If you only knew what you were
doing to me. If you loved me you wouldn't act this way. Don't you care about
me? You are making my life miserable. Sound familiar?
“Oh how I love focusing on you. If you would
only stop doing this or that or if you'd start doing this or that, then
finally, maybe I'd be happy. Relieved of the responsibility of self, it was so
easy to be critical, resentful and dependent on you. If you only knew what you
were doing to me. If you loved me you wouldn't act this way. Don't you care
about me? These were my constant thoughts.” From “Wisdom of the Rooms,” by MichaelZ.
Visit: http://www.theWisdomoftheRooms.com to sign up for FREE.
That description from Michael Z
was a wonderful description of me, too, while I still drank. I blamed by boss,
my ex-wife’s attorney, my second marriage, my over-whelming job – a lot of
things wee the reason I drank. My vodkas anesthetized my feelings until the
alcohol, itself, became the problem. My standard line was: “If you had my life
and my bad-luck experiences, you’d drink too. “
Early in my recovery program
with AA, two learning experiences led me to learn to put down the magnifying
glass and start using the mirror. The first
was a simple trick of grammar. I learned to stop saying, “If this or that bad
thing happened, it caused me to drink.” I learned to reverse that sentence and
say, instead, “Because I was drinking, this or that bad thing happened.”
I learned this by listening to
an exchange in an AA meeting early in my sobriety. A guy said that it seemed
like a lot of men in the group had done truly awful things when drunk. They had
gotten caught, went to jail, got divorces, lost jobs, etc. He went on to say
that he couldn’t relate because a lot of those things hadn’t happened to him
every time he got drunk. When it was his turn, an old-timer said quite simply,
“Stop. Think about it. Maybe you didn’t do stupid things every time you got
drunk. But, you’ve indicated that every time you got caught doing stupid
things, you were drunk.”
After the old-timer shared, I
remember thinking to myself – “Wow! Maybe I wasn’t drinking because of all my
lousy bad luck. Maybe I was having lousy bad luck because I was drinking.” That
realization began to alter my perception of reality and I began to get very
much better a lot more quickly. I was able to begin to put down the magnifying
glass, which I used to focus on all my lousy bad luck, and began to use the
mirror to understand my role and responsibility that contributed to my bad
luck.
The second learning experience happened when I was doing my Fifth Step
with my sponsor, having completed my “fearless moral inventory,” or Fourth
Step. A lot of my inventory had to do with my messed up relationships with my
children and with all the significant women with whom I’d had a romantic
relationship. As I was going through these failed female relationships, my
sponsor asked me to stop and summarize the common denominators of all these
women. I thought for a moment and began spewing out a litany of common physical
characteristics, common behavior patterns they all seemed to possess, and common
issues that kept cropping up. He simply sat there and slowly shook his head. I
asked him, “What are you getting at? What do you want me to say?” Again, he
just shook his head. Finally, exasperated, I said, “You obviously know the
answer. Why don’t you tell me the common denominator?” He smiled and said,
“Don, the common denominator of all your failed relationships is you.”
Damn!
So simple. Although I thought I
had learned that lesson and had “moved on” to bigger issues, here it was again.
Over the 25 years of my growth in sobriety, that issue has come back to bite
time and time again. If the common denominator is not me but you, if it’s not
me but the situation, if it’s not me but the event – then I am a perpetual
victim because I can never control you, situations, or events. I always will
remain at the mercy of someone or something else. It’s a built-in pity pot.
A Course in Miracles (ACIM) says
in dozens of different ways, “Whatever is bothering me, upsetting me,
frightening me, angering me, pleasing me, fulfilling me, satisfying me –
remember, it is always an inside job. It is always the end result of my
perception of my universe. It is always the result of my thinking.”
I am responsible for my
happiness and my well-being. When things aren’t going right, my first reaction,
still, is to find fault outside me. But, pretty quickly I can now stop and look
instead at my behavior, my attitude, my thinking, my assumptions – all of which
play major roles in how I perceive, react, respond, or contribute to the
situation. That is to be my focus.
I am always the common
denominator of my life and thinking. It’s always about the mirror, not the
magnifying glass. When I use the mirror the opportunities to my the Holy Spirit
increase exponentially.
Thanks for listening, and – as
always – feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those
accompanying you on your spiritual journey.
Don
#1 October, 2012
Copyright, 2012
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