A (7:27)
And they begin to lack an appreciation for the fact that they are fundamentally powerless over the substance or the behavior. There's a thing that happens with addicts where once you kind of get your life back and things start to feel like they're moving in the right direction, you want to take the helm again and start driving the car yourself. And that's what we call self will, as opposed to a surrender of your will, which is what's required in order to achieve sobriety. You have to acknowledge deeply, to your core, that you are truly powerless over again the substance or the behavior. And then you have to do the work of turning it over to your higher power, of bringing other people into your community, of running your decisions by them, of trusting them with giving you feedback on those decisions and those life choices. And the minute you stop doing that and you begin to isolate and think that you don't need that anymore, or that you got what you needed out of the program of recovery, and now you can just kind of go about your life, that's when the relapse begins. And it may take a long time before that manifests in the errant behavior, but you really become a ticking time bomb. And in the instance of Shia LaBeouf, who's somebody I don't know and have never met, I see somebody who has struggled with addiction for a very long time. At some point it appears that he got sober. This was a guy who was well on his way to building a life in recovery. It appeared that he had found his higher power in, in the church. And he seemed to be pretty right sized for somebody who admittedly has a gigantic ego about what his priorities were. Obviously that didn't stick. I have no idea what happened in the interim in terms of his behavior in New Orleans, but clearly at some point, whatever he was doing either stopped working or he stopped doing it. He lost sight of the things that he had to do in order to get sober and started resorting to some old behavior patterns that led him to the decision that it was a good idea to go down to New Orleans and just do whatever you wanted. Fast forward to arrests and all the kind of public frenzy around all of this. And again, I'm not raising this to be salacious or to really point a finger at Shia at all, but more to say that it's inevitable that a situation like this was going to emerge if the person stops doing the things that keep you sober on a daily basis, running your decisions by other people, holding yourself accountable, making amends for your past wrongs, righting those past wrongs. That's very different from apology. What we're seeing in this interview with Shai is a lot of apologizing, a lot of self awareness around his behavior, but making amends is very different. That's when you have to actually right the wrong. And sometimes, in addition to righting those wrongs, when it's possible, that means righting your behavior going forward, taking the contrary action followed by the next right action, one after the other, quietly, essentially, anonymously, to repair trust with not just the public, but with the people in your life that you care about. Once you stop doing that, or you take your sobriety for granted, or you believe you don't need to do any of that, that's when you put yourself in peril. And I see somebody who is very much in his ego, who believes that he is in the driver's seat and in control of his behavior and his decision making and is in a tremendous amount of denial regarding the harm that his behavior is creating. That self awareness piece is fine, but he's not really connecting with the fact that what he's doing is actually really hurtful to the people in his life. I can't imagine that it couldn't be given the fact that he has these former partners and he has a child. That is, you know, part of this dynamic as well. But that is addiction. Somebody who is in the throes of addiction is going to tell you, hey, I'm just having fun. I'm just doing what I want to do. I'm not harming anyone. I'm down in Mardi Gras, or I'm, you know, down at, I'm at the card table or, or, you know, it's my credit card and I get to choose when to use it without really appreciating the ramifications and the ripple effects that those behaviors have on basically everybody that that person comes into contact with. When it's so clear that this person needs help, why is it that the addict declines or refuses that help? I think fundamentally a lot of it has to do with the fact that you can't solve a problem with the brain that is creating it. So if you are an addict, you don't have the clarity of mind to understand that you on your own are capable of even solving the problem. That's sort of problem number one. And the second thing is that recovery is all about willingness. It's a program of action. And the people that are able to get sober and stay sober are the people who summon the willingness to take contrary action, to do something different, to make a decision, to invest in their well being. And willingness is something that doesn't come easy for the alcoholic or the addict. First of all, you have to appreciate the cycle of craving and reward when somebody is truly addicted. Let's just use substances as an example. The only thing that is important is sating that craving through the use of that substance. That's all this person is thinking about. They can't function without it. And once they get the satisfaction of