Mind Games

***Trigger Warning*** - this post deals with triggers & urges to drink.

Yesterday, I was walking to the drugstore on a path that runs next to Prescott Valley's big drainage ditch (built for monsoon season to help avoid flash flooding). I use this path all the time, and like any public path, there is sometimes trash strewn about. At one point, less than a mile to my destination, I noticed a bottle (a fifth) of Wild Turkey Rye Whiskey laying in the grass; only I really noticed it. I fairly often see stuff of this nature on my walks, and I usually give stuff a half-second glance. The glance I gave the bottle yesterday was much more than a half-second, and that bottle and its contents looked good.

If you are a non-alcoholic or non-addict, you might wonder what the attraction was. I walk into gas stations and grocery stores that sell beer and liquor all the time. I rarely have an issue being in close proximity to sealed alcoholic products sitting innocently on the store shelves waiting for some customer to buy them. I know I'm not that customer.

Fortunately, this happened yesterday. If I had happened upon that bottle of Wild Turkey two weeks ago, I'm fairly certain that I would have taken advantage of it, because two weeks ago I was not in a good space mentally or spiritually. Yesterday I was doing pretty good.

So I carried on to my destination, and after I was done with my business, I began my return trip using the same path. I came upon the bottle of whiskey again, and I stopped. Again, I knew the problem for me - it was there. So I decided to pour it out. I picked up the bottle, and it was nearly full. I can't comprehend someone leaving a nearly full bottle of whiskey alone in the wilds - that's alcohol abuse! I went to unscrew the cap, and noted it wasn't a cap, it was a cork - classy! I pulled out the cork, and... I've done this before - poured bottles out for myself or for someone I'm helping, and there's always this one little point, this hesitation, where the decision, or the final answer is made... Do I drink it or do I pour it out; could go either way. And I chose to pour that whiskey out onto the ground. When the bottle was empty, I flung it back in the grass, and continued on my way.

I spoke with my recovery coach a few hours later and related the experience to him. He asked if I felt good for doing that, and I told him that I did. It was a good feeling making the better choice. And we talked a little more about it, and I talked about possibly disappointing the person who bought the bottle in the first place. But he said I did the right thing, because by physically pouring it out, I got it out of my mind. We also realized that I might have saved some kid from a bad day or a bad life by removing this opportunity to use alcohol; who knows.

I'm grateful for this experience, and experiences like them. They remind me that I still need to be mindful on my daily journey. Triggers, urges, cravings happen to anybody who stops using a substance to which they are addicted, and there is no shame in having them. Addiction is tied into the part of our brains that ensure our survival, so automatically desiring something we were addicted to when triggered is not at all unusual. As a recovering person, I need to remember to not always believe everything I think. If I do, I can lead myself into some very destructive behavior.

Urges and triggers are just thoughts; however, they're thoughts that affect the pleasure center of our brain, and they can turn into physical cravings or obsessions. It's important to deal with them before they become out of control. I dealt with this one by taking action opposite to my desire (pouring it out), and talking with someone who understands (honesty). By dealing with this situation in a skillful way, I'm able to move past it and relate the story as an incident that happened yesterday. Had I dealt with this unskillfully, it'd be a pretty good bet that today would have been much, much different, and that bottle, or at least the consequences from drinking it, would still be with me. I'm grateful for the tools to stay sober, and I'm even more grateful when I actually use them.

Thank you for reading. I hope this piece has shed some light for you on alcoholism. Please share this with others if you think it would help.

Namasté,

Ken

11 Signs of Enlightenment

Thanks to Source working through Facebook, I ran across a blog post by Matthew Ferry, and I liked his material so much that I posted a link to his blog on my links page. (By the way, check out my links page sometime). Matthew posted his 11 signs of enlightenment, and I've posted them below - slightly revised: He wrote it in third person, and I changed it to first person so that it becomes an affirmation. Another 'by the way': I will contact him and ask him permission to publish this.

