20 Things I Wish Someone Had Taught Me When I Was a Kid

There's so much to know to have a happy life.  And at my advanced age I've noticed that a whole lot of us never got the instructions.  In fact we were taught a bunch of stuff that isn't true.

I was taught:  Do what you're told, get good grades, have the right kind of friends (whatever that is - probably those that do what they're told, get good grades and whose families are of the same social class as yours).

I guess those instructions were not terrible.  However, they were incomplete. Scarily incomplete.  Plus in a lot of ways wrong.

I heard somewhere that someone asked Siri (the voice on iphones) to say something wise.  She said, "Eat your vegetables, get plenty of sleep and be kind to everyone."  Those three instructions seem a lot more useful to me.

So here are 20 things I wish I had been taught before I had to act like an adult:

*Keep track of your income and outgo.  If you were keeping books for someone else, you would do it so aren't you as important?  Spend and earn according to your values, your well-being and your enjoyment. 

*Have an emergency fund so that your basic needs would be covered if you didn't have an income for six months.

*Plan for retirement.  Put a little bit aside consistently.

*Don't have any debt.  Having no debt means you have enormous freedom.  No debt means no debt.  No car payment.  No house payment.  No debt.

*Keep in mind that handling money boils down to two things:  Earn enough to cover your needs and some of your wants and spend less if times are tight.  Pay for necessities before you spend for stuff you want.

*Pay close attention to your physical well-being.  It will pay off now and later.  For starters - eat a bunch of brightly colored vegetables and fruit plus high quality low-fat protein.  Get plenty of sleep.

*Keep your teeth and your body clean.  This pays off now and later too. 

*Keep your back straight and your muscles strong.  Get your heart rate up so your heart muscle will be strong.

*Learn how to dress and present yourself in a way that you enjoy and that draws people to you rather than pushing them away.

*Develop the skill of mindfulness.  Study it.  Practice it.  Be aware of your thoughts, emotions, and behavior.  Be aware without judging yourself.  Just notice.  Notice everything around you.

*Be aware of what you really want for your life.  Be aware of whether your actions every day are steps toward the life you want.

*How other people treat you has a lot to do with your quality of life.  You can teach them how to treat you by deciding how you want them to treat you and encouraging them to do that.  Learn how to do this.  Get really good at it.  If they don't treat you well, and you've tried to teach them, go away from them and stay away.

*Treat other people with kindness; even when they're obnoxious.  Don't be afraid to do this.  Learn how and then practice, practice, practice.  The more kindnesses you do for other people, the happier you'll be. 

*Don't criticize - yourself or anybody else.  It doesn't work.

*Be aware of your environment at home and at work.  Make both nurturing and enjoyable.

*Keep everything simple - personal care, care of your environment, your activities.  Learn how to do this and practice, practice, practice.

*When someone is paying you to do something, be sure you understand what they want you to do, and then do it to the best of your ability.  Do a little bit more than they actually ask you to do.  (If what they ask you to do is illegal or unethical, get another job.)

*Romance and sexuality are incredibly complicated.  Mother Nature is driving us to make babies.  It doesn't actually have much to do with love and long term partnership.  Learn all you can.  Expect good treatment; give good treatment.  Being "in love" and/or being sexually attracted doesn't mean you've found "the one."  You are just being led by Mother Nature to make babies.

*Decide if you want to be a parent.  Not everyone has to be a parent.  If the answer is no, there are plenty of ways to keep it from happening.  If you do want to, be sure you learn how to be a parent.  We're not born knowing how.  How our parents parented us is not always the best model.

*Find what feeds you spiritually.  This is the most important thing you can do to have a happy life.  Learn all you can.  Practice, practice, practice.

Housecleaning without Stress Part 1 - changing your mindset

For those of us who have the responsibility for home care, the weight of it sometimes can feel crushing. Carrying around a crushing weight definitely causes a person's quality of life to stay at a low point on the scale. 

Either I worked like a dog for hours on end in order to get my house clean or I dodged the whole chore until I could hardly stand to live in my house!

I've often wondered why we still haven't solved this huge problem that wearies women/housekeepers all over the world.  Of course, I've also wondered if all of us just accept the weight because we thinks it's what we're born to handle and that there's no escape.

