Life's Lessons I’ve Learned to Embrace This Year

Looking back over 2018, I realize that this has been a great year of inner-conversion for me. There are several lessons that I’ve learned through Recovery, and some of the most important ones, have incorporated themselves into my thinking and behavior this year. Here are the lessons that are making my life so much better…

1.    Attention Does Not Equal Affection: Growing up as an isolated person who felt ultimately unlovable, I grew to desperately desire affection. Most people seemed to avoid me, or so I thought. Truth is, my behavior and body language told people to stay away from me. When someone was willing to have enough compassion for me to push past my steel-wall barriers, I immediately mistook their kind attention for true affection.

I was desperate for any small crumbs of affection that I could find. So I immediately mistook their kindness. Instead of seeing that these people were simply being nice, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that they wanted to be my best friend, or lover/spouse. Suddenly, I dropped the steel-walls and flooded them with attention and affection that wasn’t appropriate to the small level of attention they had given me. Inevitably, I’d smother them to death with my emotional neediness and they’d cut me off. Oh, how I suffered over mistaking attention for affection.

Recently, I had a dream in which two people in different situations showed me simple, kind attention and interest. After they left, I realized I hadn’t even learned their names and I felt a desperate need to find them. It was that terrible old desperate needy feeling of “these people were sent to rescue me and I’ve blown it! How will I ever find them?” When I woke up, I still had that awful needy feeling in my chest and I realized it had been a long time since I had suffered through that feeling. Recovery has taught me that attention does not equal affection, and that’s a trap I no longer fall into today.

2.   Life Is a Rollercoaster, You Just Got to Ride It: As a tried and true codependent, I’ve always had a tight grip on controlling life. I’ve over-thought everything possible day in and day out. I needed to control everyone and everything to ensure my safety and happiness. Or so I thought. This year, I’ve finally been able to live life and let God be in control.

     I’ve learned to pray that God, or my Higher Power, simply do what’s best for me each and every day. And I also ask God to help me to do what is best for me. I’ve let go of the need to control outcomes, which means I’ve also stopped obsessing and worrying about how things are going to work out. I let each day unfold as God wills it, while I enjoy the present moment.

   

    I’m no longer creating dramas and chaos in my head, and it feels wonderful. A song by Ronan Keating, Life Is a Rollercoaster, has greatly helped me to realize that life is truly like being on a rollercoaster. There are highs and lows, times when you scream for joy and times when you scream for fear, but God is in charge of that rollercoaster; and if we simply ride it through the ups and downs, everything works out for the best. There’s no way for a passenger to control a coaster. We need to simply accept and enjoy the ride. Better to get excited than to worry!

3.    I’m Not the Center of the Universe: Children who grow up in addictive households often don’t emotionally mature enough as adults to realize that they are NOT the center of the universe. That’s been a life-long problem for me. I’ve always felt overly self-conscious. If I walked down the street, every eye was on me, everyone was judging me (usually as harsh as I judged myself) and everyone was condemning me in their minds. Or so I thought.

     Turns out, no one ever even noticed me. Everyone is more concerned with whatever is going on in their lives and whatever they need to get done. For years, all I did was persecute myself by projecting my lack of self-love onto others and assuming that they saw me in the same bad light I saw myself. 

     No more. I’m a valuable person. I am lovable and I’m equal with everyone in this world. No one pays anymore thought to me than I do to them. I’m not the center of the universe—and what a relief! I can breathe now when I’m in a crowd.

4.    You Have a Right to Your Opinion of Me, and I Have a Right Not to Care: Most all of my life, I have cared way too much about what other people think of me. But no more. The need to seek others’ approval was based in my low self-love. I always thought everyone, even a total stranger, was more valuable than I was, so their opinion counted and mine didn’t. I don’t feel that way anymore. 

     I’m just as valuable and important as anyone on this earth. I don’t need anyone’s approval to be OK. I only need God’s and my own. I don’t have to like the fact that someone thinks ill of me, but I also no longer have the need to care. Every person on the face of this earth is responsible for how they think, feel and act. Everyone’s behavior is about them. A negative person’s behavior is about them, not me. So, yes, everyone has a right to their opinion of me and I have a right to my opinion of myself (and of them). I also have the right to not care at all if someone is negative toward me. It simply means that they have a problem and I don’t need, or want, their approval.

     I expect 2019 to be an awesome year because I’m going to simply let it unfold as my Higher Power has planned, and I’m going to go with that flow. No worries, no self-created dramas, no more projecting bad thoughts on to others, no longer mistaking attention for affection, and no longer caring what any negative person thinks about me, or life!