Here are 11 tell-tale signs you are experiencing enlightenment in day-to-day life (revised): credit https://blog.matthewferry.com/11-tell-tale-signs-experiencing-enlightenment-day-day-life/

• I am happy because I exist and it is my natural state. Circumstances are no longer the source of my happiness.
• I am at peace with the way things are and eager for whatever is next.
• I have begun to see that people are innately innocent and that their selfish actions are a natural result of survival programming.
• I acknowledge that we are all just doing the best we can in a world that is mysterious and challenging.
• I am inexplicably driven to forgive everyone for everything.
• I take steps to release the illusion that I can control anything.
• I experience the freedom of knowing that my opinion and perspective are not important, valuable, or needed and the world goes on with or without my commentary, opinion, insights, observations, or point of view.
• I am beginning to acknowledge that the world is an expression of my perspective and programs developed through familial, cultural, religious and geographical influences that I had no choice in.
• I am starting to see that the only thing I am against is my perspective about what I am experiencing in the world.
• I [am starting] to lose my urgency. Nothing feels very important. I feel compelled to do the things that I enjoy.
• My stress begins to disappear. When it returns, I might find it interesting rather than urgent and distracting.

Thank you Matthew. As I've written before, my recovery began the moment I was truly done with living life as I knew it. Now, at that point, one either changes or one dies. I'm grateful that I began to change. I'm grateful today for my wholesale dissatisfaction with life as I used to see it, and I'm grateful to be moving into a perspective that works for me. 

The very neat thing about these 11 Signs is that I can use them as a guide to note my progress. There is nothing listed above that's about perfection, and nobody on the Earth plane lives in perfection. We embody perfection, but we don't live perfectly. Enlightenment, to me, is simply learning to live life from the inside out - to endeavor each moment to live from the perfection that resides within, rather than reacting to the circumstances that surround me (which are really only the result of me and others living imperfectly).

My path toward Enlightenment consists of mindfulness, meditation, prayer, and practice - I practice being how I want to show up today. Because of this, I no longer have much use for protecting myself (my ego) nor worrying about if I'm going to get what I need. I know that I am already abundantly equipped to make this journey. 

I used to live each day with the goal of just getting through the day - surviving without too much hurt, or, if I was hurt, blocking the pain with alcohol, drugs, and other addictive behavior. It is a depressing way to live. Today my purpose is to enjoy life and to be a blessing to those around me. It's not always easy, but it's a lot simpler than reacting to circumstances. 

I am grateful today for the privilege of being on this journey.

Namasté,

Ken

What's Right

Following is a post I made to a Facebook group to which I belong called the Gratitude Circle:

I am grateful that I know how to raise my vibe w/out the use of alcohol or drugs. Sometimes I still have trouble feeling 'grateful', and today was one of those days. I felt stuck in 'what's wrong'. So I wrote a list about what's right:
I am alive
I am sober and sane
I am healthy
I am employed
I have a nice home
I have friends
I have choices
I am in charge of my focus
I have tools I can use to uplift me and others...
and the list goes on. So after I wrote the list and realized all the things that are right with me, I realized that I felt gratitude again, and, the the things that are 'wrong' fell into the background.

The Gratitude Circle is a daily opportunity to share and expand gratitude with others around the world. Today, and maybe lately, I found it difficult to post because I wasn't feeling gratitude. My mind was focused on what's 'wrong' with the world and my seeming powerlessness to affect anything.

I know from my own experience that when the gratitude cup is empty, it's empty! I knew I needed to raise my vibration (emotional state) up a few notches, but was finding it difficult. So I did just what I stated in the post - I didn't write a gratitude list, I wrote a What's Right list, with all the things that are going well in my life. By the time I got done with it, my vibe was raised, and I was feeling gratitude again.

The world didn't change, I did.

The ego can be a tricky thing - it likes to think that it has much more control over things than it actually does. I am a powerful being, as I believe we all are; however, when I put my focus on the things I can't change, rather than what I can, my power is wasted, and I feel discouraged and depleted. 

There is a great deal I can do to effect change in this world, but it begins with me. My strength comes from my relationship with my Higher Power, so I must put that relationship first. When I am peaceful inside, and grateful and receptive, I can allow my Higher Power to direct my actions where they will do the most good. 

