Recovery's Debt to William James

The ideas and insights of William James show up throughout our recovery movement and across the self-help spectrum. We know that Bill W. and Dr. Bob read James , and so they were influenced by, and incorporated, both the psychology and spiritual concepts of William James.

Here are just a few places where we see William James thoughts giving birth to today’s Twelve-step slogans and sayings:

Acceptance.  James wrote, “Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the best first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.”

Just for Today. James wrote, “Everybody should do three things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.”

How important is it?  James wrote: “Wisdom is learning what to overlook.”

Feelings are not Facts.  James wrote, “If merely feeling good could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.”

And on the value of laughter and letting go James wrote, “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

Grow Your Own Mother

I’m reading the book, “Will I Ever Be Good Enough?” by Karyl McBride, PhD.

It is about healing and recovery for daughters of narcissistic mothers. McBride writes about the patterns of behavior, the persistent feeling of never being good enough and the invisibility that accrue to women whose mothers were on the continuum from self-absorbed to full-blown narcissist. Part of the recovery that McBride describes is developing an internal mother who is all the things one’s real mother was not able to be.

So today at the beach I began to envision what that new, inner mother might be like and I began to borrow parts of other women—and some men—to grow my own mother. To be fair I did include a lot of my real mother and her best qualities: passion, curiosity, charity, physical energy and humor. But, as I walked the beach, I began to name the people who I would include as I grow my internal mother.

I added in bits of Georgia O’Keefe, May Sarton, parts of good friends whom I’d want to have as part of my eternal mom-in-me. I also added in my two grandmothers: Josephine and Sophia. I never met them, but I knew of them. But could I pass up a grandmother named Sophia—wisdom—in building my inner mother? And Josephine, my maternal grandmother) who was a professional a poker player and the neighborhood “reproductive health advocate”

(she helped women in poverty to limit the size of their families.)  As I walked the beach I wrote the names of these woman in the sand, physically co-signing the new mother-in-me.

I picture this mom-in-me growing kind of like one of those pills you drop in water to delight a child. After soaking up lots of water they blossom into a seahorse or dragon. Now, soaked in lots of saltwater--ocean and tears, I am growing my own-new-mother.

Amor Fati--or Life on Life's Terms

In the recent bestseller, “Life After Life” written by Kate Atkinson, I learned this beautiful term, “Amor Fati”—which is Latin for accepting or loving your fate.

The concept comes from Marcus Aurelius who wrote an ancient guide for how to conduct one’s life and how to develop as a person. His work was very important to the German philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche who, in his book, Ecce Homo, wrote:

"My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it."

Doesn’t that seem terribly familiar? It is so close to our twelve-step ideas of “ceasing to fight everything and everyone”, and “not regretting the past.”

Amor fati means acceptance. Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. We accept life on life’s terms. Amor fati: that might just be worthy of a tattoo.

Facing the Fountain of Youth

It has been said that the line between youth and age is the point when you stop yearning to look older and begin to hope you look younger. The search for youth is an old--and timely-- story. It was five hundred years ago this week that the explorer  Ponce de Leon, searching for the fountain of youth, claimed Florida as his discovery.

That makes us laugh today because we may think of Florida as the Fountain of Aging giving its reputation as a retirement destination. Or maybe it’s a fountain of youth denial given the prevalence of plastic surgery. But Ponce de Leon was just one of many who had sought the secret of youth. The ancient story of the search for the Holy Grain was also a search for a way to stay forever young.

Today those with the same desire have an endless bounty of pseudo-miracles to prolong our appearance of youth. We have lasers, Botox and plastic surgery. And many of us know the shock of the mirror and the discrepancy between what we feel like versus what we look like in that reflection.

There is also a cultural disappointment as so many of us age together and the pressure to look young intensifies. Years ago when the middle-aged “Baby Boom” was predicted we imagined that having an older majority would mean more acceptance of aging. We were wrong. Rather than the demographic bump offering us permission to de-babe, it has instead created even more pressure to not go gently into our wrinkles and gray hair.

