What Would I Change If It Were Easy?
I've heard people ask the question, "What would I do if I wasn't afraid?" and that's a hard one for me to wrap my mind around, because I'm not always conscious of my fears.
I was talking to an OA fellow earlier this week. She'd asked to meet me for coffee to expand on something I'd shared in a meeting recently about some recent changes to my abstinence (which, by the way are going great, and I'm resisting the urge to stop doing all the prayer that is making it go great!).
She's in the food, not sure what she wants, not sure what she should do. What should her abstinence be? What should her food plan be? How should she be working with a sponsor? These are all uncertainties in her mind.
I learned early in program that change comes in three steps:
In the shower this morning, I thought about asking her:
"What would you do if it were easy?"
And the twin question:
"What would you do if you were not powerless, but if instead you were powerful?"
One of the most valueable lessons I've learned in the 12 step, more from observation than from being told this explicitly, is that we share our own experience over giving advice. People don't want to hear, "you should do this," or "have you tried that?" They want to hear, "this is what I did, and here's how it worked."
So (still in the shower), I started to think, what would I do if it were easy? What would I do if I was powerful?
I'm not talking about the ability to fly or wanting to be rich and skinny. I'm talking about what kinds of things do I think would bring me deep, meaningful peace, and the only reason I'm not doing them is because either I think it's too hard or I think I can't.
I first thought about food (ha! I'm a food addict, I always think about food first!), and after the recent changes, I feel like my food is clean. I don't see any obvious changes today that I would like to make if I could. What a freaking miracle that is! I am always thinking I should be better, faster, stronger, less, or more with just about everything. But today, food is in it's place for me.
So what about other aspects of the program? Pretty quickly, three things came to me:
1) Forgiveness: If it were easy, and if I were powerful, I would forgive everyone. I have made a lot of progress in working steps 4-9 a number of times (along with frequent 10th steps), but there is lingering resentment towards a few key people in my life. The most affecting instance is my partner, who I've been with for 25 years and married to for 16 years. There is a lot of water under the bridge with us, and I've come so far, but there are also hurts and resentments that haven't entirely healed.
I have some family forgiveness that needs to happen, but the other big category is political. I won't go into which side I'm on (because of all those pesky traditions), but political fear and resentment is poisoning me. If it were easy and if I could wave a magic wand, I would let go of anger towards people who believe differently from me, and with that same wand, I would make sure I was still actively standing up for the people and values I believe in. I don't want to be passive in the face of injustice, I want to let go of anger. I want to accept the things I can't change, change the things I can, and know the g-d difference!
2) Use my phone less: if it were easy and if I were powerful, I would be much better at simply being present with my family (husband and two kids) without constantly distracting myself on my stupid phone with games and social media. I would like to use my phone less, so I can be in the moment with my family, or be in the moment of my relaxation, or be in the moment of my work. Using my phone is a way to numb out my feelings since I can't use food anymore.
3) Worry less about others' opinion of me: Last night we had a dear family of vegans over for dinner. We are not vegans. We are not even vegetarians. I love this family, and they love us, but we've never hosted them. I seriously, and I mean seriously considered hiding the milk and butter and cottage cheese so that if they went into our fridge (??), they wouldn't see it. Okay, I actually did put a container of salami that was on a fridge shelf away in a fridge drawer, but as I started to try to bring the organic vegan stuff to the front of our pantry, I caught myself and stopped.
This family and I go way back. Their mom was one of my best friends, and she died recently. I love them and they love me. If they want to judge me for not being vegan, they are allowed to do that. If their judgment interferes with our relationship, that will be really sad, but so far it hasn't. So far, they are able to handle disapproving of something I do and also loving me anyway. Which, by the way, I can do too! I love and like people who have some different values than me.
Man, though, it is hard to let go of that desire to people please. I want everyone to like me. But if I could wave a magic wand, I would care a lot less about that kind of thing. As they say, "what people think about you is none of your business."
Here's the rub: these things aren't easy, and I clearly don't have the power to do them (or else I already would have). My only choice is to turn them over and ask for help. And that's how I can figure out what my prayers need to be about.
I'd like to try an experiment. For 30 days, I'm going to try and ask God to help me with these three things. I'm sure I could think of 100 other things, but I'm just going to ask for these three. Asking for relief with a few new foods has been working so well. After 30 days, I don't expect these things to be cured, but maybe they will be lighter?
What started as a prompt for my friend to figure out what she should do with her food and her program ended up as a very useful exercise for me when I applied it to myself.
