Don't take this personally, but...

One of the wonderful, easier-said-than-done maxims thesedays is “Don’t take it personally.” When you take a moment to ponder what this statement is actually telling you, it can be quite useful in securing your daily happiness and sanity. The idea is to remember that everything really isn’t about you.

As an addict, I have the innate ability to make everything about me.  Most often, I am the center of my own universe and feel like I should be the center of yours too. I’ve spent the majority of my life expecting you to accommodate all my needs and wants and I’ve conversely often been disappointed in the fact that you don’t share that agenda. Anything that annoys me feels like a personal slight, when in fact it rarely has a thing in the world to do with Jesse A. Trout.

That grandmother going 60 mph on the interstate isn’t doing it to ruin my morning; she’s just going a speed that feels safe for her. The person with a full cart of groceries in the 20 Items or Less line isn’t trying to pee in my proverbial Cheerios. While it is inconvenient when I only have a gallon of water, it’s much more about that person only considering his or her own needs than them setting out with the purpose of upsetting me in mind.

I am much happier when I remember that I don’t need to take things personally. I have no idea what is going on in someone else’s life that causes them to do the things they do. They have no idea what is going on in mine (nor do they usually care).

On a deeper level, what someone else thinks of me is not my business. This is just another example of the need to stay in my own lane and worry about controlling my own thoughts and actions. I have no control over anyone else’s perception of me, nor can I control the things they do or say.

The best policy I have found for remembering to put this concept into practice is simply to take a step back and look at things objectively.  If an incident is the result of my own wrongdoing, I must promptly own up to it, apologize and go about the task of setting it right. I also need to be sure to see things for what they are and recognize and accept that they almost always aren’t about me.

As humans, we all “inter-are” and this world does not revolve around anyone. This acceptance is one of the keys to maintaining serenity and the goofy grin on my face. While the things that others do often have an effect on me, it is up to me just how much of an effect that I choose to allow anything to have on my happiness and peace. I determine my own actions and reactions and my life is lived at a much higher level of efficiency and efficacy when the actions greatly outnumber the reactions.  We must all be accountable for our own happiness in each and every moment.

Why Do Good Things Happen to Bad People?

Throughout the ages, people have searched (often in vain) for the reason that bad things sometimes happen to good people. The reasons behind those occurrences are certainly worth contemplating, but today I want to talk about something a little less often openly discussed. We have all had moments of confusion when a person we absolutely cannot stand, whose every breath seems to make us feel ill has some wonderful (seemingly unfair) circumstance occur while we are piddling around waiting for our proverbial ship to come in. We wonder how such a good thing could happen for such a crummy person.

How could God, the universe, the fates or just plain chance take a shining to this nincompoop jerk who lies, cheats and bamboozles his or her way through life? No matter your belief structure, it just doesn’t seem fair or right. This is a difficult pill for any person to swallow, but can be especially bothersome to an addict, active or recovering. 

You see one of our specialties is jealousy of the most rotten variety. It can and will eat away at us every bit as voraciously as self-pity or resentment. Jealousy enables us to feel bitterly angry without it being “our fault,” so it feels like the perfect crime. We can be so angry that some jerk hit it big that we are temporarily taken away from all our feelings and thoughts of inadequacy and self-loathing, and as such it provides a perfect vehicle for drinking and using.

The fact is that keeping your own side of the street clean is one of the first and only duties in life that is exclusively yours. As tempting as it can be to take someone else’s moral inventory for them (and perhaps even take the time to point it out to them along the way) it is the very definition of a futile exercise. While it may be temporarily gratifying to take a bath in someone else’s evil deeds, it does absolutely nothing to help cleanse the real source of anyone’s problems: your own mind.

Self-improvement and spiritual growth are first-rate focuses of the individuals seeking to build a better life for themselves. Put quite simply, you should be too busy making yourself better one day at a time to be concerned with what anyone else has or doesn’t have. Making sure you do the next right things every chance you get is all you need to be busy on any given day.

It is a fact that good things happen even to bad people, but it basically falls into the category of things over which you have no control. If you spend too much time worrying over anything that you can’t control, you will miss out on all the great opportunities for happiness that exist in every single day of your life. Be too concerned with making your life everything that it can be to have time to worry yourself with things that never were your business to begin with. 

