Bill W

I love this thread. It should be pinned on that cream of the crop thread Leo has for all the high consciousness content ??

We have a saying in AA..... "self-will run riot". I was going to write a bit about that tonight, but I will just leave this post with the term/saying and expand later. It applies to me and it relates to my emotional sobriety! It might also be a good time to remind myself of the Lords Prayer Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done; on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Thy will. Not my will.

@Anna1 Thanks Anna

think of sleep difficulties as a sign that I haven't worked on enough of my day time shit. I used to fall into a trap that if I just have a good routine 1 hour or 2 hours before sleep that all will be right. Wrong. Speaking as an ex sleeping pill addict the best thing I've ever done for my sleep is two fold and in this order of importance. 1. Mindfulness meditation on and off during the day and evening. My specific technique is to bring my attention to sound in my immediate environment. This has really helped my monkey mind. 2. Once in bed I slow my breathing right down. Especially the out breath. If you ever listen to how someone breaths when they are in a deep sleep, and model your breathing on that.

My main 12 step fellowship is Alcoholics Anonymous. The actual 12 steps are virtually identical regardless of fellowship. Some of the more well known fellowships are alcoholics, cocaine, narcotics and over eaters. Of course there is also Al-Anon for family and other loved ones of addicts. My alcohol and drug sobriety is very strong right now. Next Friday 11 October I celebrate one year of total abstinence from alcohol and sleeping pills. No slips. No relapses. Anyway, I wanted to share the first 3 steps. I have gone for emotions anonymous as they swap the word alcohol with emotions and that is where I am at right now. Step 1 We admitted we were powerless over our emotions — that our lives had become unmanageable. Step 2 Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Step 3 Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

You might find this useful as well. As painful as I find this to admit, it's a sense of entitlement that gets me angry with how other people treat me, interact with me, or judge me. This short clip is great about entitlement and the flip side of that coin (humility). Enjoy!

I love this. It's about the futility of judging others, but you can spin it around and appreciate that if others judge you it is equally futile. Therefore it's not worth the attention and worry you give to what others think. It's worth 10 minutes of your time this clip I think.

I wouldn't have enjoying conflict as a goal lol. Yes maybe coping with conflict better and even being comfortable with it but if you start enjoying it then question the enjoyment lol. As for what people think I am going to send some stuff in a minute

I think of sleep difficulties as a sign that I haven't worked on enough of my day time shit. I used to fall into a trap that if I just have a good routine 1 hour or 2 hours before sleep that all will be right. Wrong. Speaking as an ex sleeping pill addict the best thing I've ever done for my sleep is two fold and in this order of importance. 1. Mindfulness meditation on and off during the day and evening. My specific technique is to bring my attention to sound in my immediate environment. This has really helped my monkey mind. 2. Once in bed I slow my breathing right down. Especially the out breath. If you ever listen to how someone breaths when they are in a deep sleep, and model your breathing on that.

@Anna1 Nice one. Yep you got it Anna. I never even knew you could do that on Google to be honest.

@Mezanti You are most welcome brother

I don't know man. I try to make sure I have sensible contributions on here but every now and then one dumb ass post will slip in sorry! Yeh I suppose I don't understand but instead of saying that I threw some justin bieber your way!

I missed this. So the issue is poor discipline and some obsessive tendencies? Fucking join the club man! That's what needs fixing. Leaving the forum won't change anything. I bet these tendencies and traits will just follow you around until addressed. Google the term AA Geographical. I think it applies here. Or look at this. https://alcoholrehab.com/addiction-articles/addiction-geographical/

There is no blunder here! Just a journey. What is the real reason for leaving the forum? I don't doubt your sincerity but I can't see the real reason. I try to ask myself two things when I want to run away from something 1. What is the real fear? 2. What demands am.i making of how my experience should be and how others should be? I'm just speaking from experience. That's all. Sometimes leaving can be for the best as long as the real reasons are acknowledged.

If peace of mind, being of service to others and feeling content are my biggest goals and I'm not professionally or financially too ambitious what elements of your content should I focus on?

