Paul Garrigan's Blog, page 38

Closer to the Truth in Life

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Finding My Truth

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that my pet project at the moment is creating my guidebook for living. Most of my recent blog entries have come about as a result of this work, and this post is another attempt to unravel my thinking. I’m creating my own personal bible, or manifesto for living, and it will contain my best ideas about what life is all about, and how I can get the most from the experience. I want to remove all of the junk and self limiting beliefs that I’ve accumulated over the years and make a fresh start. This book is not just something that I plan to put together and forget about. I intend to use it to guide me going forward for the rest of my life; although I’ll be surprised if at least some of the content doesn’t change over time. This guidebook for living is all about the things that I find true and value, and it is not about telling other people what they should believe and value. I feel that this is work that we all have to do for ourselves.

The biggest obstacle I face while trying to find my truth is my own limitations. I’m agnostic in the sense that I don’t believe that we can know anything for sure. If this is true then how can I possibly find truth?

Not Knowing

I don’t know if it is possible for humans to fully understand this mysterious condition that we call life – how can we if we can’t even be sure if any of this is real. This doesn’t mean that I’m anti-intellectual, anti-religion, or anti-science. It just means I don’t take beliefs about our universe too seriously – or at least I try not to. I view beliefs as being similar to stories; something we use to help us make sense of it all and to keep us entertained. These beliefs are attempts to pin down something that is beyond human comprehension. I’m not saying that beliefs are necessarily bad, but they certainly can be when they limit us or put us in conflict with other people. I also appreciate that beliefs can benefit us. They make us feel more secure and in control of things. In fact, I can’t imagine how we would be able to function in the world without them. I think we (or at least I) make a mistake by becoming so engrossed in these stories that they are seen as some undeniable truth that must be defended at all costs. Surely if these beliefs were certain and undeniably true there would be no need to waste time trying to persuade non-believers?

Truth without strong Beliefs

My conviction that life is unknowable may sound unreasonable or at least impractical. If I claim ignorance about everything, how can I survive day to day living? Surely this level of uncertainty about the universe is a definite sign of mental illness and perhaps I should be locked away for my own good. If I don’t have a set of beliefs, how can I tell right from wrong? What’s to stop me from just doing as I please no matter how much it hurts other people? My complete agnosticism about the universe must surely mean that I’m a loose cannon.

I’ve found that by letting go of strong beliefs it has caused me to experience far greater inner contentment. I care more about other people, and I’ve no agenda where I’m trying to convince them that my beliefs are the correct ones. By admitting that I don’t really know anything, it has opened my mind and allowed me to let go of self limiting nonsense. I can see that underneath all the beliefs there is a truth, and I don’t need to fully understand what this is in order to get closer to it. I feel sure that our more beneficial beliefs (things like love and charity) are reflections of this underlying truth. In fact it seems reasonable for me to assume that the closer our beliefs are to what actually exists the more beneficial they will be for us. Our beliefs can bring us closer to the truth, but I’m just not convinced that they can take us all the way there. Of course, the fact that I don’t know means that I can’t go around dismissing other people’s beliefs with any level of certainty. I can only really know that “I don’t know”.

My barometer of truth is the impact that a belief has on my life. I’m not talking here about just doing whatever I like so long as it makes me happy. I don’t subscribe to the views of people like Alistair Crowley who advocated, “do what thou wilt is the whole of the law. It is not right for me to hurt other people with the excuse that I’m trying to be happy. I’ve tried living a life dictated to hedonism, and that almost killed me. I now see that the ups and downs are equally important and that always striving to be happy is life denying and a path to misery. I like to use the word “contentment” as something different from happiness – it is a sense of peace no matter what is happening in the world. It is this inner feeling of serenity that tells me that I’m moving closer to the truth. Another very positive sign is that I’m spending more time thinking about other people. I also feel that there are some truths in life that are almost undeniable. I doubt that it took the arrival of religion for humans to understand that murder is wrong. I think the same can be said of many ethical principles. It seems to be the simple beliefs that are best for leading me to inner contentment – those that are too complex can be more trouble than their worth.

