The human mind is remarkably susceptible to variations in interpretations of our world. The amazing thing is that our interpretation of things in the world can totally control the quality of our life. Two different people can be in the exact same situation, one person will be happy and content while the other is miserable. The difference is on how each person perceives their situation, in other words the person's perspective.
Changing our perspective can, in fact, have a robust effect on our happiness in life. One man in recovery from substance use put sit this way: “When I focus on what’s good today, I have a good day, and when I focus on what’s bad, I have a bad day. If I focus on a problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases” (A.A. Big Book, page 419). We are lucky here… changing our perspective is easy to do. It’s a free way to have better days!
The key to a perspective that leads to happiness is gratitude.
Gratitude
It’s human nature to take what we have for granted, and to covet what we don’t have. When we receive something we are soon focussed on obtaining the next thing. There’s even a certain dissatisfaction that sets in when we get what we want. It’s healthy to want and to set realistic goals and work toward achieving what we want – that helps us succeed in life. However, when wanting something amounts to raw envy and jealousy of those who have what we want, and therefore leaves us resenting them and the world for keeping us from our wants, we usually just fume away without any realistic positive plan of action to obtain what is wanted. This will not help us to succeed in life, it just makes us miserable and resentful. And these resentments are the sidekick of relapse.Gratitude is an issue of perspective. A little exercise in empathy helps to illustrate this. The next time you see someone who has less than you, imagine yourself in their shoes looking at you and what you have. Maybe it is a homeless person, or someone dying of cancer, or someone who is blind or in a wheelchair. Try seeing yourself from his perspective, and how he could be envious or jealous of you because of what you have. Maybe also resent you for it. Now, does what you have all of a sudden become a little more fulfilling in your eyes? Do you think that the guy in the wheelchair will be able to walk again by burning in resentful envy over you and your ability to walk? These people with glaring deficits in their lives have long ago learned to be grateful for what they do have so that they don’t spend their lives chained to the green-eyed monster and his friends. We must do the same.
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Gratitude is a therapeutic emotion. Having gratitude means having an awareness of what is good in our lives, as well as an appreciation for our lives. It is the difference between having a day filled with regret and envy or a day filled with contentedness and appreciation. Anyone who hasn’t tried it should do a “gratitude list.” This simple exercise – sitting with pen and paper and listing what in life we are grateful for – always has a healing impact. First on my list is always that I am sober today. Many people do a gratitude list every time they are feeling down on themselves and experiencing the "poor-me's." Meditating on what we are grateful for helps as well.
Some of the most content people I know are people in recovery who have glaringly little in terms of material treasures. This is because they appreciate the peace and serenity that they have found in the Twelve Step program – not to mention sobriety – and because they have humility and perspective about their situation and place in the world. Their peace comes from acceptance, and gratitude fills them with appreciation. Their program of recovery has taught them that we are a success today if we don’t drink or use today. So they feel like a success every day. They have chosen to rid themselves of the unhappy yoke of unsatisfiable envy.
Gratitude gives us a perspective of our life based in humility. Humility does not come naturally to the human mind. Humility helps us to find gratitude by allowing us to recognize that everything we have came to us because of what we were capable of working for, and for which we put in the required effort. Maybe some of it came by chance, or maybe we sometimes came up short for our efforts, but humility is about acceptance of who and what we are.
Using gratitude to refocus our perspective
One unfortunate tendency of human nature is for us to get the "poor me's." This is where we focus on the negative in our lives and we feel picked on, unlucky, victimized. The poor me's is a mind-set that leads to unhappiness in life, and leads a lot of us to seek comfort in substance use. Ridding ourselves of the poor me's involves a change in our perspective. A very effective way to do this is by doing a "gratitude list."
Doing a gratitude list helps us to focus on what we do have in life, and to beat the human tendency to focus on and envy what we don't have. It is so much better to go through life with an awareness of what we have to be grateful for than to go through life burning over all the things we don't have.
