake him up, take him to the shower and turn it on, make coffee and breakfast and follow him to his office so that he got there 30 minutes early.  Problem solved.

This is all very serious and hysterically funny at the same time.  The funny part is obvious.  The serious message is:  "How serious are we about getting the things done that we've been putting off?"

It's Possible to Never Have Another Argument Again!

It's a fact that you never have to have an argument with another person as long as you live!  I can prove the truth of this because I stopped having arguments with people.  If I can do it, anybody can.

What I'm not promising is that you will never be invited to have an argument.  You'll probably have plenty of invitations.  Not very many people give up arguing like I did, so other people are bound to invite you.  Not that I'm better than anybody else - I just learned that I could quit.  I think that the truth about arguments is not well known among humans.

The thing is, it takes two humans to make an argument.  If one person has decided to stop arguing, there will be no arguments.  Simple.  Very simple.  But...it's not an easy thing.  Those invitations are extremely difficult to decline.

So what is so incredibly attractive about arguments that swearing off is so very, very hard?  In my case, I argued in order to prove I was right (very important since being right was all I had to shore up my low self-esteem).  I also argued to defend myself whether I actually needed to defend myself or not.  I often perceived a threat from other people whether there was one or not.  I defended myself just in case.  The bottom line, though, was that I was trying to get my way about something.

The sad thing is that arguing never, never, ever, ever got me anything but a worse relationship with another person and a feeling in my body that I had been poisoned.  Once in a great while I got my way, but that was so very rare.  Even when I got my way, I didn't enjoy it because of the emotional hangover from being in an argument.

So I eventually got willing to investigate another way.  It turns out that it's tremendously more effective to just ask for what I want instead of fighting for it.  Asking in a friendly way and being willing to accept "no" for an answer, doesn't invite a fight and may encourage the other person to say "yes."  If someone else wants to pick a fight with me, I can do my best to understand what they're really saying to me and resist my impulse to fight back. 

In order to have the capability to resist my impulse to fight back, I have to live each day, with the help of a higher power, as best I can in accordance with my values.  When I make mistakes, I try to correct them.  Cleaning my side of the street keeps me from being so defensive when someone is wanting to fight with me.  This is a very hard, lifetime job.  I'm not great at it, but I have finally practiced enough that I at least remember to try every day. 

Usually when I'm invited to a fight, the other person is telling me that they've interpreted my actions as a threat whether I intended a threat or not.  Maybe their feelings are hurt because they think I meant to hurt them.  Maybe I said "no" when they had a lot of energy bound up in my saying "yes."  There are a ton of reasons why someone might want to fight me.  I often wish I could reassure them that I mean no harm, but that rarely works.  I can just remember what someone told me a long time ago - "You add just as much suffering to the world when you take offense as when you give offense." and refuse to take offense myself. 

Stuff that It's a very Bad Idea to do in Relationships, Part 3

In addition to criticism and being bossed, people really, really, hate being ignored.  I've heard it said that children will disobey, knowing they will be punished, just to keep their parents' attention.  I've noticed that most of us adults retain a lot of childish attitudes and behaviors even though we look like mature human beings.  Examples:  pouting, temper tantrums, competing for attention.  Maybe we also retain the fear that if we're ignored, our needs will not be met.

Looking like we're paying attention is almost as important as actually paying attention.  I happen to be one of those people who hear best when I'm looking away from the person.  Unfortunately, that leaves the impression that I'm actually not listening.  So I have learned to look at the person that's talking even if I'm a little uncomfortable.  It's a gift I can give that lets them know I care.

Stuff that it's a Very Bad Idea to do in Relationships, Part 2

I have learned that people (including me) hate, hate, hate being told what to do.  For me, at least, I think it relates back to being criticized.  I react as though they're telling me I'm wrong to be doing what I'm doing and that I should be doing something else.  I hate, hate, hate that.

The thing is, I tell other people what to do.  They hate, hate, hate that!  I have an excuse - the last two jobs I had I supervised people and it was my job to direct their activities.  Also, I sponsor people and since they ask for my input, I end up telling them what to do.  This is a very bad habit.  What works much better is for me to share my experience.

I really don't believe there's ANY need for us humans to try to tell each other what to do.  For one thing, we're all very different and what one person should do is not what another person should do.  Usually, though, the reason one person is bossing another person is to get that person to do what they want.  Bossing them is terribly ineffective though.  Asking politely works soooo much better.

The trigger that starts me telling someone what to do is when they're complaining about something.  So I am working on reminding myself that they're probably just making conversation.  So much of our human conversation consists of complaining.  I can do my part by responding sympathetically and by not complaining myself.