I’ve found that the universe is more than capable of leading me towards the truth. I choose to call the universe my teacher or sometimes even my God. We can speculate that there is some intelligent entity that cares about my welfare who is providing these teachings, but that just falls under the list of things that I don’t know. I do know that by letting go of many of my older beliefs and just trying to “love what is” my life is improving. I also know that every time I deny what is I suffer. These teachings seem to come pre-packaged in life. I don’t need to understand them in order to benefit from them.

Beliefs and Possibilities

I’m not against the beliefs of other people except where they are obviously causing harm to the rest of us. I like to hear how other humans make sense of this mystery, and I always have to at least consider the possibility that they could be right – the problem is that I can’t accept it as right just because they seem convinced. I’m open to all possibilities. I appreciate the mystery of what is here before me and look upon it as my God. I believe that there is an ultimate purpose, and that we are all part of this purpose, but I don’t pretend to know what it is. My caution around beliefs is not about rejecting anything but about being open to all the possibilities.

Positive Thinking is Not Waiting for Good Stuff to Happen

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I no longer hold the view that thinking positive thoughts mean that I’m entitled to a steady stream of “manna from heaven”. I’ve also found that trying too hard to make myself feel positive can be harmful to me. Positive thinking is becoming more about who I am rather than something I’m trying to force myself to do. By developing a more open relationship to my environment I’m able to let go of beliefs that held me back, I’m clearing the way for a more positive outlook on life. Of course this does not mean that it is all plain sailing, but it does mean that I’m better able to see the good in life even on an otherwise shitty day.

Positive Thinking is Energy

I like to think of positive thinking as a type of energy. It is a force inside that allows me to do the things I need to do in order to find success in life. It is not about lying in bed and waiting for luck to come knocking my door down, it is about getting out of bed each morning with the determination to get something done. This positivity is the exact opposite of the negative energy that wants to pull me down and keep me down. I can now see that this negative energy from self limiting beliefs and self hate.

The positive thinking that benefits my life does not involve waiting for good things to happen to me. I do believe that things will always work out of the best, but this does not mean that they will work out the way that I want them to work out. For me “things working out for the best” means “working out the way they should” – the only way they can work out. By being positive it means that I will be able to make the most of what lies ahead. It means that I’ll be doing the right things so that if manna does start to fall from heaven I’ll be there to catch it. I don’t need the universe to give me what I want – I just need my positive outlook so I can make the best of what I have.

People Move to Thailand to Escape Dissatisfaction and Not Just to Have Sex

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Expats in Thailand are All Sex Mad

I suppose it is understandable that male expats in Thailand tend to be viewed cynically by people in the west. The media has done a superb job of hammering home the message that men go to Thailand to have sex, so those of us who decide to live here must have it particularly bad. The harshest critics must find it amazing that any of us have time to email friends and family back at home with all the sex that must be going on – never mind how we find time to update a blog.

I’m not going to claim that all the men who end up in Thailand have come to be celibate Buddhist monks (although some do, and that was sort of my original intention). There are certainly individuals who do fit the stereotype of the sex tourist, but these make up on a tiny minority of the expat community. In my experience the “sexpats” usually don’t last very long because their appetites mean that they burn out – they learn the hard way that you can’t bonk your way to a happy life. The claim that only sex addicts would go to live in Thailand is about as reasonable as saying that only drunks would go to live in Ireland, but it is difficult to get people to see beyond the media stereotype – why should they?

