More on Not Taking Anything Personally

I’m happy to report that my efforts with Step Six and Step Seven have provided relief. Now the hope that I will remember this next time. But that’s the progress of recovery, isn’t it? We don’t always remember but we get there a tiny bit faster each time.

This week I’ve been making note of other things that are helping me with the “Don’t take anything personally” plan. At the top of the list is a hard one: Let go of being right. Yes, you are laughing. Just wait till it’s your turn.

But our insistence on being right is at the center of taking things personally. We want to be right. Our primitive brain would have us believe that our life depends on it. A new book—just in time—is helping me to loosen this belief. I have started reading Kathryn Schulz book, “Being Wrong” which is about our belief in rightness, why we insist and what happens when we face situations in which we are wrong. She details why being wrong is so painful and how we get trapped and stuck in our rightness. The chapter called “Heartbreak” which is about the ways we are wrong in love is worth the read: “Of all the things we like to be right about, none is so important to us as being right about other people.”

A couple of other things came to me this week as adjuncts to my “not personal” practice. One is this oldie but goodie from early recovery: “If it doesn’t have your name on it don’t pick it up.” I can practice not picking up other people’s business, their opinions (including their opinions about me) and not picking up fear, jealousy, comparison etc.

And then, recognizing that our Third Step is important, I heard and love this quote from theologian Richard Rohr: “We cannot say Thy Kingdom Come unless we are willing to say My Kingdom Go.”

Don't Take Anything Personally

I know, you have heard that so many times. And worse, we have probably all said it to someone else. It’s too easy to offer that advice to another woman when it’s her “personal” and not ours.

But there is something to this. And I’m feeling inspired to give it another try.

A few weeks ago I met with a woman and we were talking about The Course in Miracles—which was my entry point into recovery and changing my life. The woman reached into her bag and held up a book and said, “I’m re-reading this old book too.” And it was a copy of “The Four Agreements” by Toltec healer and physician, Don Miguel Ruiz.

You have seen this book. Maybe you read it when it came out in 1997. It was passed around recovery rooms then. It is wisdom. The fur agreements are:

Be Impeccable with Your Word.

Don’t Take Anything Personally.

Don’t Make Assumptions.

Always Do Your Best.

Great advice right? But what I have come to see is that I even took that great advice and used it against myself. Be impeccable with your word because an internal message of, “Oh, you liar, you can’t do this, why did you say that…” and on and on. And “Always do your best” became, in my head, “Do more, do better, an impossible rant of perfectionism.

Are you surprised to hear that’s not what Ruiz was talking about?

I was making even those good ideas into personal failings. Old habit.

What has really synched this for me—today—is simultaneously reading a newer book called, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”.  by Bronnie Ware. Death is a great wisdom teacher too. I date myself, but Carlos Castaneda tried to teach us that ages ago. He said, “Keep Death on your left shoulder all day.” If you do that you pretty much fall into the four agreements that Ruiz talks about.

Here are the top five regrets:

One: I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself.

Two: I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

Three: I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.

Four: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Five: I wish I had let myself be happier.

All of those regrets are about courage and self-agency. Note: it doesn’t say, “I wish I was happier” rather, “I wish I had let myself…”

So I’m going to try something. Want to join me? I’m putting a note in my planner and one on my mirror:    Don’t Take Anything Personally.

I’ll keep you posted on what comes (up) next.

Jackie Robinson and Those Who Made His Courageous Step Possible.

This week we’ll see and hear so much about Jackie Robinson. There is the new movie, “42”, a Bob Costas Special on the MLB Network and every sports commentator will be talking “Jackie.”

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was not only the man who was the subject of  “baseball’s greatest experiment”, who put a face on the color change in baseball, he also changed the chemistry of America’s pastime as well as its color. Sports writer Mike Lupica says of Robinson: “He played with flash and arrogance and made ferocity an art. Baseball did not look the same after Jackie Robinson.”

But we have to remember that history rarely happens in big events and single moments. There were other people who were critical to Robinson’s being able to do take those courageous steps on April 15, 1947.

 Jackie Robinson was not the first black to play professional baseball. It might be more correct to say that he was the first black to cross the color line who was allowed to stay.  The very first black to play professional baseball in America was Moses Fleetwood Walker. Walker holds the dubious honor of being the first black to play pro ball and the last to still be playing before the final shut out of blacks in baseball by Jim Crow laws.  Walker, a catcher from Ohio, was educated at Oberlin College and the University of Michigan and played ball at both schools before joining Toledo’s professional team in 1884.  Moses Fleetwood Walker set a precedent.

The refusal to allow blacks in pro ball meant that black ball players had to form their own teams and their own leagues. This formation of all black teams led to one of the most glorious periods in baseball history.

 There is a tendency I think for baseball fans to look at the Negro Leagues as the poor cousin to “real” baseball. Stories of barnstorming days give the sense that black baseball was an inferior game and organization. This could not be farther from the truth. Most of the bad conditions for Negro leaguers came after integration of the game. In their prime The Negro Leagues were multi-million dollar operations, among the largest black businesses in the United States, which sent millions of dollars into and through the community. .

