HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

(crossposted from Open Bar)

The main mistake that I see people making with regards to things like major life change/self improvement is spending too much time thinking about it.

Once you know what you need to do, thinking about it don't do shit but make you feel bad and immobilize you. So instead of thinking, you have to DO IT. Sometimes people get bogged down in all the different myriad first steps they COULD take, trying to decide which one is best. FACT: all of them are best, as long as you're doing one.

Just ONE. Start with ONE, and do it. Don't even think about the other steps until you have that ONE under your belt.

Let me give you an example. I was, for years, a masterful drinker. Talk about being part of your basic personality; I was a fucking GENIUS at drinking. People loved to drink with me, because I could hold my liquor and I was entertaining as hell. I drank all the time; parties, bars, home, wherever. And then I discovered that a lot of my other problems, like mood instability, irritability, poor memory, and sleep problems, were directly related to my drinking.

I'm not going to go so far as to say that I'm an alcoholic, simply because I'm not clear, as a scientist, on what that word means, but I will say that I was psychologically and physically addicted to alcohol. And I was highly functional, for the parameters of what I needed to do in life at the time. But it was also fucking me up in a lot of ways, in terms of interpersonal relationships, and doing ANYTHING different with my life.

But instead of "OMFG I need to quit drinking" or even "I need to cut back" (I hate "Needs" and "Shoulds" and "Ought tos"), I said "OK, I'm going to change how I drink". So I quit buying the half-gallons of bourbon for home. That was my first step. That was it. Before long, just changing that one thing changed my entire outlook on alcohol. I still have the tendency to drink ALL OF IT if it's in the house; if I have three drinks, I'll have eight (SORRY ABOUT DRINKING ALL YOUR PBR, J-DOG). But I go there much more rarely now and overall I feel a lot better, function a lot better, and am accomplishing more in my life.

So, basically all I'm saying is that if you feel stuck about one major thing that has come to define you in a way, that you don't like about yourself and want to change, just pick ONE small thing to work toward that change and do it until it becomes habitual. Then, pick another. Make them reasonable, and make them small. Don't say "I am going to lose 30 lbs by May!", say, "I am going to go for a 30-minute walk on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings".

If you really have to think about it and make a list, then make that list, PICK ONE THING, and throw it away. Don't keep the list, because you can make a new one when you're ready, and the new list might be different anyway.

A pitfall to avoid is the trap of thinking "OH NO, I FAILED AT DOING THIS ONE THING TODAY, SO ALL IS LOST AND I AM A FAILURE AND I AM BACK AT SQUARE ONE". That kind of thinking is why I loathe 12-step programs. They base your success, and thus your status, on being perfect. Slip up, and they consider you "relapsed". There's no "Shit, yeah, I got WASTED at the party last night and now I feel like crap, reminds me of why I decided to quit doing this in the first place": instead, it's YOU FUCKED UP YOU PIECE OF SHIT, MIGHT AS WELL GO BACK TO DRINKING A FIFTH OF VODKA EVERY DAY, TURN IN YOUR CHIP AND CONFESS YOUR SINS 'CAUSE YOU'RE A FUCKING LOSER.

Sure, that might be an effective approach for some people. Somewhere.

However, for most ordinary schmucks, that kind of absolutist thinking is totally self-defeating. If your goal is to go for walks and you let it slide for a week, so the fuck what. It doesn't mean you "failed", it just means you let it slide for a week. If you let it change your thinking from "I go for walks three times a week" to "I FAILED to go for walks three times a week and now I have to START AGAIN" you are shooting yourself in the foot by creating an arbitrary failure point. Just go for a fucking walk.

Most of all, keep perspective and don't let the big goals dominate your thinking to the point where you lose sign of the small goals. I have a lot of goals. I want a PhD. I want a flat stomach. I want to catch up on my mortgage. But right now, all I can do is do my homework, go for walks a couple times a week, and spend the couple hours between coming home from school and my kids coming home from school in my studio making beads.

