Self Awareness

The Perceiver’s Vantage Point

/ James Browning

tumblr_m3wbh9fPRD1qzjwnko1_500Being solitary is being alone well:
being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice,
aware of the fullness of your own presence
rather than of the absence of others.
Because solitude is an achievement.
Alice Koller

For a long time the beliefs I carried made Alice Koller’s statement impossible for me to grasp and appreciate. Knowing people who were alone used to bring thoughts tinted with pity, suspicion and sympathy. I was compassionate, but looked at such people as not being whole. Surely there must be something wrong with them. In other words, something would be wrong with me if I was alone.

The glass that life is viewed though is only the perceiver’s vantage point. It can feel true and be far from it. I did not realize my fear of being along drove me from one relationship to another. I honestly thought I was normal and feeling incomplete without a woman in my life was typical for every man. Without any rational examples in childhood of what love between a man and woman was supposed to look like, I ended up believing it meant ‘to be with someone’.

So many people are terrified of their own company. The thought of being at home, by themselves, with nobody to talk to, is debilitating for them. So they do everything possible to avoid just that; they create an overactive social life so that they are always with friends, or they become workaholics so they can drown themselves in their jobs, or sadly many even become alcoholics; but all with the same goal: to avoid the pain and darkness that they feel by being alone.  http://jeanniepage.com/2011/04/09/the-art-of-being-alone/

My phobia of being alone is not unique to me. Many carry the burden with a fear greater than heights, snakes or even death. My irrational fear was based on the belief that being “alone” was like an illness or some other unfortunate condition that happened and had to be cured. It was a great sense of failing; a sort of emptiness when a romantic partner (or several) was not in my day-to-day life.

The shape of my thinking today about being alone is quite different. Not only do I not fear aloneness as I once did, I actually enjoy it a good bit of the time. And that amount seems to be growing as who I wish to be and who I am become more parallel.

The pain in loneliness comes from all that surrounds it, not the act itself. And when you spend enough quality time alone, you realize that it is indeed nothing to fear. You realize that you, by yourself, are happy and are confirmed in life and worth by everything around you. Chelsea Fagen http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/the-best-part-of-being-alone/

I don’t love being alone all of the time but find the peace in it more and more. Aloneness is not for the faint of heart for it will twist and wring a person at any point in their psyche where one feels ‘less-than’. Being solitary forced me to wrestle  a long list of inadequacies. The attacks of loneliness I felt were actually those things assaulting me when I was not distracted by a relationship. Being alone was damned hard and the first two years by my-self felt like they were going to kill me sometimes. But I survived and am so much better for it. Will I always be alone? I don’t know and hope not. However, today I am grateful to know alone or not is a choice I can make and not a perceived lack I have to fill.

I don’t want to be alone,
I want to be left alone.
Audrey Hepburn

The Truth About Yourself

/ James Browning

Psy“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves” is the 4th step used in anonymous recovery groups for compulsions that range from alcohol, narcotics and gambling to overeating, workaholic behavior and the recovery group I am active in, Codependence Anonymous.

The first time I encountered the words “searching and fearless moral inventory” they spooked me (more than that… they scared the crap out of me!). The fear was of the unknown for so much of my past behavior was buried so deep within me I was not even sure what all was there. I felt deeply ashamed, but was uncertain exactly why.

The majority of people never get involved in a 12 step recovery group, but EVERYONE could benefit from doing a 4th step (Inventory) and the following 5th step that boils down to Admitted …the exact nature of our wrongs.

Going through the inventory and admission process then beginning to let go of the regret we poison our self with is one of the best self-care efforts that can be made. Yet, most don’t do it for the very reason I didn’t for decades: fear and not wanting to face the truth. My personal experience was I had previously made a mountain out of a molehill. Yes, inventory and admission was difficult for me but far, far easier than I had imagined. The good I got from the process was and continues to be life changing.

Many newcomers to the Steps feel dismayed when they first see this (5th) Step. It’s bad enough, they think, that the 4th Step requires them to beat themselves up for all the bad things they’ve done . . . but now the 5th Step says they must shame themselves before someone else so he can beat them up, too! How can I do that? they ask. What purpose could such torture possibly serve?

Such doubt and dismay are understandable, even reasonable, given such mistaken ideas about the nature of the Steps. It’s important to understand that the 5th Step is not about wallowing in guilt and shame over our past behavior. Instead, it is a practical and effective means of reconciling ourselves with the past and finally putting guilt and shame behind us where it belongs. It’s also a critical step toward restoring our battered sense of honor and self-respect.

We will never really be at peace with ourselves until we are completely, whole-heartedly okay with who we are-and that includes being okay with who we were and what we have done in the past.

