mindfulness

Safe Places

June 25, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

I remember when I was a kid in Illinois there was a pond that a couple of us guys would ride our bikes to. It was called Old Man Hendricks pond. He was a retired farmer who had this private pond that he wouldn’t let anybody into. It had a row of high bushes surrounding the pond so you couldn’t see it except from the inside. He had a gate with a big padlock on it and a sign that said “No Trespassing”. The fence surrounding the pond was covered by the bushes. We had figured out that if you go two sections down from the gate, the fence was broken and you could climb through the fence and the bushes and get to the pond.

There were so many times that I rode my bike out to the pond and would sneak in through the fence. Hendricks never knew I made his pond a safe place for me. I would bring a garbage sack with some Susie Q’s or Twinkies and a transistor radio. I would swim out to the dock which had been built twenty yards from shore. I remember laying on my back, looking up at the sky and watching the jets streak across the horizon leaving a vapor trail. The planes looked like little matchsticks. I would wonder where they were going and dream about being able to go somewhere on a plane. If old man Hendricks had caught me trespassing, I am sure he would have run me off.

Hendricks pond became a safe place for me to escape. During those days there was a lot to escape in my young life. There was physical and sexual abuse, family chaos, and a lot of abandonment and neglect. Hendricks pond became a sanctuary for me. Later in life, I revisited the site of the pond which no longer exists. The bushes were cut down, the pond had been drained and made into farmland. However, I carry the memory of this pond and made it a safe place for me in my mind.

Throughout the years of addiction recovery, I have gone to this safe place in my heart and conducted many conversations about a host of issues with those I needed to address. There were many conversations with myself and my addictive rationale. I had some knock-down, drag-out type conversations with my understanding of God. There was a long discourse with my dad and mom about why they insisted that we attend a cult-like church. There was the rage about the abuse and everything around it. There were times at the pond when I shed a lot of tears about the deaths of my dad, mom, and brothers. It became a place in my heart where I have retreated throughout my adult life to settle my soul create calm and poise and bring myself back to center.

This is what I know about recovery. Life will blitz you with concerns, pressures, and chaotic moments. If you are not proactive, you can get caught up with reactivity about the smallest of things. A blue funk will descend, your partner will say something that triggers you, your kids will act immaturely, an old act-out partner will reappear out of the blue without an invite, and suddenly you get ramped up with worry, anxiety, and susceptibility to addictive response. It happens almost at the snap of a finger.

Everyone needs to establish a safe place to sort out the events of everyday life that trigger and create life imbalance. Sustained life imbalance is a dangerous high risk for addicts. As an addict, you can’t just sit with anger toward an experienced injustice. You can’t just blow up at someone over nothing and forget it or expect them to just get over it. Toying around with “eye candy” on the internet is not something that can be minimized or normalized if sex addiction is your drug of choice. Flirting with high-risk behavior, no matter what the addiction, is high risk. Clearly, when you are engaging in these behaviors, you need to retreat to a safe place and have honest conversations with yourself about what’s going on.

Safe place conversations are where sobriety and serenity are hammered out. This is the place that you forge clarity and certainty to do the next right thing. The challenge with safe place conversations is that they need to be conducted daily, with rigorous honesty and commitment to care for yourself. All of these are simple but really difficult whether you are an addict or not. A safe place is the experience you create to grow yourself up by confronting mistaken beliefs, victim posturing, and addictive rationale. As an addict, a safe place is the place you best nip in the bud and build up behaviors toward destructive actions.

Here is a list of suggestions to make safe place experiences effective:

1. Establish a time and place in which no one interrupts you. The biggest challenge is your own thought life. Typically, it is a battle to keep from distracting yourself with a host of diversions. Once the safe place is established people avoid grounding by checking E-mail, texts, latest news from the internet, X, TikTok, Snapchat, and on and on. Before long you will have distracted yourself from the purpose of getting grounded. Many people leave the safe place experience without addressing what needs to be faced and not grounded. To do this work, you must be intentional and purposeful. It’s a commitment to emotionally grow yourself up by holding your feet to the fire in order to create life balance and centered poise.

2. Quiet your spirit with silence in the moment. This is a compelling assignment. Most addicts are dominated by monkey-brain thinking. Their mind goes on and on constantly thinking about everything and essentially about nothing. It just races incessantly. A safe place will help you slow things down and focus. It will not happen all of a sudden. It will require conditioning, not unlike other aspects of your life that you have conditioned. I believe that developing recovery skill sets requires that we reach out to other aspects of living that we have accomplished through conditioning and apply that skill set to quieting your spirit. For example, you do not run a marathon just by saying you will, as you are running your first run. Rather, you condition yourself and in time you are able to complete the marathon run. To be able to quiet your spirt in safe place, you will need to condition yourself. Start with 5 minutes. Just focus on your breath. Each time your mind goes to some other thought just bring yourself back to focusing on your breath. It doesn’t matter how many times. Just do it. In time, you will condition your mind to think about nothing except your breath in that 5-minute period. Of course, mindfulness meditation really helps with this skill set. As long as you allow your mind to give way to monkey-brain thinking, your thoughts will thrive. You must develop the capacity to quiet your spirit in silence. Safe place is the work-out room to develop this skill set.