Stuff that It's a Very Bad Idea to Do in Relationships Part 1.

I've learned a lot of things about relationships with other human beings the hard way - which means I didn't believe some of the very useful stuff I heard as a child.  For example, I heard, "If you can't say something good; don't say anything at all."  This is not only extremely good advice, it's been my experience that it's an essential building block of having happy relationships.

Humans hate being criticized and judged.  We hate, hate, hate it!  I always thought criticism was just necessary in life.  I thought, "How else do we learn?"  Well, I most assuredly do not believe that any more.  Criticism beats us down and takes away our energy.  Most of us already believe we're unworthy so criticism just backs up that idea.

The very best thing I've learned to do about criticism when it's leveled at me is:  

1) To pause, hear it, and decide whether it's true or not.  (This is a lot harder than it sounds.  But as I've gotten more comfortable with self-examination, it's gotten easier.)  Sometimes input from other people is useful if I don't let it stab me through the heart.

2)  To realize that critical people usually are incredibly self-critical and are just taking a break from kicking themselves by kicking me.  They also might be fearful of me in some way and are defending themselves in advance.  That last one sounds weird but I've had that happen to me more than once. 

3)  For me the best responses are: 
(A)"Thank you"
(B)"Oh?"
(C)"That could be." 
(D) complete quiet with a smile.
All of these work just fine.

As for my criticisms of other people:  Best thing to do is zip my lip.

There is no reason for me to criticize anyone - even myself.  There aren't ANY good outcomes.  What works is to focus on what I want to be like and what I want my life to be about.  As I focus on what I want and act accordingly, my thoughts, feelings and actions crowd out much of the negatives. 

If I don't like what someone else is doing and it actually affects me and I've talked my idea over with a wise person, I might ask the person I've thought of criticizing for what I want instead.  This is rarely necessary.  My belief is that I can accept most people the way they are.  When I reach perfection, I can work on perfecting other people.

The thing is, all of this requires that I practice, practice, practice shutting up.  Unless I keep quiet, there's no chance I'm going to speak in a way that avoids criticism.  Warning:  This is a lifetime job.

Hope for the Best; Plan for the Worst

From what I saw on CNN last night, there are social psychologists that study things like optimism and pessimism.  (I would rather they study something more important for the species like what ways of parenting yield the best outcomes.)  It seems that pessimists are right more often than optimists but optimists are happier.  Pessimists also live longer because they are on guard and anticipate trouble (but optimists are happier).

I'm thinking I want to be an optimist; hoping for the best, but at the same time look ahead and plan for escaping possible disaster.  Best of both worlds.

Looking Back I See the Pattern of God's Grace

It's a practice in recovery to "tell your story" so that listeners can see how the program helped you to recover.  I've done it dozens of times and each time I see something new and enlightening for me whether the listeners do or not. 

I am one of those people that hear from others, "You should write a book!"  So I'm writing my memoir.  It has turned out to be ever so much more trouble than I thought.  I've started over three times because it just didn't seem right to me. 

The effort of looking back over my story has shown me that my life is a terrific example of how a force for good in the universe has been taking care and guiding me even when I was a dedicated atheist!  Amazing!!!

How I Learned about Relationships with Other People

For a long time I kind of disagreed with the saying in recovery communities, "Act as if..."  It means you can act like a courageous, responsible adult even if you don't feel like it.  It means that if you act like one long enough, you will start to actually be one.

In my heart I really thought that I needed to work out my "issues" first and that then I really would be the way I wanted to be.  I worked on changing my thinking which did indeed change my emotions and therefore changed my behavior.  It does work.  But it's really, really slow. 

Since I didn't actually know how a courageous, responsible adult acts, I was a little lost anyway.  So I consulted people who seemed to have good relationships with other people and who were farther along in recovery and then I worked at applying what I learned.  For example, along the way I learned that when I stopped thinking of myself as a victim of other people, I stopped getting mad at people.  "Victim thinking" caused me to feel hopeless and helpless when I wasn't and caused me to believe the only solution to my problems were to somehow make other people do what I wanted.

Finally I surrendered to the truth - I didn't actually know how to behave in relationships.  I just reacted emotionally.  I felt happy when I thought I was being approved of and was extremely unhappy when I thought I was being disapproved of.  I was happy when they acted like I wanted them to and very unhappy when they acted in ways I didn't like.  So I began to collect information from other people and I read stuff.  I also went to counseling.

Little by little I learned how courageous, responsible adults behaved in relationships.  For example, I learned that when someone criticizes you, you don't have to go straight up in the air and criticize them back.  In fact, that strategy just leads to fighting and no solutions.  I learned that you can just listen (even though your emotions are trying to get you to attack).  It is a skill that can be learned if you are willing to put your back into it - keeping your mouth shut, that is.  You will never, ever regret learning to zip your lip.  When I did that, it gave me the opportunity to "act as if..."

