Category Archives: Thought for the Day

Trust Your Gut – Part 2

Leave a reply
Intuition vs. Logic

“I believe in intuition and inspiration. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason why.” Do you know who said that? It was none other than Albert Einstein.

 “Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect.” Any guesses? It was Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs.

Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs both attributed their extraordinary success to this personality trait of listening to their intuition. They have both been stated saying “it has never let me down.”

The article linked below was written with personal defense in mind. At first it might not seem germane to recovery — but think about it! What’s more pertinent to the recovery process than personal defense? Surely no one else is going to do it for us — keep us out of slippery places, warn us of situations or thinking that might lead us down the wrong path, give us that feeling between our shoulder blades that lets us know that we’re maybe in something that’s over our heads?

As I wrote in the previous post, our gut is one of our most powerful tools, if we listen to what it’s trying to tell us. But addicts seem to be more interested in what we want to do (I want, I want, I WANT!), rather than paying attention to creepy feelings. The remarks in the article below can (and do) easily apply to many issues in our lives, from the urge to tell that fib to the feeling that someone may have messed with our drink. Read it and think about all the possible applications of “gut feelings.”

Oh…and don’t let the source of the article offend you. Shooting messengers is almost never good policy.

https://tinyurl.com/2fxpdt6q

Trust Your Gut

Leave a reply

There is nothing mystical about hunches, intuition, and trusting your gut. We are all the sum total of millions–billions–of experiences, and we remember most of them on some level. We are well-equipped to let our subconscious minds help us out with problems, armed as they are with that wealth of experience.

But we often–if not usually–force ourselves to ignore those gut feelings, the feeling that something is just sort of “icky.” We want to do something, say something, buy something, to fill that empty place inside, and we think up all sorts of ways to justify our wants to ourselves and ignore the message that our subconscious mind is sending loud and clear, if we choose to hear it. Then we go on with the self-deception and make up ways to justify whatever it is to others–our partner, our business associates, our sponsors, our friends but, ultimately, to ourselves.

Good, healthy ideas seldom need justification. Feeling a need to explain, to justify, should tell us that something’s wrong somewhere. It may simply be a neurotic need on our part to assure ourselves and everyone else that we’re really OK, but there’s also an excellent possibility that we’re about to venture where we ought to fear to tread, guided by the child inside who is telling us it’s OK because I Want, I Want, I Want. In either case, there are two possible clues: the urge to hide whatever it is, or the urge to justify it. Both should set off our alarms.

Bitch, whine and debate, or Experience, Strength, and Hope?

Leave a reply

The other night I was at a meeting where the chair asked for a topic, and one of our more “intellectual” members raised a hand and commenced a five-minute dissertation on how they didn’t understand why we say in the rooms that it takes an addict to really understand an addict, why they shouldn’t just be able to speak openly about their addiction to any friend and get useful feedback, etc. They used the words obviously, clearly and in my opinion a lot. This sort of thing does nothing to promote discussion about recovery; it merely exercises the ego of the speaker.

Our fellowships are not debating societies. They are about getting a sponsor, developing a support system, working the steps and practicing the 12 principles* in our daily lives. If I want to bitch, whine or debate, I need to do it outside a meeting with my sponsor or a support, not hijack a meeting with subjects that have little or nothing to do with the process of recovery. Better yet, at whatever point in recovery I may be, I need to remember that I’m the problem, and projecting my complaints onto other people or ideas is not conducive to a genuine pursuit of sobriety.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing now: projecting my issues.

Or maybe not.

  • 12 Principles? What 12 principles?

Think About What You’re Posting

Leave a reply

I was just browsing Instagram and found the following:

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”

I see this kind thing all too frequently. It’s indicative of the lack of attention we give to the things we post and the messages we send. I’m sure that the woman who posted it saw the aphorism someplace and thought “Oh, inspiring,” then posted it without further thought.

But what is the underlying message? If you get discouraged, quit; it isn’t going to happen. If we applied that philosophy to life most of us addicts would be dead now (or wish we were) and very little would get accomplished in general.

We – all of us – need to be mindful of the messages that we send to others by our posts, the things we say, and the ways we behave, even when we’re just fooling around. I don’t mean we shouldn’t share things we find inspirational, nor have bumper stickers that reflect our real feelings, nor goof on stuff and have a little fun, but merely that we should look deeply at why these things appeal to us and consider what impressions, perhaps even impact, they might have on others.

I don’t believe the example above is going to destroy anyone’s life, but it doesn’t say a whole lot about the deep thinking of whomever originated the phrase and it’s a perfect example of the stuff we see on the Web. We’re inundated with posts that the perpetrator failed to think about or check out before laying them on people who might not bother to either. Like sheep they repost, and thus pass on the deception or misunderstanding to others. Much of the damage done by this sort of thoughtless posting and reposting is directly reflected in the dissonance of our current national discourse. Facebook isn’t responsible for our unwillingness to think critically; we are.

We human beings believe what makes us comfortable and rarely bother to check out things that seem to agree with what we think we know. Unfortunately, that makes us easy to lead around by our feelings instead of our intellects. We need to be mindful of the difference between opinions and facts.

As John F. Kennedy said so memorably,

“Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”