They say it's a daily programme, they say to keep it in the day, they say not to make any major decisions in the first year, and they're right. Actually, the first year thing is a bit misleading. The idea is this: when I'm emotionally unbalanced with unfinished business in the past (people I haven't forgiven / people I haven't made amends to), any decision-making is going to be distorted until these matters are settled. Twenty years sober and disturbed is just as much a bad time to make big decisions as twenty minutes sober.
Anyway, until, through the programme, I was restored to sanity, when I felt bad, I would reach for a big lever:
- Change job
- Change career
- Change major at university
- Ditch a relationship
- Get into a relationship
- Get into a second relationship at the same time
- Get into a third relationship at the same time
- Move house
- Buy a house
- Sell a house
- Move country
- Start therapy
- Stop therapy
- Become a Buddhist
- Ditch Buddhism
- Hang around bars more
- Cut eighteen people out of my life
- Attempt to resolve major philosophical questions
- Attempt to resolve major spiritual or religious questions
- Attempt to rescue whole areas of my life with a single measure
- Attempt to derive a single rule for managing all situations
- Ask questions like, 'Why am I like this?'
- Change sponsor
- Change my meetings
- Change fellowship
- Plot suicide
- Etc.
You get the idea ...
These are (mostly) not bad things, but, pending restoration of sanity, structural changes should be considered only where absolutely necessary and, if I am very disturbed, only when I am surrendered to very sound guidance.
How has change actually taken place? Making a thousand small changes, e.g.:
- Mentally bless the person I live with every time I see them or think of them
- Schedule in my week's meetings in advance
- Go to an extra meeting
- Set aside five minutes for meditation
- Listen to one piece of Schubert every day
- Make my bed in the morning
- Get to work on time
- Do the dishes before anyone else gets there
- Keep my mouth shut when I'm upset
- Make a list of things to do and order them by urgency
- Do the thing I'm most frightened of first
- Do ten small necessary things first, before the one big necessary thing
- Set an alarm to pray briefly once an hour
- Go for a walk
- Buy some fruit and eat it
- Send someone a nice message
You get the idea ...
What can I change today? The answer is always small, and the small things add up to big changes.
Once I'm settled, balanced, stable, and basically happy, I start to ask big structural questions about my life. Thing is, once I'm settled, balanced, stable, and basically happy, I have invariably discovered there is little, if anything, that needs to be changed.
I examine knotty philosophical, spiritual, and religious questions only when I'm perfectly cheerful, and I do so by reading and discussion, not in my room on my own. Nothing gets solved there.
By the way, everyone hates this. So if you hate this, fine.