3. Determine that the last truth you want to face is the first truth you will embrace. Most likely, whatever it is that has triggered life imbalance is not the first thing confronted in your safe place. Usually, there is resistance to go there. It will take discipline and conditioning like so many other areas of life. Yet, safe place becomes powerful and sacred when you face yourself with what you do not want to look at. If you have a bad attitude about a situation or person, are resentful, discouraged or overwhelmed by shame, you must begin your safe place conversation there. It helps to verbalize what you are feeling, regardless of how irrational it might be. It can be helpful to write your thoughts and feelings on paper. If you are an addict, you will then need to sit with the part of you that wants to act out and hear it out. It is helpful to say it out loud as clear as you think it on the inside. To go back and forth—addict thought—recovered response—until you see clearly what you must do. Here’s an example for a sex addict. “I want to screw my neighbor” So, in my safe place, I put my addictive rationale in a chair and let that part of me argue for me and lay out the case for acting out in this way. Then, I respond to each point made in addictive rationale with recovery response. Like, “yeah, that would be exciting and the rush would be overwhelming. Yet, the hurt of ruining my committed relationship with my partner would be crushing. I would not only tear up my relationship but end a good relationship in the neighborhood. The result would be catastrophic for a short term thrill.”At some point, the power in recovery will need to override addictive response and create a pathway back to centered living. Then, reach out and connect with support people who are willing to hold your feet to the fire of sobriety in order to follow through with your safe place conversation.

4. Anchor yourself in affirmative thought. After you quiet your mind, sort your thoughts, and clarify your steps back to poise and centered living, you must bathe yourself with affirmation. This too is a difficult skill to incorporate as a lifestyle. Yet, my experience is that unless you create a mindset that actively lives out what you dream of becoming, you never get there. As an addict I have learned that what you think about is what will expand. It’s the very property of thought. So, if you think about what is missing then that is what expands. If you focus on what you have that is what expands. Affirmations about the tools for recovery and my positive reality of employing them are a secret to successful sobriety that leads to serenity. Yet the skillset of affirmative thought is underemployed. It is a simple yet difficult habit to cultivate. However, those who experience long-term serenity, not just sobriety, engage in this practice regularly. Deprivation always fuels entitlement to act out. Practicing affirmations becomes so helpful toward shifting out of a deprivation mindset and takes what is and makes it enough. A safe place is a great place to accentuate recovery muscle through affirmative thought once you have determined your way back to center.

Some people struggle with the idea of going to a safe place to recreate centered living. This place can be a literal place or in your mind’s eye, like I do. The litmus test is if you talk to people, addict in recovery or otherwise, while they may not use the language of “safe place”, clearly you will find that these folk have learned to create a way of bringing themselves back to center that inspires living from a higher self. A safe place can take many forms, but, I don’t know of any serene people who live without it.

Footprints That Connect Spirituality

May 31, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The human body is magnificent. The more we learn about the intricacies of our bodies, the more clear it is that there is an amazing life force that creates and connects all of life on this planet and beyond. Some people believe that as phenomenal and amazing as the physical body is most of who we are is spiritual, not physical.

Volumes have been written about the spiritual world but it remains a mystery. Many who decry religion reject the concept altogether. Those who believe and talk about the intangible nature of spirituality accept that discussion about its properties can be like trying to nail jelly to a tree.

Religious practice helps many to chart a course toward the meaning of the spirit world. From a macro view of the world, the influence of spirituality is undeniable…

Today, I would like to suggest a less macro and more micro understanding of spirituality in the common experiences of everyday living.

1. Spirituality is found in the connection of you to the world around you. Addicts live disconnected. They pull the plug on connection to people and the world around them. Their addiction becomes the organizing principle in life. The affair that is created with addictive behavior has been described as a warm blanket more than once. However, spirituality is about the opposite. It is a connection to all facets of living both organic and nonorganic. Meditation is a recovery discipline that connects one to the world around you in the present moment. Being able to connect to the world around you—the birds, trees, plants, animals, rocks and human energy has been described by some recovering addicts as an explosion of meaningfulness where there was once emptiness. I like to think metaphorically that your feelings are the Voice of God.

When listened to, feelings will tell you essential needs that need to be met in a healthy way. The tendency for an addict is to disconnect from feelings of discomfort. Yet, if you sit with uncomfortableness it will tell you what needs to be addressed in your life. You will need to marshal mature actions by utilizing your wise mind to meet those needs in healthy self-fulfilling ways. This requires mentorship and endless practice. It is not magical. So you might say spirituality is about mature adult living and you don’t have to even use the word spirituality to capture this life experience. For example, you may find yourself angry. Rather than emotionally throw up in someone’s lap or stuff the experience and pretend it doesn’t exist, take time to listen to what anger is trying to say to you. Feelings are experienced in clusters. Withanger it is often tied with fear, sadness, loneliness, shame, or other feelings. If you take time to sift and sort each attached feeling they will clarify what you are experiencing and when connected to your wise mind you can better address your needs. This is why I suggest that your feelings are the voice of God! Listen to them and they will serve you well. This is a spiritual experience.

2. Spirituality is found in the experience of vulnerability. Vulnerability is the process of being exposed to possible harm. It is about embracing the fear of rejection, of being taken advantage of, and of embracing your human limits. It is not taught, it is practiced. If you do not practice it, you will not learn it. It is about becoming emotionally naked to another. It is risking rejection. It engages a willingness to remove yourself from the center of your universe for the purpose of sharing another’s energy and making space for someone else knowing that they may flatly reject your efforts.

Vulnerability is accepting this possibility and courageously exposing your heart anyway. It doesn’t make sense to always/only be vulnerable. But when it does it is pursued against all odds no matter what the price. It is a shift from intellectual reason and protection to opening your heart and sharing raw feelings that expose hypocrisy, incongruence andfailed behavior in hopes of finding connection and acceptance. This requires courage but when manifested multiplies meaningful life experiences. Vulnerability is spirituality and counterintuitively creates connection.