I have the understanding today that each of us in our own way has the ability to make the world a better place to live. I also know that to the degree I allow healing to take place in me, the world has improved by that degree as well, because I am a part of this world. I can and do make a difference.

Namasté,

Ken

The Way It Is? Mindfulness and Imagination as a Pathway to Change

We, as humans, get really used to the way things are. We get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and do our business without having to think too much about it - like what happens to the water that goes down our sinks, toilets, and showers, or even the origin of the water. We get dressed, probably without knowing who made our clothes (no, Levi Strauss and Tommy Hilfeger did not actually make the garments you're wearing). We hop in our cars, and we don't need to even know how a car works to utilize it. When we turn on the radio, do we think about how that works? How music travels invisibly through the air from some location to us so that we can listen to it? And many of us go to a job that starts at 7, 8, or 9 in the morning, lasts 8 hours, and we'll go to 5 days a week, without ever wondering if there would be a way to live on a 20 hour/week job, or no job at all? And the list goes on, and on, and on...

We don't have to consciously think about all the things we do in a day - unless we want to change something in our lives, or change our entire life.

One of the curious aspects of addiction (and mental illness, as well, I think) is the narrowing of our imaginations when we're suffering from it. For instance, I have a few challenges, or opportunities for growth, going on right now, and I look forward to working through them, knowing that they'll make me stronger and lead me to an even richer life than I'm already experiencing. However, if I start drinking alcohol today, all of those challenges will become huge insurmountable problems that nothing but another drink will fix. Such is the nature of alcoholism, and I think it's like that with depression as well. On days when I'm not feeling any symptoms of depression, life looks great, and I see many possibilities. On days when I'm symptomatic, it's really difficult to see a decent future, and everything around me looks and feels like crap. (It's those days that I get through by faith - knowing, but not seeing, that things will get better).

So, a big part of recovery is reversing the narrow-mindedness that comes from the diseases. Now, a challenge comes in - the longer we stay in our active addiction or depression, the more ingrained is the negative, narrow-minded thinking, and the more difficult it is to change. This can be very frustrating! People can tell us that it (whatever 'it' is) gets better, and they're happy and smiling, and we're slogging through the shit wondering, "When?" Bit by bit, day by day, 'it' does get better. Very slowly. This is a critical time in early recovery when much support and a lot of patience is needed, because the feeling of wanting to give up and go back to our 'comfortable' misery appears often. Medication is often required to assist us in staying in a state where we can assist ourselves.

After a time, our thinking returns to a state where we are able to resume our normal daily lives, take care of ourselves, support ourselves, and begin to enjoy life and living again.

But what if you're like me? What if, when things return to 'normal', it's still not good enough? What if, even when things are going great, there is still a indefinable longing inside for something different? Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending upon your point of view, there is not a pill that will fix that. There isn't a pill that will make me perfectly accept the way things are. I hope not, anyway.

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. (Excerpt from the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr)

I'm coming to appreciate that part of me that longs for something better - that part of me that longs for more peace, more power over my thoughts and actions, more effectiveness in helping others. Previous to understanding how to channel it, this longing in me produced depression and the desire to go back to alcohol and drugs. I wanted to extinguish the longing. Today I better understand that the longing is a good thing, because, properly channeled, it allows me to explore and discover more and more of this existence.

One of the things needed for this journey is the belief that there's more to life that what I'm seeing in this present moment, and for that, I need to be willing to expand my consciousness, my thoughts, beyond what I presently know. Jesus talked of this when He mentioned that you don't put new wine into old wineskins, or you'll burst the wineskin. I can't move to the next paradigm using the same type of consciousness I was using in the old paradigm.

I mentioned at the beginning of the post just a tiny fraction of things we might take for granted in our daily lives. Taking these things for granted, or not thinking about them, makes it easier to live our daily lives; however, it sucks for trying to get somewhere we've never been before.