It's pretty simple: just sit down with a pen and paper and write out all the things that you are grateful for. I have found that even people who have hit a low bottom can come up with a lot of things on their list. I do one of these lists fairly often, just to keep me focussed on how fortunate I am, rather than allow my natural tendency to focus on what I don't have to take over. Sometimes I will do a gratitude list in my head while out for a walk. Keeping away the poor me's is important for our recovery from substance use.
Using Acceptance and Action to refocus our perspective
We can't change what happened yesterday, so there is no point in worrying over it. We have to accept it, because we can't change it. Instead, we should focus on doing today what we can to make the negative in our lives better. We need to do today what we can to make our lives better, to deal with our problems. The things we can't do anything about, we need to accept and stop fretting over them. If we don't accept things that we can't change – like what has already happened – then we are causing ourselves undue frustration. This is when anger and resentment builds. We have to accept the past, and not steam over it, and torture ourselves with "what if's" and "I shudda done this" or allow ourselves to do the "poor me" thing. When we do that our brain will want us to drink or drug to feel better.
Accepting that we have problems is just a realistic part of life. Life is going to have its ups, and its downs. No matter what. No matter who we are or what our life situation, life will never always go our way. We have to accept the downs. Acceptance. We can do our best effort to make things go our way in life, but when they don't we must accept it. We have to accept our present situation. Nobody's life is all lollipops and unicorns. Everybody has their problems and stresses. Some people are much better off than I am (at least to outside appearances), but many people are much worse off than me. My situation is what it is. I do my best to change the things that I can do something about, but the things I can't change I must accept. We should try to make things better when things haven't gone our way, but we still must accept that things went the way they did.
As well, we must stop ourselves from wasting brain power on what might happen in the future. We have a tendency to worry and fret over the future - what might happen – and we worry and harbour fear. We tend to project our problems into the future and make them ten times worse than they really are. And it does us no good. The worry and fear and anxiety just makes us want to seek comfort in our substances. Rather than worry about how the future might turn out, we should focus our attention on doing today what we can to make sure that the future will go our way, but we have to leave the outcome to God, or fate, or whatever, because we can't control the outcome. We plan the future, not the outcome.
People who pray tend to allow their prayers to become a Christmas wish list. They pray for all the things they want to go right in their lives. This is destructive, because they double their disappointment when some things don't go their way. We can't all have everything go our way. Instead, I suggest that they pray for other people rather than themselves, and that instead of asking in prayer for a certain situation to go their way, they should ask for the strength to get through the situation, whichever way it goes.
When we are people who allow our happiness depend on whether or not everything goes our way in life, we are setting ourselves up to be frustrated, unhappy people. No wonder our brain wants us to binge on addictive substances to feel better. We are consistently happy, grateful people when we accept the things we cannot change and do our best to help the things we can change, and we accept the outcome no matter which way it goes, good or bad.
Here's what I suggest doing to make yourself a happier person and not susceptible to these urges to use drugs or alcohol to cope. It is how I live my life and I attribute my happiness and peace of mind to it. My happiness does not depend on whether everything in life is going my way. Try this:
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- Accept the past. We can't change yesterday, so we need to let go of it and accept it.
- Every day do your best to make better the things in your life that you can do something about, and accept the things in life that you can't change.
- Let tomorrow take care of itself. We can plan for the future and do everything we can to make the future go our way, but we must not plan the outcome.
Some acceptance needs a little extra help. Some people have mental demons from some deeper issues: past traumas, abuses, hurtful experiences, personal guilt, anger and resentments, and so on. In order to find acceptance and stop these things from haunting their lives they may need some outside counseling. For some more information about this see "Dealing With Past Traumas" Click Here.
Live in happiness, or live in frustration
It has always amazed me how people will tend to go through life bitter, angry, and resentful... feeling like victims because they are so focussed on what they don't have and what didn't go their way in life. For some reason, we are geared to think that way. It's almost like we love feeling sorry for ourselves and carrying anger for other people and things because of our woes. What an unhappy way to go through life! For some of us, it is what drove us to seek comfort in substance use.With a little practice, changing our perspective can make us happy, grateful people. And it can strengthen our recovery from substance use!
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5 comments
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