I was talking to an OA fellow earlier this week. She'd asked to meet me for coffee to expand on something I'd shared in a meeting recently about some recent changes to my abstinence (which, by the way are going great, and I'm resisting the urge to stop doing all the prayer that is making it go great!).
She's in the food, not sure what she wants, not sure what she should do. What should her abstinence be? What should her food plan be? How should she be working with a sponsor? These are all uncertainties in her mind.
I learned early in program that change comes in three steps:
- We ask God for the knowledge of what we should do
- We ask for the willingness to do it
- We ask for the ability to do it
I love this because it breaks it down into three parts, and in cases where I know something needs to change but Im just not willing to do it, I can consider myself 1/3 of the way to change instead of just considering myself a lazy, clueless sack of shit, which is what I used to do.
But what about the very frequent instances when I don't even know what to do?
In the shower this morning, I thought about asking her:
"What would you do if it were easy?"
And the twin question:
"What would you do if you were not powerless, but if instead you were powerful?"
One of the most valueable lessons I've learned in the 12 step, more from observation than from being told this explicitly, is that we share our own experience over giving advice. People don't want to hear, "you should do this," or "have you tried that?" They want to hear, "this is what I did, and here's how it worked."
So (still in the shower), I started to think, what would I do if it were easy? What would I do if I was powerful?
I'm not talking about the ability to fly or wanting to be rich and skinny. I'm talking about what kinds of things do I think would bring me deep, meaningful peace, and the only reason I'm not doing them is because either I think it's too hard or I think I can't.
I first thought about food (ha! I'm a food addict, I always think about food first!), and after the recent changes, I feel like my food is clean. I don't see any obvious changes today that I would like to make if I could. What a freaking miracle that is! I am always thinking I should be better, faster, stronger, less, or more with just about everything. But today, food is in it's place for me.
So what about other aspects of the program? Pretty quickly, three things came to me:
1) Forgiveness: If it were easy, and if I were powerful, I would forgive everyone. I have made a lot of progress in working steps 4-9 a number of times (along with frequent 10th steps), but there is lingering resentment towards a few key people in my life. The most affecting instance is my partner, who I've been with for 25 years and married to for 16 years. There is a lot of water under the bridge with us, and I've come so far, but there are also hurts and resentments that haven't entirely healed.
I have some family forgiveness that needs to happen, but the other big category is political. I won't go into which side I'm on (because of all those pesky traditions), but political fear and resentment is poisoning me. If it were easy and if I could wave a magic wand, I would let go of anger towards people who believe differently from me, and with that same wand, I would make sure I was still actively standing up for the people and values I believe in. I don't want to be passive in the face of injustice, I want to let go of anger. I want to accept the things I can't change, change the things I can, and know the g-d difference!
2) Use my phone less: if it were easy and if I were powerful, I would be much better at simply being present with my family (husband and two kids) without constantly distracting myself on my stupid phone with games and social media. I would like to use my phone less, so I can be in the moment with my family, or be in the moment of my relaxation, or be in the moment of my work. Using my phone is a way to numb out my feelings since I can't use food anymore.
3) Worry less about others' opinion of me: Last night we had a dear family of vegans over for dinner. We are not vegans. We are not even vegetarians. I love this family, and they love us, but we've never hosted them. I seriously, and I mean seriously considered hiding the milk and butter and cottage cheese so that if they went into our fridge (??), they wouldn't see it. Okay, I actually did put a container of salami that was on a fridge shelf away in a fridge drawer, but as I started to try to bring the organic vegan stuff to the front of our pantry, I caught myself and stopped.
This family and I go way back. Their mom was one of my best friends, and she died recently. I love them and they love me. If they want to judge me for not being vegan, they are allowed to do that. If their judgment interferes with our relationship, that will be really sad, but so far it hasn't. So far, they are able to handle disapproving of something I do and also loving me anyway. Which, by the way, I can do too! I love and like people who have some different values than me.
Man, though, it is hard to let go of that desire to people please. I want everyone to like me. But if I could wave a magic wand, I would care a lot less about that kind of thing. As they say, "what people think about you is none of your business."
Here's the rub: these things aren't easy, and I clearly don't have the power to do them (or else I already would have). My only choice is to turn them over and ask for help. And that's how I can figure out what my prayers need to be about.
I'd like to try an experiment. For 30 days, I'm going to try and ask God to help me with these three things. I'm sure I could think of 100 other things, but I'm just going to ask for these three. Asking for relief with a few new foods has been working so well. After 30 days, I don't expect these things to be cured, but maybe they will be lighter?
What started as a prompt for my friend to figure out what she should do with her food and her program ended up as a very useful exercise for me when I applied it to myself.
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