October 14

DISCIPLINE MONTH: DAY 14: “We cultivate our feelings the way we cultivate a garden: we can’t entirely prevent weeds from coming up, but we can take care to remove them before they do much harm.” ― Phillip Cary

This is a good quote for me, because I love to garden. I love to create beauty where there is nothing to see. Each home I move into becomes a canvas for me to decorate. Not only my gardens, but my home as well.

When we allow our feelings to run the show, we are in trouble. The reason we begin, in very early recovery, to recognize what we are feeling and to stay in touch with those feelings is so we can begin to take responsibility for our actions.

Step 10 is a daily practice of weeding our gardens. We get to check in to our feelings and daily behavior. It is a deep practice that is best practiced daily; for when we leave it alone for any length of time, we end up creating another mess.

Most addicts want to sweep their feelings under the rug. They get very busy with other things so they can ignore that uncomfortable feeling they got yesterday and the day before when someone said something to them that hurt their feelings. Then they will continue to build a case around what that person is up to, what an asshole they are, etc.

When we check in to our feelings each day, we can check into relationships that may need to be weeded.

Sometimes they need to be cleared of weeds, sometimes it is just about letting go of those feelings and seeing why we have them. Most of the time, in my experience, it is about my perception of what they said and how they said it.

When I ask the other person what they might have meant with what they said, I am often surprised to learn that they were not intending to hurt my feelings at all. Sometimes, and this is most often the truth, I am way too self-centered and take way too many things personally and seriously.

One of the things I don’t hear a lot in meetings is the Four Agreements that I know a lot of recovering people read. It is a great little book.

One premise I have had to really adopt, being extremely self-centered (what some people say is “sensitive” …ha!), is that I need to NOT TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Oh! Okay! I know some of us can be assholes at times. That is our stuff. Others believe it is about them. It is a problem.

So, Step 10 keeps me right-sized. If I am being an asshole, I can clean that up and (hopefully!) stop being an asshole.

Checking in with myself, I get to process this stuff. I don’t want it to go on long enough to damage my relationships with others. Sometimes I really don’t want to, but pulling weeds is a spiritual thing for me. It keeps my gardens full of flowers and things I choose to have there.

Same in life. Keep what you want and get rid of the rest. Just be careful. Sometimes we throw out a plant we really wanted, instead of a weed. That is why we keep doing this stuff. It gets easier and we get better when we do.