@DrewNows Will try and do this Mr Drew I don't know whether this counts as an "insight" or more of a moment of self-reflection today. I wonder if I've made so much "progress" in one area of my life, that I've gone too far and up and out the other side of what is "optimal". I put progress in speech marks as it's probably part progress and part an unintentional swapping of one social liability for another one. I was thinking about how socially anxious I used to be. I still get it some times, but nothing like how it used to be. I used to spend hours wondering what people thought of me. How I came across. Did I sound or look like and idiot? Does he like me? Does she like me? Am I a popular person? Or am I a reject? I'd have interactions at college, university, or at work, and then analyse the interaction over and again to try and work out of I'd been an idiot of some description, or have a reason to be deeply embarrassed. I'd be worried about being made an outcast or a reject. I think this might have stemmed from some really bad psychological bullying I had at school. It was two years non-stop. Aged 14 to 16. I went from a "Jack the Lad" kind of "ringleader" boy to the school idiot, the one who had hardly any friends and was often on his own. It was like there was a revolt or uprising and someone else succeeded me and I was driven out of the pack of Lions to become a hunted prey. Anyway, from about 14yrs old to well into my 30's I'd have this anxiety I was about to be cast aside from the group again. Whatever group that was... friends, work colleagues, family....It's fascinating to think this needing to be part of a group is probably instilled in our psyche as it would have helped protect us from predators a long time ago (and perhaps still now to a degree). I read once that this instinct to remain part of the herd had to be in place for our survival? I'm not arguing against the need for human to human connection and being a social creature. I know and believe the many benefits this can have. It's just amazing how much fear creeps in when we are worried about being ostracized from a very small group of people, when the truth is, we probably go through life entering and leaving set social and other groups of people all the time. However, I realise I am speaking from the perspective of someone who is able to move from group to group if he chose. I'm sure there are millions out there that don't have this luxury for one reason or another. After lots of self-help including an absolute ton of reading and soul searching, some therapy, medication playing a part, and generally outgrowing some of this social anxiety and fear, I now feel like I don't give a shit what people think. I don't think this is just a denial either. Apart from a very select few triggers about my relationship with my father, I genuinely feel like I couldn't care less if a work colleague or family member thought ill of me. Friends who I really value, perhaps yes, I would be concerned, but even with close friends I no longer spend time over-thinking how they feel about me or how they regard me. I don't cling to anyone's approval (apart from the sentence below this) and I wonder if that's a problem? I also do have body image hang up's, but this is very specific and rarely causes distress like it used to. It's still a problem though as I allow it to block my efforts to make the first move in finding another partner. So, I do care what women (who I am attracted to) think of my appearance. This I would really like to work on. So this seemingly "thicker skin" has it's benefits. Less background anxiety for one. Less holding back and withholding expressing my opinion. More confident in challenging people or drawing the line. More willing to accept any consequences if someone doesn't like me, or didn't like a particular interaction they had with me. I believe that even if a select few turned against me out of the blue, that I could cope with that. The best thing about this is that I no longer catastrophise about what people think of me. That was fucking debilitating in years gone by. Anyway, the point of this post is that, sometimes I wonder if not giving a shit what people think makes me come across as arrogant, aloof, or detached. Some of my spiritual journey in the last 12 months has actually reinforced my ability to not worry about what others think. AA has been good with this. It's taught me that I am not the only person riddled with character defects. I've learned that character defects are rife among virtually all of us to some degree or another. Therefore, if someone wants to throw shit at me, I know they are far from innocent themselves. And if I want to throw shit at someone else, I have learned that I am full of shit anyway! This has aided my path to trying to me a more humble human being. Don Miguel Ruiz writes some amazing stuff about how pointless it is to judge others and how pointless it is to allow yourself to be judged. He writes about the "image" other people have of us. They only have this "image" of us. They cannot possibly know enough about us to make an accurate judgement, or accurate enough to justify their total conclusion of you. So this works both ways. I have an "image" of everyone else. It's not the true picture. It's an "image" I have created of them. David R. Hawkins writes similar stuff about the futility of negatively judging and negatively labeling people. As does Adyashanti. However, and I'll end on this. I'm not sure about patting myself on the back too much for developing the ability to "give less shits" about what people think of me. It helps my anxiety for sure and appears to increase my self-esteem and confidence, BUT, part of my spiritual journey must involve being a better human being for the sake of others as well as myself. Does giving less shits potentially increase the other person's suffering unnecessarily?

haha, all good and thanks for your message.

Anything for you my friend. Consider it done

I'm going to write more on my relationship with humility over the weekend, but for now I wanted to note that I really want to investigate the phenomenon of Karma if phenomenon is the right word. Karma massively intrigues me. I've just spent an hour searching the Karma posts on here and have a few videos to watch over the weekend.

A good way of raising money would be to charge real money for starting a new thread. Would raise money and increase the quality of these great self actualisation threads of yours lol.

@studentofthegame Thanks will PM you now

This thread will be locked for super high quality self actualization content.