3. Spirituality is about the experience of uncertainty. No religion can prove that it is the one true way. Outside of religious experience, no philosophy or experience can prove its methodology of living as the one correct approach. There are many opinions and beliefs. Likely, they are all correct in different ways! You will need to sort out what you choose to think and believe. Ignoring this reality is a choice in itself. For sure, spirituality is a belief plunge into uncertainty. None of us like the experience of free falling. When I was young I would take junior high kids to a cliff at a lake in Wyoming to jump in for a swim. The cliffs were between 50 and 60 feet high! It was far enough to consciously experience the free fall. When free falling you experience total helplessness. There is literally nothing you can do to counter gravity but to fall. This is what it is like to plunge into the uncertainty of spiritual belief. It is having the confidence that in free-falling into your belief, your confidence is not that you will control the outcome but that your spiritual belief will bring you back up. This means that with bravery you are willing to live with the uncertainty that surrounds you every day because of your belief in the basic goodness of who you are and/or the power you choose to trust in your daily free fall.

4. Spirituality is about velvet steel. I call my blog Velvet Steel because of my deep conviction of this spiritual principle. Spirituality is about connection which engages the principle of velvet steel. This concept embraces the word “consideration” which can describe a parent who practices when to apply the strict letter of the law to a misbehaving child and when to back off and go easy. There is no formula. It’s all about cultivating sensitivity to the spirit of another. Sometimes you need to be willing to walk to hell and back to stand for conviction and principle and other times not. It’s about being velvet steel.

In recovery meetings, there is usually at least one person who sees themselves as the hammer—the steel—and gives feedback from that standpoint. It is common for others to consistently be velvet, being easy toward others hoping they too will be easy with them. It is rare that you experience velvet steel blended in feedback. This is because it is difficult. Often it takes a certain degree of steel to be velvet as well as it is important to share a certain amount of steel while being velvet in feedback. That said, spirituality is not all about rules and regs (steel) but it also includes knowing the rules well enough to know how and when to break them (velvet). Velvet steel is a dynamic applied in many different ways and requires integrity and honesty to the practice for it to be a spiritual practice that heals and transforms behavior. Spiritual practice must include a mature application of velvet steel. In truth when applied with sensitivity it reflects an art form.

There are footprints of spirituality in common everyday places that are mostly overlooked by those who are in a hurry or a frenzy of everyday living. Take time to notice the footprints of spirituality that will help right-size your everyday walk with meaningfulness and connection.

Dating Protocol Considerations to Avoid Painful Past Patterns

May 24, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

According to the most recent data from the American Psychological Association, the divorce rate in the United States is around 40-50% for first marriages. As you might guess it is higher for second marriages and on up from there. You would think with those kinds of repeat numbers, you would slow the process down so that you don’t repeat the second time around the agony you experienced the first time. But, it doesn’t work that way.

The relief of getting away from the agony of a relationship that hurts and the need to fill the emptiness of being alone, and without the intrigue of a romantic relationship, overpowers perspective and contemplative consideration. Add to all of that the rush of oxytocin, endorphins, and dopamine that comes with the honeymoon feeling of a new relationship, and you have a cocktail kick that blows past rational thought and deliberation. It all contributes to why the likelihood of failure in a second marriage is higher than the first.

Analytically, we can figure it all out. Yet, even after enlightenment we go against what we know and plunge down the same rabbit hole we just escaped.

Why is this? There are many reasons. People carry with them old tapes of mistaken beliefs learned from their family of origin that create relationship sabotage. Why consider something that might spoil the fantasy relationship I think I can have in the here and now? Many people choose to run from what hurts and never want to stop and scrub the wounds that come from betrayal and various forms of intimacy disability. All this makes sense. It’s just that doing the same thing you have always ever done, doesn’t work toward healing a broken heart that comes from a dysfunctional relationship.

So, here are some considerations to think about regarding relationship healing, before engaging the next exclusive romantic relational experience.

1. Take some time to catch your breath. You have been running so hard to fix the hurt of the old relationship in ways that did not work, or you are running as hard as you can to get away from the relational pain. Take a time out and catch your breath. Relationships in distress or pursuit burn a lot of emotional BTUs. How much time do you take? One size doesn’t fit all. Some people need 6 months; others need a year. The time you need is unique to you. After you have calmed the chaos, the amount of time you need to heal before engaging in a serious new relationship will vary. The point is to catch your breath before rushing ahead.

2. You will need time to grieve. How much time? Again, it varies. The rule of thumb is that you will need more time than you are thinking about right now! You will need time to grieve what used to be and no longer is. You will need to grieve what never was that you hoped would have been. You will need to grieve the reality of what is. It’s hard to engage in grieving when the oxytocin, endorphins, and dopamine are rushing through your veins with someone new. Most of us don’t know how to grieve deeply. We cry, feel empty, might get drunk, and on we go to the next relationship. But, there’s the need to go deep and feel the hurt of the sadness of what will never be again. Relationship ties undone with family, the loss of the good times, the hurt of the pain, and the impact on others (kids particularly, friends, relatives, etc) all must be embraced experientially before moving on to something new in a serious relationship. The truth is that you will need to create space in your life to grieve and let go of what used to be periodically for the rest of your life. It isn’t meant to grovel in the pain of an old relationship. Yet, recognizing painful experiences in past relationships and letting go is a part of the pattern of being an adult. The time it takes you to sufficiently grieve will vary and you will be wise to consult with counsel and to live in consultation with support people.

3. Learn to be with yourself. When you end a relationship there is an empty spot. There is a great temptation to fill it in with another relationship, work, travel, and a lot of other activities. Our culture provides so much stimulation that you can just go from one high to the next. But, you won’t heal yourself that way or know who you really are by doing a blitz on stimulants that come from dating and other activities. Embrace the winter of your life and learn from it.

4. Unravel the patterns that sabotage intimacy. If you don’t you will keep doing it and likely blame the other party for your relationship unfulfillment. Some people can date and unravel this self-sabotage behavior at the same time through counseling and group support. Most of us cannot. If you have never been in a riptide current at the beach, you would be wise to stop swimming and learn from those who have experienced and managed the riptide. Ignoring this suggestion is how many people drown in the next relationship doing the same things as before. Unraveling your self-sabotage pattern that contributes to relational failure is difficult. You will need to address unresolved family of origin issues that contribute to the way you do relationships today. Soren Kierkegaard was right when he wrote “Life is meant to be lived forward but can only be understood backward”. To move forward and not self-sabotage you will need to look backward and understand what brought you to where you are today. On the other hand, it’s easier to blame your past partner and keep truckin’ wondering why you keep hooking up with partners who hurt you.