One last thing; sometimes accomplishing something you REALLY want means letting something else slide. You have to decide how important the thing you want is, and how important the other things in your life are. For me, housekeeping and going out drinking with my friends are the things that have to slide. It's a bummer, I miss my friends and my house is constantly just barely on the verge of squalor, but if I really want that college degree, that's the way it's going to be, and I can live with that.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I have long agreed with Stang's hatred of 12-steppers, and your opinion only reinforces that.

Perfection is the enemy of the good.  Attempting perfection only has one result; inevitable failure leading to depression and feelings of worthlessness.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I have long agreed with Stang's hatred of 12-steppers, and your opinion only reinforces that.

Perfection is the enemy of the good.  Attempting perfection only has one result; inevitable failure leading to depression and feelings of worthlessness.

Exactly. Seeking perfection is courting failure.

Worse, 12-step programs are BUILT on shame and fear of failure; they are rigidly hierarchical and inherently judgmental. They are, in my opinion, highly cultish by nature.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I have long agreed with Stang's hatred of 12-steppers, and your opinion only reinforces that.

Perfection is the enemy of the good.  Attempting perfection only has one result; inevitable failure leading to depression and feelings of worthlessness.

Exactly. Seeking perfection is courting failure.

Worse, 12-step programs are BUILT on shame and fear of failure; they are rigidly hierarchical and inherently judgmental. They are, in my opinion, highly cultish by nature.

Yep.  Let's take a look at AA's 12 steps:

1.We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2.Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3.Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4.Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5.Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6.Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7.Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8.Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9.Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10.Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11.Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12.Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Bear in mind that in some states (AZ, among others), this program can be mandated to those convicted of substance abuse-related crimes (DUI, etc).

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Now, contrast that with the idea of "Take responsibility for your own actions, and when you fuck up, get back up and try again."

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's a little like forcing people to attend Church every Sunday if they're caught stealing.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Now, contrast that with the idea of "Take responsibility for your own actions, and when you fuck up, get back up and try again."

yeah.

I am 100% in favor of therapy and social support, whether that be a structured support group or just a few friends you can talk to. In my opinion, most of the time, when and for as much as 12-step programs work (almost everyone "relapses" and loses their "time" at least a couple times) it's because of the social support aspect.

The rest of the structure is the cult part. Do this or you FAIL. Listen to your Elders (those who "have more sobriety"). Call your sponsor every day. If you stay sober and move on with your life, if you quit "working the program", you become an outcast, a "dry drunk". 12-steppers are encouraged to have friends only within the group; outsiders tend to be regarded with suspicion, as potential bad influences. Doubly so if they're "drinkers".

At the end of meetings, everybody holds hands in a circle and says "KEEP COMING BACK, IT WORKS!"

IT'S A FUCKING CULT.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

It's a little like forcing people to attend Church every Sunday if they're caught stealing.

Don't laugh.

http://tucsoncitizen.com/freethought-arizona/2012/07/16/religion-is-creeping-into-politics-and-the-courts-bible-reading-as-a-sentence-and-u-s-schools-modeled-after-madrassas/

Links at site.  The links are good, the article itself is crap, on account of bigotry - at the end, the author goes all sideways, demanding to know where all the Islamic Nobel Prize winners are.

Oh, Tucson.  You can't even get being WRONG right.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It's a little like forcing people to attend Church every Sunday if they're caught stealing.

Don't laugh.

http://tucsoncitizen.com/freethought-arizona/2012/07/16/religion-is-creeping-into-politics-and-the-courts-bible-reading-as-a-sentence-and-u-s-schools-modeled-after-madrassas/

Links at site.  The links are good, the article itself is crap, on account of bigotry - at the end, the author goes all sideways, demanding to know where all the Islamic Nobel Prize winners are.

Oh, Tucson.  You can't even get being WRONG right.

[Lenin McCarthy]

The essence of this is nothing new for me, but it is something I need to be reminded of constantly. Like now, when I have four assignments for school overdue, have agreed to hold a 45-minute presentation about a subject I know way too little about tomorrow, a report about the Young Liberals' project in Belarus to copyedit. And the list just adds up. All these tasks put together look like this steep, seemingly insuperable mountain (for this still depressed-ish teenager), but I really just need to look at the map and I'm likely to find a less steep path, maybe even some stairs or a chairlift. And I do have lots of hours of spare time that I spend doing nothing useful (like reading about remote Chadian villages on Wikipedia). I can do all the work I need to if I allocate my time right, instead of running away from it. I can even still have the time to hang out with my friends, do drugs and read books just for fun.

