Perseverance

Agility, Adjustment and Resilience—Necessary Capitol to Achieve Sobriety, Serenity, and Success

October 17, 2023 by Ken Wells

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When you begin a project it’s impossible to prepare for all the obstacles, difficulties, and challenges that lie before you. It doesn’t mean don’t plan. It just means you need more than the right connections, financial resources, and blueprint for creating what you hope to achieve.

A fixed rigid mindset will be your detriment. It is important to be stubborn with your intent to fulfill a dream. It is also essential to cultivate physical and mental agility. Adjusting your plans and approach in order to complete your goals is crucial. People who are unwilling to adjust and create new pathways become unbending which contributes to falling short of fulfilling their aspirations.

Here is a list of considerations that come into play while you attempt to fulfill your pursuits whether it be entrepreneurial success, addiction sobriety, emotional serenity, or whatever else you aspire to achieve.

#1: Intensity. Creating dreams requires intensity. Merriam-Webster defines intensity as extreme energy or force expended. A synonym for intensity is passion. You will not be successful with a half-hearted effort. You must prepare your heart to be intense.

When I was a kid my favorite football team was the Chicago Bears and my favorite player was middle linebacker Dick Butkus who just passed away a few days ago. Butkus was a living incarnation of intensity on the football field. During plays he was knocked down, he popped back up and sprinted to the other side of the field to make the tackle. Those who played or watched him knew that he was intense about achieving his goals on the football field.

When I was Little Leaguer, I was intense about winning. When I pitched, if the players in the field were not “talking it up” with chatter, I would go to the teammate and get on his case. I thought that was what it took to win.

We are not all football or baseball players or fans. Some people in pursuit of achievement do not fit the projected stereotype of one who is intense. They may appear calm and quiet but when you connect with their spirit you discover a burning intense desire within. The takeaway is that intensity is a necessary ingredient to fulfill whatever you are passionate about. A half-hearted effort will never fulfill your dreams.

#2: Detach and surrender what you cannot control. You will not be able to control all of the factors as you pursue your goals. You must learn to be flexible and live life making constant adjustments. The more rigid you are, the more you must have what you want when you want it, and the less likely you will create your dreams. It’s not like you cannot create success but it is more likely success will begin to own you rather than the other way around. Rigid people lose sight of the goal along the journey and even once the goal is accomplished, there is a subtle sense of hollow fulfillment.

Practice the Serenity Prayer, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot control, change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Detaching from what you cannot control, being clear about your lane of responsibility, and staying there is the hardest simple thing to do in pursuing a life goal. Dream fulfillment is dependent upon your capacity and commitment to let go of what you cannot control. Detachment is a daily lifestyle, not a one-and-done event.

#3: Play the hand you have been dealt to the best of your ability and you will win! When things don’t work out as planned, it is easy to become stuck in self-pity. You will need to assess what are the strengths and resources you have to draw from and adjust your focus and strategy as you move forward. If you allow yourself to get bogged down in discouragement, self-pity, and self-defeat, you will not fulfill your dream.

Sunny Weingarten is a perfect example of someone who refused to be mired in self-pity. Sunny was a friend of mine when I was a minister in Denver, Colorado. He was a key member of the board of directors for a citywide ministry that I engaged. Sunny was struck down with polio when he was a young boy. His days were controlled and confined to an iron lung every day of his young life.

Sunny was determined to live life outside of the iron lung. As a young adult, he disciplined himself and practiced forcing air into his lungs sort of swallowing and forcing air into his lungs outside of the iron lung enclosure. Eventually, he conditioned himself to live up to 10 hours outside of the lung. He purchased a Van, hired a driver, and engaged in life, including activities on my board. He was a powerful energetic force. He began attending Denver Bronco football games and never missed a home game for over 20 years! In the course of time, Sunny tapped into his creative spirit and designed a lightweight portable lung that allowed him to operate outside of the lung for the entire day. Soon, drawing from his entrepreneurial spirit, he organized a company and flew around the world making a living selling his Port-a-lung to those in need!