Only by revealing who we really are can we become the same person on the outside as we are on the inside. http://serenityweb.com/?page_id=70

From my vantage point there are two ways of getting to the process outlined in the 4th and 5th step of recovery: 1) great need and courage or 2) great pain that allows us to do nothing else. Most people, including me, take the plunge for the second reason that is outlined well in the quote “When the pain to stay the same exceeds the pain to change, we change”.

Today I think of each of the 12 steps kind of like having a cavity in a tooth filled. Until I do, what is wrong with me will continue to get worse and worse, hurting more and more as time goes on. While getting a filling is not my idea of fun, it’s not that bad either. Same is true for the steps. Not painless, but far less so than I originally though. Getting to feel better about life and myself makes it worthwhile just like a trip to the dentist is.

My gratitude today is for all the goodness and positive growth that has come my way since getting into Codependence Anonymous ( http://coda.org/ ) six years ago. Saying it has been “life changing” is vastly inadequate to describe the personal renaissance and growth that has come. To CoDA and my brothers and sisters in recovery I say thank you with a humble mind and grateful heart.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself
you cannot tell it about other people.
Virginia Woolf

Window With A Different View

/ James Browning
6312097041_b093d9c916_bI would be grateful if you’d forward to a few friends
an installment of G.M.G. you found meaningful and help set a record
for readership for GoodMorningGratitude.com’s second birthday on April 25, 2013.
Thank you.

Life without thankfulness is devoid of love and passion. Hope without thankfulness is lacking in fine perception. Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude. Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road. John Henry Jovett

What a fast two years it has been. The benefits of sharing a little of myself with the world each day yields multiplied blessings the longer I do it. My view of the world is through a window with a different view from any I have known before. From where ever and what ever the inspiration came, I am humbly and deeply grateful.

The value we place
on what we’ve been given
correlates to our depth
of gratitude for it.
Todd Stocker

Why the Sadness Passes

/ James Browning

the_stillness_of_march_by_nelleke-d5h14q9It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living.

Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us;
because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us;
because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.

That is why the sadness passes:
the new presence inside us,
the presence that has been added,
has entered our heart,
has gone into its innermost chamber
and is no longer even there;
is already in our bloodstream.
And we don’t know what it was.

We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened,
yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes.

We can’t say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens.

And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad:
because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside.

The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate. Rainer Maria Rilke

Rising whole and feeling well after a few days of moderate depression, I can find gratitude for those few days of monochrome life. Learning to use such times as a way of contrast to better days has greatly enhanced the good. And so today with much gratefulness I go into my day feeling contented, happy and a little stronger from enduring another little storm.

If you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger,
and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places,
then I am afraid that for you the road will be long and brown and barren,
and you will have trouble finding the light.
But if you DO believe, then you already know all about magic.
From “Liesl & Po” by Lauren Oliver

The Well of the Spirit

/ James Browning

well-w-bucketWhat if you had died in your sleep last night? Would you be wishing you’d done yesterday what you didn’t do? Words that you regret not saying? Gratitude left unexpressed? Love left unspoken?

While the scenario is humanly impossible, it’s just the sort of exercise I throw at myself once in a while to see how well I lived the previous day as compared to my intentions. There’s a line of thinking that goes “when you die there should be plenty left to do in your “in-box”. To follow through on this morning’s exercise, I have to put away most of the things on “my to-do list” choosing instead what I mean to get around to more but never seem to even get on that list.

I should…

…call my son more often and travel to see him more.

…touch base at least once per week with my dearest friends.

…remember to congratulate loved one’s birthdays/anniversaries & on the correct date.

…pay attention and observe the world more closely when I am walking or driving.

…listen closer to what others say getting less caught up in my thoughts as they speak.

…notice more things to be thankful for. There are many more than I acknowledge.

…slow down when I eat and enjoy my food instead of making it just a necessary task.

…notice the sunrise, the sunset and the sky in between.

…communicate more with my brother who is the only close blood relative I have.

…say I love you more to a broader group of people than I usually keep it to.

…daydream more and actually do the things I dream up and really want to do.

…be less afraid of my feelings and openly expressing them.

…be kinder, more forgiving and less hard on myself.

…be quicker with apologies and forgiveness.

…read more.

It’s interesting how fast that list came. I barely had time to type one before I was on to the next. Sometimes they came so fast I lost one or two before I could get them written. What that shows is the abundance of  “should-dos” I am missing out on; a gentle wake up call.

The inspiration to write this came from the infinite source beyond me that I readily acknowledge. When I am truly ready to receive, inspiration always shows up. Often it does not come in the form I was hoping for, but rarely is it anything but what I needed. I am grateful for the well of the spirit from where understanding and insight flow to me.

