monday update: from your point of view

Belle accountability, shit belle says, the good sober life

Here’s the link to today’s Monday Update message. This is omm253. This message summarizes what’s coming up this week, and i wanted to share an idea with you about Point of View: “what does it MEAN when they say this or that…”

To hear this Monday message, play below. nothing to download. just press play.

 

 

links mentioned in the audio (in order):

and in case you hate listening to audios, here’s the transcript:

 

(I took the liberty of adding a ‘u’ to Labour Day Weekend.  Is that Canadian?  Did I get it right?  Do I get a cookie? J)

Good Morning. I had an idea to do these Monday morning updates, sort of to set the pace and tone for the week, but also to let you know what happened last week and what’s happening this week. Last week on Friday, I opened a new session of the Sober Jumpstart Class with 25 new spots and I think as of today, Monday morning, there are 9 left (or 8). So if you are interested in doing that, you might want to leap on it now.

The other thing I announced last week was a new class/workshop for anybody who is more than 200 days sober. We’re calling it Sober Seniors, but really it’s more like Sober Champion or Sober Veteran or Sober something. I want you to know also that, this week — and this doesn’t happen all the time, but it definitely happened this week, especially with the message that I sent this Monday, where I said: here’s the thing for people who are new and here’s the thing for people who are 200+ days. Guess what happens? — And the reason I’m sharing this with you is so that you can see the parallel with your life. Guess what happens when you share that you’re going to do this and this? The people who are on Day 1 say “there was too much about the 200 day people.” And the people who are on 200 days say “there’s not enough for me these days, there should be more for senior people.”

Both of those opinions are true. I’m sharing this with you not because you should feel sorry for me, because I don’t feel sorry for me. Because I already know something that I want you to know which is: both of those opinions are true from the point of view of the person speaking. So there’s really no argument, there’s no: ‘No, no you’re wrong’. There’s no: ‘Let me explain’. We try to explain things to people that are TRUE from their point of view.

So you might be one of the people who emailed me and said, “Gee I wish there was more stuff for beginners”. And I’m like, everything’s for beginners. And then you might be someone who says, “I wish there was more stuff for people who are further along”. And I say, all of the early stuff is also applicable to you, just change some of the words. I set myself up that I will be a lighthouse and I will say and do the same thing all the time and that will either appeal to you or it won’t. I’m sharing this with you, not because I think it’s a really interesting story, but because I think it’s a model of something that is happening to you right now in your own life, which is where you feel like (please, I don’t feel like this) — where you feel like, “no matter what I do, somebody’s going to complain.” I don’t feel like that because I actually know what the perspective is. I know that I do the next right thing as far as I can see and that will either resonate with people or it won’t. But from my point of view, this is the right thing to do going forward, which is to have things for both ends of the sober continuum.

In your life, there are some things that you decide to do where some people are supportive and some people aren’t. Some people get it and some people don’t. Perhaps I’m modelling this for you. (You’ll remember that modelling has 2 L’s the same way that travelling last week had 2 L’s. This is Canadian spelling, I’m slowly going to inform you, word by word.) I’m modelling the fact that it doesn’t bother me. In fact, it makes me feel happy because it means that if you’re on Day 1 it’s like: ‘there’s too much about the old people’. And I’m like, OK you know, they’re really getting value out of the stuff I provide especially when it’s tailored right to them. And then if somebody says the same thing: ‘why isn’t there anything more for those…it seems like all you do is for beginning people, don’t you have anything for me’. And I’m thinking, OK what they’re saying is, I don’t want to go away, I want to stay here, can you entice me to stay. Can you provide some content that could be useful for me.

Can you hear the message that is behind the thing that the person is saying? Because our gut reflex is to be defensive to the words. You can’t be defensive to somebody’s words unless you know what the emotion driving it is. What’s behind it? Why are they saying those words? To respond to the words is to misunderstand completely what’s happening. Because there’s always a thing behind the words. Why would they say that? What would they have to be feeling to say that? So, let me tell you about this week. And if you think it’s a good idea or a bad idea, I’m OK with both of them. That’s what I mean when I say I’m okay with you not agreeing with me. I’m okay with it because I know that from your point of view, everything, of course, makes 100% total sense to you from your point of view. Of course it does. As it does from mine.

Here’s my week coming up: I have been working this past weekend which I don’t normally do. I’m not usually online on the weekends, but I have been. Because if you signed up for the Sober Jumpstart Class on Friday, it would be rude if you’re first interaction with me was then an out of the office for a long weekend, 3 days because it’s Labour Day Weekend. So I decided I would work through the weened and that I would take this coming weekend off. So I share that with you in advance so that you know that Friday, Saturday, Sunday I’ll be off line this coming weekend as opposed to having taken Labour Day weekend off. We’re going to the beach, and you will cross your fingers that we get like, I don’t know, one sunny day out of those 3 days because it seems to have turned to be September weather here abruptly. I’m not thrilled with it. Like I have to wear socks again which I’m against. I’m against socks all the time. I’m one of those ‘wear your tags inside out, don’t like stuff to scratch me’…I don’t like socks either.