How does this apply to us as people in recovery? Well, if you’ve been around awhile or you plan to be in recovery a long time –you’ll need to come to terms with your beliefs and choices around aging and appearance. Just as we keep examining our insides we also do have to face our faces and come to terms with our outsides. And yes this does hit woman harder than men. Again, culture.

Sure we can blame media and marketing but the focus on “them” ignores the fact that the search for youth is not really about looking younger. What Ponce de Leon and those who sought the Grail wanted was not a cosmetic fix but immortality. They wanted to not die.

And of course many of us came into recovery because we didn’t want to die—at least not the way we were going to if we kept using. But the truth is that we will die and recovery offers us the chance to relay think that through. Only when we understand that we’re going to die do we ask the crucial questions:  What do you want to do with your life? And with whom do you want to spend your precious time? Maybe accepting death –really accepting it—is the best secret to living young.

As so many of us—and I’m in here too—try to erase our age with lotions and lasers we are trying to change reality. But that may also be magical thinking, just like looking for the fountain of youth. 

April is Poetry Month: Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver is one of America's great writers: fiction and poetry. He is one of the chroniclers of what a drinking life is like and a sober life. His stories have become movies, his poems, plays. Here is a poem he wrote near the end of his life.  This poem is called, "Gravy".

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.


Gravy, these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving, and


being loved by a good woman. Eleven years


ago he was told he had six months to live


at the rate he was going. And he was going


nowhere but down. So he changed his ways


somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?


After that it was all gravy, every minute


of it, up to and including when he was told about,


well, some things that were breaking down and


building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”


he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.


I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone


expected. Pure Gravy. And don’t forget it.”

Raymond Carver

Life on Life's Terms

Last week I heard this great line and it has stuck with me as I am racing to work each morning:

"Running yellow lights is not accepting life on life's terms."

Self-Care, Again

Today’s lesson: self-care. Why do I fight it? Someone pointed out that fighting self-care is paradoxically, a form of narcissism. “I should not be tired, ill, under the weather” etc. This should not be happening to me. But it is. Fighting self-care is also arrogant. “I’m too busy and important for this.” Ah, well.

Here I am with a cold, cough, tickle and sniffles. It simply is.

Acceptance. Surrender. Vitamins, hot lemon water, football, girly magazines: self-care.

Say YES! Today

Today is Bloomsday. In James Joyce novel “Ulysses” he commemorates the single day –June 16th—when his famous everyman character, Leopold Bloom, journeys through Dublin. It’s a long and complicated novel that more people pretend to have read than actually read. But it is Molly Bloom who wins us over with:

“Yes” she said, “Yes, I will, Yes.”

Joyce wrote that “Yes is a female word and the end to all resistance”.

Maybe for us yes is a female word and the beginning to all acceptance.

Can you say yes to your life today?

All of It

A friend of mine told me what a wise friend of hers told her when she was contemplating marriage to the man she had been living with.

The friend told her to get very quiet and “make a list of all the things that upset you, annoy you and that you don’t like about him”. Then very carefully look at that list and ask yourself: “Can you accept each item on that list?”

If you can, then you can marry him because those things will not change.

Cut the Resentment

Control is connected to resentment and to difficult people in our lives. Last week a friend gave me this practice to try with any person who challenges us. What she told me to do was:

Early in the morning or late at night—when you can imagine that the other person is sleeping—visualize your higher or best self who is wise and compassionate, and in your imagination allow your higher self to visit that person. See your higher self using a pair of beautiful golden or jeweled scissors and cutting the cord that attaches you to that person. See the cord connecting you fall away and then bless that person and see your higher self return home to you. Allow the blessing to fall on your self too and thank your higher self and your higher power.

Do this visualization as many times as you can over two to three weeks and you will find that your resentment, obsession and struggle with that person will lessen or disappear.

Byron Katie Loving What Is

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop at Kripalu Center with Byron Katie who teaches a self-knowledge and self-change process called The Work. Katie teaches a method that invites us to judge others and then turn around those judgments to look deeply into our own thoughts and beliefs—and ultimately to free ourselves by seeing our projections.