I collected a lot of knowledge.  I wrote it down.  I practiced (and I still practice).  I make mistakes but clean them up as quickly as I can.  I am still learning.  Every day I get a little more comfortable "acting as if..."  I am a courageous, responsible adult.

How I Changed My Mind

For most of my life I had no idea that my problem was my mind.  I thought my mind was me and I believed everything I thought was correct.  No one had ever enlightened me that it's actually a dangerous thing to listen to your own mind; let alone believe it. 

I think there's a very good chance that an awful lot of people are like me, and they picked up the ideas from random sources when they were kids that play over and over in their heads.  As kids they had no ability to decide what to believe so they just believed everything. 

As I grew up I began to be suspicious that maybe some of the stuff I had been taught might not be true, but it wasn't until I got into recovery that I realized my thoughts were not the same thing as me and that a lot of what I thought wasn't true at all. 

It's a radical idea but I've come to believe that it really isn't possible to be absolutely sure of anything.  Since I am just one flawed human being on the face of the earth, and will only be on the earth for a tiny time, how could I know anything for sure?  Only God can know anything for sure.

So, I learned that the little bit of power that I have as a flawed human being would be best used to enjoy my life, make it the best life I can, and live from the heart so I can love myself and all the other flawed beings on the earth.  If I am confused about what action to take on any given day, asking what love would do will give me direction every time.

It's a challenge to remember the decision I made to live from the heart, so I have to take time in the morning to remember when I make my to-do list, again during the day, and again before I go to sleep.  I have a very different life since I changed my mind from believing random stuff to attempting to live from love.  I highly recommend it!

Guilt vs. Shame

I've been noticing for quite awhile now that a lot of people are riddled with shame and have it mixed up with guilt.  Lucky for me, in the very beginning of my recovery, my dear sponsor told me the difference:  Guilt is the feeling I have when I've violated my values and shame is my fear of being judged or of someone being mad at me.

Of course, I had to do the work of discovering what my actual values were.  Her belief was that our values are formed pretty early in our childhoods and from then on they may be largely unconscious.  She encouraged me to do a lot of writing about what I thought was right and wrong, from the small things to the large things. 

For example: Is it wrong to leave your grocery cart in the store's parking lot without putting it back where it belongs?  Is it wrong to park in handicapped parking when you're not handicapped?  Is it wrong to have sex with someone other than who you're married to?  When you're single, is it wrong to have sex with someone who's married?  Is it wrong to gossip?  Is it wrong to yell at your kids?  Is it wrong to call your spouse a name?

It's amazing how many things there were to consider about what I really believed was right and wrong.  She also helped me see that all these rules I had absorbed in my childhood were often quite different than other people's rules, but that I as well as those other people would expect that everyone's rules were the same.  This belief causes endless conflict!

When you violate any of these values on any day, she said, you start carrying a heavy load of pain, and your self esteem gets smaller and smaller.  The fourth through ninth steps of the program allow us to unload that pain and the tenth step allows us to stay out of pain. 

Then, she said, shame is the fear that all of us have of being judged by other people.  That fear is why we keep secrets that weigh us down and shrink our self esteem.  A lot of the secrets are not about violations of our values - just things we think others would judge us for.  If we're single, we worry that others are judging us for not being married.  If we weigh more than we think we should, we think others are judging us.  We have fears about what our clothes are like, what our home is like, what kind of car we drive and on and on.  Secrets are a different burden to carry than guilt but are just as heavy and make us think less of ourselves too.

Luckily, the same steps will relieve the burden and keep it from coming back if we practice them every day.  I have no secrets anymore.  Of course, I don't tell everyone everything about me, but I make sure that at least one person somewhere knows.  I also manage to go against my values, but I correct those mistakes as quickly as I can. 

Sometimes it's kind of a pain to always put that grocery cart back and put trash in the nearest trash can, but the lingering, nagging discomfort of not doing it is not worth it.  I've only yelled at someone once in the last few years and I caught myself quickly and apologized.  Living fairly free of guilt and shame is an incredibly wonderful freedom.

"Denial is ...like inertia with attitude"

"Denial is invigorating - like inertia wih attitude.  It allows you to be defiant while doing nothing at all."  (from a short story by C.J. Gall in the latest issue of The Sun.) 

