What is it that I really want?
For years, I don’t think I ever stopped long enough to seriously ask myself that question. I just kept chasing things, consuming things, looking for something that might make me feel better.
I wanted to be happy, but I had no idea what road to take, so I started down whatever one happened to be in front of me.
I wanted fulfillment, so I filled myself with alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, and whatever else seemed to take the edge off for a while.
I wanted to get along with people, but my pride often wouldn’t let me simply be myself. Instead, I tried to become who I thought other people wanted me to be.
Anyone but me.
Over the years, I learned all kinds of techniques for handling life. At the time, I thought of them as tools.
I had techniques for dealing with anger. One of my favorites was simply keeping quiet. I figured if I didn’t say anything, at least nobody would know how angry I was.
The problem was that I never really looked at what was fueling the anger in the first place.
I had trouble understanding why someone might prefer another person over me, or why a perceived slight could bother me for hours. Instead of asking what was behind that need for approval, I usually focused on the other person.
I wanted to be successful at work and put a great deal of energy into that. It took me a long time to wonder why I didn’t always bring that same eagerness into my life at home.
I became pretty good at keeping feelings in check.
One technique I used constantly was what I came to call the maybe technique.
If my boss seemed short with me or didn’t show quite the enthusiasm for my work that I thought it deserved, I could start explaining it away.
Maybe she’s having trouble at home.
Maybe she’s having problems with one of her kids.
Maybe she’s under pressure from her boss.
Maybe I’m just being too sensitive.
The technique worked well enough.
The problem was, I found myself using it all day long.
Maybe the driver who cut me off is rushing to the hospital.
Maybe that customer is tightening down on spending.
Maybe my spouse is under a lot of pressure from that special project.
Maybe this.
Maybe that.
The one maybe that rarely crossed my mind was:
Maybe I should ask why I need all these maybes just to get through a simple, ordinary interaction with another human being.
I had learned how to manage my reactions without ever asking why ordinary life required so much managing.
Then came the internet, and my collection of techniques really took off.
Search for almost anything and there is no shortage of advice.
How do I cope with stress?
How do I eat less?
How do I stop worrying?
How do I find peace of mind?
How do I become more confident?
There were lists, books, exercises, videos, podcasts, and plenty of people telling me what might work.
And many of those things did help.
Cognitive behavioral therapy helped me greatly. I learned to recognize some of the ways my thinking could get twisted around. The trouble was that, for me, once I stopped practicing it regularly, some of the old thinking returned.
The anxious, agitated mind showed back up.
Positive affirmations were another thing I heard a lot about. If they help someone, I think that’s wonderful. For me, though, they often turned into an argument with myself.
I could say, “I’m a wonderful person.”
And a quieter voice inside would answer, “No, you’re not.”
I could say, “Today I’m going to be successful.”
And that same little voice would say, “You’ll mess it up just like you did before.”
At some point I realized I had accumulated so many techniques that I practically needed techniques for managing the techniques.
I grew up around agriculture, and around there tools mattered.
If a tractor was broken, the crop might not get planted.
If the combine was down, the crop might not get harvested.
There were everyday tools like pliers, wrenches, and screwdrivers, and there were specialized tools for bigger jobs.
Nobody stood around trying to invent a new technique for using the wrong wrench.
You went and got the right tool.
A screwdriver isn’t a bad tool because it can’t fix everything. It just wasn’t designed for every job.
I think that is what I slowly began to understand about some of the things I had been trying.
They weren’t necessarily bad tools.
I was asking them to do a job they weren’t built to do.
I was trying to use techniques to manage anger when the deeper issue was what I was carrying inside.
I was trying to talk myself out of insecurity when maybe I needed to look honestly at why I needed so much approval.
I was trying to change the people around me so I could feel peaceful.
That was a pretty big job to hand to a set of coping techniques.
Not long after I got sober, I spent about a year doing what I can only describe as intensive work on myself.
Somewhere during that time, something began to change.
I started to feel a kind of peace I hadn’t known before.
I began to feel that maybe I was okay.
And, just as importantly, maybe the people around me were okay too.
I didn’t have to constantly measure myself against everyone else.
I didn’t have to win every interaction.
I didn’t have to prove that I belonged.
I began to understand that I had something to contribute simply by being who I was.
One of the strangest things I learned during that year was that sometimes, when I stopped searching so hard, I found what I had been looking for.
When I gave up control—even if only for one situation—sometimes the outcome was better than anything I could have planned.
I slowly realized that I didn’t need my boss to give me a raise in order to be okay.
I didn’t need the driver in front of me to learn how to drive.
I didn’t need everyone around me to behave the way I thought they should.
And I didn’t need another broken tool to fix what was hurting inside me.
What I needed were inner tools.
Heart tools.
Tools that worked on me rather than on everybody around me.
Acceptance.
Humility.
Surrender.
Honesty.
Patience.
The willingness to let go of some of what I was so certain I knew, so I could become open to what I did not know.
For years, I had tried to calm the storm inside me by controlling what was happening outside me.
The boss needed to change.
The spouse needed to change.
The driver needed to change.
The world needed to cooperate.
But the more power I tried to exert over everything around me, the more unsettled I became.
What surprised me was that accepting the world as I found it brought more peace than trying to force it into the shape I wanted.
God didn’t change the whole world to fit me.
God began changing me.
And the more I changed, the more the world around me seemed to change too.
Not because everybody suddenly started doing what I wanted.
But because I wasn’t fighting everything anymore.
For years I thought peace would come when I finally figured out how to handle the world.
What I eventually discovered was that the tools I needed were never meant to fix the world.
They were meant to change the person experiencing it.