Life is not lost by dying;
life is lost minute by minute,
day by dragging day,
in all the thousand
small uncaring ways.
Stephen Vincent Benét

Food for Thought

/ James Browning

antidepressant-facts-400x400It has been no secret on this blog that I deal with cycling depression that comes around for two or three days about every six weeks. Though counseling I have learned to mostly just let it pass through me like “wind through the trees”. The depression comes, shakes me a bit and passes. For years now I have taken the prescription antidepressant Wellbutrin/Bupropion. While I don’t necessarily agree with the material I have placed here today, I don’t disagree with it either. Simply it makes me want to know more.

Depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and it is not cured by medication. Depression may not even be an illness at all. Often, it can be a normal reaction to abnormal situations. Poverty, unemployment, and the loss of loved ones can make people depressed, and these social and situational causes of depression cannot be changed by drugs.

Our analyses of the FDA data showed relatively little difference between the effects of antidepressants and the effects of placebos. Indeed, the effects were so small that they did not qualify as clinically significant. The drug companies knew how small the effect of their medications were compared to placebos, and so did the FDA and other regulatory agencies. The companies found various ways to make the data seem more favorable to their products, and the FDA helped them keep their negative data secret. In fact, in some instances, the FDA urged the companies to keep negative data hidden, even when the companies wanted to reveal them. My colleagues and I hadn’t really discovered anything new. We had merely revealed their ‘dirty little secret’.”

In 2004, the FDA urged drug companies to adopt a ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy with respect to their clinical-trial data showing that antidepressants are not better than placebos for depressed children. If the data were made public, they cautioned, it might lead doctors to not prescribe antidepressants.

Psychotherapy works for the treatment of depression, and the benefits are substantial. In head-to-head comparisons, in which the short-term effects of psychotherapy and antidepressants are pitted against each other, psychotherapy works as well as medication. This is true regardless of how depressed the person is to begin with.

Psychotherapy looks even better when its long-term effectiveness is assessed. Formerly depressed patients are far more likely to relapse and become depressed again after treatment with antidepressants than they are after psychotherapy. As a result, psychotherapy is significantly more effective than medication when measured some time after treatment has ended, and the more time that has passed since the end of treatment, the larger the difference between drugs and psychotherapy.

When people recover from depression via psychotherapy, their attributions about recovery are likely to be different than those of people who have been treated with medication. Psychotherapy is a learning experience. Improvement is not produced by an external substance, but by changes within the person. It is like learning to read, write or ride a bicycle. Once you have learned, the skills stays with you. Furthermore, part of what a person might learn in therapy is to expect downturns in mood and to interpret them as a normal part of their life, rather than as an indication of an underlying disorder. This understanding, along with the skills that the person has learned for coping with negative moods and situations, can help to prevent a depressive relapse.

Depression is a serious problem, but drugs are not the answer. In the long run, psychotherapy is both cheaper and more effective, even for very serious levels of depression. Physical exercise and self-help books based on CBT can also be useful, either alone or in combination with therapy. Reducing social and economic inequality would also reduce the incidence of depression. From “The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth” by Irving Kirsch

I am grateful for this food for thought came into my path. It deserves a good bit of further exploration. Maybe it is time I stood on my “own two legs” without being propped up by a pill. Then again, maybe without it I’d end up back in the ‘darkness’. From people I known there is a personal conviction that antidepressants really do help some, but don’t help others at all (sometimes doing some harm). For now, lots more research to do before I reach any conclusions for myself.

The truth will set you free,
but first it will piss you off.
Gloria Steinem

Six Little Things

/ James Browning

find-cheaper-beverag_1371Having focus and good intentions has proven to have significant effect on the quality of my life. When I walk into a day with specific things to try to do better, even managing to improve just a little gives a sense of satisfaction. Here on a Monday, with that in mind I go into my work-day with six little things to keep top of mind.

1. Be focused outwardly and actively observe the outside world I see during my morning and evening commute.

2. When I get to work, open up my office then walk around and say hello to everyone.

3. Take a ten minute break late morning and mid-afternoon. Get up from my desk and walk around.

4. Leave the office for lunch and eat something I like that is good for me.

5. Prioritize and do what needs to be done today. Then go home on time.

6. Try to listen a little more and talk a little less.

At the end of the day, it may be apparent that I did well at keeping all six top of mind in my behavior. Or my results may be small because I lose focus through the day. No matter. Good intention and even small successes at living better always lend a positive result. I am grateful for the inspiration to try.