Desperation Drives People to Thailand

I don’t mind that people who don’t know me might assume that I’m some type of sexual reprobate because I live in Thailand. I’ve certainly done my fair share of jumping to conclusions about people based on limited information and stereotypes. The people who matter to me know the truth, so it’s no big deal and I’m not going to whine about the injustice of it all. I will say this though; the vast majority of expats that I know have not ended up living here because of sex. They mostly came because they were unhappy with life back in the west, and Thailand seemed to offer an escape from this. I’m not just talking here about people who were suffering from the Monday morning blues. I’m talking about real and persistent unhappiness that drains all the good out of life. Who knows? Maybe some of these guys might have decided on a more final escape from their miserable existence if they didn’t have Thailand to pin their hopes on. I’ve certainly had emails from people who sounded that desperate.

It was desperation that fueled my decision to move to Thailand back in 2001. I sort of ended up living here by accident really. At that time I was like a dog with shit on its fur who kept moving from place to place in the hope of escaping the smell – not realizing that I was taking the shitty smell with me. I came on holiday from Saudi Arabia where I was working as a nurse. I’d taken the job in Riyadh because a country where alcohol was illegal seemed like good choice for a nervous drunk. I’d hoped that living in the Kingdom of Sand would solve my alcoholism, but things only got worse during my stay there. I strongly suspected that if I returned I’d wind up dead, so as the end of my holiday drew near I began to panic. I decided that if I was going to drink myself to death, I might as well do it somewhere nice like Thailand. I also held onto a tiny bit of optimism that staying here would somehow save me. Maybe I would become a monk and dedicate the rest of my life to meditation.

My state of desperation was more extreme than most, but I’ve heard similar stories from other expats. For some it was just a general sense of dissatisfaction with their life that pulled them to Thailand. It is so easy to feel like a failure in the west and even the winners can end up feeling dissatisfied with their achievements – there is always this push for more, more, more, bigger, brighter, better. I suspect the recent financial woes have only increased these feelings of dissatisfaction with life. There is also the fact that divorce rates are sky rocketing and getting old can be a terribly lonely business – apparently men are far more likely to end up alone than women. It is hardly any surprise that people would fall in love with a culture where dying alone at home without anyone noticing for weeks is almost unheard of.

Thailand is No Magic Solution

The desperation that drove me to Thailand almost killed me. I ended up living in a village in the middle of nowhere, and by that time I’d completely lost hope that this change of scenery could save me. At the end of my drinking I might as well have been sitting in a bus shelter in Brixton for all the good the Thai culture was doing me. I somehow managed to extract myself from this mess, but there are plenty of expats who never manage this. The reality is that the solution that places like Thailand offer to the desperate only works when we face our problems – it doesn’t work if we come to escape them.

Most expats don’t move to Thailand for sex; they come for a fresh start. The ones who end up being successful are the ones who make it work for them. I’m talking here about people who gave up a possible future of loneliness and depression and created a new reality for themselves. Those of us who come to Thailand hoping that the country will somehow fix us are almost doomed to failure – we have to make it work. The irony is that by making this new future in Thailand we come to the realization that this is something we could have done anywhere; maybe even back at home.

I doubt that my description of desperate people ending up in Thailand is much fairer than the idea that we are all sex addicts. I’m sure that there are plenty of highly functioning expats who live here as well – they just don’t hang around in my circles. I’m just trying to show that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about expats in Thailand, and maybe a better understanding of what drives people to move to the other side of the world will be beneficial somehow.

Delusions of Grandeur

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In this video I talk about my brushes with delusions of grandeur. I’ve found that my thoughts about being “special” are not only bordering on delusional, but they can also prevent me from finding contentment in life. There is no need for me to be special in order to have a fantastic life, and believing untrue things always leads me to me to more suffering

Press play to watch the video. You will also find the podcast version of this episode below.

Here is the podcast of this episode.