sating that craving, the cycle perpetuates. And everything else is unimportant to that person. And anything that is a threat or that might interrupt that cycle is something that the addict is going to run away from and not be interested in. So when you say to the addict, like, listen, you know, I know you're doing this thing, look at all the chaos it's creating. It's obviously destroying your life. It's hurting us. You got to just stop. That person may be able to recognize that and say, you're right, I need to. But they are powerless to do it because they're running on their self will. They're running this program. It's almost as if they have A virus or a malware in their operating system that overrides their better judgment and basically takes over their decision making mechanism. Short of some kind of intervention or interruption, that cycle is going to perpetuate until that person reaches what we call rock bottom. They arrive at a situation that is creating so much pain that they finally realize that they're going to have to do something about it. Rock bottom is a subjective experience. It's not an objective thing. Things can always be worse. Some people have high bottoms, some people have low bottoms. But addiction is certainly on the rise. Everywhere we look. The opioid crisis, this scourge that leaves almost all of us touched in one way or the other. And I think, I want to make sure to say that I believe addiction is something that lives on a spectrum. I think most people would recognize their own addiction tendencies with respect to the phone, you know, the supercomputer that we have in our pockets. And to one degree or another, all of us are victim to certain compulsive behaviors that we feel not adequately in charge of that lead us towards negative life outcomes. Yes, on the one hand, on the far end of the spectrum we have the, you know, the homeless heroin addict living on skid row, or you know, the alcoholic who just can't stop drinking. But there's also the person who continues to get into the same kind of not so great relationship, or the person who is a shopaholic, or the person who is online gambling a little bit too much. So somewhere on that spectrum, I think most people could probably identify themselves. But with respect to people who are truly in the throes of, of a deep seated addiction, let's say to opioids, I think very few people don't have somebody in their life who is so impacted. And it's a very challenging and disorienting dynamic in which it's unclear how to interact with that person. Certainly you don't want to enable their behavior, but if you care about this person, you feel responsible for them and compelled to intervene on their behalf. And so what you see is a lot of well intentioned efforts to get a person to get sober, most of which don't work out. And generally that involves the transgression of all kinds of boundaries. It's simple to say if somebody is in throes of addiction, your job is to basically recede from that person, set a hard boundary and do nothing that will enable that behavior. But let's say that person is your child or your partner or your spouse. This becomes easy to say and very Difficult to do. That puts the person in a vulnerable situation in which they end up conceding to the addict's behavior in a way that is not only harmful to the addict, but also harmful to the well intentioned person who's trying to help that person. And so while there's no easy answer to all of this, the tldr of it is that you can love that person deeply while also setting a boundary that cannot be transgressed. Sometimes you have to give them the hard truth and remove yourself from any kind of relationship dynamic with that person. And what you will find is that oftentimes that might facilitate the rock bottom that gives them that injection of willingness to actually do something about their situation, because you've created a consequence for a transgression of that bound. But every case is different. I guess I would say that the notion that you're going to stage an intervention and you're going to surround this person who's hurting with their loved ones and you're going to get them into a program and that program is going to fix them and they're going to come out and be fine. While that does work on occasion, oftentimes if not most of the time it doesn't because it presupposes the willingness that is required in that person in order to make sobriety actually stick. Because you really can't get sober for somebody else, you have to want it yourself. The program works not for people who need it, but for people that want it. And you can't instill that want, just like you can't instill willingness in that person. Which makes it difficult when you're a bystander, a loved one bystander, observing somebody who's spiraling out of control and you can see what they need to do in order to fix the problem. And you're just flummoxed at why they can't see it themselves or do anything about it. And so what you do is you end up putting yourself in an enabling position where you're preventing them from falling as far as they could, catching them when they're falling and softening the blow. And sometimes that's what you got to do, because you can't live with yourself just watching them descend into the darkness. But at the same time, it's important to understand that that's not always what's going to solve the problem. And generally it