Getting Out Of My Own Way
What does it mean to get out of my own way? It means I would need to stop prostituting my future (fulfillment) for the short term gain of getting my immediate needs met (Happiness). Getting out of my way means to subordinate my immediate gratification for the long-term benefits of what matters to me with another person or group of people. For instance, I will say I am committed to having an open, authentic and loving relationship with my wife. When I find myself in a conversation with Aileen and she is communicating to me what I do that causes her to with draw from me. Without exploring what I do or don’t do that would contribute to her with drawing, I immediately begin to explain to her: • How she doesn’t understand what I meant, • How she isn’t seeing what is going on • What was going on with me • How she misunderstood what I said • If she really listened she would hear how much she means to me I get in my own way, when I trade the inheritance of a fulfilling life with my wife for the short-term happiness of being right about what I meant, feeling like I am in control, being justified looking good.
As always, I am reading with an anticipation of discovery. You have a way of languaging that provokes thought and emotions. Thank you for taking on the cause of “Being Right”. I am shocked into transformation, when I think of all the times my being right has killed the moment, the relationship or the future possibility. Oh yea and thanks for kicking my ass when I do it again.
Brother Bill
Dan,
Great to hear from you and see your work.
I love the design and I am always blessed by your content … We really do alot to mess up our own lives. Thank God for His promise to change our hearts and minds by His power!
Looking forward to meeting when you come to Grand Rapids!! Check out my new web site, http://www.theuncovering.com … hoping to get someone from ACCD on our TEAM … Call if you like.
616.949.7500, cell 616.617.1016. Brian Fowler
How much time have we all wasted defending ourselves? People are going to judge us, so get over it and learn to just take it. What hits the mark will help us, if we can receive it and apply it. So who cares if we are right or not (only us).
I like this concept of getting out of our own way; we are the problem, the hindrance,to transformation; if I could just get out of my own way.
JR
Dan,
Your one posting says it all. Looking at my part in how things have gotten to be the way they are ( for better or worse) rather than my partner’s part, may be the most powerful tool that I can utilize in the domain of committed relationships. And it’s also the most challenging. If there’s anything that we resist giving up more than being right, I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s because self-righteousness is such a good way to defend ourselves from vulnerability. It works, but what high price we pay for protection!
You nailed it Dan.
Thanks,
Charlie
I’ve been an active member of AA since 8/5/07 and since then I have been fond of saying that staying out of God’s way has made me a new man or as Hermann Hesse puts it, “incipit vita nova.”
Staying out of my way certainly came first as I had nothing then. I was jobless, homeless but I was despairless…I had to be if I was going to live. At this very point, I chose to live and therefore was given a new life…a life free of living in this world.