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Recover to Live: Kick any Habit, Manage Any Addiction by Christopher Kennedy Lawford

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I managed to get my hands on a review copy of Recover to Live: Kick any Habit, Manage Any Addiction. It is written by Christopher Kennedy Lawford who is also the author of a bestselling memoir of addiction called Symptoms of Withdrawal: A Memoir of Snapshots and Redemption. I’ve not yet had a chance to read any of his earlier work (I probably will after this), but the bits of his story that I’ve picked up online make it clear that he is an inspirational character with a powerful message. The author has been sober for over a quarter of a century, and he has dedicated his life to helping people break away from addiction. Christopher is the son of Patricia Kennedy and the nephew of John F. Kennedy.

Recover to Live

When I started reading Recover to Live I wasn’t expecting much. I began by looking at the chapter headings, but it all seemed to be material that I’d read hundreds of times before. One of my more bizarre behaviors as a habitual drunk was to spend my afternoon in a bar with a good book on addiction and recovery. I’d keep on reading until the words became illegible, and by then I’d be ready to begin lecturing my fellow drinking companions. This was my ritual for years, and it got to the stage where I sort of felt a bit odd to be out boozing without this self help material to tuck into as I drank. I’ve read a ton of recovery books, and when I saw the contents for Recover to Live I wrongly concluded that it would be more of the same.

It turns out that Recover to Live is an exceptionally informative read, and I would recommend it for anyone who is interested in recovery. I disagree with some of the ideas and claims, but that’s not a problem because the book provides information on many different approaches to addiction treatment. Christopher is not just simply giving his own opinion but is sharing the views of over 100 of the world’s top experts on the subject. It is the fact that it contains all these different voices that makes it such an important book.

I originally intended to treat Recover to Live like a textbook, and to just dip into the bits that interested me, but it is such an absorbing read that I went from cover to cover. Christopher has a knack of repackaging old information in such a way that it is not boring for those of us who may have read this stuff before. There is also plenty of new information and ideas.

12 Step Apologetics

Recover to Live has tons of information and lots of different viewpoints, but I sort of felt that Christopher pushes the 12 step programs a bit excessively at times. He admits that this approach is not for everyone, but on a couple of occasions it sounds like he is almost blaming people for not getting the program. I find this type of 12 Step apologetics to be unhelpful because it implies that other approaches are somehow inferior. I think it’s unfair to suggest that people fail in these groups because they didn’t try hard enough. The truth is that this approach to recovery simply does not work for everyone, through no fault of their own, and they should try something else. At the end of the day though, the 12 Steps are what worked for Christopher so it is understandable that he would want to promote this treatment.

Best Book on Addiction?

I read some of the comments on Amazon and more than one person said that this is one of the best books they have read on addiction. I agree. It probably contains most of the important knowledge we have at the moment for dealing with addiction problems, and it presents this information in a readable way. He even talks about things like body work and acupuncture. Christopher doesn’t just limit himself to alcohol and drug addiction – he also has chapters on sex addiction, hoarding, gambling, cigarette addiction, and eating disorders. He provides plenty of citations for those of us who want to dig deeper into the information. It looks like Christopher has another best seller on his hands and hopefully this book will encourage more people to escape addiction.

How My Stories Can Suck the Joy Out of Life

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I’ve just spent half an hour trying to come up with an interesting title for this post. I’m not completely satisfied with the one above because you might see it as an admission that my writing is dangerously depressing – maybe it is, I hope not, but that’s not what I’m getting at here. The stories I’m referring to are the ones that buzz around inside of my noggin; my beliefs about how life is and how it should be. These stories behave like a virus by taking over my thinking, so that I mistake them for some type of truth. This means that when life causes my story to unravel, as it always does, I can feel like I’m under attack or that things are going wrong for me. It is only by understanding that these stories were never important that I can escape this unnecessary dissatisfaction.

How Stories about the Future Can Ruin the Present

The stories that cause me the most suffering are the ones about my future. These act like unexploded landmines just waiting for me on the road up ahead. My ability to predict the future is abysmal, but it is just so easy to be sucked into these stories. I develop these expectations and when they do not come to fruition I feel cheated and misled. Even when life is turning out better than planned, which is regularly the case, I can still feel let down because my story of how it should be is under threat. This sad situation becomes farcical when I realize that none of my stories have ever turned out to be true, yet I can still be suckered into believing them.