won't. The person who is suffering has to get to that point where the pain of their circumstances exceeds the fear of doing something different. And you cannot foment that in somebody, they have to arrive upon it themselves. And so when someone is in the throes of addiction or a relapse, they have to meet the consequences of those actions as an inciting incident to provoke that degree of willingness. Here is the dilemma. When you choose headphones, you usually have to decide do you want to be fully immersed in what you're listening to, or do you need to stay aware of what's going on around you? Well, most earbuds force you into one camp or the other, but Shokz has figured out how to bridge that gap with the new OpenFit Pro. It's their first open ear headphone with open ear noise reduction. What does that mean? That means you can actually focus on your podcast or your music without being completely sealed off from the world. 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Scraps, leftovers, even things like avocado pits just go right into our mill. And while we sleep, it quietly turns it all into dry, odorless shelf, stable grounds. No more bags and no more compost smells creeping into the living room, which really matters in our open floor plan. And I think the thing that surprised me the most about the mill is just how much cleaner and simpler our routine feels now. Fridge cleanouts don't stress me out anymore. The kitchen stays fresh and looks great in the kitchen too. Try mill risk free for 90 days and get $75 off@mill.com richroll and use code richroll at check check out. Addicts tend to be very good storytellers, but you can't narrate yourself into innocence or absolution. It's a program of action. And so when somebody comes into the program broken, confused, unable to modify their behavior, aware that they need to change, but confused as to how to do that. Just walking in the door of, let's say, an AA meeting is an important first step. Step. But self awareness will avail you nothing. Without understanding that sobriety is built upon taking contrary action. And the first contrary action is to understand that your brain, the brain that created the problem, Is ill suited to solve the problem. The solution rests in the hands of others. So the first thing is recognizing that you cannot do this alone. Raising your hand, asking for help, and then accepting help when it's offered. And that's very difficult for most addicts. Because addicts are not trusting people. Most of them have had a challenging relationship with trust in the past. Where their trust has been betrayed. And we tend to isolate. We tend to believe that only we can solve our problem. There's this sense of terminal uniqueness. You don't understand my life. You don't understand how difficult my problems are. They're so much worse than you can possibly imagine. And then layer on top of that just a huge amount of guilt and shame for what they have done. And that fuels the isolation. Like, I can't possibly tell somebody how I'm actually behaving or what I did. I'm so ashamed of it. I just have to figure out how to solve this myself. Because the prospect of opening up, letting somebody else in who I already have trust issues. And trusting them to guide me or help me is a terrifying prospect. And that's what keeps a lot of people out of the rooms of sobriety. Because of that fear of letting somebody in. So I think it's important to understand that for the addict that's suffering, for them to raise their hand and actually acknowledge that they need help. And to accept that help is actually a great act of courage. Because they have to overcome all of that guilt and that shame and that fear of being judged. There is this profound sense of just being an absolute piece of shit. Like you're the worst person in the world. You are beyond the ability of being helped by anyone else. And it's just impossible to fess up to that to somebody else. While at the same time, interestingly, this is a unique twist of the alcoholic mind. That same person who feels like the worst person in the world. And just completely irredeemable generally also happens to have a tremendous amount of grandiosity. Only I can solve my problem. My problems are the worst. They're so much more extreme. Like there's this huge ego piece, like I'm so much worse off than everybody else, but I'm also like the only one who can fix this. And like I can get away with this or I can behave this way and still do X, Y or Z. So it's this bizarre combination of these two mindsets that inhabit the addict's brain that seem to operate in parallel even though they're in opposition to each other. So when the person comes into the program, they have to be humbled, disabused of this egoic sense of entitlement and grandiosity, while also being held in a non judgmental way such that the person feels safe that they can open up. So when you look at somebody like Shia LaBeouf and you know, I'm not going to armchair psychologize this person that I don't know what would motivate somebody with so much to lose to behave in this way fundamentally. Oftentimes it's because there is a deep seated sense of unworthiness often generated by some degree of childhood trauma or some series of experiences earlier in their life when they were meant to feel unworthy or undeserving. And that's when the substances come into play to, to basically medicate that so that