Alcoholics Anonymous Blog/Video Oct 22 DonInLondon Step 10 "Reality Check"
October 22, 2013 Step Ten Month: "continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." We are allowed our feelings in recovery. If we do not acknowledge our feelings in recovery, how can we possibly understand the way we think? And if we do not understand what drives our thinking, we continue to make the mistake or have a misunderstanding that we do not control our world. What we have is freedom to choose based on our current conditions.
If I don't know how I am feeling, H.A.L.T. at the base level of hungry, angry, lonely, tired: I do not know whether or not I am stressed enough to check, or distressed and thinking without realising which emotions are governing my thought processes. Many others have tried to use our thinking abilities to suppress the real human inside each of us. Real humans have real feelings and real feelings once we understand them are factual states of being. The misunderstanding that many humans make is they can suppress and ignore their emotions when there is a dire need to get something done, to get out of doing something, to obscure the truth of now.
Step ten and spot-check inventory is a way to acknowledge our emotional and spiritual condition at any given moment. The simple reason for doing this is to know our current emotional state. Once we realise it is okay to have extreme feelings in extreme situations, and share them, it is a sign of strength to be able to express our truth. If we hide this truth, we are slowing down our own understanding of what we can do next, and we are disabling everyone else who is involved in the situation. Playing poker with life is simply delaying, obscuring, pretending and denying the truth of now. In many ways the ideas that secrets give us a competitive advantage in many situations, is very disabling and causes extreme reactions and extreme outcomes. How we choose to live, how we choose to live to the truth or not is the freedom we can exercise in any moment of now.
Medical stuff about me. Five days of physical and emotional difficulty dealing with minor procedures to investigate medical conditions which are still unknown to me. All but the last one, the medical procedures are okay and the last one I will know more about in good time, the good time being the time it takes for one department to send information to another department, write me with an appointment, me wait until the appointment and then get the results. Of course I did ask yesterday if there was anything to be concerned about, and it is always a little bit unsettling if not downright difficult to accept that I have to wait for the results. Meanwhile my symptoms are on-going. And physically it is difficult, emotionally after all these years in recovery, acceptance comes quickly and I can be as good as I can be knowing what I know today. I feel good! Even though not everything is right. Step 10 to self is; acceptance of life as it is right now.
Landlords and surveyors! Following my initial contact to express my concerns about the surveyor and their behaviour, their ignorance, their lack of knowledge about why they had come to my home, their lack of knowledge about the problems, there perfunctory inspection and expression of not knowing why they were there in the first place and then leaving with a remark over the shoulder, "I'll put a call in," has led to a very defensive and inaccurate statement from the landlord. Having had my mind focused on my own medical matters, I did put this particular situation to one side because my medical health is far more important than bricks and mortar! However when I woke up this morning at silly o'clock, my mind started with a feeling of anger and resentment about the report back to me on what happened. Anger is a good feeling, it tells me I feel wronged and it is good to feel upset. What I do next is what is important, my actions and not my intentions. And also to focus on the problem of repairs, and also remind myself of the accuracy of my feedback to the landlord and be certain that I can recollect everything pertinent. This is all part of recovery and I have a right to my feelings and acknowledge them and to know how they impact on my thinking and then my actions. It then helps me understand the consequences of next steps for me.
I have a friend coming to talk about a particular type of career they feel is right for them. It certainly is not for me to judge them on their choice. In this instance it is for me to help a person find the real truth, not my truth, their truth about their personal choices. Indeed I want them to be a success, simply because if a person is successful in what they do, emotionally and spiritually they will feel good as can be in the moment. No matter what we choose to do in life, there will be good bad and ugly, some of it we will have initiated, a lot of it is dealing with reality which can be very bad and very ugly and not of our making. Step ten all the way to bedtime is an emotional and spiritual key today.
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