I like having goals, and it is probably important to have them, but getting too hung up on where I should be going in life is a recipe for disaster. The best things have all been unexpected, and they turned out to be far better than anything that existed in my stories. All these beliefs really do is get in the way of enjoying what is already here because they nag, nag, nag. These stories trigger a steady stream of bullshit thoughts that try to convince me that something is not right and that this isn’t how it should be. I doubt there are any thoughts more useless than the ones that involve “this is not how it should be”. Such thinking is useless because “should be” is just another way of saying “isn’t” – there is no “should be” because there only is what is. This is why I need to embrace the uncertainty of life and let go of any confidence I have in my fortune telling ability.

Spirituality without Beliefs

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I view myself as a spiritual person, but this has more to do with my lack of beliefs than my actual beliefs. What I mean by this is that I don’t have much faith in materialist reductionist explanations of the universe, and I do not consider myself to be an atheist. I feel uncomfortable about defining myself by what I don’t believe, but there is so much that is unknowable to me that it is becoming difficult to say what I believe. To keep things simple it is just easy for me to say that I’m spiritual.

I’ve come to the conclusion that ultimately life is one huge mystery, and this is what makes it so wonderful. I feel that all beliefs, including scientific ones, are just stories that we have developed to help us make sense of what it means to be alive. Some of these stories may do a better job than others of describing this experience, but ultimately they are trying to describe something that cannot be contained by language. I now say that I believe in God, but my god is completely beyond my comprehension – it is the mystery that can’t be described.

Problems with the Spiritual

One reason for why I can feel hesitant about using the word “spiritual” is that people tend to associate it with something beyond normal living. I made this mistake for a long time (I mean that this was a mistake for me – it might not be a mistake for someone else). I went searching for something special that I hoped to find if I meditated hard enough or believed in the right kinds of things. I now see that I went looking for the spiritual in all the wrong places. It was so close to me that I just couldn’t see it. The thing that I now refer to as the “spiritual” is all that is left when my beliefs about reality are removed. It is what lies underneath all the stories that buzz around in my head. It is something so wonderful – way better than anything I could have hoped for. Yet it was so easy for me to miss because it was never hidden in the first place. This spiritual is always there in everyday life, but the stories I use to make sense of life act as filters.

Spirituality without Beliefs and with Beliefs

My spirituality lacks beliefs. This works for me because I can be a right pain in the ass when I have beliefs that I feel the need to defend. I’ve been forced to give up on beliefs for similar reasons that I needed to give up alcohol – I’m an addict! This is not to say that I’m opposed to other people’s beliefs because I’m not. In fact by admitting that I know nothing it makes it easier for me to entertain the beliefs of other people. I don’t see their beliefs as a threat to my lack of beliefs. I said in the first paragraph that I know nothing about my god, but this is not completely true. It is obvious that whatever this amazing thing is, it loves diversity so maybe there is room for many different beliefs and non-beliefs.

Embracing Uncertainty Can End the Fear of Death

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I will not be surprised to find that my consciousness continues after death, but my current contentment and well-being does not depend on it.

Belief in an Afterlife

In the past I’ve felt comforted by holding onto the belief that there is life after death. I’ve also felt equally comforted by the conviction that there is nothing after death. I latched on to each of these extremes because the truth didn’t satisfy me – I believed that there has to be an answer one way or the other, and that it was my job to find this answer. I wanted certainly so that I could end my concerns about death and just get on with life. I now accept that such certainly does not exist for me, but that I can erase my fear of death by embracing this uncertainty.