5. Sex is always an issue: If you are stuck in the juggernaut of sexual addiction, sex has become an organizing principle of your life. Any reason is a good reason to be sexual. Most likely your behavior is about objectifying another person. Objectification is a way of using another person to get your needs met without dignity and respect or consideration of others. Non-addicted people can objectify as well. If you use another person’s space to meet your needs without proper scrutiny of that individual’s needs then you are objectifying that person. Some people say no sex for 6 months or 1 year after a breakup! Maybe so or maybe not! It makes sense to discipline your tendency to accelerate physical connection so that with moderate speed you are better able to distinguish the difference between intensity of feeling and true intimacy. All too often with oxytocin, adrenaline, and dopamine in control, people thicken the plot to an unhealthy relationship by mistaking intensity for intimacy. In this equation, addicts can’t get enough of what they don’t need and many non addicts adopt an unspoken mentality that my half plus your half will make us a whole! On the contrary, you take what is and make it less because the other person cannot supply your basic need for self-care, so 1/2 + 1/2 = 1/4, not a whole.

6. Don’t forget the impact on other key relationships: This doesn’t mean you don’t date. It just means that you don’t date lacking sensitivity to the community of people who provide support and who respect and love you. This includes careful considerations about dating others who were once romantically involved with your friends, family, or workmates. Most companies have policies that govern romantic relationships at work. However, not all are the same and many people try to bend the rules to engage in romance. It’s important to be careful and considerate in comprehending the consequences of romance in these situational dynamics. Children need to be carefully considered. Bringing a new person in and out of their lives can be very destructive to them without thoughtful consideration of their care. Each of these impacts requires consultation and accountability with people who are in your support group.

We are all designed to experience connection with others. How we engage romance requires thoughtful preparation and consideration so that the charm that wells up within does not become harm that hurts others.

Perfect is Never Part of the Plan

December 19, 2023 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

“She’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be. But if she can make you laugh at least once, cause you to think twice, and admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She isn’t going to quote poetry or think about you every moment, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you could break. Don’t hurt her, don’t change her, and don’t expect more than she can give. Don’t analyze. Smile when she makes you happy, yell when she makes you mad, and miss her when she’s not there. Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect people don’t exist, but there’s always one person that is perfect for you.” ― Bob Marley

When addicts come to recovery, there is always a desire to do it perfectly. On the one hand, their ego tells them they can. “Twelve steps, twelve days, knock it down, what’s next!” I’ve heard it more than once. On the other hand, “failure, missing the mark is so painful I don’t want to get up and try one more time” is a common lament from many. More than one addict can testify that they have a drawer full of chips reminding them of commitments made and broken. Why try if I can never reach the mark, never measure up? Recovery becomes like the life they have always lived. Somehow I should be able to do this perfectly and I cannot because I am woefully imperfect.

Baseball great Mickey Mantle once reflected on the average experience of his Hall of Fame baseball career. He said, “During my 18 years of major league baseball I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked another 1,800 times. You figure a ball player will have about 500 at-bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.”

The average experience of a baseball player is making an out, not getting a hit. In the presence of striving for success, even for someone as great as Mickey Mantle, there is a compelling story of difficulty and strife to share. Mantle’s authentic willingness to connect with his intimate battle with failure forced him to practice the fundamental basics of self-care. As a result, these common-place experiences of struggle enabled him to look back at his Hall of Fame career and understand how to put imperfection in its proper perspective. No matter who you are, transforming meaningfulness from mundane moments of struggle and failure requires accepting imperfection. It is necessary to embrace the benefits of average commonplace struggles.

When you don’t measure up to what you expect, you then scale down your expectations of achievement which can be helpful or disastrous. Moving acting out behavior from your inner circle to your middle circle and denying that it is any longer acting out but just high-risk behavior is disastrous for sobriety. You just practice old destructive behaviors you did before recovery with a different label. In your attempt to be perfect, you end up accelerating more shame. No one ever beats themselves up to a better place.

However, when you fail to measure up to what you intended, it is important to adjust the way you treat yourself. Rather than criticize and judge your failed behavior, it is transformative to recognize the mistake and then focus on the next right behavior which always anchors being centered. Centered living involves grounding yourself in your values. When you blow it, either by relapsing into addictive behavior or falling short of treating yourself and others with respect and dignity, you will need to practice ignoring the inner critical voice, bring yourself back to the center, and anchor yourself to your values. You will feel hypocritical, discouraged, and dejected because of your failed behavior. You will need to embrace your imperfect behavior by positively affirming who you are. This takes practice and everyday conditioning. You will need to create healing affirmations that you engage in as frequently as you brush your teeth before they consistently transform your imperfect behavior into empowerment. Slowly your new relationship with imperfection will emerge. Being able to bring yourself back to center is more important than never having left center in the first place.

Imperfection contains the secret message the universe would like you to have to live life in harmony. Striving to be perfect deafens your inner ear to the message of the universe. When you persist toward perfection, you will hide inevitable shortcomings and run from the message they have for you. Managing imperfection requires that you listen to the pain of failure and shortcomings. For example, as an addict when you crave a fix from your drug of choice, after you take yourself out of harm’s way, listen to the legitimate need that must be met with healthy self-parenting. Your imperfect craving will contain a message from the universe to take care of yourself in this extremely needy moment. Perfection will try to deny the craving and thus miss the message from the universe. By embracing your imperfection you will transform the curse of craving into a blessing of personal care and intimacy. Imperfection teaches you to listen to your feelings and become present in the present moment.

