Often in recovery, I have found myself unhappy and immediately concluded: I need to redo the first nine Steps / seek ‘outside help’ (which has an ominous, expensive, and time-consuming ring to it). Sure, that might work, and that might be necessary, and I’ve certainly done both. However: in almost every case, the answer has not been found in the past or in some dark corner of my psyche but in some practical aspect of my life that is out of whack or some fundamental spiritual principle that is not being observed. Once such matters are resolved, I have been pleasantly surprised to find my psyche relieved without any laborious process and certainly without any navel-gazing. Living life satisfactorily turned out to be the answer.
Here’s a list of questions I have asked myself over the years and whose resolution has been necessary for me to be achieve stability, usefulness, and happiness. There is a lot of material here, and Rome won’t be built in a year, let alone a day, but running through this list will reveal a lot of ‘low-hanging fruit’ in terms of improving one’s life and one’s experience of life.
The topic of this post is therefore: Low-Hanging Fruit!
Almost all of these can be addressed by applying Steps Ten (including a spot-check inventory on a current problem), Eleven (including devising action and corrective measures), and Twelve (including taking the action and implementing the corrective measures), seeking the guidance of people in AA who are functional and happy in the area in question, or through rudimentary research, reading, or recourse to ordinary professionals who can help with practical matters, e.g. a yoga class or recruitment consultant.
Alarmingly, some of these aspects of life are sufficiently important individually to knock a person off balance if they are out of alignment. With many of these matters out of alignment, is it any wonder a person is experiencing generalised malaise?
These questions are divided into eight areas:
PHYSICAL
- Do I have a regular, stable sleeping-and-waking pattern?
- Do I sleep enough (clue: if I am tired more than occasionally, the answer is ‘no’)?
- Do I have peace and quiet at some point every day?
- Do I shut off devices long enough before bed for my mind to calm down?
- Do I eat regular, super-healthy meals, in moderate quantities?
- Am I addicted to nicotine?
- Do I abuse caffeine?
- Do I abuse sugar / grain products?
- Do I undertake vigorous exercise regularly?
- Do I stretch every day / do yoga, etc., or use other joint mobility exercises?
- Are there any medical problems I need to see a doctor or other physical practitioner, e.g. a physiotherapist, about?
PRACTICAL
- Are there any pressing practical difficulties in my life that I am avoiding facing or are otherwise unresolved?
- Do I spend more money than I earn?
- Do I record everything I spend and earn and examine the results regularly to draw up a budget and stick to it?
- Do I have a job, occupation, or caring role?
- If I don’t have these, am I studying, volunteering, or taking other concerted steps to sort something out in this area?
- Am I otherwise occupying myself fruitfully and in the benefit of others for a substantial part of the day and week?
- Am I freeloading in any way?
- Am I engaged in any other illegal or illicit activity?
- Do I do anything I would not care to broadcast at my home group?
- What do I do for fun? (TV, YouTube, Facebook, etc. does not count: Valium with a plug.)
- Do I have enough fun?
- Do I have any contact with nature, animals, or children?
- Do I do anything creative?
- Is my living space orderly, tidy, clean, and pleasant?
SOCIAL
- Do I have social contact with people I can confide in and learn from?
- Do I have social contact with peers?
- Do I have social contact with people who can confide in and learn from me?
- Do I sit down and eat with others?
- Do I cook for others?
- Do I let others cook for me?
- Do I have friends?
- Do I spend time with them (including virtually)?
- Do I have a wider circle of acquaintances?
- Do I have any connection with my community?
- Do I have any wider connection with society?
SPIRITUAL
- Do I consider myself a physical being or a spiritual being in a physical form?
- Do I see myself as a servant, child, employee, etc. of the Higher Power?
- Is my life devoted to serving that Higher Power and accepting the gifts the Higher Power provides?
- Do I have an identity that separates me from other beings, including non-human beings, or one that joins me to all other beings?
- Do I have an established, regular, and robust prayer and meditation practice?
- Have I completed the first nine Steps, including every last amend?
- Any secrets?
- Any resentment?
- Anyone unforgiven?
- Any fear squashed down and not abandoned in pursuit of God’s will?
- Do I see the material as a vehicle for the spiritual or an end in itself?
MORAL
- Do I think about myself?
- Am I concerned with sex, money, power, prestige, comfort, thrills, and appearance?
- Am I concerned with how others behave, my finances, my needs, my wants, what others think of me, and what I think of myself?
- Or am I concerned with eliminating my character defects to better serve others’ needs, to help them achieve their hearts’ desire?
- Am I engaged in any behaviour that harms others or others find distressing, disagreeable, or plain annoying?
- Any unmade amends?
- Any unfaced creditors?
- Any unfulfilled obligations?
- Do I give a substantial chunk of my income to charity or a substantial chunk of my time to charitable work?
- Any area where self-will is running riot?
- Is my life filled with service?
- Do I consume more than I need?
RELIGIOUS
- Do I have a religion?
- If I do, am I practising it wholeheartedly or fitfully, perfunctorily, and guiltily?
- If I do not have a religion, have I resolved the question finally and satisfactorily or is the matter worth more investigation?
- Is it worth revisiting a religion, possibly with a different approach, or investigating other ones?
PHILOSOPHICAL
- What is my basic philosophy of life?
- Where did I get it from?
- Does that philosophy bring me peace, acceptance, joy, and a sense of purpose?
- Or does it bring me restlessness, unhappiness, gloom, fretfulness, cynicism, and apathy?
- What am I doing to improve my philosophy of life?
MENTAL
- Am I familiar with the standard cognitive distortions and biases affecting human beings generally?
- Do I concertedly watch out for and correct these?
- What am I currently learning?
- What am I currently reading or listening to?
- Do I consume ‘junk thinking’?
- Do I police what my mind dwells on or do I let it think about whatever it wants?
- Am I careful about the external material I expose my mind to (in the media, in social media, in terms of entertainment, or in terms of the other people in my life)?
- Do I permit fear, resentment, guilt, shame, nostalgia, fantasy, and scheming to occupy my mind or do I spot and turn away from these promptly?
- Am I applying the tools of Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve consistently to root these out?
All of these matters can be taken to God and one’s confidantes for simple diagnosis and correction.
As Super Dave says, I act my way into right thinking!