January 10

ACCEPTANCE MONTH: DAY 10: “Study yourself. Become your own mentor and best friend. When you are suffering stay at the bottom until you find out who you are. Let the storms come and pass. How you walk through the fire says a lot about you. Nobody likes a victimhood mentality and what happened to you is not important. It is about how you use your chaos that matters. The dawn will come”―M. Najumi

This quote is new for me, but screamed at me when I was gathering quotes at the end of last month. Yes! It is a great concept that has taken me a while to be able to practice in my life.

To sit still when we are in confusion, fear and lost is not the thing addicts know how to do. Quite the opposite, we run away and hide from all of this stuff. The fact is this: most addicts do NOT know what to do with emotions that are anything less than us getting our way.

We medicate, in one way or another, all feelings that we find uncomfortable…in other words…all feelings. We eat, play on our phones, run to this or that, anything other than sitting with the feelings. I know it has taken me over 20 years to be able to practice this most of the time. Even now, after nearly 34 years, I am unable to say that I do it all the time. The default setting in our brains is to fight, flight or freeze.

How we do that is to shut down and move into addictive behavior. If we don’t drink or use, we mask feelings with food, online shopping, busy-ness, and more busy-ness. And we create the story…omg!…the story. Ugh!

Poor me, life is doing this, he or she is doing this…it is pathetic and such an incredible waste of space. We take up a ton of air in the Universe with the story. And it is BS anyway. Just our response to life. So sad. So, to sit still with my “stuff” is the greatest gift. I feel honored and heard and like I DO have a best friend. ME! What a great gift…I love this practice. And this quote. It is like I am finally in love with Kelly and giving her the time and attention she spent way too many years looking for. It is NOT your job or anyone’s job.

It IS my job. I just never did it before. It takes a long time to get there. We are such adrenaline junkies and whores. We sell ourselves way too cheaply, and then become tremendously sad and angry at the world for not meeting our needs. Ugh! We can channel this into TRUE acceptance and love for ourselves and the world around us. But I cannot give it to you sincerely until I can give it to me. Says that in the BB. I cannot transmit something I have not got.