Managing imperfection means that you will need to recognize when you have handed the reins of control over to the small child within. As a child, you become emotionally stuck around the needs that did not get met and are fueled by neglect and abandonment. When that perception is triggered as an adult, the inner child seizes the moment and flees or freezes with fear. At that moment, you give power to the little boy or little girl to address an adult decision and you render your powerful wise-mind adult inoperative. The results of this interaction are dismal. Perfection denies or becomes overwhelmed with the failure. Managing imperfect moments means that you take the reins respectfully from the child and assert your adult-wise mind to address the need or situation. This, too, will require training and practice. Again, perfect is never part of the plan.

Managing imperfection requires that you cultivate the concept of Velvet Steel. This recovery skill is an art form. Most addicts are hard or harsh (steel) where they need to be gentle, and soft (velvet) where they need to be steel. The misapplication fuels addictive behavior. In striving for perfection you will miss cultivating velvet steel. Likely, you will become stoic and stern in your endeavor to live a sober life.

Managing imperfection requires learning when to apply the strict letter of the law about your behavior and when to be gentle. Parents must learn this as they guide children through the stages of life. Rigidity around failure and imperfection is a breeding ground for shame.

You will develop the art of living when you learn to make imperfection your teacher. Allow your difficulties to become your learning and source for growth. Set recovery goals that challenge rather than defeat you before you begin. Be realistic. Accept imperfection and stretch yourself from there. Your imperfect feelings will help you grow in self-care and understanding toward others.

Your choice in recovery is not whether to use affirmations. We’ve been affirming thoughts and beliefs since we were old enough to speak. The choice in recovery is what we want to affirm. Whatever thoughts you give energy to, empower you. Are you willing to release, or let go of, negative thought patterns and replace them with positive ones? Will you choose to affirm imperfection and make it good? Remember, perfect is never part of the plan.

Embracing Sacred Moments—Learning to Be in the Life You Already Have

October 20, 2023 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

When I was a little kid, I used to always want to be somewhere else than where I was. When I sat in school in the third grade I could hear bulldozers and carpenters pounding nails outdoors and wished I could be one of them—anywhere but in school. When I sat through long hours at church I daydreamed about playing baseball to avoid the boredom and drudgery. During the summertime as a teenager, I would hoe beans and detassel corn. While walking the rows I would fantasize about swimming in a favorite swimming hole.

Looking back as an adult, some of those places don’t seem quite as bad as I once thought they were. I even have fond memories of grade school and summer jobs. However, as an adult, I have been in places where I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was.

Addicts and entrepreneurs have the same experience. Dread and craving trigger an addict to avoid what is real. Driven dreams powered by doing more to keep from being less, push many entrepreneurs toward the next enterprise. People tend to want to build a road to someplace other than where they are. Many find it scary and stressful to be present in the now moments of life and struggle to be comfortable in their own skin. So they keep moving from one project to the next or from one high to the next hit as an addict.

Recovery includes a voice that calls each of us to listen to the insights and wisdom that come from the heart. It won’t scream at you like busyness and chaos often do. In your darkest moment when you face total exhaustion, it will speak to you with clarity and resonance. Rather than look outside yourself for fulfillment you find the realization inside as you sit with your own personal brilliance, not to be utilized to do something great but to understand that you are something great just as you are.

Here are a few keys to cultivating sacred moments in the here and now:

#1: Take a deep breath and be where you are. In the presence of disgruntled living and the tumultuous commotion to create something new, inhabit the life you are given. There is nothing wrong with improving your outer circumstances. Yet, going someplace means nothing if you cannot appreciate and become present in what is real right now! Eckart Tolle wrote “As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love–-even the most simple action.” Make the present space you are in a sacred moment.

#2: Slow your compulsive thinking about tomorrow. Understand that this present moment with its trial and tribulation is interconnected to all that exists. Troublesome times augment for inner choice. First, accept whatever situation that you are in with its accompanying feelings. Then change the circumstances by improving your attitude or leaving the unacceptable condition. Wallowing with negative feelings of complaint and derision will disconnect you from a possible sacred moment. Your present day struggle is a significant element to your future success because it is now which is the only time you will ever experience. Let the feelings that lie underneath the compulsive thought teach you what you need at the moment to care for yourself and mark that moment as a sacred experience.

#3: Don’t forget “Yesterday ended last night.” Lamenting about what could have been, should have been, or used to be is a common human response to life circumstances. Sports fans often reminisce about lost championships or glory days past. Addicts struggle to let go of missed or failed opportunities. Entrepreneurs sometimes languish in agony about what might be a reality if they just pulled the trigger on a particular investment or idea. Some become bitter with resentment toward others they blame for their missed opportunity. What is missing is acceptance. Working with what is reality in the present moment requires that you work with the results of past actions and not wallow in what could have been. Even, yesterday’s successes must be treated like yesterday’s newspaper. Saying yes to today’s results is a recognition that yesterday’s negative or positive results do not determine your experience in the present moment. Aaron Rogers, the great NFL quarterback once said “I have been to the top and I have been to the bottom and peace comes from some other place.” He’s right and that peace comes from the sacred moment of embracing the here and now regardless of yesterday’s results or the feelings you experience in the here and now.

Your Feelings and Thoughts Do Make a Difference

August 25, 2023 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

Addicts are vulnerable. They don’t know how to recognize or manage feelings, particularly strong and powerful ones. What they do know is to split off from their feelings and pretend they are just fine. Once I was sitting at a wedding reception and a clergy colleague who sat next to me began talking. He had a close friend who was also clergy and was allegedly run out of his church because of a trouble-making family who accused him of sexual abuse. What he didn’t know is that the accusatory family was mine, and I was one of the family members that was abused. I wanted to kill him on the spot. But, I didn’t. What I did was smile and become quiet. I think I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

Addicts are pretty good with these splits. When they are hurt, numbed with shame, seething with resentment, or dominated with anger or hate, they know how to compartmentalize their feelings and pretend they are not there. They use this ability to manage and control their environment that is unsafe. The problem is that inwardly they lose themselves by failing to recognize their effect. They drown in the feelings that were triggered or go to great lengths through maladaptive behavior to avoid their emotions. Addicts learn to avoid the obvious and embrace the improbable.