they feel comfortable in their own skin. And perhaps that partially explains the notion of these two opposing emotional dispositions that are common in the addict and the alcoholic. So when someone comes in the room, you have to create a welcome mat, a place of non judgment where they feel safe to engage in this process of recovery while also disabusing them of their grandiosity and their egoic impulses to provide them with a sense of accountability and an appreciation for the consequences of their behavior. But in order to get sober, you have to create a degree of non judgment for that person to open up and create this crucible of trust for them to engage with the steps, to basically engage in truth telling, to open up about how they're actually behaving, how they're actually feeling, to get more connected with their body and with their emotional self so that we can get to a place of rigorous self honesty. Because until you engage in rigorous self honesty, everything else is theater. And so when I look at this Channel 5 interview, I see a lot of theater, I see a lot of justification, I see a lot of linguistically talented gymnastics to kind of charismatically acknowledge behavior while also sidestepping the responsibility piece in a way that Leaves the viewer perhaps with a misunderstanding about what is actually going on with this person right now, who's clearly spiraling out of control and in need of help. And on some level, perhaps decided to do this interview as a unconscious or subconscious call for help. And my hope is that he finds that help and he can get into a situation where he can engage in that degree of rigorous self honesty to repair the wreckage that he's reaped recently and begin to assemble the pieces of his life and rebuild a relationship with sobriety. I believe in change. I believe that this is possible. I've seen it so many times. It's happened in my life. People say people don't change. I think that's bullshit. Nobody is irredeemable. We have to create an on ramp for people like this to be redeemed, but that doesn't mean that we're allowing them to skirt the consequences. The consequences piece is a very important component in that redemption arc. Somebody has to actually take responsibility, face those consequences, walk through them, and do the heavy lifting of repairing trust with the people they care about quietly, behind the scenes. And that only happens not through words or acknowledgment or verbal self awareness, but instead through a series of consistent right action over an extremely extended period of time. Trust that's broken isn't repaired easily. It can be repaired, but it just takes a very long time. And if the person is truly interested in redeeming themselves, they have to recede into the background, do this work, and do it quietly, and do it without expectations of anything other than that they get another day to hit the pillow without picking up. That's it. I also want to say a few words about relapse itself. I think there is this misplaced notion that if somebody relapses that they have completely failed. But in my experience, my personal experience, and in my experience in the recovery community, relapse more often than not is a part of the recovery equation. Most people relapse, most people go out at some point. And so what's astonishing when somebody goes out isn't that they went out. What's astonishing is all the days that they didn't go out because the addict or the alcoholic, all they want to do is use. And so every day that they don't, that's a miracle. Relapse is more commonplace than people realize. And sometimes it can actually improve that person's relationship with recovery because it gives them a heavy dose of just how powerful the pull of addiction can be. When you start to take your sobriety for granted, and then you relapse. There's a recognition of powerlessness that I think can inform a deeper connection with recovery going forward. I know in my own personal story, as somebody who's been sober for a little while, that I came into the rooms of recovery on the heels of two consecutive DUIs. Two DUIs that I got in a period of about six weeks, blowing insanely high blood alcohol levels, one of which involved a car accident. Both involved me going to jail and together meant that I was not only going to get my driver's license revoked, but that I was definitely going to going to go to jail for an extended period of time. I was court mandated to go into aa. I didn't want to, but circumstances being as they were, I didn't really have a choice. And I can just remember the fear and the shame of walking into these rooms. The only relationship I had previously with was what I saw on television and movies. A bunch of trench coated, you know, kind of decrepit men talking about their problems in some dank, smoky church basement. And what I discovered instead was an incredibly vibrant and positive, smiling group of seemingly high functioning individuals. But I was in so much shame that I couldn't look anyone in the eye. I remember purposely arriving to those early meetings late, leaving early, trying not to engage with anyone, not trusting anybody who came up to me to ask me what my name was or any of that. Like I just didn't want anything to do with it at all. I knew that I needed help, I wasn't ready to receive help. And so I would say that that phase would be characterized as being a tourist in aa. Like, I