I was very struck with this quote.  Since I sponsor quite a few folks in 12 step programs, I am very familiar with denial - which seems to be the main problem with all of us.  I especially like the "attitude" part of the quote since we all seem to react with anger and resistance when someone challenges our denial.  Also, our denial seems to be characterized with extreme stubborn resistance to taking any useful action while at the same time exhibiting a lot of emotional energy (the "invigorating" part). 

Denial also makes us seem either crazy or stupid to other people because they can clearly see what our problem is and what we could do about it.  What they hear from us seems like we're not living on the same planet at all. 

For example, if we're living with someone who constantly criticizes us and we're angry about that, but defend the person when someone else points out that we have the option of getting away from that person, we really do seem either crazy or stupid. 

Of course, our denial is protecting us from a truth too painful for us to face.  In that example, maybe we can't bear to see that the person is unlikely to change, and that our problem solving choices are limited to 1.  learning to accept constant criticism without anger or 2.  getting away from the person. 

In every single case, denial just means that the truth is too painful to face.  The 12 Steps break that denial which is why only people who are really desperate to get out of the pain they're in will actually work them.

The Great Book Purge

For the past several weeks I've been gradually going through all my hundreds of books and ditching the ones that I don't need anymore.  I ditched a whole bunch of books on supervising difficult people.  I hope to God I never have to do that again!  It seems to me that once a person has been trained and has a job description plus a weekly meeting to solve any problems that come up, the person should just do his/her job.  It turns out that isn't how it works.  

I still need to decide where to put a few of the remaining books, but for the most part I'm finished.  This little chore only gets done every few years, but is eminently satisfying.  I have so many wonderful books that I end up with a huge pile of books I want to re-read.

I am grateful to have learned to read at around four years of age. As an only child of schoolteachers, I entertained myself by reading.  I also learned a tremendous amount.  I am probably educated to the level of a doctorate even though I barely got my undergraduate degree.  I've read thousands of books - both fiction and non-fiction.

One of the things I learned is that there's a lot of information about how to live life in all those books that you won't be able to think up on your own.  Of course, now we have Google but even though I utterly adore Google, I still enjoy books more.  I'm not a fan of electronic books because I can't share them with other people and I wouldn't have the happy task of handling them with love.

Benefits of Living Alone

I really like living by myself.  There are a lot of advantages, not the least of which is being able to set my own agenda every day and not needing to adjust myself to anybody else. 

I play classical music as loudly as I want any time of the day or night.  I burn incense pretty constantly and a lot of people don't like incense.  I eat when and what I want to without having to be concerned with what someone else might want to do.  If I want to take the day off and just rest, read, and listen to music, there's no one here to ask me what's wrong and insist on reassurance that I'm okay.

If I don't want to wash my hair, I don't and there's no one to remark that my hair could use a washing.  I wear whatever I want without concern about modesty or fashion.  Since I have limited energy but I like an uncluttered environment, it's a blessing that my environment stays the way I want it unless I mess it up because there's no one else to pick up after. 

Right now there are books on every inch of my bedroom floor except for a pathway to the bathroom and the closet.  I have been in the process of sorting books for many days.  I have hundreds of books and I keep acquiring more.  I refuse to buy another bookcase so it's time to clear them out.  That requires some re-reading of books to see if they will make the cut.  Thanks to low energy and re-reading, this project is going to take weeks.  If someone else were living here, I would have to explain why there are piles of books everywhere.

I talk to myself a lot.  I used to only do this in the car because the people I lived with would have thought I was crazy.  Talking to myself is a habit I developed as a child when I was an only child and frequently alone.  There's something kind of magical about hearing myself talk out a problem or making a decision.  It's like hearing another person, and since I often think I know what other people should do, listening to myself really speeds up my ability to make decisions!

I know some of my habits would get on someone else's nerves and vice versa.  For example, one of my regular houseguests is a little creeped out by the knife that frequently sits on the top of the peanut butter jar.  I use it to dig out a bit of peanut butter when I pass by.  (Probably contributes to my overweight.)  But when someone else besides me washes the dishes, the knife has to be wiped off before putting it in the dishwasher.  Peanut butter is gooey and sticky.  So, in order to be considerate, I try to remember to clean off the knife and put it in the dishwasher myself.

My sleep patterns are pretty messed up and have been all my life.  I've tried pretty much everything to straighten them out, and some of the things I've tried have helped a lot.  At the same time, I am usually awake for a period of time around 4:00 in the morning.  I blame all the years I got up with restless children, but who knows why the pattern still persists.  So I get up and eat something (peanut butter).  I read.  I clean out closets.  I write blog posts.  I read stuff online.  Finally I go back to bed and watch television.  All that activity would be very aggrevating to another person living in the house.  My dear husband slept with ear plugs and an eye mask.  The other problem is that when I go back to sleep I sleep past normal getting up time. So I may appear to be sleeping very late unnecessarily which tends to make people think I'm lazy and irritate them.

