Look for Blessings

Do we look at our blessings, the gifts we have in our lives, and the many opportunities the universe has given us as we start our day?

If that's the way you woke up this morning, congratulations. Because gratitude is the nectar that makes life sweeter and more worthwhile.

But what if we weren't taught to look at our lives this way?  Maybe we grew up in poverty.  Or in a family of alcoholics and addicts.  Perhaps negativity was in the air.

The good news is that we can overcome this upbringing by changing our focus. Many of us grew up noticing what we didn't have. We compared ourselves to others and always came up short.

And the reason we came up short is that we compared ourselves to those who had more.

However, if we must compare, we may compare ourselves to those who have less.  Then we can develop gratitude.

There are parts of the world where poverty and disease are rampant. Where there's little or no employment or opportunity for education. Where war and strife are part of daily life.

When we see others living with these major challenges, it’s easy to recognize our blessings.

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Forget the Past

 In the recovery field, I deal with many troubled people who blame today's problems on how they were raised.  They blame the past for their failure to succeed in relationships, careers or whatever else they set out to do.

As a result, they muddle through life, drinking, using recreational drugs, or serial sex partners to ease their self-induced pain.  They might achieve some degree of success, only to self-destruct because they can't get over whatever happened to them.

Now some of these folks truly have been abused, either sexually or emotionally, and have reason to be distressed about those events.  But I always ask them the same question: do you want to squander the precious moments of your life reacting to what happened 20 or 30 years ago?  Events that may be distorted or magnified by time and the constant reliving of them in your mind?

I remember one client who had a wonderful upbringing with all the amenities and privileges.  Yet she blames her past for her current misery.  No matter what goes on in her life she finds someone else to blame.  She's constructed a fantasy personal history that explains away all her failures and unhappiness - a history that bears no semblance of truth.

The reality for all of us is that life is sometimes a bitch, filled with disappointment and unhappiness.  And the way to get happy is to be real with ourselves and recognize that life sometimes sucks.  If we can really believe that then we can roll with the times when we're down.  We can accept that things don't always go our way.  That the world is sometimes quite unfair.

Obstacles and pain often teach us the most valuable lessons.

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Recovery+

In 34 years of recovery, I've learned that there's a lot more to staying sober than just going to meetings and not using drugs or alcohol.

I learned that I must exercise and eat healthy, as well as listen to and read motivational material, to keep moving forward.

After 34 years, I still attend weekly meetings. I work in a recovery environment. And I only associate, practically without exception, with people in recovery. The remainder of my associates are either family members or business acquaintances who are – as far as I know – not addicts.

Just because I get up and go to work every day in a clean and sober environment doesn't mean I have all the answers to keep myself going or that I don't need encouragement.

Sometimes I get discouraged because things aren't happening as fast as I want them to.
Maybe our company is facing a lawsuit. Maybe we're having financial issues. Perhaps our population is going down, or a key staff member is suffering from ill health. As long as we're living, there's something to challenge us.

Something I do every day – just to get myself charged up and ready for what's ahead – is to feed my mind and spirit motivational material. Sometimes it's a book, but lately I've found myself listening to motivational talks I find on YouTube or Ted Talks.

In our digital world today, there's a plethora of material we can find to get fired up and ready for whatever challenges we might face in the office or on the job.

There are motivational videos from back in the day, when I was a youngster – long before we had iPads and iPhones. Today, I feel blessed to be able to listen to such pioneers as Napoleon Hill. Zig Ziglar or Earl Nightingale.

Whatever your field of interest, whether it be sports, religion, business, or entrepreneurship, there is someone out there to help you get motivated. Someone to get you started. Someone to make you want to jump out of bed and get busy trying to do something with your life other than just exist.

It's true that the most important thing for an addict or alcoholic is to remain sober. But we're also capable of doing much more than simply staying sober. For example, if we have a passion for sobriety, perhaps we get involved in a program or business that focuses on helping others stay sober.

I guess my bottom line point is there's plenty of information that will supplement what we already know about recovery. And there's nothing wrong with trying to improve our lives in any way possible.

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Being Homeless is Hard Work

About 100 feet behind my office are two large dumpsters with block walls around them - probably put there by the City to make the area more aesthetically pleasing.

Sometimes, when I drive by them to my parking spot, there's someone either in or climbing out of the dumpster. Most appear to be homeless men searching for aluminum cans or other items they can recycle or sell. Those dumpsters are a regular stop for those on the homeless circuit who park their shopping carts outside while they look for something of value.

While the dumpsters are there for the business people in the area, construction workers, and landscapers who don't want to drive to the city dump also use them.

I bring this up because sometimes I have a hard time understanding why people would work that hard to survive.  Are they addicts?  Are they mentally Ill?

