I Need To Stop Beating Myself Up
~ Donald L. O’Dell
I get really frustrated with myself quite often. My ego keeps telling me I shoulda/coulda/woulda all sorts of things if I were really spiritual. As a result, I find myself getting – not just upset with me – very upset with others. My serenity goes in the toilet. Spiritual? Ha!
As I began really understanding the messages of a Course in Miracles (ACIM) and its similarity to much of the spiritual truth I found in AA, I began getting anxious and frustrated over my lack of progress in all things spiritual. This has not been a new phenomenon for me. Whether I was playing tennis or learning to play golf, or enjoying springboard diving, I would work so seriously to improve my skills that it ceased being fun. It had become work. Frustrating. Exasperating. Counter-productive.
The same process occurred with my journey into sobriety. Very early on in AA I found myself reading through the Twelve Steps and wondering, “How difficult can this be? I mean, when you read the early accounts of the pioneers of the Fellowship, they were going through the Steps in a month or less: Accepting that their lives were out of control; doing a moral inventory and sharing that with someone; making amends where they could; and moving on to doing Twelfth-Step work – sharing their lives with still-active alcoholics.” Within several months I believed I had “gotten it.” I was ready to tweak Bill W’s version of the Program. In fact I was ready to be the reincarnation of Bill W. Then I found out that there were many of us in my groups ready to assume that same role. How could that be? How could so many of us be convinced we were correctly improving the Program yet vigorously disagreeing with each other?
Finally I understood how idiotic I was being. After eating many, many slices of humble pie I relaxed and found myself enjoying simply being one of the herd – growing, morphing, changing, becoming transformed from the inside out.
Blessings, Don
March 14, 2024