I like to spend about an hour every morning reading my meditation books and journaling.  Being free from a 9 to 5 job, has given me this luxury.  Then I've been slowly developing the habit of doing 20 minutes of meditation at around 5 or 6.  These two opportunities to connect with myself and a force for good in the universe keep me pretty grounded mentally and emotionally, but they interrupt interactions with anyone who is living with me and require special requests for no interruptions.  Since I love to gab and interact, I don't really want to ask.

Being alone a lot of the time gives me the opportunity to more easily notice my thoughts, emotions and behavior.  There's really no one else to blame when something goes wrong.  It's always me; me every time!  That fact gives me the opportunity to notice and work on correcting my thoughts before they become emotions and behavior that are negative.

On the other hand - I love having company.  I seem to be both a very social and very reclusive person at the same time.  Weird.  Plus being a little bit old and a little bit disabled, makes me more vulnerable so having someone here is good for my safety.   

I am not at all fearful for myself - I keep my cell phone close by so if I fall down, I've got a way to call for help.  Plus I'm probably a little bit more muscular and balanced than a lot of old ladies because of 20 years of yoga and weight lifting.  I also have had great nutrition now and in my earlier life which means I do not have brittle bones.  In addition, I'm not very fearful of intruders because I have wasp spray, an aluminum baseball bat and my bad temper for protection.

Nevertheless, I probably am safer when other people are here.  So, all in all, I like living alone and I like company.  I think I'm blessed to love both!

Caring for the Ones Who Take Care

My youngest children with disabilities both turned 41 this year.  They came to me through the foster care system when they were just babies and because of their disabilities were never adopted.  So they have been in my life a long, long time.

It turns out that our world does not really want to spend tax money to take care of severely disabled people, regards them as less than human and would prefer to have them permanently out of sight (which is some cases means dead).  This attitude probably comes from the eugenics movement in the early part of the 20th century when there was a belief that people with severe disabilities were the cause of all society's ills and if they were eliminated or locked up, the problems would be solved.  So, I have had to fight all kinds of people and systems in order for them to have any kind of life and many times the fights were about life and death.  But we've made it this far. 

My own belief is that if we as a society are not going to own up to wanting people with disabilities dead and are going to let them live, then we have an obligation to help them have a decent life since as human beings they actually do have many of the same wishes as other humans.  I'm not talking about the lap of luxury here but I am talking about a decent place to live, reasonable health care, decent food and clothing, friends and family that care about them, and interesting, productive things to do all day.  I believe they should be treated with kindness and understanding.

Both of them live in group homes with roommates and have care staff with them all the time.  My son has a part time job at a recycling center and my daughter is a volunteer paper shredder at a local non-profit.  For the most part they have pretty good lives.  However ever since they've had paid caregivers, I've had problems with the caregivers.  Some of the problems were relatively minor - things disappearing from the house, my daughter being dressed in inappropriate clothing, teeth needing to be brushed and so forth.  Some of the problems were very serious - injuries, verbal and physical abuse, important doctor appointments missed.

Over time I became aware that the agencies that serve folks like my son and daughter have an awful time finding people to be caregivers.  It's not a popular job at all.  Plus it pays very, very little and often has no benefits.  So the agencies overlook even serious problems if caregivers come to work every day and have some kind of explanation or excuse for the problems.  There are also big financial consequences for the agency if they have to let someone go - the agency pays the new person for their time while they're being trained but the agency is not reimbursed for this expense.  Plus the agency has to pay another staff to work the shifts vacated by the person they let go - usually this means overtime which they are also not being reimbursed for.

I was very angry for a long time about the poor care my son and daughter seemed to be getting.  I blamed the care staff and the agency.  A little at a time I tried to open my mind so I could understand what was happening.  First of all, I learned what the agencies were up against.  Then I took the training that was provided for care staff and learned that it was good training in the philosophy of community living but provided very little in how to care for a person with disabilities on a daily basis.

In the last couple of years I've learned a lot more.  I've tried to get to know the people working with my son and daughter.  Most of them come from a "poverty culture" which I have had the opportunity to learn about having come across a book on the subject.  Many of the things I criticized the care staff for came from the culture they grew up in and that they still live in since most of them are paid $7.40 and hour - not enough to live on.  Many of them are uneducated and have many, many family troubles.  They are fearful outside of their own neighborhoods and so have a lot of trouble finding any place outside their neighborhoods.  The way the dress and eat are very different from what the rest of us do so how they dress and feed my son and daughter reflects their own lives.