They live in a constant state of vulnerability not knowing how to recognize or manage the feelings that have been buried. They are unable to draw from their own internal resources because there aren’t any. They remain in constant need of self-regulation resources. They think the resources are external. It’s a fantasy that is never realized. Since painful, rejecting, and shaming relationships are the cause of their deficits in self, they cannot turn to others to get what they need or have never received. With few other options addicts turn to their drug of choice. Why, because the dopamine rush delivers what it promises. To get away from the hell of the pain that slaps them around. Any reason is a good reason to use.

Drugs of choice migrate. Addicts might find a way to shut down their use of heroin, booze, crystal, molly, or blow. They just migrate to the next fix. It can be anything including workaholism, exercise, food disorder, rage, and even caretaking. It is common for recovering addicts to create a new cocktail for their choice of drug. It will always be that way until they get to the root cause of needing a fix. Here are a few things to consider.

1. Understand your pain. Slow your life to a pace that you go inward and embrace what hurts. Dare to embrace average. Go inside to the common places of your life and face what you feel. None of us got through our childhood unscathed. There you will find the wounds that need to be scrubbed. It hurts but you are already in pain. Why not make your hurt a healing hurt rather than wallowing in pain that never stops looking for a fix that is never enough. You must resolve the pain and stop pretending.

2. Learn to regulate your emotions. Practice recognizing what you feel, particularly the powerful feelings of shame, resentment, anger, and hate. Learn to sit with them and experience embracing unwanted emotions and notice that you can get through them without having to numb out. You will need help. Step outside yourself and ask for that help even though it feels awkward.

3. Utilize others for support. Finding your tribe for support is important. This is a long-term problem for addicts in recovery. When in crisis, addicts surrender to a 12-step fellowship. Often, they don’t go deep in a consistent manner to live in consultation with accountability about their feelings. You will need help holding your feet to the fire about relationship issues. Addicts often focus on the fundamentals of 12-step work in order to address their drug of choice. But many miss out by not using that same support to regulate their feelings in other aspects of living. It is important to utilize your community of support around the feelings that come up in your everyday relationship life.

4. Become an observer of what you think about your own thinking and learn how to reflect on the mind of another. Learning to manage your emotions is necessary to understand your thoughts about yourself and the world around you. People tend to be insular. Life becomes a mind-numbing hamster wheel in that we just do what we do. Take time to pause and observe what you feel. Utilize contemplation. Think about your thoughts. Learn to identify and give voice to the different parts of your mind that are contradictory to other parts. Learn to sift and sort by listening and recognizing the truth that is in each thought. Then practice integrating your thought discrepancies with your own wise mind. It is necessary to transform behavior. Emotional maturity and secure attachment are capacities to reflect on your own internal emotional experience and to make sense of it. It includes being able to observe and reflect on the mind of others and connect with them. The way you read others is important. It begins with learning to manage and make sense of your own affect and thoughts.

Managing your feelings and thoughts creates self-agency. Developing emotional management is necessary in cultivating a true sense of self. When you don’t you foster a false sense of self which blinds your awareness of feelings and thoughts. It further darkens your understanding of ways in which your behavior hurts yourself and others.

Oh! By the way, I did circle back with the insensitive clergy colleague and insist that he listen to the gory details of sexual molestation by his clergy friend toward me and my family. Though he was stunned with silence, he heard the other side of the story. I have since wondered if that did not change the way he shared the narrative with others.

How to Practice my Best When Stuck in Feeling Down on Myself

June 20, 2023 by Ken Wells

Nobody ever beat themselves up to a better place. Then why do I keep doing it? When I was a young 7th grader in junior high, I played basketball for the junior high team. I was good enough to be one of the starting five. However, every time I made a mistake, I magnified the error and would verbally beat myself up running up and down the court. Getting down on myself only contributed to an even worse result in play and eventually, I was sitting on the bench. Ultimately, beating myself up increased my discouragement and eventually, I was cut from the team. In truth, I never figured out how to change this pattern until many years later while in recovery from addiction. Yet, still I struggle with this self-denigrating behavior! What the heck?

It seems really common for people to create a bad relationship with themselves. It seems commonplace for many to get down, to denigrate and think bad of themselves. We seem prone to be hard on ourselves. An obvious observation would be that when I make a mistake I would shed a tear as if I was my own beloved child and was sad to see me do these things to myself. Yet, many of us beat ourselves up instead and live a guilt-ridden life. Someone surmised that guilt reminds me that I am not sociopathic—that at least I care when I have hurt someone else. Once guilt has served its purpose then it no longer has value and should be discarded. Easier said than done!

Often, guilt is accompanied with shame. Many agree that guilt says I made a mistake and shame says I am a mistake. Even if we agree on that, then what? Both pervade and stalk me and become my constant “friend” when I am stuck in feeling down. So the question about how do I do my best when I feel so down becomes how do I manage shame and guilt. I don’t know of anyone who does not have to address these two powerful feeling experiences who is not stuck in pathological behavior.

I have discovered that an appropriate response to guilt and shame is to stalk both powerful experiences. Like a pack of wolves that chase me through the woods, shame and guilt relentlessly pursue with negative self talk. Only when I turn around and face the wolves, negative condemnation, am I able to deflate the power of shame and guilt’s message. I then discover that the power of its message is like paper-mache which appears solid on the outside but when exposed is only hollow and illusory on the inside.