If your daily life seems poor,
do not blame it;
blame yourself,
tell yourself that
you are not poet enough
to call forth its riches;
for to the creator
there is no poverty
and no poor indifferent place.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Words Of Wisdom Borrowed

/ James Browning

160159330469133768_a8z26rl3_c

This world is your best teacher.
There is a lesson in everything.
There is a lesson in each experience.
Learn it and become wise.
Every failure is a stepping stone to success.
Every difficulty or disappointment is a trial of your faith.
Every unpleasant incident or temptation is a test of your inner strength.
Therefore nil desperandum (never despair).
March forward hero!
Sivananda Saraswati

“Everybody wants to be on the mountaintop, but if you’ll remember, mountaintops are rocky and cold. There is no growth on the top of a mountain. Sure, the view is great, but what’s a view for? A view just gives us a glimpse of our next destination-our next target. But to hit that target, we must come off the mountain, go through the valley, and begin to climb the next slope. It is in the valley that we slog through the lush grass and rich soil, learning and becoming what enables us to summit life’s next peak.” Andy Andrews

I make no profession of being wise; only that I am wiser than before. There has been no gain of wisdom from my casual observations of life. It came only from walking into the fire, letting it burn and scar me then walking out of it with intention, a changed man. Being mostly content with who I have become, it is impossible to damn the blazes of pain and heartache that shaped me. I am grateful for the those flames, especially those that scorched me when I resisted most.

By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest;
Second, by imitation, which is easiest;
and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius

No Apologies, No Regrets

/ James Browning

1961499_ce55_625x1000I faked it. I pretended. I spoke about it with words that were false. I made others think I was, when I wasn’t.

What was this “it” I fabricated, made up, manufactured, constructed and lied about?

The simple statement “I am proud of myself”. Now that such a proclamation can roll from my lips and be true, it is so easy to see how for so long I lacked the ability to have anything more than momentary self-pride.

You are your own best friend and your own biggest critic. Regardless of the opinions of others, at the end of the day the only reflection staring back at you in the mirror is your own. Accept everything about yourself – EVERYTHING! You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

People who are proud of themselves tend to have passions in life, feel content and set good examples for others. It requires envisioning the person you would like to become and making your best efforts to grow.

Being proud isn’t bragging about how great you are; it’s more like quietly knowing that you’re worth a lot. It’s not about thinking you’re perfect – because nobody is – but knowing that you’re worthy of being loved and accepted. All you have to do is be yourself and live the story that no one else can live – the story of your own unique life. Be proud, be confident, you never know who has been looking at you wishing they were you. http://www.marcandangel.com/2012/04/26/you-should-be-able-to-say-about-yourself/

Always thinking I was a work in progress that could not be appreciated until completed, beginning in my teen years I spent decades being dissatisfied with myself. Age has a way of increasing imperfection, especially physical ones, that set me up to either accept myself as I was or collapse under the weight of my self-dissatisfaction.

Ultimately both happened. I broke until the strain of my self-discontent and like an egg was cracked open to my own truth: I am wonderful and awful; I am brilliant and dim-witted; I am handsome and ugly; I thoughtful and hard-hearted; I am peaceful and restless; I warm to love and am cold to love at the same time. All these things exist simultaneously within to create the mosaic that is “me”. Gratefully, today, the former part of each statement rings more true that the latter.

The joy within glows with gratitude that I can now accept the perfectly imperfect being that I am. Today I accept wholly the man I am with “no apologies, no regrets”. With hope, effort and intention my perfection will grow, but only if I remain wholly cognizant and accepting of my imperfections.

Every second that you spend on doubting your worth,
every moment that you use to criticize yourself;
is a second of your life wasted,
is a moment of your life thrown away.
C. JoyBell C.

Ready To Be Changed

/ James Browning

natureThe paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life; we’ve added years to life, not life to years.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space, but not inner space; we’ve done larger things, but not better things. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we’ve split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less; we plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait; we have higher incomes, but lower morals; we have more food, but less appeasement; we build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; we’ve become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology has brought this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference, or to just hit delete… By Dr. Bob Moorehead

Within the hurricane of modern life my experience has included thinking lots of money fixed everything, only to find it fixed nothing and after a point only created a lack of appreciation. I have been loved deeply but walked past it thinking something somewhere else would be better, but nothing was. I chased success, achieved it and discovered it contains its own unique way of ‘undoing’ a person. There have been years when I knew more people and had far fewer friends than now.

Each and every broken stepping stone has moved me ever onward, often staggering and involuntarily falling forward. But keep moving I did and now on the far side of the mountain, life is very good. Imperfect certainly, just as I am. The landscape changed very little. Instead I did.  Lessons that arrived didn’t teach simply because they came into my life. Nothing was learned until I opened myself and was ready to be changed and became grateful for each difficulty that was my teacher.

We were all born equal,
but where we are in life now
is of our own making
Stephen Richards