I finally decided that what would help the most in getting good care for my son and daughter was to care as much about the well-being of the care staff as I do for my son and daughter.  What the care staff lack most is money.  So I've been fundraising for a couple of years and I've been able to give them small amounts of cash from time to time.  I had a birthday party for myself when I turned 70 and asked people to bring money for what I call the "Integrity Fund" instead of presents.  I've had a garage sale.  I have a friend that donates her designer clothes which I take to a resale place.  When they sell I donate the $ to the Integrity Fund.  Sometimes that little bit of cash enables one of the care staff to get gifts for her kids at Christmas or go to the dentist to get an abscessed tooth taken care of.

I actually have seen a difference in the attitudes of the care staff since I've been trying to care about their well-being.  They're more friendly to me, of course, but also much more willing to accept my input about care.  My next step is to find out what resources are available to them as "working poor."  I'm pretty sure there are places that will take care of dental needs, etc.  On the other hand, figuring out a way to present this information is going to be tricky because they're proud and don't want to accept "welfare." 

At this stage in my life as a long time "do-gooder,"  I'm thinking that caring for the those who care for my son and daughter is an excellent way to spend my last years.  I'm not likely to solve the problem before I check out.  The problems have been around for a century or more and are deeply ingrained, so I will be satisfied if I can make a small dent.

Okay, Now I've Really Gone Over Some Kind of Line!

The day after Christmas I dreamed that I had decided to take my wheelchair to a nearby town to take care of some important business.  It's about 20 miles away and I rolled that wheelchair all the way there instead of taking the car.  Hmmm.  I have no idea what that was about.  But, of course, since I no longer need the wheelchair, as soon as I got there, I got out of it, leaving my back pack with my credit cards, money and cell phone in the chair. 

When I finished my business and came back to wheel myself home, the chair and my back pack were gone.  Of course I panicked.  Then I suddenly remembered that I had all sorts of tools to solve problems and there was no reason to get upset.  I got busy finding a ride home, borrowed a phone ansd cancelled my credit cards.  I talked to myself in a soothing way and what had been a nightmare turned into just another dream.

When I woke up I thought, "I can't believe I've been using the tools of the program so long that I actually turned a nightmare around.  That is really strange."  I guess this means that the tools have finally sunk into my unconscious which is a good thing.  On the other hand I feel a little like I'm now living on another planet.

One or the Other: Self Pity or Acceptance

I really hate it that any attitude I take that isn't acceptance is self-pity.  I've tried and tried to escape the truth of this.  I listened to an audio book on acceptance in the car and I'm sure other drivers wondered why the old lady in the old Honda Civic appeared to be yelling the f-word.  I needed to put up a sign that said, "There are just some things I refuse to accept!!!"

There's a whole philosophy of acceptance in the recovery programs.  No one tells us that we have to like everything that happens in life; that we should not have negative emotions.  Where the mistake comes in is when we don't change our attitude to realize that we are not Gods and so do not get to decide what should happen and what should not happen. 

We can dislike 100 degree heat in July but if we keep thinking that it shouldn't be that way and complain incessantly, we're just making ourselves more and more unhappy.  If, instead, we simply let go and accept what is, we become free to decide how to handle reality.  I can get a remote to start my car and get the air conditioning on before I get in.  That way I can stay out of the heat most of the time.  I can put a little ice chest in my car and carry the "cooler" so that when I'm out in the heat I have a way to keep relatively cool. 

As long as I complain, my life is just about noticing what I don't like instead of noticing all the good around me.  That attitude is self-pity whether I like the term or not.

The Negativity Diet

One of the benefits of living alone and journaling every day is that the ideas that pop into my head often get recorded - if they seem to be useful.  I love the practice of having whole days devoted to a particular spiritual practice because the main obstacle to my spiritual growth is my bad memory.  I forget that my purpose in this part of my life is to try to enlarge my spiritual condition.  So, yesterday I had what I thought was a bright idea and since it stayed with me until this morning, I decided to record it and try it. 

Central to my spiritual practice is to pay attention to my thoughts since unbeknownst to me, my crazy thinking often dictates my behavior.  What a disaster that can be!  The idea I recorded this morning was to have a whole day devoted to eliminating negativity from my thinking - specifically: 

• no criticism or judgment of other people.
• not talking about anybody not in the room (unless it's not gossip).
• not trying to get my way about anything. 

Cool, I thought.  A really good practice.  Then I remembered that the idea really came from a little 12th Step pamphlet called, "Just for Today."  Well, okay.  Not an original idea.  But still a great one!!!

