All My Affairs Blog

"I'd rather be happy than right."

I heard someone say last night that he'd "rather be happy than right."  Thanks Mark, I feel the same.

I spent a short lifetime wanting to be right in all situations.  Sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn't.  But my ups and downs, in many ways, were determined by how much I had to fight to be right.  Because even when I wasn't, I was going to convince myself (and you) that I was.

I just read a book called Fooled by Randomness.  It made the point that humanity and especially the United States, look down on those who change their mind.  It is seen as a bad thing to completely reverse course based on new information.  Instead of incorporating the new information into our outlook (and thereby changing our outlook), we adjust how we see the information so that it fits our outlook.

This is dangerous.  There are countless examples of this in the world, but I'll let you come up with your own, lest I alienate people from my website's goal to help recovery.

Attraction Rather Than Promotion

Here is the very basic of how search engines, and Google in particular, work:

The websites that have the most links to them from other websites appear the highest in the search engines.

That is an incredibly simplistic explanation, but full of truth nevertheless.

Sounds a little bit like the attraction rather than promotion model of public relations.  Google's traditions (at least for their search engine algorithm) are not entirely dissimilar from some other important traditions.

As Good as it Gets

What is this thing Recovery and how is it supposed to play into our lives?  I mean, is this all we've got.  What am I supposed to do, go to meetings for the rest of my life and that's it?  Is this as happy as I'm gonna get?

These were some of the questions posed to me recently.  I'm the advisor (o or e?) who is supposed to answer questions like these.  Wow, that proposition still scares me.  But all I've got is my experience, so that's what I shared.

This thing is a launching pad.  A foundation.  It shows you how to live a life when you don't have a clue.  But it starts to give you a clue.  You start to understand a little bit about humility, compassion, and kindness.  You even become acquainted with the concept that it is actually better to help someone else than help yourself.  Great principles of existence are revealed and they start to become part of you.  You may not always remember them, but you always know that if forgotten too long, there is a reminder on a random wall in a random room in your random town.  A foundation is plain white.  Intricate architecture gets built on top of it.  Recovery is not all there is.  Recovery's the foundation, the blueprints and, depending on your experience, some of the architecture.  But it needn't, nor could it, be the whole building. 

My experience is not long, therefore it may not hold much weight to say that my life just keeps getting better.  But I listen to the people with a decade or two or five say that it keeps getting better everyday.  Not just easier not to take a drink, but the fourth dimension kind of better.  Where you have nothing but gratitude, and negative emotions pass like an interrupted dream in the morning.

Nothing worth doing more

This is from a goal that I answered on 43Things.  You can learn more by clicking the link at the end of the post.  I share my experience, strength, and hope because it helps me live a happy life.

I said for about 3 years that I wanted to drink less. I actually couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even come close. Ultimately, I just had to stop drinking period. I needed help. I went to rehab and then worked the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous.

At first I thought it was some sort of hideous, disgusting cult/religious freak show – both of which I’m not into. Then I found out it’s nothing but a few simple ways to deal with my problems in a healthy way. Problems – we all got em, it’s about how we deal with em. Haven’t had a drink in two years tomorrow.

My life actually got really good after I’d put down the booze for awhile. I became employable again – no easy feat for a drunk AND a lawyer. (As a website owner and consultant – not an attorney.) And now I’m building a network for people in recovery at allmyaffairs.com.

So I learned to drink less by accepting I couldn’t drink at all.

See more progress on: drink less