All of my life I've thought about the way things used to be - long ago, before I was born. I like sitting at the shore of Lake Michigan, and try to look at it through the eyes of a Native American 200 or 300 years ago. Lake Michigan means different things to us today than it did to the person observing it back then. Back then, the person looking at it might have looked at it as a source of life - both water and food. I've wondered why people ever settled in Kansas (the Great Plains). Did they just get tired of traveling in covered wagons and give up? Because 150-200 years ago, Kansas was one great big flat treeless field. "Oh, yes, this looks like a great place to settle - absolutely nothing as far as the eye can see!" And when English settlers first settled on the North American continent - what were they thinking? 450 years ago, there weren't housing developments and roadways and cities in North America - just a lot of land, and people that we used to refer to as 'savages'. What about a long, long time ago, before there were even governments, or kingdoms? What was life like then?

For the longest time, my thinking made the world as it is today seem false and unnatural, and much of it is! But it made me disdain today's world. If we didn't have mass generated and usable electricity, most people today would plain just die. Ok - what does that have to do with mindfulness or depression, or alcoholism, or spirituality?

It is this: Anything is possible. In the midst of alcoholism and depression, the only thing that seemed possible was death - either quickly, or painful and slow. In the midst of recovery and spirituality, anything is possible. I have been rescued and elevated from a 'hopeless' condition of mind and body to live this life in recovery and achieve or attain anything I can set my heart on. The only limitation I have is my own thinking - my current mindset.

I am not 'stuck'. But in order to be able to change my thinking, to change my life, I need to examine the areas in which I'm accepting 'the way it is' or the way things are. Those are the things that I have to unaccept, and and change it around to 'the way things could be'.

This is wonderful news to me. I don't have to stay stuck in who I am, or who I've been; I simply have to shake up the neural pathways in my mind and develop my power of imagination. 

I can see very well the way things are. I can stop fighting them and move on to the next step: Begin to see the way things can be.

Namasté,

Ken

It's All Mine

I am very grateful for both of my jobs. I can only imagine where I'd be without them. Both of my jobs require me to model recovery. For me, this means that if I come into work late and angry with myself, and upset that nothing around me seems to be going right, I must behave differently than I feel. And when I begin to behave differently than I feel - in other words, when I begin to put into action the things I've learned in recovery - I see that my feelings, though they may be valid, aren't good indicators of the way I ought to behave.

A line from one of the recovery texts says something like this: "When I am upset or disturbed, there is something wrong with my thinking." The author called this a spiritual axiom, and it has been most useful to me. What this line says to me is that my natural state is peace, because I know Who's in charge, and it isn't me, and also that all is well, despite how it may seem to me. This axiom is the basis of practicing my life from the inside out, which I endeavor to do. It means that, second to my actions, my attitude is the most important thing over which I have control. 

I don't know if it's a good thing or not - I kind of think it is - that I don't outwardly show when I'm upset or disturbed. It's good in that if I always spoke or showed what was going on in my head or my feelings, I probably wouldn't have any friends or any jobs. On the other hand, suppressed emotion causes sickness and more emotional distress, which can lead to collapse. When I am unable to turn my own thinking or feelings around, I talk with one of my mentors about what is going on,

So I'm at work this morning and I'm picking on everything that everybody else did or is doing wrong. And what am I going to do. But, the niggling thought comes back, "The problem isn't out there, Ken, it's within you." Shit. So, at this point, I'm half-paralyzed, because there's stuff to do, but I don't want to act out of my disturbances, and I'm still feeling disturbed. I take things slowly, and think to myself, "What would a sane, rational person do?" And I proceed, slowly, to do that. It's like walking with a broken toe - I can still walk, but I need to step gingerly.

For instance, one of the things disturbing me was that I found out someone lied to me. Thinking error #1 - they didn't lie to me specifically - they put down false information on a sheet of paper. But I was upset, thinking, "Who does this person think he is? Does he think we're stupid?" Thinking error #2 - this person's lie had nothing to do with me or anyone else but himself. The whole thing is that I'm taking something personally that isn't directed at me at all, and, after thinking about it a bit, the consequences of this person's lying are going to be all his. What is my part in it? Upon discovering the falsification, I reported it to my superior, and am following his instructions. Boom, end of story. 