The fourth thing that came to mind is how much more I need to practice taking responsibility for having a wonderful time every day.  I spent way too many years being a leaf in the wind; letting whatever happened each day and whether I liked it or not, determine whether I had a good or a bad day.  Every morning when I wake up I have forgotten completely who is responsible for having a wonderful day.  Maybe I could tatoo this on the palm of my hand. 

clutter is magnetic!

Once I leave "stuff" on a surface, the next thing I know, there's a whole lot more "stuff."  This is particularly true on my kitchen table and kitchen cabinets.  It happens so quickly it's like magic.  In less than an hour I can cover up every surface.  It's all stuff I want to do something with but just not right now.  So today I'm going through piles and doing something with it all.  It's not going to be finished today either.  Probably going to be several days.  Grrrr.

I am Loving Simplicity and Intentiion More and More

I am the queen of clutter working toward being a minimalist.  Ever so often I notice that "stuff" has piled up everywhere again.  Back in 2000 we had a fire which pretty much wiped us out.  Our insurance let us replace the necessities but we didn't replace "stuff" so the house was almost minimalist.  It only took a couple of months for things to be cluttered again. 

Periodically I clean everything out.  I did that last spring and had a garage sale.  It's time to do that again!  It's mysterious.  I seem to have twice as many books as I did a few months ago.  Some of that is due to Amazon sending me emails about books I might like for ridiculously small prices, the friend who donated to the garage sale - several boxes of books, many of which I couldn't wait to read.   Okay, it's not mysterious.

The shelves in my room and in my bathroom have a whole bunch of stuff.  My desk is covered with this and that.  I have little and big piles of things on the floor of my office.  I am a very lucky woman because I know what to do.  Every day I will pick out a section of one of my rooms and sort the "stuff" into three piles:  1) throw away 2)  put away 3) sell or give away.  Little by little I will be back to minimalist again.

The thing is, I want to stay that way.  So now I get to figure out how to do that.  I think the answer is going to be to sort everything that comes into my house into those three piles on a daily basis,

Why I don't Change When I'm Sure I Want To

I'm really sure about the changes I want to make in my life.  I've never lied to myself about it - not even for one moment.  But somehow...

I think this problem might be universal from what I hear from other people.  Women I share with in the program surely have this problem.  It's really our only problem.  Some of those women are dealing with problems that tear them apart on a daily basis.  The problems are solvable but they don't take the action.

I think that there are a few people in the world that actually decide to make changes in their lives and do it.  So why do they succeed and I don't?

Here's my guess about what I think are the main reasons -

• We don't realize there are solutions.  Somehow we've come to believe that our problems are caused from outside ourselves and so we don't realize WE can make the changes that would solve the problems.  Our egos don't want us to believe we're responsible for our lives.

• We don't have the tools or the support to take action.  Somehow we've come to believe that we should already know how to do everything even though we've never had the information needed.  Somehow we've come to believe that we should solve our problems without help.  (A lot of us think we're getting help when we complain incessantly about our problems to other people.  This is a big mistake.)

• We haven't suffered enough to be motivated to take action.  A lot of us have a huge tolerance for pain.  We live with problems that would kill someone else, and we don't even notice because we've gotten used to it.  In the past I've actually gotten kind of comfy with being a wreck all the time.

• Last but not least, we don't care enough about ourselves to make the needed changes.  Somehow we've come to believe that we are just basically unworthy.  This was never true, but until we dig through those beliefs and clean up our past mistakes as best we can, we will not believe in our worthiness.

 So what's the solution?  For me it's been daily working the principles of the program.  In the program we talk about recovery being like peeling an onion.  Little by little as I work at it daily, I come to see the truth and am able to take baby steps toward change.

Being Temporarily Disabled Instead of Retired

For the past year I've had a 32 year old roommate.  She "ran away from home" (a difficult situation in her marriage) and eventually went through a divorce.  Now that her life is settled, she'll be moving into her own place at the end of this month.  There were many valuable and enjoyable experiences because she was here, but one of the most surprising ones for me was that I got to see my life from the point of view of someone who goes to school (for her master's degree) and works part time.  Every day when she breezes in from her busy life, she asks me what I did that day.  Very difficult question for me to answer.

After being asked that question every day for awhile and trying to figure out what the answer was, I finally figured it out:  What I do all day is all the things I used to do in the evening or on the weekends when I had a very challenging full-time job.  But errands, personal business, etc.  take up all my time now.  It's very weird. 

I never intended to retire.  I thought that was a stupid concept developed in a time when people were decrepit at age 65.  I watched other people retire and thought they had incredibly dull and meaningless lives.  There's only so much "traveling" you can do.  I'm not into golf and other retirement-type stuff.  I did think that volunteering looked fun.  The last two organizations I worked for utilized huge numbers of volunteers for very important work and a whole lot of them were retired people.   At the same time it seemed silly to me to quit working for money and start working for free.