I think I was definitely one of those that just thought I was doomed to have a lower quality of life than other people because home care was my destiny.  Then in recovery I learned that problems have solutions and that maybe it wasn't my destiny to struggle.  I found out that the world is full of information about how to solve problems and the main barrier to solving them is not asking for help!

It turns out that professional housekeepers have figured out how to do a fabulous job in a tiny amount of time.  They do it in a meditative way, without wasting steps and movement, so that when they're finished they're not tired and are not stressed.

So...I took what those professionals have figured out and applied it to my own life.  Guess what?!  I no longer worry about home care.  Specific instructions in Parts 2 and 3.

How Unsolved Problems Can Ruin Our Lives

It took me a long time but after years and years I finally noticed that I had a long list of problems that I had never solved.  I complained a lot about them - to myself as well as other people. 

I often woke up in the morning worrying about them. 

Thoughts about them plagued me during the day. 

Guilt and regret kept my self-esteem from growing and kept me from going after my dreams. 

In fact, they were ruining my life, but I wasn't doing a thing to solve them.

My appearance and my health concerned me but I didn't know what to do about them.

My ability to carry out my responsibilities worried me.  I worried that I was just incompetent.

My problems with people disturbed me mightily.

Thanks to recovery, I actually followed suggestions and made a list of those life problems and asked for help in figuring them out and taking action to solve them.  I got the help I needed and I'm still working on some of them, having arrived at a place where patient improvement is good enough to keep me comfortable!

Prayer for Cleaning Up after Cooking and Eating

Dear God,

I was stuck with the dishes from the time I was seven and I was an incompetent dishwasher.  I never really finished and there were piles of dirty dishes in the sink, on the stove, on the cabinets and on the table.  I washed some of them every day but I never really learned how to do it and I never caught up.

Once I was an adult on my own, I continued to do clean up the way I had as a child, but eventually figured out stuff like soaking cooked on or dried on food, washing glasses first, etc.  But I always regarded it as a huge pain to have to do it.  Having a dishwasher only helped a little and my kitchen was always a mess.

So, now I try to clean up once a day, but I'm not very good at it.  I want to change my way of thinking and being.  I want to be present and grateful for the whole process of feeding myself, including the clean up. 

So, dear God, may I be at peace, present and grateful as I clean dishes and kitchen space whenever it's time.

Thank you,

Amen

Prayer for Preparing Food

Dear God,

I'm awfully lazy.  I spent most of my life cooking for other people.  It was an obligation.  It never even occurred to me to ask myself if I liked to cook or not.  I just did it.  Now that I only have myself to cook for I really don't know what to do with myself.  I actually would rather eat out for every meal.

The only problem with eating out at every meal is that I don't get nearly enough nutrition, I gain weight rapidly and it empties my pocketbook.  So I believe it's best that I prepare food for myself.

So, dear God, I ask you to help me willing to honor you and your creation - my body- by mindfully and gratefully and peacefully and cheerfully prepare the food for myself - to nurture and please myself for no other reason other than it's surely what you want.

May I be joyful in caring for your creation now and always.

Amen

Prayer for Grocery Shopping

Dear God,

I don't like going to the grocery store.  It seems like such a hard chore.  May I remember that gathering food is honoring your creation.  May I remember too that the huge and glorious mounds of delightful food in grocery stores is unusual in this world of lack.

I want to change my thinking so that I love the process of gathering nutrition for my body and pleasure for my senses.

I want to notice the other humans in the grocery store and remember to bless them.  Some of them may be like me and feel overburdened by the effort it takes to gather food for themselves and their family, so please help them remember their purpose as you help me remember mine.

May I not feel deprived as I pass up the refined and processed foods that are poison to my body even as they provide a false sense of pleasure.  May I look forward to providing my body with the beauty of eating delicious truly nutritious foods.

Thank you for your bounty, your power, and your guidance.

Amen

Prayer for the Grocery List

Dear God,

Please guide my thoughts and desires as I list the items to buy at the grocery store.  I hope you will help me remember to select the foods that will honor your creation and build my health and those I share food with.

I believe, dear God, that you want me to enjoy feeding myself and others so I am counting on you to help me choose nutrition that pleases as well as nurtures.

I want to always remember that you are the creator of both our bodies and the food that fuels our lives so that I will make a list that honors you.

I can't do this by myself.