kind of heard about the steps and I listened to the people share their stories about what happened and what they did and what it's like now. And I kind of got it intellectually and I kind of understood how these steps might move my life forward. But that didn't mean that I modified my behavior at all. And as a result, for many, many months I was in and out. And I'd be able to stay sober for a week or maybe three days, or maybe two weeks or once in a while, for a month. But inevitably I would relapse and come back. It's a longer story, but the upshot of it was that I didn't actually begin to engage with recovery until the aftermath of a relapse that left me waking up the next day in a sufficient amount of pain, in which I was blessed with a degree of willingness to do something different. And that set in motion this domino effect of actions and behaviors that very slowly and over an extremely long period of time repaired my life. It began with 100 days in a treatment center in which I was introduced to these ideas. And it was impressed upon me just how vital understanding these tools and beginning to practice them was to whether or not I was going to be able to not only stay sober, but actually live like my life was truly on the line. And I had a degree of desperateness, and for the first time, I had the temerity and the courage to actually tell other people what I was thinking, how I was feeling, and how I was behaving. And that really was the beginning of understanding the power of recovery and the power of the recovery community. And it's been decades since then. But every good thing in my life, everything that I have accomplished, every success or peak experience that I've ever had, is solely attributable to the fact that I was able to get sober and create a foundation of sobriety, full stop. I do not get to even be alive, let alone have the life that I have today had those experiences not happened. But my sobriety has not been linear. It's been up and down. And I've had my challenges along the way, because it's not a linear thing. Human beings are messy. We're emotional animals. And once I was able to establish physical sobriety, I then had to contend with emotional sobriety. And short of having my crutch in the form of substances to manage those emotions, I then had to figure out how to deal with them on my own, how to sit in my discomfort and process all of that. And that is messy business. And to this, this day, something I am far from having mastered. And so perhaps understanding that might give you a degree of empathy or understanding for the addict who is suffering, who even in physical sobriety, reaches a point where their emotional discomfort is so severe that it leads them out the door and into yet another relapse. Foreign this podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. You know it, you love it. Because Squarespace is the all in one website platform for building an online presence and getting your work into the world. 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And so I suppose I would say that if you have somebody that you care about, a loved one who is suffering and you feel confused about how to help this person because you're conflating your love with them with your capacity to help them, I would say that it's important to let that person know that you love them and that you Are there for them to support them, but that you're also unavailable for the lies, the excuses, the justifications, the spinning of elaborate yarns to, you know, kind of like, excuse, you know, some kind of inexcusable behavior. But when they're ready to change, to actually change that you will be the first one there to support them as long as they know that, like, hey, I'm here for the solution, not the problem. But until you're ready for that, I can't be there for you. So call me when you're ready to get help, and I will do everything in my power to support that. But until then, you're kind of on your own, so that's tricky. Again, easier said than done, especially for parents, you know, of. Of a child who is spinning out of control. But I think that the general point I'm trying to make is you can. You can love without also enabling or being complicit in the behavior. You love the person, you don't love the behavior. And that's an important distinction to make. The addict as an individual is very different from the behavior. So they're behaving in a certain way that is obviously problematic and that, you know, you don't support and don't love. But you can still love the person underneath, because that person is in the throes of a disease, and that behavior really isn't the true version of that person. So being able to hold a vision for the best version of that person, Free from their addiction, is an important piece, While also obviously and very stridently not condoning the behavior. How do you do that? Well, that's the subject of many hours of discussion and perhaps many volumes of books. But I would say it begins with, again, raising your hand and asking for help. You cannot fix this problem alone, but you can do it with other people. And so summoning the courage to enlist the support of somebody else. It could be a friend, it could be a teacher, a mentor. It could be somebody in a more formal, therapeutic session, A psychiatrist, a psychologist, a therapist. It could be within the rooms of recovery. I'm not here to say, you