When I am feeling down and dominated with guilt and shame, there are 3 important steps to take:

1. Cultivate compassion toward yourself. When you get hooked by your own guilt and shame, you won’t be able to have compassion for others at the deepest level without knowing and practicing compassion for yourself. Take time to recognize where you feel the guilt and shame in your body. Shame and guilt can be cloaked with other feelings and can go unrecognized by those who have not practiced being mindful to their emotions or who are disconnected from their body.

Cultivating self-love will require that you recognize the negative message and the original voice who spoke this message to you. This message may have been spoken to you or you may have learned it by the way you were treated. To cultivate compassion, it will be important to keep the negative message away from your sense of self. This will require that you scrub the wound of the shameful message that you have carried throughout your life from your family of origin and gets triggered by present behavior. You do this by grieving the message given to you by a primary caregiver (parents) and practice giving it back to them. Seldom is this one and done, rather an ongoing practice of message recognition and giving back the message and embracing your own self empowerment and self compassion. Most people need to practice “giving back” these hurtful messages about self to the original source throughout their entire life.

2. When you have carried out a shameful behavior, direct the shame and guilt to the behavior and keep it away from your sense of self. It is important to recognize that the behavior is an aberration to who you are—not who you are. When you allow yourself to believe that what you did is who you are, you smear the shameful message all over your sense of self. This always scars and mars your view of yourself.

When you separate yourself from hurtful behavior that you did, you are able to transform the energy of shame about the behavior into one of compassion to the one you hurt because you have rooted your belief about yourself with self-care and compassion.

3. Practice ignoring negative self-talk by acting on positive belief about yourself. To believe means to act. When you are stuck feeling down about yourself, it will be difficult to act on positive belief. This will require conscious exercise and practice. Like building muscle mass through exercise, when you practice positive belief about yourself, particularly when you feel down, you will build the power of positive belief through acting on what you deeply believe about who you are. You will need to write down your positive beliefs and regularly bathe yourself in them. This is a life-long skill set that when practiced becomes a beautiful art form that leads to personal transformation.

So, when you feel the despair of being down on yourself, overcome being harsh and beating yourself up by bringing yourself back to being gentle and not beating yourself up. I call this the practice of Velvet Steel which is a life-long experience of transforming guilt and shame into being kind and compassionate to yourself. Don’t ever forget, no one ever beat themselves up to a better place.

Trapped in Negative Thinking

June 2, 2023 by Ken Wells

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Addicts are plagued with stinking thinking. They are not the only ones. Addicts learn to stop acting out with their drug of choice. However, many who have put a cork in the bottle are still badgered with negative beliefs that sabotage serenity.

Addicts wallow in past memories, wishing that things were different. In recovery, many “future trip”, focus on how things will be when sobriety and stability is achieved. Everybody grapples with staying in the present moment, but this is difficult when you don’t like where you are. Mistaken beliefs about self and the world flourish when addicts get stuck focusing on the past or future.

Most addicts say they just want to be happy. However, happiness depends upon positive conditions. Yet, this cannot always be controlled. In the life of an addict, the results of addictive behavior have a life of their own. Trust is broken and lives have been destroyed. Often, once the havoc is wreaked, there is no going back to fix things. Relationships are devastated regardless of achieved sobriety. Loved ones have had enough!

People who are not addicted cannot control the conditions for happiness either. For example, loved ones die unexpectedly. Tragedy and heartache happen outside of your control, too! The chase for happiness becomes an illusion because you cannot govern all of the outside factors that contribute to happiness. Your efforts to create happiness are fragile at best. Negative thinking is overcome by seeking inner peace rather than happiness. Inner peace is controlled from within.

Struggle and adversity leave an addict feeling empty and without happiness. It is possible to create inner peace in the presence of unhappiness. Addicts can transform limitation, failed recovery, broken families, and relapse into their greatest teacher. This stabilizes long-term sobriety. They transform emptiness into serenity with perspective and stability.

Last year, I spent time with friends in their mountain home. We visited someone who modeled peace. He was a campground host and recovering alcoholic. He spoke about past losses and hurt, yet now exuded with enthusiasm, joy, and peace. During a tour of the campground, he underscored how appreciative he was to have such stunning views of the mountains that were nearby. He was excited to show us his small camping trailer. At the end of the tour, he declared that he was the luckiest man alive and that he was living the life he had always hoped.

Upon reflection, he seemed to radiate an inner peace that was opposite of the negative thinking that dominated his addictive behavior earlier in his life. He talked about being present in the moment with his thoughts which brought him peace. He learned to block out the negative thoughts from the past and anchored his thoughts to the present moment. As I listened to him share, I thought of the many people who had so much more in personal possessions but who were stuck in negative thinking about needing more to keep from being less. When you discipline yourself to be in the present moment, negative thinking is countered with inner peace.

When you lose a loved one or must face your own demise, it is impossible to be happy about the misfortune. But, you can be at peace as long as you have released grasping for things and conditions you cannot control. In recovery, maybe you won’t be able to be with the family you thought would be there for you, but you can have peace. You may face a dramatic change and limitation in your life because of illness or financial restraints. Economic reversals and poor health will never trigger happiness. Yet, peace can be attained within when you let go of negative beliefs by simply embracing the here and now.

Peace comes in the present moment, not the past or future. Anxiety and worry accelerate when you fret about what might happen in the future or lament about a past action. Addicts tell themselves that bad things happen because they deserve it. They create movies in their head that reinforce destructive experiences from the past. They tell themselves they don’t have what it takes to live a sober, serene, and successful life. Their negative thinking sabotages good results in their life and prevents them from being present in the here and now. They become their negative thoughts. This contributes to relapse behavior and impairs the possibility of peace in the present moment. Addicts get stuck and are unable to separate themselves from the negative voice in their heads.