Amen

Prayers and Ceremonies for Feeding Myself

I just 'googled' ceremonies and rituals for food and eating and nothing came up except descriptions of ways food is used in religious rituals.  Hmmm.  I was hoping for something that is used in some culture to honor food, the body and the company that is used with meal planning, shopping, preparation and consuming.  Of course, just because Google came up with nothing doesn't mean that there is nothing, but it does leave me to my own devices.  (I didn't forget about saying "Grace" but I was looking for more.)

Ever since I can remember I've struggled with food and eating.  I hated to eat when I was a kid.  Probably I was depressed.  When I started feeding myself and others as an adult, I felt a tremendous sense of responsibility and fear that I wasn't doing it well enough.  I over ate enough that I was somewhat over weight.  Once I started smoking, though, I exchanged overeating for smoking.  I realize I've never had a healthy relationship with food.

I had kids that were picky about food - some of them were extreme.  It was hard to feed them.  I struggled some more with what was right and what was wrong.  I never did figure it out.

For a short while after I inherited a little money from my dad, I solved my dilemma by just eating out most of the time.  Because I was a very heavy smoker I didn't gain weight.  Then I gained like crazy when I quit.  Then began the dieting phase of my life.  Weight Watchers, Overeaters Anonymous, various diets.  At one point I was at my goal weight in Weight Watchers but it lasted only as long as I worked an active job.

So...for the past several years I've been trying first one thing and then another, losing a few pounds and then gaining them back.  I've learned a few things about myself, though.  The problem is my lack of a spiritual connection with feeding myself.

The process is 1) planning what to eat  2)  Buying the food 3) preparing the food and 4) consuming the food.  So I am developing prayers and practices that remind me to honor the purpose of food --
 which is to care for myself, to call forth the Spirit of healing and the life force, and to be mindful of the blessing of having all the food I need when so many others on the planet are lacking what they need.

When Surrender is a Wonderful Thing

I always thought surrender was a bad thing.  It meant I had lost and was a loser.  It meant that I was just stuck in my helplessness and would not ever be able to make anything better.  I thought the purpose of life was to be a winner and that winning was the definition of success.  Of course, there's a little tiny bit of truth to that perspective, but there are many, many other perspectives that come from an almost opposite direction.

Surrender works really well in my life when I let go of trying to control something that I'm actually powerless to control.  I used to think that if I surrendered, it meant there was no hope.  But it actually means that I just need to ask for help. 

Sometimes there's a solution, and when I ask for help from God and other people, we can find it.  Other times when God and other people help me look at my situation, we see that it's something I can accept and be at peace.  Of course, acceptance is a huge big deal when the situation is truly tough.  But it gets so much better when I stop complaining inside my head.

Living in Solutions - Changing the Things I Can

When I started moving from feeling helpless to solve problems to living in solutions, it felt like a whole new planet and a whole new life.  I was excited because I learned that I am the one that can change in order to solve problems and I don't have to try fruitlessly to change someone else.  It's a pretty big challenge to change myself, but at least that method of problem-solving at least has a hope of actually happening!

So, the very first step in living in solutions is believing that I am capable of solving problems.  Even if I don't know what to do, there's a world of people and information that can help me if I just ask.  Luckily I was past the stage in life where I thought only weak people asked for help.  I was willing to admit to being weak if that was what it took.  I was beat.

The help I got was a combination of information and instruction on how to generate solutions.  The basic thing about generating solutions was to ask myself one question:  "How can I make this situation better or solve this problem WITHOUT trying to make anyone else change."

Living in Solutions - Acceptance

For so much of my adult life I lived with what I thought were unsolvable problems.  That's a hellish way to live.  After I came into recovery, I learned that there are a possibly innumerable solutions to every problem a human being can have. 

Of course, the first step in problem-solving is to use the Serenity Prayer to determine whether the problem is something I can change: 

 "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference."

I need the perspective of another person to determine this - usually.  Sometimes it's pretty obvious and I can see it myself, but it's always a good idea to check it out with a wise person.  If it's really true that there's nothing I can do to change the situation, there's still a solution - ACCEPTANCE.

I had to learn the acceptance part of problem-solving before I could learn the rest.  Acceptance is the hardest.  But here's my personal "how to" for acceptance:

1) Stop telling myself that this shouldn't be happening.  All that kind of thinking does is make me angry and upset.  Instead I remember what my dad said after the tornado took his house: he first thought, "why me?"  Then he thought, "why not me?  Is there something special about me that should make me immune to disaster?"  So, I'm not immune to events I don't like.  I can let go of my feeling of being treated badly and remember that the whole of humanity experiences this and remember that compassion for myself and for everyone is comforting. 