The ability to understand that my life is not what goes on around me, but what goes in within me is one of the greatest blessings I've received in recovery. Things don't have to be 'right' for me to be ok.  But, sometimes, things get reversed in my head for a while. The really neat thing is that once the above stated misperception became clearer to me, the rest of the things that were 'wrong' no longer upset me (or had power over me) either. It's stuff to deal with, one way or another, but it doesn't have to rule my emotional day.

In early recovery we're taught to act differently that we think or feel. "I need a drink." Call someone instead, or go to a meeting, or do something besides that first thought. "I'm so angry and I'm going to let everybody know." Ok, calm down and find some peace first, and if it's still important to let everybody know, do it in a way that isn't violent, abusive, or destructive to me or anyone else. In our sickness, and in our early recovery, our feelings have power over us. In recovery, we learn to take different actions, and to eventually reclaim our power over our thoughts and feelings. 

And that's why I'm really grateful for my jobs - they remind me that whatever is going on inside of me, it's all mine. Nothing and no one can cause me to feel any way - my feelings are my domain. Spiritually, mentally, emotionally, even physically, it is much better, though often more challenging, to live this way. 

Mindfulness and Change

How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

A few days ago, I posted this statement to Facebook: "The only thing that makes change difficult is my resistance to it." My resistance may come in the form of something outside of myself, like a lack of education, or a physical addiction, or where I live, or how much money I have. However, ultimately, I am the one responsible for my own change. And how do I change? By changing the hardest thing in the world to change - my thinking and my beliefs.

If we've never changed a belief in our life, then 100% of the beliefs we operate by were given to us by someone else - our parents or guardians, and the people important to us growing up.  Our beliefs determine our perceptions of life - this is good, that is bad, this is right, that is wrong, this is safe, that isn't. But sometimes we test our beliefs, often because we see someone doing something we believe is harmful or wrong, but they look like they're enjoying it. Drinking is a prime example. There are people who have become alcoholic who grew up in a home where alcohol was never once used. They may have even been warned away from alcohol. But they join the Navy, because they learned that's the patriotic thing to do, and they saw all of their buddies drinking on liberty in Manila, and they thought, "Well, maybe one won't hurt." And if one doesn't hurt, and they have a little fun, their belief regarding alcohol will probably start to change. 

Most of us don't hang on to all of the beliefs with which we were programmed, but we do hang onto many. Sometimes they're not beliefs that really help us - sometimes we have gender role beliefs that don't really go with the yearning of our soul. Perhaps a man loves to cook, but he has a belief that men don't cook, and that's why they get married. Men hunt, women fix the food. So he never enjoys cooking, because (to him) it defies his manliness. Perhaps a girl really enjoys football, and yearns to play, but 'girls don't do contact sports', so she never experiences football in the flesh.

Sometimes the beliefs we hold cause us so much inner pain that we seek change. Often, we look for change outside of ourselves. For instance, I used to feel so bad about myself - low self-esteem - that I sought approval from others. I could get it, but it didn't last and I could never get enough (sounds a little like alcohol!) When I finally realized that only I could give me self-esteem, I began taking the actions that I thought a person with good self-esteem would take - basically, I began being responsible for myself. Then I began to change my thinking about myself, and my perceptions of myself began to change, and now my beliefs about myself are beginning to change. But I have to be mindful of what I'm thinking and what I'm doing. Being mindful at its most basic simply means - paying attention.

Another thing I had to do was momentarily suspend my disbelief. When I began recovery, I knew nothing would work for me. However, because I was in so much pain, I was willing to suspend that belief, if only for a few minutes at a time, to take different actions. Little by little, bit by bit, by thinking and my beliefs began to change. It definitely is not an overnight process.