Success

Success can sometimes be a terribly dangerous thing. As with any occurrence in our lives, if an unhealthy perspective is taken on a good thing then bad things can and often will result. As any recovering addict can tell you, successes were just as worthy a cause for imbibing as failures. I didn’t need a terrible or terrific day to spur me on to a bender, but they sure did help me have a ready-made excuse. In this narrative I want to discuss the danger of success in the life of a recovering addict.

You see, the most dangerous part of success is that it often enables complacency. There’s the requisite patting yourself on the back, typically followed by resting on your accomplishment while you tell everyone about what you’ve done.  Before you know it you are paying today’s debts with yesterday’s successes and that account will go bankrupt far quicker than most realize. The point is that if you aren’t moving forward you are moving backward. You don’t get to coast in neutral in this life.

 Complacency is ultimately a death sentence for a person in recovery. If you truly think you’ve permanently defeated the beast within, you are in a seriously dangerous place. The sizeable dimensions of the addict’s ego are staggering.

Couple that with the fact that addicts are typified by the description of being an “egomaniac with an inferiority complex,” and you have a recipe for disaster. That’s exactly what our active addiction brings us until we get to a point where even we cannot keep up in with the chaos we claim to embrace.

 Ego is a tremendous threat to anyone’s happiness and success. Ego says, “Look at what I’ve done!” Humility simply asks, “What can I do now?” Ego is a falsely inflated sense of oneself. It breeds laziness and bitterness with the illusion of achievement. No person can ever know everything about anything, and the sooner in life one can come to that conclusion the more they have put themselves in a position to truly succeed. The person who humbly embraces a beginner’s mind in all things will walk the path of lifelong learning and constant growth.

Are you mentally dwelling on past successes (or failures) when you should be climbing the next mountain? It may be time to step back, step down and start over. All any of us have is today; this fleeting moment in which we are breathing is our only guarantee. If you ask a room full of old timers who has the most sobriety, you’ll be answered with a question: “Well, who woke up the earliest today?”

 If you live today rightly, it’s all you’ll ever need anyway.

Rigorous Honesty

One vital part of recovering from any addiction (and any worthwhile life for that matter) is the necessary adoption of being rigorously honest. It is important to note that rigorous is not brutal. Deciding upon this as a personal ideal does not give anyone the license to be purposefully hurtful or overly confrontational. Life does not often present anyone with the circumstance wherein that is appropriate. You don’t get to act like a jerk and play the recovery card. Rigorous honesty simply describes being honest in all matters big or small, seen or unseen.

One pattern of behavior into which many addicts (and plenty of normal people) fall is that of telling “white” lies or making seemingly innocent exaggerations. While at a glance these behaviors may seem harmless, your subconscious is keeping a sort of tally and the guilt begins to form a spiritual obstacle directly between you and true happiness.

One cannot be simultaneously deceitful and happy. It is simply an empty existence. Happiness becomes fleeting and true friends become scarce. Lies lead to more lies and your entire existence becomes a hazy, shadowy scam. Alcohol, drugs or any other form of acting out become a coping mechanism that helps the addict feel good about themselves again, even if only temporarily.

Often the lies are a way of creating a persona for the addict about which they can feel good. They lack the normal self-worth of a typical person and feel the need to lie or exaggerate to turn himself or herself into someone worth knowing or even loving. The addict does not realize that who they are is good enough for others because that person isn’t even good enough for them.

Self-loathing is a battle addicts fight moment-to-moment, even long after the last drink or drug. Personally it is a war that rages daily inside my mind. It is only when I am reminded that who I am is really not that bad that I can function without an empty, angry self-hatred in my gut. It is a constant companion and something that I can become all too accustomed to feeling. 

Honesty really is the best policy, as cheesy and outdated as many may feel this saying is. Rigorous honesty makes life simpler and lessens a great deal of the guilt, shame and remorse. Why lie? Who you are is good enough for someone, somewhere once who you are becomes good enough for you. You must love yourself before you can successfully love anyone else, and you have to start with honesty.

Make yourself someone worth loving in your own eyes without chemical assistance. It won’t happen overnight but it will be one of the most worthwhile things you ever do.