2)Then, since there's nothing I can do to make it better, I turn my attention to something else and pray for a peaceful mind and heart.

Analyzing Fear

I've learned that taking a good look at what's causing my stomach to knot up is a terrific idea even if it's a little unpleasant at first.  When I don't look, fear starts running my life without my knowing it and without my permission.

Many of the things I've been afraid of in my life have just been leftover stuff from childhood - like being afraid of being alone, lost or abandoned. 

It's not actually dangerous for me to be by myself, for example.  I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself.  It's nice to have companionship but it's not actually necessary. 

It's also impossible for me to be lost - I was only lost if I couldn't find my mother when I was a child.  Now, as an adult, I might not know exactly where I am, but I can put my wits to work to figure it out so I can get where I'm going. (GPS technology and maps really help with this.) 

It's also not possible for me to be abandoned.  It's only possible for a child to be abandoned.  I don't need a caregiver so I'm okay even if someone in my life decides to leave my life.  I will miss the people that come and go, but that's not about being abandoned.  I can abandon myself, however, by not taking care of myself. So I've learned to grow up and take care of me.

Then there are the fears that are related to the past.  I've made a lot of mistakes, and I lived with the fear that they would catch up with me and I would pay a price.  Then I was taught by my spiritual mentors that it was my job to make amends for those mistakes as best I could, and do my best to not make the same mistakes again.  Then I can let go of the fear.  If I have to pay a price, I can pay it knowing that I've done what I could to amend the mistake but that the price is just.

Of course, anxiety and worry about the future also plagued me and still can today.  What has helped the most with those is to remember that I've made it through a lot of scary stuff with the help of God and people I love.  So, there's no reason to believe that God and the people I love will quit on me now.  I've surrendered to the reality that scary stuff happens to everybody and that even if I do everything right (which isn't actually possible for human beings), I will still not be able escape difficulty.  I will be okay anyway. 

Those annoying Buddhists keep telling us that everybody gets sick, has disappointments, has to deal with events that are difficult,. If we're lucky to live long enough, we'll get old, and we're all going to die.  They tell us that the answer is acceptance and compassion.  Most of our upset comes from believing that stuff isn't supposed to happen.

So...the practice of analyzing fear has kept me almost fear-free for quite awhile.  That is a huge gift and I highly recommend the practice of facing fear instead of running away from it.

Simplicity and Clothes

I used to have an on-going source of misery in trying to figure out what to wear.  I was 100% unhappy with my clothes 100% of the time.  I went clothes shopping and tried on clothes and hated whatever I put on.  I bought something so I'd have something to wear.  I hated all of it.  I felt like a loser.  I felt ugly.  I felt stupid.  It all made me feel as if my body was defective because I thought I looked so strange in my clothes.

A few years ago I started tracking my spending.  I read that by tracking it as if you were the bookkeeper for someone else's business, you will become aware of when you're spending money that doesn't benefit you and when your spending does benefit you.  At the end of the year I added it all up and discovered I had spent a tremendous amount of money on clothes and didn't have a thing in my closet that I actually liked.  What I really wanted was the ability to travel, and I could have taken several lovely trips on the money I spent to buy clothes I didn't like.

So...I started buying used clothes and very cheap clothes since I didn't seem to be able to buy stuff I looked good in and actually liked.  What the hell - spend as little as possible.  To my surprise I found a bunch of clothes that I really liked and that I looked good in that were used. 

Eventually one of my friends told me about a store that sold clothes for middle-aged and older women that were beautiful, fashionable, that fit our body types, and that seemed to be indestructible - never wrinkling or wearing out. Those clothes were exactly what I had been hoping to find my whole life.  Flowing, beautiful colors, very basic blacks, etc.

So...for the past 20 years or so, I buy 90% of my clothes at that store.  I don't need to put much thought into what to put on every day because what's hanging in my closet is simple and already matched up.  I could simplify a little more, but that would take a little bit of the fun out of dressing myself.

Being able to stop worrying about what to wear, how I look and whether I'm dressed appropriately has opened up space in my mind and my time for other much more valuable things.