I would like to share a real-life example of why change can be so difficult: My father answered the phone every time it rang - even if it was a number that was unknown to him. As he got to his last years, he got fewer and fewer legitimate calls. I assisted him nearly the last 4 years of his life, and I tried to get him to not answer the phone unless he knew who was calling (nowadays, I don't try to help someone change unless they want to). My father passed away when he was 86 or 87, so you know there wasn't going to be much changing going on. But here's the picture about the phone thing. Back when my father was growing up, if his family had a phone, it would have been a luxury. More than likely, the town he grew up in had only a few phones, and people would have shared. Also, each time someone used the phone, they had to pay. So you knew if you got a call, it must be important. Additionally, there weren't answering machines. You either took the call or you missed it. Answering machines really didn't come into popular use until the 80's (that's 1980, for my younger reader), and my father was in his fifties in the 80's. So that's a long habit of answering the phone every time it rang with the belief that the call must be important, and that behavior won't change unless given a good enough reason to do so. 

Many people will do an outer change without making an inner change simply because the society around them is changing, and it's more expedient to go along with the flow than to continue on in their behavior. An example of this would be if a woman who loved telling sexist and racist jokes at work learned that her company instituted a new policy whereby the jokes she loved were now forbidden at work. She could probably, for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, conform her behavior to meet her company's expectations, so long as the job was worth it to her. Nothing has changed inside. She doesn't respect men or people who look different than her any more than she used to; now she just doesn't show it. She will probably continue her behavior outside of work, never giving it another thought.

True change takes mindfulness, because human beings naturally resist change (see one of my earlier posts about the way the human brain operates to protect us). Welcoming change or even understanding the benefits of change is a form of higher thinking. But, again, because our beliefs and our habits are deeply rooted neural pathways in our brains, real change takes more than just the desire to change.

The resistance to change comes when I become mindful of my obstacles to change, which, at first glance, are usually my thoughts. I do control my thoughts to a great extent, so I don't have to let any one thought pattern control me. But if I've made a physical or behavioral change, and it's not sticking due to repeated thought patterns, then I must look more deeply than just my thinking. And this is where the real resistance comes up, because I have to begin to look at my beliefs, or my subconscious. Beliefs can be not only mentally difficult to change, but biologically difficult as well. Some beliefs we hold are called defense mechanisms, and we have them because at one time they served us - we needed them, they protected us. They are wired into us biologically, so when we start poking around at them, we start getting symptoms like anxiety.

For instance, I hate conflict. I will go out of my way to avoid conflict. I will pay money to avoid conflict. I will do things I don't necessarily want to do to avoid conflict. If two people are arguing around me, I feel great anxiety, and I want to leave, to escape. Avoiding conflict is an old defense mechanism from way back. I no longer need it. Today I'm safe. But because I haven't yet worked on that defense mechanism, it's still there. When I do get to work on it, this is what I will need to do:

When involved in a conflict situation with another person, I must physically calm myself, probably by breathing, even perhaps by temporarily removing myself from the situation to calm down. Then I must reassure myself with some pre-planned self talk to let me know that I'm ok and this is ok and I am safe. Then I must engage and try to peacefully and reasonably resolve the conflict. And then, I must tell myself that I survived it. Repeat probably 20 or 30 times, and I'll have changed my belief about conflict, and it will no longer engage my automatic autonomic fight or flight reaction.

I haven't worked through this one yet because I haven't gotten a big enough carrot; I do, however, see it on the horizon. I've experienced so much change and growth over the past 4 years that I now expect more to come. I've still got a lot of stuff hanging in there that I can get rid of.

But the point is that the more I allow change to occur in my life, the easier it gets for me to let it happen. My resistance drops much more quickly than it used to because I'm reaping the vast benefits of positive progressive change. I used to live in a pretty small and narrow world. I suffered. I choose to no longer suffer, but, in order to avoid suffering, I must  accept some temporary but beneficial pain.

If you've made it this far with me, God bless you! I just learned today some ways to make desired change a little more palatable, and if I implement these methods, I'll let you know how it turns out. 

Namaste,

Ken

Some Helpful Tools for Time Management

About 10 years ago I was diagnosed with ADD (attention deficit disorder). I've had it since elementary school, and probably my whole life. I sometimes wish I had the 'H' (hyperactivity) that often goes with it. I've tried to treat it a couple of times with Ritalin, and that hasn't been a satisfactory solution - I didn't like how controlled the drug is, and I always seemed to build up a tolerance.