Fear of Death Kept Me Awake at Night

I can’t remember much about my early childhood, but I do remember the first time that I became aware of the meaning of death. It was around the time of my grandfather Garrigan’s funeral when I was seven. I don’t have that many memories of him, but I do remember laying in bed feeling terrified about what had just happened. I realized that he was no longer going to be in my life, and that other people I cared about would eventually die too– it also meant that there would come a day when I would die. I’ve no idea how many nights these fears kept me awake, but I resolved them by developing a strong belief in the afterlife. I clung to these stories of a heaven as if they were a lifeboat, and it worked for a time. By the age of 14 though, I was well on my way to atheism and a new kind of certainty about the afterlife.

The Comfort of an Atheist

During my mid-twenties I went through a full year of feeling suicidal. At that period of my life I would have considered myself to be a hardened atheist. By this I mean that I got great comfort from the idea that there was no God and therefore nothing after death. This was the lowest point in my addiction to alcohol and my life felt worthless and pointless – I just wanted it to end. I not only didn’t believe in an afterlife, but I also didn’t want there to be one.

During this year of despair I got close to suicide a number of times, but the only thing that kept me back was fear. What if I was wrong? What if blessed oblivion was not waiting for me on the other side? What if there would be some price to pay for my act? Worse still, what if by killing myself I would be somehow destined to relive this shitty miserable life over and over again? I felt sure that the afterlife was just wishful thinking for the weak and stupid, but when it came to actually testing this conclusion the doubts began to crop up. I wasn’t willing to take the risk because, when push came to shove, I knew that there was no way for me to know anything about what happened after the death of the physical body.

The Hypocrisy of My Beliefs

I slowly realized that the criticisms that I once made about believers could have equally applied to me. I wanted to believe in something that gave me comfort. It scared me that my consciousness might continue after death because this would involve a step into the unknown. By saying that there was nothing after life it meant that there was no unknown to worry about. I felt confident that I’d feel no regret about not existing; if there is nothing after death there will be no person to feel that they are missing out on anything. In many ways the believers were braver than I because they seemed to have the worse deal – fear of hell or a never ending existence which must surely get boring after a few thousand years no matter how wonderful it all is. There can be far more comfort in believing that there is nothing than believing that there is something unknown beyond physical death. This means that belief in nothingness may be as much wishful thinking as being convinced of a particular type of afterlife.

No Evidence for an Afterlife

My confidence in the non-existence of an afterlife was bolstered by my conviction that there was no evidence for such a thing. After all, I should only believe in things that I have evidence for – right? It was here that my thinking took a huge leap – I mistook lack of evidence as evidence of lack. I never considered that my expectation that there should be evidence of an afterlife, if there is one, might be unreasonable. How could there be any evidence? I didn’t know anyone who had come back from the dead and I’d never experienced death – what evidence could there be? It was no good looking to science for answers because this was just a method for testing things in the physical world, but who said the afterlife was physical? The truth was that death was this impenetrable wall and for me to claim that there was nothing on the other side was a huge leap of faith. I’d also ignored the reality that there were plenty of people who did claim to have evidence of an afterlife. I dismissed them because it wasn’t the type of evidence that fit in with my world view.

My atheistic convictions blinkered my thinking and gave me a false sense of certainty. I had no problem entertaining ideas of multiple universes because that sounded scientific, but I would get irritated even at the mention of something after death. I felt happy to consider the possibility that there could be other universes out there, even though there was no way that this could be proven, yet when it came to life after death I knew that didn’t exist.

Overcoming My Fear of Death by Embracing Uncertainty

I can now see that it was the uncertainty about death that terrified me more than anything else. I somehow developed the idea that uncertainty is bad, and that I needed to find a path away from it. This misunderstanding took me on a wild goose chase because the life is one huge wonderful mystery, and it can’t be anything else for me. It is not my job to solve the mystery – it is my job to enjoy the show without always being obsessed with what comes next. I’ve fallen in love with the mysterious of it all, and this means that I can embrace the uncertainty. I hope to die feeling like an intrepid explorer going into the unknown, rather than someone who struggles to keep their spirits up by pretending to have all the answers. I’m brave, so I thrive on the uncertainty.