Also coming up this week, there will be, in addition to this, 2 other One Minute Messages for a total of 3. I will, not everyday, but in some of the days where I don’t put up a new one, I will put up an archived one. Like you might have noticed on the weekend there was one for Julie from the cruse director at The Love Boat. She made a guest appearance/reappearance.

I sent out a new podcast to podcast subscribers about compliance on the weekend, that was on Saturday, and a new one will go out Tuesday or Wednesday, but I am definitely doing 2 new podcasts a week now for people who have the membership for…to get the new podcasts every week as they’re released. It is cheaper to do the membership than it is to buy them individually. But of course you may still choose to pick and choose. You can do that. I did get an email though from somebody who said: “I used to pick and choose the audios until I realized there was something in every audio and that I couldn’t base it on the title,” so I’ll just (it sounds so self-serving) I’ll just share that with you in case that’s helpful.

I will also share with you a little story from my weekend which will be illustrative and will sound like sobriety. Are you ready? I did a month without television, for the month of August. It’s something that I do each year. I don’t suggest this. I’m not recommending this. I’m not saying this is good for early sobriety. I’m simply telling you something that I did. Like quitting drinking, the period of time was short, and so it meant that I watched for the end of it the whole time. Which is why I actually think it’s easier to quit drinking for longer than it is to quit for shorter and there is a One Minute Message about this called Long Haul. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. But I quit for a month which meant that probably only 3 times or 4 times in the month did I really think, “Fuck I really wish I could just like, zone out and watch a show.” It’s not that I don’t have other ways to zone out, I do. I was just doing an exclusion with the television thing. And then, when it got to the end of the month, of course I got to make a decision about whether or not I continued. I thought, “well I only said I was doing it for a month so.” I still haven’t watched television, yet. So now it’s what day (I don’t even know what the day is) the 4th? But what I did do was I played a video game which was part of the thing that I gave up. I gave up TV and video games for a month.

What I did do on Saturday – this is going to sound familiar – is I said to myself, I’ll just play one game. I’ll just play 2 games. (I’ll just have one drink.) I’ll just do a little bit. I’ve had some time off, I’m sure now I won’t get sucked right back into it.

I loaded the game on my phone, snuggled into bed and thought, “oh this is the thing I’ve been looking for all month. This is the thing I’ve been waiting for. I’ve been yearning for something. So I snuggled into bed on Saturday and I got my phone and I turned on the game and 4½ hours went by. It went from light to dark. I didn’t eat. It’s not even that I really felt like playing the game. It’s that once I started to play the game, I didn’t feel like stopping. It’s not that I was particularly excited to be playing the game. It’s that once I began, I was disinclined to stop. So at the end of that experiment, I uninstalled it from my phone.

I’m sharing it with you as a way of accountability to say the following: the thing that is setting off that part of my brain doesn’t go away by me not doing it for a month. The only way to get that to stop… like I said it came up 3 times in the month where I really thought – yeah, yeah, yeah I want this … if I quit for longer, that 3 times would become 2 and then it would become 1 and then it would stop. I know this is the same for quitting drinking. I share this as a story because if you are near Day 1, you can see directly how this applies to being sober. But if you’re on Day 200, you can see directly how this applies to quitting smoking. You think about it a lot at the beginning and then less and less and then it stops. If we quit for a day, then we’re just waiting to drink again. It’s easier to quit for longer. I suggest quitting for longer only if what you’ve been trying has been working and you’d like to try a new strategy and so, it’s sometimes easier to say 100 days than a week. It’s easier to say a year than 100 days. Because then your brain goes, “OK, well I’m just not going to think about it then, I’m not going to negotiate.” The answer is no. The answer is just no, I’m not going to keep revisiting it going, how about now, what about now, can I do it now. No.”

OK, well this is long for a Monday update, so stuff coming up:

  • 2 x podcasts a week
  • 3 x One Minute Messages this week
  • Daily emails, sometimes twice a day. Definitely one a day, sometimes two
  • I’m doing coaching calls this week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
  • I’ll be away Friday, Saturday, Sunday offline. Not travelling with my laptop. I’ll have my phone for emergencies but I’m offline. And I will be at the beach. Theoretically, not sitting under an umbrella. Well, if it’s umbrella, it better be a sun umbrella.

That’s all I have to say. Happy Monday. Talk to you soon. OK Good Byyyyyeeee.

Belle

I want to put this online, to hold myself accountable. I want to document the noise in my head. I'm tired of thinking about drinking. date of last drink: june 30, 2012