So I decided to keep working at least until I was 72 and then get a part time job so I could relax a little but not too much.  I looked forward to just hanging out with my husband which I could never get enough of.  Of course, like everything in life, it didn't turn out the way I had it planned in my head.  As a result of the wreck we were in, he left the earth and I was left with this less than able body.

For several years I did my utmost to work like I always had.  Boy, was that ever a dumb idea!  My body would not cooperate.  I tried to work at my full time job.  Couldn't do it.  Tried to work part time.  Couldn't do it.  Tried to just work a little bit.  Couldn't do that.  So I quit and took training to be a life coach and began writing my memoir.  I had one or two coaching clients.  I did several classes for people in recovery and took some writing classes.  I did quite a bit of writing on my memoir.  But eventually my body refused to do any of that, so I focused on doing everything I could to heal my body and my psyche.

All the work I did to heal definitely helped and I am greateful to be able to do what I'm able to do.  But still I'm only just getting by.  It's a hard thing to accept.  I do have quite a few responsibilities - I have a son and daughter who are adults now but who have very severe disabilities.  I am their guardian as well as for my daughter's roommate.  That's not a huge responsibility but it does require time and thought.  I'm also sponsoring several women as part of my recovery program.  This can be pretty challenging since people in recovery often have very difficult problems and my job is to help them figure out how to use the tools of the program to solve them.  And then I also do quite a few things to continue my own recovery which includes three or four meetings a week, reading program literature, step work, etc. 

So I've arrived at the point where I just have to answer the question, "What did you do today?" with - a whole lot of just stuff.  I don't like it but my job right now is to learn even more acceptance.  I still don't want to be retired so I still answer questions about what I "do" that I'm a life coach and writing a memoir. I say that I'm temporarily disabled.  And I am working on getting really good at prioritizing so that with what ability I have I use it for those things that are absolutely the most important to me.

Radical Acceptance

Let's see now - I've been practicing the principles of the program on a daily basis for over 29 years.  You would think I would have reached enlightenment by now.  But...  On the other hand, I'm certainly a lot more mellow than I used to be.  As we say, "it's progress, not perfection."  The thing is, one of the principles is that there really are no problems; that everything in our lives is meant for our good.  With gritted teeth, people say, "Grrrr!  Another growing experience!" 

I've alway accepted the truth of this principle, but I still reacted emotionally to almost everything that happened that I didn't like.  I hate to say anything in case I'm wrong but I think I'm actually beginning to see how my attitudes and judgments about any experience I'm having cause any negative emotions I might have.  If I imagine that I have an opposite attitude about an experience than my usual "this is bad" reaction, I can often see where the good is in the experience.  I'm telling you what, it's a very weird feeling!

Daily Work

I heard in a meeting a few months ago - "When I go to sleep at night, everything I've learned in the program falls out of my head and I have to start all over when I wake up!"  I immediately knew that I had the same problem.  I cannot even skip one day of working my program or I immediately find myself dealing with my old self and my old ideas.  This problem is very hard to describe.  But let me take a shot at it.

For example:  my ego is still bigger than I'd like it to be which means that I can still get my feelings hurt by something someone else says or does. Right away my mind starts planning how I can protect myself.  However, my program says that it's pointless to get upset with someone who's trying to grow up just like I am.  When I remember that, I stop being upset.  We're all imperfect and accidentally step on each other's toes.  Sometimes we even do it on purpose with the intent of hurting.  However, when someone does that to me, it's a reflection of their fear and is not necessarily about me.   My job is to watch my own behavior.  I really have nothing to fear from other people.

National Novel Writing Month

November is national novel writing month.  I can't remember where I heard about it but it was at least two years ago.  It's a not-very-serious effort by thousands of people to write a 50,000 (at least) word novel from November 1 through November 30.  That's a little over 1,666 words per day.  No one is working on a great, beautifully written novel; they're just writing a draft of a novel.   There's a website that explains what few little rules there are - nobody else's writing but your own, nothing you've written before (it all has to be written in November although you're allowed to have an outline and have done some research), and do not write the same word over and over 50,000 times. 

The website says that about 40,000 people finished a novel in 2011.  On November 1st there were a bunch of middle school teachers, mechanics, out of work actors, etc. and on December 1st there were a bunch of novelists.  For the rest of their lives they can brag that they've written a novel.  All of the novels are posted on line.

I'm thinking it's a great way to establish a daily writing habit without any pressure except to get the words on paper.  I'm thinking I will sign up.