Sunny demonstrated passion with intensity, a willingness to surrender what he could not control, and played the hand he had been dealt as well as anyone I knew. Though confined to a wheelchair in the day and an iron lung at night, Sunny lived 70 years of life a true winner.

When you are discouraged and tempted to wallow longer than necessary in a mud hole of self-pity, remember an old saying that says “When you don’t like the way you are sailing, don’t curse the wind, change your sail”.

Play the deck you have been dealt with intensity, detaching from what you cannot control, and what you desire and hope to create will become reality.

A Worn Road Less Traveled

July 28, 2023 by Ken Wells

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“Two Roads diverged in a wood,

I took the one less traveled,

And that has made all the difference.”

– Robert Frost

An addict contemplating recovery sees only two options. It is either use or die with craving. Addicts don’t usually die with cravings but they habitually succumb to acting out. In the beginning days of recovery, addicts are poor at creating options. They come from an either/or, black/white world. They either use or obsess about using until the craving has subsided.

People live with shame and pain. They live disconnected from their inner self. Most of us long for connection. Mindlessly, we listen to the radio or to a podcast when driving. Aimlessly, we scroll texts, emails, and a host of social media platforms disengaged and lost in the spectacle of it all. For an addict, any reason is a good reason to use. In recovery, creating options to using requires that you take the road less traveled. There are no shortcuts. There is no room for perfection. It requires a willingness to endure painful moments, relentless perseverance, and a commitment to being a little better today than you were yesterday.

Along the road, there will be a dawning that you are a spiritual being having a human experience. This will transform your struggle into sacred meaningfulness. This awareness is hallowed throughout 12-step rooms across the world. Carl Jung once concluded that what chronic addicts needed was a spiritual experience and ongoing communal support.

Most addicts in recovery settle for sobriety. Certainly, it beats the hell out of wallowing in the pain and distortion from a life lived in the agony of addictive behavior. Yet, few engage the worn road less traveled. Once you have put the cork in the bottle, what is next? Are you willing to go deeper? Are you willing to explore what is missing? Are you curious to understand why the addiction? Why the pain? Do you want to address that feeling in your gut that you are not good enough? These questions and more represent the gateway to a worn road less traveled. To those who have committed to sobriety and who are no longer content to rotate the object of addiction, I offer the following road markers on the worn road less traveled.

1. Adopt a mindset for recovery: Practice brainstorming more than one option for every challenge you face. Breakthrough the either/or mentality. Change your language about how you see yourself and the world around you. Dare to dream about creating the kind of person you want to be. Figure out what your song is and sing it. The expedition in recovery truly begins when you earnestly are willing to truly change your mindset about addiction, yourself, and the world around you.

2. Become a Sponge: What has helped me to be successful in my world of endeavor is that I became a sponge to learn everything I could to be the best I could be. I was a minister in a church for over 25 years. During the beginning days of my training, I worked for three years for free, with whom I thought was the very best. I asked so many questions that the lead pastor asked me to stop asking so many questions. Today I am proud that I learned to be a sponge in ministry and as a professional counselor. That said, it saved my life in recovery. Early in recovery, I adopted the mindset of learning everything I could about recovery. It is one of the fundamentals that has projected my personal growth during the past 33 years in recovery. Be a sponge!

3. Learn to fail forward: People who embrace a healthy recovery mindset create a paradigm shift in their thinking about failed behavior. They make it exciting. They realize that within their failure are lessons to learn that will help them become a little better today than they were yesterday. Rather than wallow in the mud of shame and negative thinking, they practice conditioning themselves to pursue a better way to live. They learn to transform the word excitement from a necessary feeling to a committed action of exploring what went wrong and doing something different.