I have found that mindfulness helps me greatly. There are certain things that people with ADD or ADHD can do to lessen the negative effects of the disorder. Two books by Edward M. Hallowell, MD, Driven to Distraction and Delivered from Distraction give a very good explanation of ADD and helpful pointers in living well with it. By the way, there is a positive side to it - people with ADD are generally imaginative and creative, and can be quite productive when we learn to work with the disorder rather than against it. One thing that really helps is finding a job that has a variety of things to do - I have a tendency to lose interest in what I'm doing rather quickly, so if I have a few things to bounce around, it's helpful. I imagine that if I was operating a huge press in a factory pounding out the same fender every day, I'd eventually lose a body part due to inattention. Fortunately I currently have jobs that allow me to do different things throughout the day. Even when I was answering phones at the call center all day, we had lots of accounts, so the calls were all different. I could stay focused.

So my challenges at my current jobs are I now have jobs in which I'm not told exactly what to do and when to do it. It's up to me. Another challenge with ADD is that we are poor estimators on how long a task will take. With having multiple things to do and no clear outline on the order in which they should go, I found myself getting behind and feeling a little overwhelmed. My jobs involve helping people and talking with people, but I also do administrative stuff, and, in that department, I was lagging.

At my main job we use Trello, which allows us to communicate better about different projects going on, and also allows us to set reminders and deadlines for ourselves. It's like a central file cabinet with all the to-do lists, only it's digital. Perfect for me, because paper clutter has always been a bugaboo. And then, this week, my supervisor told me about Timecamp. Timecamp allows me to track what I'm doing, either at home or at work. For Timecamp, I simply start the clock and put in the task I'm doing. When I'm done, I stop the clock and start it again on another task. When I'm at the front desk, I type in front desk, and in the comments I can put down the things that I've done while at the front desk - support calls, entering records, whatever. What this does for me is it helps me stay on task, because I'm mindful that I'm keeping track of myself. Additionally, it helps me realize how much I do in a day. Some days I do so much yet have felt unproductive, because I didn't remember half of the things I did. If you do Timecamp, I would recommend two accounts if you're going to do it for your job and for your other life. Additionally, in Timecamp you can run reports to actually see how long it takes to do certain things. 

Both of these software applications have free versions, and I am not getting paid to endorse them. I imagine in today's world that plenty of these types of programs abound. And that's another thing: I'm very grateful for the things I can do with modern technology - it has really enhanced my creativity and, when used skillfully, it enriches my life. 

So there's a few really practical things that have helped me a great deal.

Namaste,

Ken

Mindful Helping

I unintentionally opened a can of worms this morning in our reflections group. Without going too far into specifics, I made what I thought was a fairly clear and straightforward statement about living in community and looking out for each other. A discussion that was longer and more in-depth than I had anticipated (or desired) ensued. I don't think we came to any hard and fast conclusions about when and how to help the people we live with.

The incident got me to thinking about how I determine when and how to help someone. I looked at my past behavior and my present behavior regarding this, and what 'rules' I follow. I'm pretty sure this is a topic upon which a whole book could be written, and, even after it was written, there'd still be questions about the 'right' way to help someone.

In the past, helping someone was rarely done from my heart, or with any sense of rationality or even humility. I helped when I had something to gain from helping. Often, that gain came in the form of ego gratification or to escape confrontation. A pretty girl had a lot better chance of getting help from me than some guy did. (In fact, sometimes with women I would get obsessed with helping them out, which usually ended with me getting resentful and then drunk. Obsession deserves its own post). Inside, I usually expected something in return for my giving of myself or my money. Sometimes I helped because then I could feel superior to those I was helping. Sometimes I withheld help in order to punish. Often I helped to receive pats on the back, to make someone else make me feel better about myself.

