fookisan
Guest
Written for a 12 step group
We never know when and where an "aha" moment or glimpse of enlightenment will come for us if we are open to it. I learned about accepting the inevitable losses from living an unbalanced life in 1996 while watching the TV show COPS. I saw a man living in a ghetto area that bought a a newish Cadillac and had called the police because neighborhood kids had been cracking old LP records off of his new car. He didn't have a garage and had to park it on the street. Living in a bad area ... no garage...new Cadillac? What else could he expect other than trouble? I thought to myself that this guy needs to learn to accept what he can comfortably have and what he can't and stop "forcing" things if he ever wants any peace. He could probably have owned a nondescript, average, plain car with little problems, but in his current state of affairs, he could not comfortably own a new Cadillac without problems.
From much personal experience in this forcing area, I've learned we can all force owning or doing things in life, but the key for sane living, for me, is to learn what I can comfortably own, comfortably maintain and have in my life and not force the issue. I experienced the effects from forcing things in my life many times, but could not see it clearly and would just develop more resentments from the problems that came my way, even though the problems would be an almost guaranteed outcome from my actions. For instance, with my own car I lived in a welfare area for many years and wanted a better car stereo. Within 2 weeks of installing a $125 stereo in my older car it got stolen and my car was vandalized. When the car had a basic factory radio it was no problem, even after parking it on the same street for years, but my neighborhood could not successfully allow me to have the more expensive car stereo. When I moved, then I was able to get something better. If I never moved and nothing changed, then I had to accept the facts for what they were if I wanted any peace.
It doesn't matter whether it is my time schedule, a job, a thing, a relationship or a vacation, it all has to fit into what I can comfortably (or more importantly) abstinently handle. In other words, I am shooting for balanced living through accepting my abilities and not looking to add more problems to my life and destroy my serenity. Every decision I now make is weighed by such terms. I see many people getting into addictive trouble when they confuse THEIR comfort levels with the comfort levels of OTHERS and refuse to accept that they are forcing an unhealthy, unsustainable lifestyle. Now, for those that want to achieve something along higher lines in life they will generally not get far without forcing things some. We have to be careful to balance whatever force we do use so our life is not lived artificially and we are exchanging our peace and serenity for something we want, but cannot have unless we trade our soul for it. Of course, this tradeoff is totally up to the individual. Many of us decide in favor of selling our soul to extend ourselves to the breaking point and have to resort to our addictions for support. Myself? If possible, I try to put peace and my recovery program first in all decisions. I am not perfect in these efforts, but am very aware of when I start to force things and hopefully start pulling back to more comfortable territory in short order unless I want to start damaging my recovery efforts. On the flip side, you could never climb Mt Everest without forcing things and making yourself uncomfortable. But we must balance such efforts with the idea that all our actions have consequences and these consequences might result in our death or our destruction through addictions. So asking oneself the "affordability" question is very important when you are an addict and want to stay clean of your addiction.
High capacity persons can work day and night, thrive on stress and problems, juggling numerous projects all at once, but the major deciding point is they show little or no ill effects from their lifestyle. Whereas, lower capacity persons that strive to live the life of a high cap person have to compensate themselves with various drugs and crutches for living on a higher output level that is not naturally comfortable for them to live - they are refusing to live right size. What happens if the novice skier goes down the steepest and most treacherous slope? He is not comfortable to say the least. It is no different in life, and we all have our comfort zones and to go beyond them is forcing things unnaturally for us. So, we use compulsive overeating, using drugs and alcohol, gambling, sex addiction, compulsive spending, clutter, rage or any number of other destructive addictions to help distract us from the mess our lives have turned into from forcing things. Lots of times these addictions start out as pleasure vehicles to compensate us for the pain we have feeling from life, but like all addictions the pleasure component soon turns to pain and now we have double the pain to deal with. Pain from our unbalanced life and pain from our addictions we used to help us deal with our unbalanced life. It snowballs from here - that is how I picked up 8 addictions to recover from. Once I started to live within my comfortable means and accept life without forcing things my addictions started to lessen up their hold. I started to live "right size" as the 12 and 12 of AA says on pages 122-125. There is no more important reading to do. Read these pages and digest it. It is the foundation of all of my recovery efforts.