4. Practice Playback: This road marker is related to the previous one. When an addict relapses, it is common to admit the destructive behavior and then get back on the horse and try again. It is often brushed off with the idea that “I’m an addict” and what needs to happen is that I just need to bear down with my recovery skills. Sometimes, they commit to going to 90 meetings in 90 days or start again doing the 12 steps. What often is overlooked is the importance of playback. When addicts admit their failure to their support community, what is left out is why they relapsed and what happened. What often is overlooked is the importance of playback. It is crucial to go back and unpack what happened and where the breakdown was. A golfer will learn to improve his/her swing by watching videos of past swings. A basketball player will learn where they were out of position and how to correct other mistakes by watching past videos of performances. A recovering addict needs to do the same. Go back and fastidiously review triggers, build-up behaviors, and mistaken beliefs that dominated and then practice over and again replacement behavior that corrects what broke down. We never become perfect. But playback will help you become incrementally better than before. So, practice playback and pay it forward with an incremental positive change that over time will make a profound difference.

5. Protect your imagination and get outside your comfort zone: It is counterintuitive for an addict to embrace discomfort. Running from emotional and physical pain is at the root of why addiction grows in the first place. Though contraindicated, in recovery an addict learns to lean into the pain and sit with it. Recovery requires that you get outside your comfort zone. Only when you do this, are you able to give birth to the person that your destiny is pulling you toward. The worn road less traveled demands that you live outside your comfort zone. This is where the problem is. Once sober from the hectic helter-skelter life of addiction and within the warm and friendly confines of a 12-step community, an addict is asked to push toward living outside of his/her comfort zone. It requires sensitivity to the support of the community while pushing forward to dream and realize your destiny. In doing so you must protect your imagination from the negative messages of “you can’t” or “who do you think you are.” You must protect your imagination from the impact of your personal failures or others who subtly want to pull you back into an old mindset. It is a road less traveled for those who live outside their comfort zone. Laying it on the line and pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone will require a commitment to being the best person you can be one day at a time. Sometimes you will take 2 steps forward and then 3 steps backward. Everyone slips even as they soar. Overcome your setbacks by doing the next right thing regardless of how you feel. You won’t think your way into acting differently. You will act your way into a different way of thinking. Don’t abandon your quest to fulfill your imagination. Stop flogging yourself with negative messages. Every positive thought and action will move you closer to your desired transformation. The worn road less traveled requires that you protect your imagination and live outside your comfort zone.

6. Choose your support community carefully and elevate those around you: One of the biggest challenges for an addict is to create an environment that fosters sobriety and personal growth. Most addicts have not surrendered to recovery behavior and hang around old friends who either influence them to return to addictive behavior or who thwart their vision of fulfilling their destiny. Like the old saying, “Hang around the barbershop long enough and you will get a haircut”, many addicts can testify to the reality of this powerful truth! The worn road less traveled in recovery will require that you weed out those who bring you down. You will need to distance yourself from the dream crushers around you. Don’t let them rent premium space in your mind. Foster a web of influence that will inspire you to achieve and transform yourself and hold you accountable to your imagination. Build an environment where half-assed efforts are unacceptable. Cultivate your brilliance by choosing a support community that expects greatness within. Create a support system that you can solicit counsel from those who will inspire you. Always know that on the worn road less traveled, life transformation is a team sport.

When I wrote the book Dare to Be Average, Cultivating Brilliance in the Commonplace the emphasis was the opposite of half-hearted living. Rather, it is about taking the worn road less traveled and embracing the common everyday moment—even those that provide emotional discomfort—and mining meaningfulness from each one. This pursuit of meaningfulness is required in recovery for those who choose the worn road less traveled.