know, what you should do or shouldn't do, Only to say that you need to find somebody that you can talk to, that you trust, that you can be honest with, that you can open up with, and then to allow that person to provide you feedback and hold you accountable for your decisions and your behavior. So the next time you want to indulge in that behavior, you check in with that person first. Here's what I want to do, or here's what I'm thinking about doing, or here's what I just did, even though I told you I wouldn't. That is a fundamental practice that is essential towards not only the self understanding and the accountability piece, but to actually end up modifying that behavior and replacing it with a better one. Every addict wants to isolate. They don't want to open up to other people. They withdraw and again reside in their minds and try to solve the problem on their own. This is a way of secret keeping. But when you're keeping secrets, you're not in the solution. And the antidote to your problem lies in transparency and vulnerability, which means you have to do some truth telling. You have got to disabuse yourself of your secrets and find somebody to open up to. And I think around this creating structure so that you're not isolating, so that you're being called out when you, you're keeping a secret, so that you have people in your life who know you well enough when you start to veer off track or engage in unhealthy behaviors to again hold you accountable so that you can hold yourself accountable eventually. On the subject of weaving your own redemptive, you know, narrative arc, you cannot craft your own redemption story. What you have to do is do the redemptive work over time to rebuild trust with the people you care about and reach and rebuild trust, trust with yourself. There's a saying in the, in the rooms of recovery, you can save your ass or you can save your face, but you can't save both. And if you'd rather spin a manipulative arc that makes you look good, you are engaging in saving your face. If you're worried about what other people think or you're afraid of how they will perceive you if you tell them your secrets, you are saving face. If you want to save your ass, you have got to just vomit out all the uncomfortable truce and embarrassing stories and humiliating aspects of your past behavior, and then we can begin the process of repairing your ass. So it's a choice. If you are putting a veneer over how you're showing up and communicating with these people that you've now raised your hand and are inviting in to help you, you have got to be rigorously honest. Otherwise you are putting a spin on your story that is anathema to the work of recovery. You have to roll up your sleeves and get ugly with yourself. And that takes courage. It might be the most difficult thing that you've ever done, but it's also incredibly cathartic. And liberating. When you release these things that you have pushed down in shame for so long, it's not until you release them that you realize the weight bearing that they have been doing that has been holding you back from the change and the growth and the evolution and the transformation that is available to you. But. But there's no end run around it. It's not optional, this process of rigorous honesty, but it is the path forward. And so to the addict who is out there, who is still suffering, who is harboring that degree of shame, who can't imagine the idea of sharing those deep dark secrets with anybody else, I'm telling you that you're not alone, that you are not terminally unique, that your problems, as tragic as they might be, as difficult as they may come across, they are more commonplace than you might imagine. And the sense of connection and community that you will find and discover by opening up and trusting another person with those is the path to not only saving your ass, but is the solution to your brokenness that will set you on a journey towards wholeness. If you want to change, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop asking, when are people going to trust me? Why don't people trust me? Woe is me. Don't you understand how hard my life is and how difficult my problems are? And instead ask yourself what you're going to do differently today. What are you willing to do now that you were previously unwilling to do? And that's truly as far as your gaze should be cast. Because recovery and the redemption that you seek is really a function of behavioral action in the present. You can't change the past. The future is uncertain and unwritten. All you can do is focus on what is happening in the present moment and what you're going to do differently this time than you have historically. That is going to nudge your life ever so slightly, perhaps even imperceptibly, in a different direction. And this is something that you have to repeat religiously over an extended period of time, for a very long time in order to work your life towards those things that you want, which is connection with other people, trust, a sense of well being within yourself, a sense of wholeness and the capacity to be a productive member of society who shows up when they say they will, who does what they say they will, and has a chance at pursuing a life of purpose, meaning, satisfaction, connection and love. In other words, what is the truth that I'm hiding from? What is the lie that I keep telling myself? What is the root cause for