When you think about it, being homeless is hard work and sometimes dangerous.  There's never a guarantee that a homeless person will find something to eat. A place to shower, a safe place to sleep, or take care of their other needs. To survive takes a certain amount of cunning and ambition.

Several studies show that the homeless population has many addicts and the mentally ill within its population.  Yet, despite that, they somehow muster up the ability to survive and feed their habits.

I know that if they took the time to think about it, there are many easier ways to meet life's needs.  We live in a time of prosperity where signs are posted everywhere by companies seeking help. One would have to be blind to not see them.

I think they all could prosper if they'd put the energy they expend on scavenging toward positive things like working a regular job - they would succeed.

Or they might read the story of the man who went from being homeless to becoming worth 3 billion dollars.  His name is Paul Jones DeJoria and he's one of the creators of a top line of hair products.  His story is on YouTube and well worth reading.  Forbes magazine rates him as one of the 400 wealthiest people in the world, which goes to show that anything is possible if we have the will, homeless or not.

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Be Here Now

I just finished a book called "Practicing Mind" about the value of living in the present moment. And it was so good, that I'm going to listen to it again. And I would recommend it to anyone who has trouble living in the moment and being in the here and now.

And while the author meditates on a regular basis, he's not a meditation instructor nor is he espousing any schools of meditation.

His point throughout the book is that we spend a lot of time in our country focusing on goals, our eyes on the end product. And he succinctly points out that when we do that we miss a lot of moments of our lives.

His point is mostly that the enjoyment in our lives comes through the process of creating and obtaining the things we are focused on – not in the possession of what we had as our goal.

And I'm sure we've all experienced what he's talking about at some point in our lives. Take for example the years when we decided we wanted a new car and were finally able to get it. At first, we didn't allow a speck of trash or dirt in that car. We washed it every week. We waxed it. We didn't park around other cars for fear that they would scratch it when they open their doors.

But as you all know, the novelty of that wonderful object we were looking to obtain wears off. Pretty soon the car no longer holds its fascination for us. We allow trash and dirt to accumulate in it. We rarely wash or wax it anymore.  And we're busily looking at the next goal that we want to obtain – the next thing we think will make us happy.

Now goals are not a bad thing. But if we only have our eyes on the goal are we enjoying the moments of our lives spent trying to obtain that goal? Because as the author points out, we put a lot of effort, skill, education, in achieving different goals. And when we get them we find out that they are somewhat hollow and empty.

He says we should focus – and I heartily agree with him – on the processes that allow us to obtain what we want. That's where we're able to flex our mental and creative muscles and put in the hard work that allows us to get these things that somehow don't seem so magical once we have them.

After all, we feel much better about ourselves if we realize that we're the sum total of what we do – not just the things we have.

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Depression?

I was talking to a recovering client today who told me that she always went back to using drugs or alcohol because she was depressed.

I asked her to tell me about her depression. Had she been suffering from it for a long time? Was there ever a time when she was happy and positive? In her memory, what was the happiest period of her life?

She said that there had been periods when she was happy. But then the happiness seemed to become normal and ordinary, and then her depression would creep back.  And she would be off to the liquor store or dope house.

I decided to offer her some suggestions about how to have conversations with herself that would put her life into a more positive trajectory.

People often grow up with unrealistic expectations about how life should be. We go to school, get good grades, graduate, and expect to land a dream job. But for many people, that scenario doesn't play out.

Instead, they find that it's a tough, competitive job market out there.  And that they're just another face filling out applications. In fact, I often read about college graduates in their thirties still living with their parents because they haven't found a career opportunity in spite of having graduated in the top half of their class.

In this woman's case, she'd been divorced once, was raising a child by herself, and had been successful as a professional person who made a good salary. For a period of time, she had a nice home and car but eventually, drugs and alcohol caused her to lose everything. Plus the state had taken custody of her child until she could prove that she could live a sober life. Which is why she was with us.

I gave her this prescription which I found has helped me and some of our clients to get over bouts of depression. And no, it's not a pill. However, it does require a minimal amount of work. And it goes like this: every morning when you wake up, write down five things that you are grateful for.

You might think as you read this that you're not grateful for anything. And that may be true. In fact, the woman who is the subject of this blog asked me what she had to be grateful for. Here she is trapped in this recovery program. She doesn't have her child with her. Her family is angry at her. She doesn't have a car. She's in a minimum wage job at a fast-food restaurant. She's back at the bottom again.

So I asked her to reframe her thinking and stop looking at what she didn't have. Instead, perhaps she should focus on what she did have. And by the look on her face, I could see that I hadn't really reached her. So I continued, asking her why she couldn't see the positive side of her situation right now.