Forcing things comes to play with all the addictions, so there is no way we can condemn one addiction over any other at being worse at forcing things. Clutterers make great use of "pressure packing" their hoard. If you have ever seen my website you can see how I forced my prior life through clutter. Debtors force their finances and refuse to accept and live within their means. Now, the debtors have no monopoly on robbing Peter to pay Paul. The overeaters do the same when they run their lives ragged and leave no time for preparing healthy foods, exercise and most important - time for contemplation and relaxation of the mind. At a conference I attended, an overweight lady professor said "this was going to be one of those semesters ... too busy to exercise until next semester." I could see why she was 100 pounds overweight - as the program tell us "First Things First." A lot of us don't want to give up anything to get recovery. We also see overeaters force things whether it be their caloric intake making the low calorie food their god so they can consume more to feed their sensation addiction. I have an OA acquaintance that gets terrible stomach problems from sorbitol, yet she had seen nothing wrong with overindulging in it cause it is calorie and sugar free. Sorbitol may have legitimate purposes, but it becomes just another one of our addictive drugs once it starts ruining our life.
Addicts force their comfortable abilities and then need to relax artificially with their D.O.C. A famous movie on addiction with Sandra Bullock called 28 Days uses this example when she says she has to get drunk and use drugs... "cause she is a writer." Many problems of forcing things come from having blinders on and we see only a small part of the picture and this gives us tunnel vision with no hope for other choices or solutions. We have to start being open to other possibilities and direction instead of just the same old thing. Many of us don't want to choose abstinence or solvency or sobriety in life...we may want a new life but do not want to let go of the old one to get it. Going back to the writer example. We have 2 choices without even giving it much thought. We can learn to apply the 12 steps to our current life and find success or we can abstain from the old sick life that has been tearing us down and still apply the 12 steps to this new life.
continued...
We never know when and where an "aha" moment or glimpse of enlightenment will come for us if we are open to it. I learned about accepting the inevitable losses from living an unbalanced life in 1996 while watching the TV show COPS. I saw a man living in a ghetto area that bought a a newish Cadillac and had called the police because neighborhood kids had been cracking old LP records off of his new car. He didn't have a garage and had to park it on the street. Living in a bad area ... no garage...new Cadillac? What else could he expect other than trouble? I thought to myself that this guy needs to learn to accept what he can comfortably have and what he can't and stop "forcing" things if he ever wants any peace. He could probably have owned a nondescript, average, plain car with little problems, but in his current state of affairs, he could not comfortably own a new Cadillac without problems.
From much personal experience in this forcing area, I've learned we can all force owning or doing things in life, but the key for sane living, for me, is to learn what I can comfortably own, comfortably maintain and have in my life and not force the issue. I experienced the effects from forcing things in my life many times, but could not see it clearly and would just develop more resentments from the problems that came my way, even though the problems would be an almost guaranteed outcome from my actions. For instance, with my own car I lived in a welfare area for many years and wanted a better car stereo. Within 2 weeks of installing a $125 stereo in my older car it got stolen and my car was vandalized. When the car had a basic factory radio it was no problem, even after parking it on the same street for years, but my neighborhood could not successfully allow me to have the more expensive car stereo. When I moved, then I was able to get something better. If I never moved and nothing changed, then I had to accept the facts for what they were if I wanted any peace.