Monkey-Minded Friendships

July 18, 2023 by Ken Wells

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” – Bob Marley

I was at the Tucson Zoo a few days ago with our little 4-year-old granddaughter Mo Jelly. She’s in a stage of social development where she finds a slightly older girl who might even be a stranger and then will follow her around like a puppy dog, mesmerized by the other girl’s every move. She then will try to mimic whatever the girl does. I watched this unfold at the zoo. Mo Jelly noticed another little girl. When the other little girl grabbed her mother’s hand, Mo Jelly reached out for her grandmother’s hand. Wherever the other girl went, Mo Jelly would follow. When the other girl rode the carousel, so too did Mo Jelly. The other little girl got off the carousel and gave her mother a high-five. Mo Jelly gave her mother a high-five too. It was amusing and typical to a little girl’s social development.

Mo Jelly made up a fantasy relationship about another little girl she did not know. This happens in the recovery world. People make others to be a figment of their imagination. They make up that others work a solid recovery program or have a cool personality. They put people on a pedestal and make them up to be what they are not. They are disappointed when others do not meet expectations.

I have often heard people complain that their sponsor is not responding as expected. Frequently, I hear others bemoan that their 12-step group is disappointing and less than anticipated. Just like Mo Jelly, they have made their expectations about a recovery community to be a figment of their imagination. People are simply human with flaws and disappoint others with their shortcomings. This is true of every organized group. Developing healthy relationships in a 12-step community involves the same dynamics as establishing good relationships elsewhere. Listed are observations about utilizing a recovery community to learn how to cultivate friendship and connection.

1. Friendship relationships take time to develop. This observation is familiar and well-worn. Most addicts who seek recovery do not put in the time to cultivate connection. They settle for intensity and do not do the work of intimacy. In a 12-step group there are interesting characters with personality flair. Frequently, addicts are enamored by the intensity of personality and the mantras that are shared during a meeting without internalizing the principles of recovery. This is the work of intimacy. I have listened to addicts complain about not being able to relate to 12-step meetings after attending one or two times. What they are really saying is that they are not willing to invest the time to connect. The value of a 12-step community is the space it provides to be vulnerable. Vulnerability requires time to unfold. When you invest the time you will create the deepest friendships.

2. Friends are just who they are. There is a tendency for people to idealize and make their friends what they are not. But, friends are never a perfect fit. They won’t change your life or make whatever has been wrong, all of a sudden right! You won’t like everything about your friend. They will irritate and disappoint you. They don’t entertain or make you laugh all the time. You learn to let your friends be just who they are.

3. Friendships share space. In a friendship one person cannot have all the power, make all the decisions, and dominate the space. When this is true friendships don’t last long. The relationship morphs into codependency or some other form of dysfunction. Addicts are oblivious to how much space they demand in a friendship relationship. They think their space includes other people’s space. As long as they relate to others in this way, they sabotage their potential to deepen friendships, if they have any. Friends are curious about the interests, needs, and expectations of each other. Between friends, there is mutual respect of boundaries. There is never demand, that is a one-way street. Friends are willing to share space.

4. There are cycles to friendship. There is ebb and flow to friendship relationships. There are times of much conversation and times of silence. Just being in the presence of your friend is meaningful. Friends don’t fuel chaos or turn each other’s lives upside down. They go with the flow of life issues. There are times that a friend will have an issue and need time to address a challenge and you let them have their space. Friends don’t have to be in each other’s presence 24/7 to be close. There is space and time for each to go his/her own way. True friendships are both close and distant in the course of time.

5. Deep friendships don’t personalize the issues of the other. Don Miguel Ruiz taught us not to personalize other’s behavior and actions in his acclaimed book The Four Agreements. Friends work to recognize each other’s flaws. There is an ongoing willingness to make apologies when actions or behaviors have been personalized. This is a lifelong process and deepens relationship between two friends.

Henry Nouwen framed the journey of true friendship in a beautiful description. He said “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness—that is a friend who cares.”

Monkey-minded friendships have a limited shelf life. Embracing the long journey of deepening relationships through vulnerability and perseverance creates the richest experiences in all of life.

This new post was written by Ken Wells. In Dare to be Average, Ken’s new book, you can embrace healing, peace, and self-acceptance through meaningful insights to discover purpose and fulfillment in everyday life.

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