Letting Go of Judgments

September in Leo's Sea Change program (Zen Habits), is letting go of being judgmental month.  Wow!  That's a challenge for me, for sure.

I really learned at an early age that criticizing everything was a nice change from my constant internal criticizing of myself.  I've spent most of my adult life with judgments taking up most of my mind.

In recovery I've learned that a judgmental mind is an unhappy mind and have worked at changing my thinking.  The first step was just to notice it.  Then I worked on substituting acceptance which was a whole lot harder.  But...then...recently...I noticed that it's likely most of my judgments are incorrect.  Wow!  that's really scary. 

I had thought I was probably correct in most of my judgments of other people and myself, but that I probably shouldn't do it and should accept instead. That's what a nice, spiritual person would do. But then I noticed that when other people judged me, they were doing it on the basis of what they thought they themselves would be doing if they were me and they were so far off base that it was actually funny.

Of course, I then realized that I was doing the exact same thing - basing my judgments of others on myself.  If those other folks are totally wrong in their judgments of me, I'm probably just as incorrect in my judgments of them.  That really helps with letting go of judgments.  Why would I want to keep them if they're basically bullshit?!

For example, I've judged myself harshly (and I think other people have also), for sleeping and resting too much.  I have trouble keeping commitments because I am likely to suddenly need to lie down.  Some have hinted and others have said outright that they thought I was undisciplined and basically a lazy person.  I thought so too and felt like a bum.

It wasn't until in recent years that I was diagnosed with PTSD and one of the symptoms in my case is that my nervous system is just used up so to speak.  When my ability to process incoming information is used up (and that happens with very little input), my body just shuts down and I have no choice but to stop functioning for awhile.

The whole thing annoys me and other people as well.  I finally decided to quit kicking myself for being impaired.  I don't know if anyone else will change their minds, but it's okay if they don't.  I'm working on not judging them for being judgmental.  (By the way, that's a subtle joke.)
 

Why I Sleep with the Television On

A very long time ago - probably about 20 years ago - I discovered that if I fell asleep with the T.V. on, it helped me sleep better.  Instead of having to listen in the dark silence to my mind remind me of all the tragedies of my life, whatever story was on captured my mind instead, allowing me to slip quickly into sleep. 

I have been plagued with a disturbed sleep pattern for most of my life - waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep. My mind woke me up with many terrible thoughts - fears, painful memories, grief.  When I woke up and the T.V. was on, whatever was on immediately grabbed my attention and wiped out the crazy thinking.

If I watched for awhile, I almost immediately got sleepy again and fell back to sleep.

Of course, anyone in their right mind would think I was crazy to sleep with the television on.  I have heard many folks chastising me for doing it.  I don't even bother to defend myself, because I realize it still won't make sense to them.

I still hope that all my relaxation methods, guided visualizations, meditation, mantras and affirmations will allow me to sleep without the television.  I'm not going to give up because that would be preferable. 

I've progressed now, to leaving the television on to a recorded program to go to sleep.   I'm recording programs that might be soothing to sleep to.  When the recording ends, I usually continue to sleep.

Progress, not perfection.

The End of My ToDoList Life!

I spent the greater portion of my life in a rush to finish my to do list.  I started making todolists when I was a teenager because somehow I had gathered the impression that I was supposed to accomplish stuff in order to be a good person.  That's about a 60 year run of the todolist life.  Only one time did I actually finish a todolist and I had to stay up without food or sleep for over 24 hours in order to do it.  You would think I would have learned something from that experience.  I did think that I should make my todolists smaller but that was all.

Later in my 30s I had become so overwhelmed that I was downright crazy with everything I had taken on that I had to just stop or fall apart.  I was already a little disintegrated.  I stopped long enough to notice that there was a part of me that knew what was what and that could guide my actions and I was excited because I felt strongly that I had found the answer.  However, some terrible tragedies came along about that time and I totally let go of what I had discovered.  Some part of me connected the tragic things that happened with the discovery I had made and I became terrified to go back to that.

Finally,  at my now advanced age, I have arrived at a place where I am brave enough to stop again and renew my search for that part of me that I now know is intuition.  So my new practice is to ask that part of me for guidance and attempt to follow instructions.  I hope I will get really good at this sooner rather than later.  So far, I am delighted with the peacefulness I have.