Negro League star Josh Gibson was the greatest player of that time. He is now considered by most baseball historians to be the greatest baseball player of all time. One of the games most natural hitters, Gibson played for Pittsburgh’s Homestead Grays. Gibson’s hitting prowess outshined Babe Ruth. In one season Gibson hit 89 home runs, 29 more than Ruth’s record. And Gibson is the only player to ever hit a home run out of Yankee Stadium.

Without Josh Gibson Jackie Robinson’s moment would never have come. Josh Gibson showed fans what black ball players could do and he showed major league owners what black fans could mean to the business of baseball.  The Homestead Grays, who played in any town that had a ballpark available for rent, set attendance records in most of the big league parks along the east coast and through the mid west. Josh Gibson was the hot draw and fans- black and white -- came from all over and sold out every game to see him play.

Those sold out houses were not lost on another important baseball man, Branch Rickey, president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Rickey had been managing baseball teams all of his adult life, and when he came to the Dodgers he inherited an aging team and declining audience. He wanted to win a pennant and he knew that the hottest talent in the game was in the Negro Leagues. Rickey knew that the draw for those games while mostly black included white fans who loved the more energetic brand of baseball played by the all black teams. Rickey spent more than two years orchestrating Robinson’s first step onto Ebbets Field. Rickey was willing to endure the scorn of all of the other major league owners and managers.

But ultimately it was Jackie Robinson who had to step onto that field, and who agreed to Rickey’s offer and Rickey’s terms. And the terms were tough: Robinson promised, “no reaction, no matter what” for three years. That was not easy for Jackie. He had to put up with bean balls aimed at his head, spikes aimed at his shins and the ugly names aimed at him and at his family.

Rickey admitted later that, “Jackie had to turn the other cheek so often that he had no other cheek left – both were beaten off.” But Jackie Robinson was not Jesus and not Gandhi. It is unfair to characterize him as a man of superior spiritual character who took his enemies racist hatred and returned compassion and forgiveness. He did not. Robinson swallowed a lot of that hatred. He was smart enough to know that this was the only way the “experiment” would work and he was wise enough to know that the men waiting behind him in the Negro Leagues depended on his fitting in. 

Robinson was the man who took the risk, who played the game and who changed its play in so many ways. But Branch Rickey can also be a role model for showing us that winning and making a profit do not have to be separate from making important social change.

Looking at these others who set the stage for Jackie Robinson doesn’t take anything away from him on this special day. Rather it may let us take away something that we can apply to our lives. There are many parts to play in making great social change. Most of them come without recognition and they can, like Rickey’s, come with very mixed motivations.

So what does this mean to us as we live our recovering lives? Well, few of us will have the opportunity to be the man or woman of the moment, to publicly enact history in such a dramatic way, but we all have opportunities to be one of the unnamed others, who, though unrecognized, are necessary to building the momentum  that allows the historical moment to happen.                        

Cognitive Therapy--The Books

This is a follow up to the last post about Cognitive Therapy and how we can change our moods and feelings by changing our thinking. There are many therapists trained in a variety of cognitive therapy techniques. The name you’ll see over and over is Aaron Beck, MD—kind of the modern “pioneer”, (even though the thought-mood connection this is an ancient idea). Beck has done the most to breakdown the “how” of cognitive change.

There are two terrific books that I have read-and returned to again and again—that are a good introduction and that have really helped me. I go back to them repeatedly because in this, as in everything, change happens in layers and stages so I go back to get more help for the next layer. (Not unlike working the 7^th Step.)

Here are the two books on Cognitive Change that I have found useful:

“Reinventing Your Life” by Jeffrey E. Young and Janet S. Klosko

“Mind Over Mood” by Dennis Greenberger and Christine Padesky.

These books are available at your library or local independent bookstore.

Great Relationship Advice

I heard a great piece of relationship advice last week. This one really got my attention and gave me a way to see if I’m being reasonable or unreasonable when I get into that “wanting him to change” thing.

It goes like this: You can ask a partner—and maybe even your child --for a behavior change but not a personality change. You can ask for behaviors you want from your partner but we can’t ask them to be different inside or to develop the characteristics that will cause him to think like you do.

For example, you can ask him to take a turn doing the laundry or ask him to clean the bathroom on Saturdays—those are behaviors—but you can’t ask him to notice when the bathroom is dirty or when you need socks—those are aspects of personality. You can ask him to buy and mail his sisters birthday gift (But please, please do not comment on what he chooses—don’t sabotage yourself.) But you can’t ask him, “Why don’t you remember your family’s birthdays?” That is personality.

Similarly, you can say, “I’d like you to give me one compliment each day.” –that’s behavior. But it’s not OK to say, “Why don’t you appreciate me?”—That’s personality. And the start of a fightJ. That’s pretty much like saying, “Why don’t you be me?” And really, would I ever want to be married to me? I don’t think so.