about happiness

Happiness is a function of two things: attitude and circumstance.

Sometimes, I exist in circumstances that are not conducive to my being happy. Such circumstances are those that seem to force me to behave in ways contrary to my integrity, values, learning style, talents or preferred skills. If a job doesn't allow me to use my best abilities, there's a good chance I won't be happy. If I'm in a relationship with someone who is verbally, emotionally or physically abusive, I probably won't be happy. So to be happy, I need to change my circumstances.

Yet, I wonder if attitude isn't the basic factor in happiness. There's a quote by Abraham Lincoln that "most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be." If I decide that I want to be happy, I will seek circumstances that are beneficial to my mental and physical health, that contribute to my further spiritual and social growth, that feel nurturing and positive. For so long, it felt comfortable to be unhappy and complaining about everything around me. It wasn't easy to get to the point where I realized I was the common denominator in all the problems I had or faced. I resisted for many moons the knowledge that I could take action to change my circumstances if I was dissatisfied. It took great pain for me to understand that I could leave dissatisfying relationships, jobs, environs - or I could accept that I was exactly where I was supposed to be and be happy in spite of unsatisfactory circumstances.

When I made the decision to be happy, when it felt more comfortable to be happy than to complain, it became clear that even awful circumstances couldn't make me unhappy. Circumstances no longer had the power to control my mood and attitude. And by accepting where I was and coming to understand why I was in a certain situation, I was finally able to change my circumstances to more salubrious ones. Paradoxically, my decision to be happy no matter what allowed me to create happier circumstances.

This shift in attitude, this desire to seek a state of happiness regardless of circumstance has stood me well as I face circumstances beyond my control - David's illness and death, my physical problems, work travails. I can't bring David back. I really am disabled - although I do know there is more I can and will do to become more physically able. And I can't change the past and how I behaved toward and was treated by employers. Because circumstances are out of my control, the only thing I can do anything about is my attitude.

Sometimes I find myself depressed, lonely, hopeless. While these feelings were familiar and comfortable in the past, they no longer are. I don't want to wallow, to feel sorry for myself - at least, not for very long! And so I change my attitude. I seek to be serene, happy, content, satisfied with the life and blessings I have now. And lo and behold, I find myself gravitating toward other people or doing something positive like writing or gardening or calling someone. I no longer feel powerless and trapped by my circumstances. I find the power I do have, and exercise it. I feel better about myself for doing so.

about keeping the focus on myself

This slogan is the heart of my path to spiritual peace. It sums up the wisest approach to healing by suggesting that I keep my focus on my own path, my own feelings, my own recovery - instead of focusing on the people and problems in my life.

When I first began working on becoming happy, I learned that the condition of the Al-Anonic was just like that of the alcoholic. We too suffer from the family disease of alcoholism. The difference? While the alcoholic has his/her arms around the bottle, we have our arms around the alcoholic. The A can't see anything but the bottle, and we can't see anything but the alcoholic. The A focuses on alcohol, we focus on the alcoholic. The A's life is defined by alcohol, our lives are defined by the A.

I kept track of how much my loved ones drank, counting drinks and bottles. I carefully watched my tongue and my step around my primary qualifier when she had a few, so I wouldn't be in any danger from her unpredictable temper. I edited everything I said around her for fear I would be criticized. I tried so hard to protect myself that I began to disappear. I got so used to hiding my own opinions, it was almost impossible for me to know what I thought about anything. I found myself incapable of spontaneity. It was hard to make friends because I couldn't be myself. I found myself with friends who were very needy, critical, demanding, mean, charming, manipulative, alcoholic. People who had little ability to give me anything I needed.

While I was frustrated and angry almost all the time, I also was comfortable. This was what I knew. I knew very well how to focus on someone else's needs, moods, preferences, behavior. I criticized and complained about these friends, just as I did about my qualifier. And I felt they were legitimate complaints. I "knew" that if they would only begin to see me, pay attention to me, stop criticizing me, etc. then my life would be better. If they would only "do unto me" as I had been doing unto them, everything wold be good. See, I am so good to you, can't you follow my example and be good to me?

Just writing about this makes me queasy. It was such a miserable existence, focusing on how other people were responsible for me not getting what I needed in life. It took me a long time to realize that I was in fact the person responsible for the quality and conditions of my life. No one else. Just me.

More than that, I learned that I could change the conditions and quality of my life. With the help of the program, the fellowship, and my Higher Power, I could actually become fully myself and be surrounded by people who support and celebrate me as I am. I could have mutually loving and respectful friendships and relationships. And all I had to do was take the first step - admitting I am powerless over alcohol and other people - and use the slogan "keep the focus on myself."