First of all, she is in a safe place where she can focus on her recovery and her psychological issues. Her child is in safe hands. She has a chance to regain custody of her child when she graduates from our program and finds a job and a place to live. She has her freedom, which many addicts have lost because of the crimes they committed while they were using. She is still relatively young and healthy. Her parents are beginning to talk to her again because they see that she's trying to help herself. She's making a few sober friends.

I asked her to start writing a gratitude list every morning for a week, then come back to me with what she had written. She halfheartedly agreed to do it and I told her I was looking forward to see what she came up with.

Many times in life, we addicts have a lot of false expectations about how life should be. And therein lies the problem. Because life, if we live it daily, is an up-and-down proposition. Everyone on the planet has good days and bad days - some more than others. But if we can develop the perspective that this is just the way life is, then we build resilience and can bounce back much faster when we fall into moments of depression. Any time I start falling into depression, I look around me and find someone whose life is a much bigger mess than mine or who is much less fortunate than I. And when I do that, I immediately get back on track.

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Be Here Today

A while back I dealt with a client who had a severe case of anxiety. He had trouble sleeping. He had trouble relaxing. He spent a great deal of time looking into the future, or dwelling in the past.

And like many of the addicts in our program he had the perfect solution for his anxiety: he would bury it with drugs or alcohol until he passed out. The only problem is that he had to wake up the next day and start all over again. This regimen didn't work out very well for him because eventually he lost his job, his marriage, his automobile, and the home that he lived in for seven years.

As I got better acquainted with him I learned that he had been treated poorly as a child. But instead of blaming those who mistreated him, he blamed himself for the bad things that happened to him. And of course that affected his self-worth. When in school he got poor grades. He ended up hanging with other students who had similar experience to his. He had found a clique of drug addicts to whom he could relate and who accepted him just as he was. And because of his association with them he eventually ended up in juvenile hall and then jail. And for the next 20 years he spent a lot of time associating with people like him and ultimately returning to jail or prison.

During my sessions with him I was able to help him understand that he could do nothing about the past. Nor could he really plan a future. But something that he would be able to do that would bring him some happiness and peace was to learn how to live in the moment. It took a while for me to help him understand that the only thing he had control over was this moment. And when he spent his time in the past or the future he was wasting a lot of the brief time that we all have here on earth.

After a while his anxiety went away because he began to grasp the concepts that I was teaching him about living in the moment. Someone taught me that concept a long time ago. And when I'm able to share it with others who begin to use it in their lives I feel like I'm helping someone learn how precious each moment of our life is.

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All in the Mind

 "I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." Mark Twain

The line above has been one of my favorite sayings ever since I got sober in 1991.

Why?  Because it summarizes in a short sentence the addict's dilemma. 

For years I was ruled by my emotions:  mostly frustration and anger.  And the way I overcame those things was to bury them with drugs and alcohol.  And that worked, of course, until it didn't and my life became a trainwreck.

But stop and think about how many catastrophes we've been through in our lives that later turned out to only be our fear-based thinking.  So-called thinking that caused us to make rash decisions based solely upon how we felt at the time.

So, how do we escape these fears and anxieties that cause us to make terrible decisions, feelings that sometimes cause us to think that life is really unbearable?

Well, I've found that one way is to pay attention to our thinking and realize that our thoughts most of the time have little basis in reality - especially when it comes to our fears about what might occur in the future.

Another means of escape is to learn to live in this moment.  And realize that life is a journey and not a destination where we'll find a life that is without problems.

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Repetition

 When one writes a blog about recovery it might seem as if the subject matter becomes somewhat repetitious after a while. After all, this blog has over three thousand three hundred entries - and surely I've covered the same subject a number of times.

But when one stands back and takes a look at it, recovery is a lifestyle that must become repetitious if it's to succeed in the long term.  And even though we talk in 12-step meetings about "one day at a time," if we repeat these sober days one after the other we soon will have a few years - then even decades.

The reality of recovery is that it must be repetitious.  There can be no breaks.  No days off to imbibe our favorite beverage or smoke a joint.  That is, unless we want to start over.

There are times when I have to dig deep to find a topic that is different from the one I wrote about before.  But I've found that it's okay to write about the same thing because staying sober is a daily project for those of us who want to succeed.  And we must repeat the things that have kept us sober thus far.

Does that mean we must attend a 12-step meeting each day?  Not necessarily.  But it does mean that we must stay in touch with who we are.  By that, I mean we must stay in touch with our emotions as much as possible.  We can't walk around full of anger, or sadness, or depression without eventually addressing it.

And the AA literature has many examples of how we successfully navigate the tough times that everyone experiences at some point or the other. Even if you've read the Big Book 20 times you can always learn something new.So, we keep repeating what has worked.  

And as we do that we find fulfilling lives.

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