A 40-day detachment fast:
1. Stop thinking about others
2. Stop talking about others
3. Stop interfering with others, e.g.
- Stop with the fix–change–control pattern
- Stop anticipating people’s needs & meeting them
- Stop organising things, others, when it’s not my job
- Stop giving people work to do / putting others to work
Instead:
1. Start thinking about God
2. Start thinking about and fulfilling MY obligations
3. Start improving what needs to be improved in MY life and MY character
- Leave people be as they are without comment, intrusion, or suggestion
- Leave others to voice needs and make requests, if they have them
- Organise only what I’m legitimately in charge of
- Involve others only where necessary, and minimally [let them get on with their day]
The results:
- Peace
- Slowing down
- Having more time
Most of the above are clear. Some items bear explanation:
“Stop giving people work to do / putting others to work”
Examples of how I have done this:
- Phoning people up with complex or unprocessed situations rather than figuring out the input I need
- Giving people blow-by-blow accounts rather than cutting to the chase
- Asking people essay questions, ‘Can you tell me about the Traditions?’ [a real example]
- Sending people long screeds, unbidden [instead: take turns, one line, one line, one line, …]
- Sending people a message so long it needs to be or should be in a document
- Asking people to do for me what I can do for myself
- Treating others like Wikipedia, Google Maps, the Big Book, the AA website, etc.
- Sharing the workings of Step Four rather than a prepared Step Five
- Organising workshops no one wants and no one has asked for and recruiting speakers
- Asking questions I know the answer to
- Asking questions I can find the answer to myself
- Requesting favours, adjustments, carve-outs, workarounds that inconvenience others
- Presenting (e.g. clients) with problems without presenting best-guess proposed solutions
- Taking others’ time to establish, improve, or repair my image in their eyes (JEDI [justification, explanation, defence, intention] mind tricks)
- Evasiveness, changing the subject, non-sequiturs: making others hunt for the information they need
- Playing needle-in-a-haystack: rabbiting so others have to figure out the single, relevant fact
- Conjuring, indulging, or settling down into problem states to elicit attention and company
- Devising joint projects when others have not shown overt interest
A little caution with this item:
“Stop thinking about others” and “Stop anticipating people’s needs & meeting them” seems at odds with this line:
“Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers, depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.” (page 20)
It is not. “Thinking about” is dwelling (particularly negative). “Think of” is consideration: working around others’ stated needs and preferences and fulfilling my obligations; yielding to them; being as invisible and unintrusive as possible; fulfilling precisely and only those needs that are inherent or stated; certainly not disregarding someone’s stated position ‘because I know what they really want / need’.
There’s a note required also on this point:
“Stop organising things, others, when it’s not my job”
When it is indeed my job, it must be done promptly and to the absolute best of my ability, foreseeing and solving every problem in advance.