The common ingredient in the way in which I helped others in the past was me. Or, more accurately, my fragile, arbitrary ego. These are not healthy ways to help for me. They threaten my recovery. One way to avoid helping in this manner is to stop helping. I don't think that's healthy, either. Another way for me to learn to help others helpfully is to constantly be on the lookout for the things I put in italics above - is it part of an obsession? Do I have expectations surrounding my help? Is my helping someone helping me to feel superior? Is my ego getting stroked? Am I helping out of fear - like a fear of rejection?

Now, my experience has been that I don't change overnight. This means that in my giving and helping, there are probably still elements of selfishness and ego gratification. However, I can move toward a more healthy helping and giving. For instance, I gave someone a handmade gift (I've probably mentioned this before), and the giving had healthy and unhealthy elements. I care for this person, and I wanted to give him something nice that came from my creativity - that's healthy. I also recognized that I had expectations surrounding the gift. He was supposed to open it in front of a bunch of other people - that didn't happen, and I watched how my thinking went to the disappointment of the dashed expectation. Because I was being observant and mindful, it didn't really matter that part of me went there, because I chose not to focus on what my expectations were, and chose to focus on the fact that I was able to give someone a nice gift that came from the heart.

I think, too, that now that I recognize a higher power that is not only operative in my life but the lives of everyone, the way in which I give is different. I no longer try to be someone's higher power through helping and giving (obsession). And there seem to be a lot of times, especially lately, when people may come to me for something that isn't mine to give. In those cases, I can give support and referral to other resources. There's a part of me that wants to be the Godfather - you come to me needing something, I can supply it. That attitude is 'playing God' (hence the term Godfather), and I avoid doing that. I have to trust that if I can't give someone what they need, our Higher Power will give it to them another way.

Another helpful guideline someone gave me a few years ago - If I do something for someone that they can do for themselves, I'm subconsciously telling them that I don't believe they can do it. This is very important to me in my role as a peer specialist, and even in general as a human being. The greatest discoveries in my life have been when I've been able to do something that I thought I couldn't do. I don't want to deprive anyone of finding out how powerful they really are by doing things for them that they can be doing themselves. Now, sometimes, maybe often, this puts me in a position where I have to say 'no' to folks, and I really don't like doing that. It still makes me uncomfortable, so I guess I have room to grow in that area. But people desiring recovery from addiction and mental health conditions come from a state of helplessness. I still remember vividly when I believed I would never be able to support myself or live by myself. Had I had too many people agree with me on that, I might not be alive today. I certainly wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now. So it is very important to allow people to discover what they're really made of.

I also have professional ethical boundaries, which give me guidance on how much I can help another. They are useful guidelines, but sometimes I cross those boundaries when I feel I'm doing the right thing. I'm not a big stickler on following rules simply because they're the rules (just kidding if any of my supervisors are reading this!).

Lastly, I need to be mindful of my own needs, which is very much a challenge for me. I still have a tendency to overextend myself in the 'service' of others. Just thinking about it now, writing about Helping Myself could be its own post, if not an entire book. Taking time for myself, by myself, recharging, taking care of my physical, mental, and spiritual health all require time, and very often I find myself out of time to take care of myself. To be of maximum service to others, I must make sure my own house is in order, to quote one of the recovery texts out there. In other words, if I haven't been taking care of myself, I will be deficient physically, spiritually, or mentally, or all three, and whatever I have to give to someone else might not be all that great. It's a definite balancing act right now on my recovery journey.

Halfway through writing this I changed the title to what it is now, Mindful Helping, and I think this is the key. Practicing mindful helping means being aware, very basically, of my motives and how my actions will impact others and me when helping others. This doesn't mean that all of my choices will be the best choices possible, but it does mean I'll be paying attention to help me avoid the pitfalls I used to experience. Today I can learn from my experiences, and when something doesn't feel right to me, I discuss it with another. 

What I'm most grateful for is that the spirit of service seems to be deeply embedded in me. It's like a gift or a talent that I desire to develop as much as I can. So when I do mindful helping, I'm benefiting not only another human being, I'm benefiting myself, and affirming our connection with the Universe. 

Namaste,

Ken