"I SCREWED UP, NOW I'M FUCKED UP FOREVER" is a fucked up attitude to have, and one I have way too often. Taking responsibility for your own actions also implies that you manage to evaluate your past actions and MOVE ON being a better person. That does NOT INVOLVE descending into self-loathing Turtle Mode.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The essence of this is nothing new for me, but it is something I need to be reminded of constantly. Like now, when I have four assignments for school overdue, have agreed to hold a 45-minute presentation about a subject I know way too little about tomorrow, a report about the Young Liberals' project in Belarus to copyedit. And the list just adds up. All these tasks put together look like this steep, seemingly insuperable mountain (for this still depressed-ish teenager), but I really just need to look at the map and I'm likely to find a less steep path, maybe even some stairs or a chairlift. And I do have lots of hours of spare time that I spend doing nothing useful (like reading about remote Chadian villages on Wikipedia). I can do all the work I need to if I allocate my time right, instead of running away from it. I can even still have the time to hang out with my friends, do drugs and read books just for fun.

"I SCREWED UP, NOW I'M FUCKED UP FOREVER" is a fucked up attitude to have, and one I have way too often. Taking responsibility for your own actions also implies that you manage to evaluate your past actions and MOVE ON being a better person. That does NOT INVOLVE descending into self-loathing Turtle Mode.

BINGO!

Like, I just fucked off for a whole hour that I should have been working in my studio. It would be easy enough to now just decide that I fucked everything all up and why bother, and I'll "start again" tomorrow, but actually it just means I'm going to go down there right fucking now and be an hour shy of work today. 

[Don Coyote]

Printing this shit out right now and taping it near my computer. Because I knew this but my inner monkey likes validation?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Printing this shit out right now and taping it near my computer. Because I knew this but my inner monkey likes validation?

Yay!

[Bu🤠ns]

I like the core message of this post. (The whole post too :P )   It works really well for changing habits with kids too.  You pick ONE THING and work it until it improves.  Then move on to the next thing.  I found that my kids get really overwhelmed when trying to change a bunch of habits all at once.  And what make the small success really worth it is that it adds extra motivation for the next one.  So the outlook begins even more positively.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Now, contrast that with the idea of "Take responsibility for your own actions, and when you fuck up, get back up and try again."

yeah.

I am 100% in favor of therapy and social support, whether that be a structured support group or just a few friends you can talk to. In my opinion, most of the time, when and for as much as 12-step programs work (almost everyone "relapses" and loses their "time" at least a couple times) it's because of the social support aspect.

The rest of the structure is the cult part. Do this or you FAIL. Listen to your Elders (those who "have more sobriety"). Call your sponsor every day. If you stay sober and move on with your life, if you quit "working the program", you become an outcast, a "dry drunk". 12-steppers are encouraged to have friends only within the group; outsiders tend to be regarded with suspicion, as potential bad influences. Doubly so if they're "drinkers".

At the end of meetings, everybody holds hands in a circle and says "KEEP COMING BACK, IT WORKS!"

IT'S A FUCKING CULT.

People who "relapse" are "out there". Even if they're in the SAME FUCKING HOUSE, they're out-in-the-cold motherfuckers.

And check out the 20 questions. According to this (and some of them are "HAVE YOU EVER -?" questions)

If you have answered YES to any one of the questions, there is a definite warning that you may be an alcoholic.

If you have answered YES to any two, the chances are that you are an alcoholic.

If you answered YES to three or more, you are definitely an alcoholic.

(The test questions are used at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Baltimore, MD, in deciding whether or not a patient is an alcoholic).

http://step12.com/alcoholic-20-questions.html

Therefore, everybody who hasn't always ABSOLUTELY HATED DRINKING is an ALCOHOLIC and NEEDS TO BE RECRUITED INTO THE CULT.