This slogan gives me permission to start paying attention to myself and empowers me to begin my own recovery. By keeping the focus on myself, I began to understand my role in my unhappy life. I began to see that I made choices every day about whether to listen to my own feelings or ignore them, whether to react instantly or angrily to something my A did or said - or take some time to think and consider and then respond thoughtfully, whether to take on one more task along with a resentment or to carefully consider my time and energy level and respond yes or no to the request - and if I said yes, to do so with pleasure and willingness to do the best I can.

Keeping the focus on myself, I learned about my boundaries and began to see that I was the one who violated them by giving in to unreasonable requests or demands from other people. I started to recognize how I felt when I was being criticized by someone else, and to quickly detach from that person or situation or conversation -either physically or emotionally or both. And by keeping the focus on myself, I learned how to be good to myself - buying flowers once in a while, taking a hot bubble bath, having alone time, reading a book or watching a TV show without guilt, going to meetings, slowly making friends with people who saw ME and liked me, laughing and having fun.

As I write all this, I remember the concept of detachment. Detachment helps me remember that the other person's behavior and attitudes are not my business. My only real business is my own attitudes and behavior. And those I can learn about and begin to change when I keep the focus on myself.

on omitting "all" from Step 6

Hmmm. Maybe I need to be reminded that Step 6 asks me to become ready to surrender ALL my defects to the God of my understanding. Not just a few, not most, but all.

There are surely still some defects of which I'm not fully conscious, because they are more subtle or were hard to see given the enormity and visibility of some more glaring ways I get in my own way. I find they emerge as I and my Higher Power clear the path of the extreme dysfunctional habits and attitudes. Yet even if they're not completely visible now, it's important that I be willing to be fully free of limitations, completely willing to let go of "my way" to happiness.

When I am willing to admit there may be another way for me to be happy, then I am free. As long as I "hold on to old ideas," I get in my own way and limit my life to my vision. After 25 years in recovery, I have ample experience that says my vision is so small compared with the possibilities that the universe/my HP have in store for me, many of which have already manifested in my life.

about Step 6: "Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."

I didn't really know what Step 6 meant. It's about a state of being, I thought. So how exactly am I to get to that state of being entirely ready to have God remove my defects? I thought I already was ready, because I was so sick and tired of being unhappy, discontent, irritable and angry all the time. Weren't those my defects?

Then I did Steps 4 and 5 and learned much more about the causes of those defects - my high (unrealistic) expectations of myself and others, my fear of failing, my inability to focus on myself, my constant trying to twist myself into whatever shape "you" wanted me to be for fear of being alone, my loneliness because I was afraid of people - especially of them criticizing me - and afraid of being disappointed by a relationship with a higher power, and my arrogance that I was smarter than you and more powerful than God. It was a pretty hefty list, and quite dismaying in its scope and depth.

OK then, I thought. Now I really know what my defects are. After all, I'd just spent a few weeks writing and a few hours speaking about them. And I did know my defects - in concept, and viewed through the lens of history. For Step 4 asked me to look at all the resentments and fears and envies and arrogance that plagued me up until that moment. It was hindsight. Extremely revealing and humbling hindsight, but hindsight nonetheless. Little did I know that I was about to encounter all those defects in the here and now.

Step 6 was for me about the experience of behaving in the old ways while being conscious of doing so. I watched myself through the new lens of awareness. That lens magnified my behavior so I could see it in detail. And I was horrified by some of it, pained by other, and brought to tears of frustration by yet other behavior. I couldn't stop doing it. I watched myself retreat into a silent huff when my significant other criticized me, knowing full well that a) my withdrawal was an effective punishment but b) that it would only make matters worse. I likened it to being at the top of a hill caught in a snowball and the snowball was charging down the hill and I was powerless to stop it.

The key word here is "powerless." Yes, I was powerless to stop my behavior. Sure, I could make some changes, and I did. But the fundamental beliefs and motivations were still very active - including the belief that "I" could change my behavior. Luckily, my defects were in the process of humbling me.

There's an Irish blessing that begins "may the road rise up to meet you." The blessing for me was that once I became aware of my defects through Steps 4 and 5, I was presented with opportunity after opportunity to see them in action. The road was rising up to meet me, and it was just what I needed to bring me to a state of being of total readiness - readiness to surrender.

Feeling powerless to change myself, to rid myself of my defects of character, combined with horror that I was doing the same old things with the same horrible results and growing despair that I could ever change: these were the preconditions for my total surrender in Step 7. I became "entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character" when I experienced my defects in my present daily life while acutely aware of their inability to get me what I wanted.

What I wanted was serenity, acceptance, patience, self-love, and more - all the promises of recovery. I had a vision of what life could be like, by watching people in the program who had gone through the Steps. I wanted what you had. And it was only possible if I surrendered to a power greater than myself, trusting that God could and would do what I could not, if only I were to ask for help.

Pain and hope together made me entirely ready to take Step 7.