It doesn't matter whether it is my time schedule, a job, a thing, a relationship or a vacation, it all has to fit into what I can comfortably (or more importantly) abstinently handle. In other words, I am shooting for balanced living through accepting my abilities and not looking to add more problems to my life and destroy my serenity. Every decision I now make is weighed by such terms. I see many people getting into addictive trouble when they confuse THEIR comfort levels with the comfort levels of OTHERS and refuse to accept that they are forcing an unhealthy, unsustainable lifestyle. Now, for those that want to achieve something along higher lines in life they will generally not get far without forcing things some. We have to be careful to balance whatever force we do use so our life is not lived artificially and we are exchanging our peace and serenity for something we want, but cannot have unless we trade our soul for it. Of course, this tradeoff is totally up to the individual. Many of us decide in favor of selling our soul to extend ourselves to the breaking point and have to resort to our addictions for support. Myself? If possible, I try to put peace and my recovery program first in all decisions. I am not perfect in these efforts, but am very aware of when I start to force things and hopefully start pulling back to more comfortable territory in short order unless I want to start damaging my recovery efforts. On the flip side, you could never climb Mt Everest without forcing things and making yourself uncomfortable. But we must balance such efforts with the idea that all our actions have consequences and these consequences might result in our death or our destruction through addictions. So asking oneself the "affordability" question is very important when you are an addict and want to stay clean of your addiction.
High capacity persons can work day and night, thrive on stress and problems, juggling numerous projects all at once, but the major deciding point is they show little or no ill effects from their lifestyle. Whereas, lower capacity persons that strive to live the life of a high cap person have to compensate themselves with various drugs and crutches for living on a higher output level that is not naturally comfortable for them to live - they are refusing to live right size. What happens if the novice skier goes down the steepest and most treacherous slope? He is not comfortable to say the least. It is no different in life, and we all have our comfort zones and to go beyond them is forcing things unnaturally for us. So, we use compulsive overeating, using drugs and alcohol, gambling, sex addiction, compulsive spending, clutter, rage or any number of other destructive addictions to help distract us from the mess our lives have turned into from forcing things. Lots of times these addictions start out as pleasure vehicles to compensate us for the pain we have feeling from life, but like all addictions the pleasure component soon turns to pain and now we have double the pain to deal with. Pain from our unbalanced life and pain from our addictions we used to help us deal with our unbalanced life. It snowballs from here - that is how I picked up 8 addictions to recover from. Once I started to live within my comfortable means and accept life without forcing things my addictions started to lessen up their hold. I started to live "right size" as the 12 and 12 of AA says on pages 122-125. There is no more important reading to do. Read these pages and digest it. It is the foundation of all of my recovery efforts.
Forcing things comes to play with all the addictions, so there is no way we can condemn one addiction over any other at being worse at forcing things. Clutterers make great use of "pressure packing" their hoard. If you have ever seen my website you can see how I forced my prior life through clutter. Debtors force their finances and refuse to accept and live within their means. Now, the debtors have no monopoly on robbing Peter to pay Paul. The overeaters do the same when they run their lives ragged and leave no time for preparing healthy foods, exercise and most important - time for contemplation and relaxation of the mind. At a conference I attended, an overweight lady professor said "this was going to be one of those semesters ... too busy to exercise until next semester." I could see why she was 100 pounds overweight - as the program tell us "First Things First." A lot of us don't want to give up anything to get recovery. We also see overeaters force things whether it be their caloric intake making the low calorie food their god so they can consume more to feed their sensation addiction. I have an OA acquaintance that gets terrible stomach problems from sorbitol, yet she had seen nothing wrong with overindulging in it cause it is calorie and sugar free. Sorbitol may have legitimate purposes, but it becomes just another one of our addictive drugs once it starts ruining our life.
Addicts force their comfortable abilities and then need to relax artificially with their D.O.C. A famous movie on addiction with Sandra Bullock called 28 Days uses this example when she says she has to get drunk and use drugs... "cause she is a writer." Many problems of forcing things come from having blinders on and we see only a small part of the picture and this gives us tunnel vision with no hope for other choices or solutions. We have to start being open to other possibilities and direction instead of just the same old thing. Many of us don't want to choose abstinence or solvency or sobriety in life...we may want a new life but do not want to let go of the old one to get it. Going back to the writer example. We have 2 choices without even giving it much thought. We can learn to apply the 12 steps to our current life and find success or we can abstain from the old sick life that has been tearing us down and still apply the 12 steps to this new life.
continued...