Painful Emotions are Actually Useful

For a lot of my adult life I just wanted all my emotions to just go away.  I kind of wanted happy to stay but was willing to give it up to get rid of the others.  I had no problem with going through life being numb.  I felt like I had had enough painful emotions to last a lifetime and I was just finished with the whole thing.

In recovery I learned that emotions were given to us humans as tools to keep us safe.  I had no idea!  I thought I was just being tortured for no reason.  "No," my mentors said, "If you broke your leg and had no pain, you would keep walking and do yourself damage.  The pain alerts you that you are injured and need to take action to take care of yourself."

The same thing is true of painful emotions.  Of course, the usefulness of those emotions depends on my ability to determine exactly what causes them so that I can take the appropriate action to take care of myself.   That was the hard part.  I had to have a lot of help with that because I had spent so much of my life blaming what was going on outside me for my painful emotions.  I learned that the pain was really about what I told myself.

When I was angry I noticed that I thought someone had deliberately done something to hurt me.  Sometimes that was probably not true.  It was a good idea to talk to a mentor to help me sort out when I needed to protect myself from someone and when I needed to just let it go.

When I was afraid, I also learned to talk to a mentor to sort out whether I was entertaining a real or imagined fear.  It turned out that most of my fears were about the future and that the problem was that I had a habit of believing I could predict the future and my predictions were always about disaster.  So...I learned to do today the next right things and let the future take care of itself.  Fear was useful in that I could use it for motivation to take action when action was needed.

Grief and sadness - unavoidable - a natural reaction to losing people I loved.  The price we pay for love.  But when I let go of anger about it, or beliefs that I could have somehow prevented the loss, I was just left with the sadness of missing the person and learning to live without that person.  Something that every human being must learn to do.  So...we can have compassion for each other.

I started out in recovery feeling guilty about everything.  My mentors taught me to sort that out too.  We started with harm I had done other people - guilt alerted me to the need to amend my behavior and do what I could to right the wrongs I had done.  When I had violated my values, I also felt guilty so I learned to examine my values, and commit to living up to them with the help of God. 

I was going to make mistakes, my mentors told me.  They also said, that a daily review would help me remember to stay on track, but that I was not to carry guilt for my mistakes for the rest of my life.  Instead I was to try to do better the next day.

Keeping the Spark

Since people in recovery talk to each other about problems a lot, I've heard a lot from wives who are sick of their husbands demanding sex.  I have to laugh because my last husband never even came close to having to do that.

From what I hear, a lot of husbands think their wives are supposed to provide sex when they want them too, and they get mad if that doesn't happen.  I guess they just don't know what my husband knew.

Us girls are wired differently.  We aren't turned on by seeing you naked.  We might be turned on by help with the housework, sweet words of love, and hugs without a push toward sex. 

This might take a lot of time before we're in the mood - especially if you've been acting like we owed you sex on demand.  We're going to have to get over that.  At first we're going to think you're just trying to manipulate us into sex.  (which you are, of course.)

Speaking of time-- I don't mean a few hours.  It might be a few weeks.  Even then you're going to have to pretend you're in the back seat of the Chevy and you know it's going to take awhile for us to give in.  In fact maybe several make out sessions.

When we finally do give in, it had better be after a very long make out session.  And if you haven't yet learned how to make sex worth our while, you'd better study up on it.  And you better not roll over and snore.

Since my dear husband knew all this, there was never a problem.  He made sure I was always happy.  Best way to go, guys!

Why I Usually Don't Believe in Advice

When I'm quiet and listen to people talk around me in public settings, it surprises me how much of their conversation is either complaining or advice-giving.  I've come to believe that neither are actually very helpful in making life better.

Complaining doesn't solve problems.  Focusing on stuff I don't like and then complaining about it is a big waste of time.  I might get a little bit of satisfaction from being self-righteous, but nothing gets better as a result.  Plus my mind just runs in a negative groove which never makes me feel happy.  Acceptance has brought me so much more peace.

Advice-giving is not only a waste but even can be dangerous.  I have lots of opinions, but unless they're based on my life experience or on my education and training, they're just my ego flapping it's lips.  I'm just judging and then telling someone else what to do.  I could be extremely wrong.  If anyone listened to me, did what I said, and got horrible results...well, enough said.