my historical reason to Refuse help? What am I afraid of if I open up? And what would happen if I could be free of all of the shame and the guilt and the lying? What would life look like? There's a funny thing with addicts. You can say to the addict in the throes of their addiction, if you keep doing what you're doing, there's only three outcomes. It's either going to be jail, institutionalization, or death. Or you can come over here and come into this room and talk to people and be honest, and then you can have a life that is happy, joyous, and free. What is it going to be? Only the addict will say, I'm going to have to get back to you on that. And that, in a nutshell, is the disease of alcoholism. It is a disease that so captures the individual that even when you can present them with a solution that provides all the things that that person would want in their life, they still are predisposed to choose the cycle of unhealthy behavior, that is reaping chaos, destroying their lives, and harming the people they care about most. And the only way for that person to snap out of that mindset, that delusion, is when their circumstances present them with a situation in which they're in so much pain, that pain overwhelms their otherwise fear of doing something differently. I think it's a useful exercise to reflect upon the excuses that we make to justify those behaviors. What is the narrative that we tell ourselves that lets us off the hook so that we can perpetuate the behavior or continue to do the thing that we know in our heart of hearts we probably shouldn't? Because until you do that, you're really not putting yourself in a position to change that behavior. Again, self awareness is not enough. Let's get honest, rigorously honest with ourselves. And that begins with identifying the excuses and the justifications that we make. This reminds me of a story from early sobriety, when I had a real resistance to availing myself of the recovery community. Like, I just wanted to solve the problem on my own. I didn't want to have to involve all these other people. Let me just, you know, I'm a smart person. I'll figure it out. Leave me alone. Of course, this resulted in relapse after relapse after relapse. Because while I acknowledged the need to get help and receive help and I was contrite about my behavior, I was also continuing to justify or excuse my lack of commitment to this set of tools that had been, you know, presented to me as effective. At solving this problem. So instead, me wanting to solve the problem on my own, and what I think held me at arm's length from this solution was the fact that I saw these people as different than myself. I was, in my sense of terminal uniqueness. I was indulging my ego. I had a lack of humility. Perhaps on some level I thought, like, I'm better equipped to solve this problem for myself than any of these people. And so when I would go into these rooms and I would hear these people share their stories or attempt to introduce themselves to me, all I could think is that, like, I don't belong here. You know, these people are different from me. I have nothing in common with them. And as a result, I short circuited my capacity to learn, to be open, and to participate in my own recovery. And there was one occasion where I sort of was ducking out of a meeting early. I would do this. I would, like, arrive late and leave early, avoid eye contact, because I really didn't want to have to talk to anybody. And I thought that I was being quite crafty. And what you realize later is that, like, this is very common, transparent behavior. And on one of these days, when I was ducking out early, a guy came out after me, and he's like, hey, where are you going? And I made up some excuse, I'm late. I got to get out. I'm so sorry, but I have to leave. You know, I have an appointment or some bullshit like that. And of course, this guy saw right through that, and he just pointed to a phrase on a wall, one of those annoying AA aphorisms, and it said, look for the similarities, not the differences. And I'd seen that there before, and I didn't really know what it meant, but in that moment, it actually landed. Basically, what he was saying is, stop trying to create arguments for why this isn't going to work or why you're different than these other people. Instead of listening to somebody's story and trying to determine how your life is different and how it doesn't apply to you, instead, try to see yourself in this story. What is it that this person is sharing on an emotional level can you relate to? And once you start to do that, then you're able to kind of connect with whatever wisdom they are in a position to impart to you. And I share this story because while we rubberneck at this story of Shia LaBeouf, we. We kind of perceive it voyeuristically, or we jump on a chance to vilify this person that we haven't met. I would suggest that if you watch it, to look for the similarities, not the differences. And what I mean by that is what is it about this person and what they're sharing? Can you relate to, can you see some aspect of your own behavior, your own blind spots, your own proclivity to justify or excuse your behavior in what he's sharing? And I think if you can do that, then you're in a position to better self reflect on your own behavior and what you're doing or not doing in your own life to become a better person tomorrow than you are today.
