October 10

DISCIPLINE MONTH: DAY 10: “Stop seeing discipline as something you hate or dislike; start embracing it, start loving it, start seeing it for the friend of your success that it really is, and start seeing comfort for the enemy of your success that it really is.” ― Jeanette Coron

I am uncomfortable with growth, change, development of spiritual principles and new behaviors. When I work with addicts in treatment or in sponsorship, they like to tell me how “hard” all of this new stuff is. I will not allow them to use this language. Nothing about recovery is hard.

It IS uncomfortable, new, different, awkward until we practice for some time, unusual, and so forth. That is because our “comfort” level is at the level of dysfunction, addiction, insanity, prison, and the bottom we reach with all of our old ideas and behaviors.

Unfortunately, the world around us, and most people in recovery believe that all we need to do is stop drinking and using drugs. That is NOT the recovery you need. Recovery is shifting EVERY SINGLE THING in your life to be in a different state of acceptance and openness to loss of ego.

EVERY SINGLE THING. That IS going to make you REALLY, REALLY UNCOMFORTABLE! Oh! Yeah! So we MUST shift that thinking. If you are uncomfortable, it is because you are stuck in an old idea and cannot get free.

There is NO recovery in staying uncomfortable. There IS recovery in walking through discomfort to find a new way of being in this world and a new attitude about LIFE. THAT will become your new comfortable. And EVERY time I do this, I find a new level of comfort with myself and life. Not with you, because I do not need to be comfortable with YOU. I need to be comfortable with ME and my life.

I need the discipline to see what I need to shift to get comfortable with me. That means I may often have to step away from you and your drama or your way of being in the world. If I sit in your shit long enough, it becomes my shit. And I don’t need that. I have enough shit of my own to wade through already.

If I am here to be of service, the greatest service I can provide is to let you be in your shit and walk away. I serve you best when I don’t play in your shit. Me playing in your shit in the name of “helping” you is never going to work. If I am your sponsor, I will tell you to get out of your shit and show you how. If you keep doing it, I will walk away. I got nothing for anyone who enjoys playing in  their shit.

I insist on having sponsorship that tells me when I am sitting in my shit. I need that. I don’t need to be in that space. It is a waste of my life and my recovery. There is no time to lose. I am here for the work, not the shit.

If you don’t want to change, that is your business. I don’t care, really. I wish you well, but the world is full of addicts. If you are stuck in your shit, I got to move on to the ones who want to benefit from the work I can do with them. It ain’t hard, but it ain’t sitting still either.