At Kripalu Katie worked with individuals on stage asking them to voice judgments about family and friends and then she walked them through her inquiry process by asking them to answer these questions about each judgment:

Is it true?
Can you absolutely know it’s true?
How do you react when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without that thought?

And then: Turn each thought around to it’s opposite.

Doing the “Work” provides a kind of fast-track to seeing inside of me. The idea behind it is that we make our own suffering by projecting all of ourselves onto others and then being mad at them for the things we projected. That is not so new. Many spiritual teachers and The Course in Miracles have pointed out how we create our world by projecting what we cannot accept in ourselves. But Byron Katie has given us a fast way to actually do it:
Judge your neighbor. Write it down. Ask four questions. Turn it around.

What I found this week after finally doing the exercises—called worksheets—is that of course it's me, of course it’s my thoughts, and the best part is that I can laugh at myself. In some cases writing out a worksheet was enough for me to shift my thinking about another person and in other stickier cases I could at least loosen my grip.

What struck me today is that for those of us in 12 step recovery—the lessons of The Work correlate nicely with our amazing 12 steps. The Tenth Step Axiom says that when I am disturbed there is something wrong in me. Doing a Byron Katie worksheet shows me this is true each time. The process also speaks to acceptance: what is, is. All my fussing and fighting and judging and insisting don’t change what is. And only when I face the truth about myself or a situation, only then can I begin to change—me!

Don't Push

I love this saying that reminds me that while I must do the foot work, I do not have to muscle my way through my life. In fact, if I start to use muscle I am trying to go to a place I don’t belong:

“Only go through the door that is open. Do not push against a door that does not easily yield.”

Bob Fosse at Jacob's Pillow

At Jacob’s Pillow I saw a video interview with jazz choreographer Bob Fosse. His work includes A Chorus Line and Chicago as well as many ballets and jazz pieces for concert and Broadway.

In the interview he talked about the development of his distinctive style. He said that he had very bad posture for a dancer so when he choreographed he created moves for his dancers with his now signature curved and turned-in shoulders. He talked about having “bad legs” for a dancer--and so rather than use traditional turn-out as in ballet he turned his dancer’s legs inward. He also mentioned that he had started to go bald when he was only 25 years old and so he wore hats all the time hence his incredible use of hats as props in all of his major works. He said: "All of my gifts have come from my defects."

What if all of the things we are trying to fix and hide and change are the things that are part of our distictive style and that could become our creative signature?

Temp for God

Here is a spiritual strategy that I began practicing a couple of years ago. I wish I remembered to do this every day because when I do, my days are so much better.

This came to me when I was working in an organization that hired temps to get thru busy times. I noticed that most of the temps were pleasant, hard working and very willing to do whatever needed to be done. They showed up each day and did what was on that day’s list. There was no sense of right, wrong, should, shouldn’t, not-my-job or why me? I thought, “What if I came to work like that each day?”

So now, when I remember, I think of myself as a temporary worker. The temp agency that I work for is God. In my morning prayer I say, “OK, God I’m temping for you today; whatever shows up is what you are asking me to do and like a good temp I’ll do it pleasantly, willingly and without debate. Where are you sending me today God?”

Maybe this new agency needs plastic mugs that say: Temp for God.

Negative Capability

Poet John Keats first used the term “negative capability” to describe the state and the process of being with the unknown. He valued this ability in writers and thinkers describing it like this, “that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after facts and reason.”

I think this is also something that we strive for in recovery and use less elegant language to describe. Being comfortably in the unknown, accepting doubts is not far from being in the day and the moment and being in the process of living life on life’s terms.

Gratitude is a Behavior

Yesterday in a meeting the speaker said that acceptance is a process. That helps me remember that when I can’t really “get” acceptance I can still be in the process of acceptance. Similarly, I realized that gratitude is not just a state or an emotion; it’s also a behavior.

We make our selves notice things we are grateful for. We can make a gratitude list to further this noticing. We can say “Thanks” quietly or out loud and always we can recall that, “Service is gratitude in action.”