Of course, I learned to complain and give advice from childhood.  I think everybody does.  Of course, those of us who consider ourselves intelligent (isn't that practically everybody?), think our opinions are the exact truth.  What an illusion we're all living in!  No wonder there are so many unsolved problems in our world.  I actually have no idea how things are supposed to be because I'm not God.  I actually have no idea what somebody else should do because I've not lived their life nor had their experiences. 

What can be helpful for me is to say the Serenity Prayer and really give thought to what I can change and what I can't.  If it seems after prayer that I can change something and it would be helpful, I can do it.  That's a big difference from complaining. 

If someone is struggling with a problem that I have experience with solving, education and training about, or I've researched solutions, I can share what options they might have for solving the problem - if they want my input.  If they haven't asked, well...why would I open my mouth?

Of course, this means that I pretty much ignore other people's complaining and advice.  I try to remember to change the subject or just let the advice go if I think it's well-intentioned.  (If I asked for input, it's from someone who has similar life experience or training.) 

I do wonder sometimes if it would be more helpful if I said what I think, but usually I don't.  I would probably say something that might hurt feelings.  I used to say something like, "I'm not open to advice from anyone who hasn't had my life experiences."  But that seemed kind of harsh so I stopped.  Of course, I was irritated and really wanted to say, "Oh honey, you are so full of shit.  You have no idea what you are talking about.  You are just sharing your judgmental thinking and that's inappropriate even if you are well-intentioned."  Very harsh. 

I think I should add that there are some things that probably apply to just about everything.  I saw something on TV once that was meant to be funny but was also truthful.  A guy was sitting in his recliner with his iphone.  He said, "Siri, tell me something wise."  Siri replied, "Always be kind, eat your vegetables and get plenty of sleep."

It's so much more peaceful inside my head when I'm not looking around for what someone else is doing that I judge as wrong, or complaining about stuff I don't like.  I can have fun, listen to music, read interesting books, hang out with friends, walk in the woods, take a nap, etc. instead.

Social Convention and How I Let It Go

From time to time I notice that I deeply believe that social convention is a total load of hog wash.  I've believed it for such a long time, and it's so deeply ingrained that I forget about it.  Then something will come along to remind me, and I feel such gratitude that I let social convention go so long ago and how much more beautiful my life is because I did.

I usually am reminded because someone I've visiting with will say something snarky about one of my friends who is more visibly rebellious about social convention than I am, and I find myself putting up a defense.  I realize that I fly under the radar so effectively that lots of times those folks who are deeply committed to fitting in see me as one of them.  It's always a little bit of a shock!

My parents were intelligent, educated people and raised me to believe that because we were intelligent and educated, social convention didn't apply to us.  Our education and intelligence made it possible, they believed, to use good judgment in running our lives instead of relying on social convention.  They also raised me to understand that if you openly defied "the rules" you would pay a price, so, you can do what you want, but it's better to do it on the down low. 

Weirdly, I also had an extremely low opinion of myself along with having been raised to believe that intelligent, educated people like myself were actually much better than other people.  What a dichotomy!  It just depended on my mood whether I thought I was better than others or a piece of garbage.  But I didn't look down on myself because I wasn't following the rules, just because I thought I was generally no good.

When I was in my early 20s I read "The Feminine Mystique" which convinced me that the trappings of femininity were all a load of hogwash.  That was the final marker of the place where I let go of every scrap of belief in social convention although I continued to be a rebel on the down low.

When I came into recovery, I was scared to death that I was going to have to follow "the rules" in order to get well.  But I was willing to do whatever it took.  So, for a little while I tried (not very successfully)to do what I was "supposed" to do.  Finally, my dear spiritual mother explained that recovery was not about "supposed to's" but was about being myself with all my individuality.   That was a huge relief.

Eventually I got well enough to go on a journey of seeking out who I really was.  I still believed that social convention was hogwash, but I went even further and believed it was actually a barrier to a joyful life.  It was the precursor to shame because it set me up to fear judgment from other people.  Eventually I let go of even the fear of being judged as long as I was doing the best I could to live by spiritual principles. 

At my now advanced age I am increasingly aware that I wouldn't have the beautiful life I've had and have now if I had spent even a teeny, tiny bit more time trying to follow the rules.  I must still be on the down low, though, since I'm sometimes mistaken for those who worry about social convention.  But even that's okay by me.  I'm fine with being a little bit of a secret total rebel.