I’m now interested in what people who claim to have experienced the afterlife have to say, but I can’t just take their word for it. I’ve had my own experiences in meditation and during lucid dreaming/astral travel that do seem to suggest a continuation of consciousness, but it is not enough to convince me. I’ve not died so I can’t know for sure.

If I’m honest here, I’ve become much less interested in the “nothingness” view of death because it is not like those who believe this can bring any personal evidence to the table. Lack of evidence is not enough to sway me one way or the other, as I don’t see why there should be evidence. I’m not saying that this view of death is wrong, but there is just no way to ever know. If there is nothing after death the person who believed this does not get to know that they were right, and they can’t communicate with the living to confirm this nothingness.

I will not be surprised to find that my consciousness continues after death, but my current contentment and well-being does not depend on this being true. I plan to avoid that familiar trap of believing that what may be over the next hill is better than what I have now. This is something that I’ve been doing for years, and it means that I’m always pushing the wonderfulness of what is right now away from me.

Ending Addiction Does Not Need to be So Complicated

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I struggled for years with my addiction to alcohol but when I finally quit it turned out to be incredibly easy. I stopped struggling with alcoholism almost seven years ago because not only did I give up alcohol, but I also gave up on the idea of being an alcoholic. The whole story about me having this disease called “alcoholism” proved to be way too complicated for me, so I tried something different.

If believing that you are an alcoholic isn’t helping you to end the behavior why not try believing something else?

I discuss the reasons why addiction recovery does not need to be so complicated in this video. You can also listen to the podcast below.

Here is the podcast edition:

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Freelance Writing Need Never Be Boring

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I’ve been guilty in the past of taking on freelance writing projects with less than an enthusiastic attitude. This begrudging view of work will arise when I judge the project to be boring and therefore a bit beneath me. At these times it can feel to me as if I’m doing the client a huge favour instead of feeling thankful for the work they are sending me. I am professional when it comes to getting the job done, but there can be this underlying feeling of resentment about doing something that feels like a waste of my abilities. It can mean that for the duration of the project I feel put upon and at times almost miserable. It is only in recent months that the truth became obvious – the problem is not the work but my perception of the work.

The Writer I Think I Should Be Versus Reality

In a few of my posts on here recently, I’ve talked about how almost all of my suffering occurs because the stories in my head about “how life should be” do not match the reality of my life. My work as a freelance writer provides another fine example of this type of unnecessary discomfort. My problem isn’t that I’m occasionally offered boring projects that I can’t afford to refuse, but that I’ve somehow picked up the idea that the only projects that I should be involved in are the ones that interest me. If I had clients banging down my doors with offers of $200 a word articles I probably could afford to be choosy, but this is not the reality of my situation. The problem is that in my mind I am that type of writer who is able to pick the cream of the writing project crop.

I know that when there is a conflict between the stories in my head and reality there can only be one winner. So long as I hold onto this belief about what my freelance career should be like, I will keep on inviting the real world to slap me about without mercy. There will continue to be this inner discomfort because I’m not where I should be, yet where I am is the only place I can be.

No Such a Thing as Boring Writing Projects

The cure to my freelance writing dilemma turns out to be so simple – I just need to stop believing the crazy bullshit about myself that is not true. It means accepting that the work that has come my way is the work that I should be doing. When I can do this the project stops being boring, and I stop feeling resentful. It means that I can return to hopping out of bed bright and early in the morning while looking forward to a day of writing. It’s so easy.

I’m no longer sure that there is such a thing as boring writing projects. There is just the writing that I think I should be doing versus the writing that I am doing. There is no such a thing as “should” – there is only what is. So by kicking that toxic word out of my vocabulary completely it will mean that I never will have to face boring writing work again.