You stop negative thoughts by learning to sit in life experience as it is whether pleasant or unpleasant. In recovery, you learn to connect with yourself without judgment and without clinging to the past or grasping for the future. You must learn to accept what is, right now. Your sense of self is different from your life situation. When you learn to be friendly with the present moment, you begin to make peace rather than embrace negative thoughts that treat the present moment as an enemy. In 12-step groups, addicts learn to separate their sense of self from their negative thoughts. When this happens an addict can embrace the present moment. They create inner peace and discover the brilliance of who they really are. The trap of negative thinking is resolved by practicing being present in the here and now.

Deep Listening

May 2, 2023 by Ken Wells

When Someone Deeply Listens to You

By John Fox

When someone deeply listens to you

it is like holding out a dented cup

you’ve had since childhood

and watching it fill up with

cold, fresh water.

When it balances on top of the brim,

you are understood.

When it overflows and touches your skin,

you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you

the room where you stay

starts a new life,

and the place where you wrote

your first poem

begins to glow in your mind’s eye.

It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you

your bare feet are on the earth

and a beloved land that seemed distant

is now at home within you.

This beautiful poem expresses so much of what most people long and yearn for. It is a gift simply to feel heard by another. Feeling heard is more than hearing the sounds and syllables pronounced by another to you. It is engaging the presence of another and comprehending the meaning of the spoken word. Listening is so powerful, yet such an elusive skill. Some experts have said that 85% of all learning is acquired through listening, yet they suggest that 75% of the time we are distracted from what we hear. It is believed by some that only 20% of a lecture is remembered less than one hour afterward. Some believe that human beings attain only 25% efficiency of the capacity of our listening possibilities and that our current span of attention is but only 8 seconds. All this said there remains great potential in the resource of listening to self and another.

Our society fosters a poor listening environment. We are blitzed every day with massive doses of technology to our brain. We are constantly triggered to shift our attention from one thing to another. Algorithms are designed to influence what you listen to determined by what triggered your interest in past sites visited on the internet. There is constant competition for your attention which lessens your capability to listen to yourself and others around you. Some studies suggest that spending more time in front of a computer screen lessens your ability to concentrate because of the influence of distractions to your brain. The challenge to listen is not new. Over 100 years ago William James wrote that there is “a ceaseless frenzy always thinking we should always be doing something else”. There is the urge to do, to declare, to sleep, or do anything other than the work of listening to another. The airwaves are full of talking heads. Seldom do warring countries sit down and listen to each other. It is always for peace talks.

In today’s world, media often distorts what has been spoken. There’s the little boy who thought he was repeating a well-known prayer translated by what he heard grown-ups share numerous times. He began “Our Father who does art in heaven. Harold is his name.” I recall as a young boy listening to public prayers in church. My dad would verbally declare “Grant it Lord” indicating his support of another’s verbal request. As a young boy, I always thought that my dad was comparing God to a piece of granite rock. It is easy to carelessly distort what others say.

Here are some points to remember:

Without developing listening skills you will lose sight of the sacred in life. Addicts must cultivate heart listening. This requires quieting the soul to uncover true yearnings of mind and spirit. There is a constant clamor of distractions that addicts must learn to sort and sift in order to listen to the heart and discover true aspirations. Addicts approach recovery not knowing how to listen to their heart. Rather than seek understanding, an addict is driven to numb pain and avoid discomfort. Yet, the sacred is uncovered when you listen to your truth. Some people like to think that written texts provide a way to know truth without listening to their heart. Through religion, they seek truth packed in sacred texts like the Bible, the Koran, or Bhagavad Gita. But truth is discovered in your heart with assistance from sacred texts like a Big Book in 12-step recovery, etc. There is no understanding without listening to your heart. Addicts must cultivate the capacity to recognize needs that must be met in healthy ways through the identification of their feelings. Breathwork helps to slow inner distraction and to notice feelings. Being able to recognize feelings provides a vehicle to meet legitimate needs in mature and healthy ways. Addicts transform the curse of feeling addictive craving into the blessing of intimacy through meeting needs in a healthy manner by listening to their heart.

Less talk and more listening cultivates understanding that relieves frustration and suffering in others who feel injustice and misunderstanding. Compassionate listening helps to calm reactivity in others. Fear is born from a wrong perception. Trying to correct misperceptions before carefully listening and understanding only fuels debate. As you listen, think about what is behind the words. What does the person want you to know and what meaning is behind the words? It takes courage to listen to someone who is espousing a belief that you do not believe in. Lean into the possibility that you might be changed by what you hear.

Become aware of your “wanting” agenda. Be conscious of your wanting the person’s approval, wanting the conversation to go a certain direction, your desire to fix the person, etc. All of these impact your listening skills. Can you recognize your agenda and let it go? Can you simply seek to understand? Can you stop planning your response while listening to another? Can you wait to express your thoughts and feelings and focus on another? Maybe not even address the misperception until later. It is difficult to listen without speaking when you feel threatened or offended. It is difficult to attend to the spirit of another when aversion arises. We want to control the conversation.

Practice becoming a receptive open presence. Conditioning your mind to listen began with inner listening to yourself without judgment. This requires ongoing training. You then extend your receptive open presence to another. It takes meditation and practice to listen to another without judgment and to attune to their spirit. You will need to anchor with your breath and give yourself care while attempting to do the work of listening to another. Telling another that you have not understood their suffering and that it is not your intention to make them suffer more relieves suffering and struggle. Telling them you are eager to hear more about their suffering heals the greatest divides the world knows. It impacts your significant relationships and offers healing to those who hate you and despise what you stand for.

In a world of divergent interests, pejorative perceptions, and unfriendly resistance toward others who are unlike you, practice becoming a receptive open presence. As you sit with your family and friends during the next holiday, courageously listen to another’s passion and frustration. Practice extreme listening. Find common ground. Always know that when the other person feels heard it is the beginning of trust which heals hate and hurt perpetrated throughout the world by those who choose not to deeply listen.

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