My 21st Sober Birthday - Being Honest With Ourselves

#387 - Every year when my Sober Birthday comes around, I like to talk about it on the show. I pick a different theme or aspect of sobriety and what it means to me. There are thousands of us sober/clean runners out there. I can think of few activities that are as great for those getting sober or clean than running. My theme this year is being honest with ourselves. This applies to both running and the rest of our lives. Many times we're not honest with ourselves in our running. It's time to be honest. If you're injured, then get help. If you're slow and you run, you're a runner. And so on..... give yourself props, you deserve it.  

Transcript

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Hidden West share stories you might not hear anywhere else. Want to know why the last chance grade might be the most dangerous bit of highway in California? Why did the Japanese drop bombs on the western part of the U.S.? And where is the state of Jefferson? All these stories and more about what makes the Western U.S. so great are here. There's a new story published every week. Check out Hidden West on YouTube. Welcome to Martha Runs the World, a podcast with a new take on running, fitness, and all things health-oriented. I'm Martha Hughes, your host, and each week I present a new topic that is of interest to all runners. Hi and welcome to episode 387 of Martha Runs the World. Thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it each and every week. This week marks my 21st year of sobriety. Every year I like to talk about it on the show because I think it's important for us sober runners to talk about our sobriety and share our experiences with not only the those runners who want to be sober or who are sober, but also those who don't have a problem with addiction and that maybe need a little bit more understanding of what it's like to be an addict or an alcoholic. And each year that I address it, I pick a theme to talk about it in regards to sobriety and and how it relates to running. This year it's about honesty with oneself. One of the many things I'm grateful for in my life was finding AA when I decided to get sober. I don't know if I could have done it without AA and be or let me rephrase that. I don't know if I could have gotten sober and stayed sober without AA. One of the things AA taught me is that that I probably should have known already, but I didn't for uh for some reasons um that go beyond the scope of this show, um, is that I learned self-respect, self-love, and self-honesty. And that is what I'm talking about. If we can't be honest with ourselves, then we can't be honest with others. Being honest with ourselves, whether in running or in any part of our lives, is extremely important. And I think sometimes in running it's pushed aside, sometimes in a humorous way and sometimes in a serious way. But in order to keep us healthy and happy runners, we have to be honest with ourselves, even when we don't want to be. If we are honest with ourselves in our running, then we can be honest with ourselves in all aspects of our lives. It will just become easier. And being truthful to ourselves does seem difficult if it's not something that you've done a lot in the past. If you always pretended you weren't hurt when you were, you pretended you were trained for a race when you weren't trained, that kind of thing. Um but like any skill, it becomes easier with practice. Just if you practice being upfront and honest with yourself, um it that skill becomes much easier. And it and part of that and I'll talk about what that is, what being uh truly honest with yourself really means. And it will also make you feel better in many parts of your life, not just running. For much of my life, I wasn't honest with myself. I believed the lies that others said about me, how I wasn't good enough to do things, how I had potential but never saw it through, how I didn't like to work hard at it, how if I only tried I could be successful. That was a big one. But working with the steps with my sponsor, and now these are this is a slow process. It's slow and painful, but it's necessary. It's extremely necessary when you become sober to to look at certain parts of your life and look and going through the steps helps you understand why you drank in the first place. This that's what the steps are all about, is to you to make this this um understanding of why you did it. If we don't have an understanding of why we did it, then we can't stop doing it. Um and it's very it's it's very difficult process, and I'm gonna talk about a couple steps in a minute here, but it really helped me understand that all the things that I've been told my whole life growing up were not true. And these falsehoods were the reason for my anger, my rage, and it my eventual drinking. Ever since I was a kid, I was angry at everything. I was frustrated that I never got the support and unconditional love that I craved so much. There's always some condition that had to be met before I got any kind of approval or anything in my life. I it was I always had to go through these hoops, to jump through these hoops, and me being a rebellious uh kid that I was, I didn't like jumping through hoops. I didn't like pleasing others just for the sake of pleasing them. I wanted to be who I was, and that was not acceptable in my childhood. So that got me very, very frustrated at a young age, and I didn't know how to voice it or how to talk about it. Nobody talked about it back then anyway. We didn't talk about our feelings when I was growing up. It was a different age. Working the steps with my sponsor, I realized that with God and or my vision of God, I knew there was a greater being who had unconditional love for me and would always be there for me, unlike the adults I knew as a child. That was really important for me. I had not believed in God when I got sober. I was very cynical and I was raised as a Lutheran, and I just I didn't like the Lutheran church. I didn't want to have anything to do with it, and and I said, okay, I'm gonna be open-minded, I'm gonna start believing, and I truly did believe when I got to the steps, um, when I started working the steps, I started to believe. Made a difference in my life. I understand that some people are turned off by AA, and I think that's a mistake. Sure, they may get clean or sober without a step program, but having no groundwork or understanding of why they might have turned to drugs or alcohol in the first place doesn't help them stay clean and sober. We really need to know why we did it. So we can work on that why and we can work on that part of the life rather than just the um the the behavior. We can work on why we did the behavior. One of the things that Twelve Steps does is it takes a deep dive into why we're doing these terrible things to ourselves, drinking alcohol and doing drugs are not natural. These are not things that we would do if we are healthy, happy people. It's a means of escape. If we are trying to escape from life, that means we're not happy with life. If you don't have a problem with either, then you may not understand the reason why so many of us want to escape. But there's a lot of people who do. And I'm sure you do know someone who has an alcohol or addiction problem, so maybe you can see it through their eyes. Um it's impossible to live I mean, ever each one of us knows somebody who's addicted or alcoholic in this world. It's kind of impossible to live in our world without seeing that because it's so prevalent. There's just so many pr people in our lives and in our world that have addiction problems, be it with drugs or alcohol. It's it's just such a massive problem. There are three steps that really got me on the road and got me to be honest with myself. And step three of the 12 steps tells us to turn control over to your higher power. Because in AA, we believe there is something bigger than us in the world. So we are able to understand that we don't carry our burden alone. We're not in this alone. There is always something or some person, you can think of it as a thing and it, a person, a tree. If you want a mountain, if you want to look at a mountain, if you don't want to believe in a god, look at something like a mountain. When I first started going to A, I didn't believe in a God, so I looked at a mountain or tree, because they were much, much bigger and mightier than I was, and and then it took me a while to actually believe in God, but that's what I did first, and then it slowly won me over because it started making sense to me. But getting this through my head that there was a higher power took a bit of time, but once I did, things felt better, and I knew I was on the road to getting well once I was able to give the control to something who was bigger and uh a stronger power than myself. When we ask God to help us with these problems, we give it to the higher power, that means that uh we are no longer alone in this. We will always have our higher power there with us. And that made such a huge difference in in my way of thinking. It just made me feel it made me feel loved. And it made me feel like there is something out there and um I'm not alone in this world because being an alcoholic or an addict can make you feel awfully lonely. Now, step four asks us to conduct a moral inventory. Now, this is a tough, tough one. Uh for me it was this was the hardest step. For many people, step four is the hardest step, and a lot of alcoholics don't go past step four because they can't do it. And this takes the most time. It took a lot of time for me. Um, I had to go back far in my memory and remember uh to get all the times that I would had anger or resentment or or did things out of those, out of anger, out of resentment, out of fear, out of all that. I had a little notebook and I wrote down everything I could think of and I brought it to my sponsor and she said, and it was pretty soon, it was like the next week, and she goes, Oh, that's nice, but think of more. And then I brought it back and she goes, Oh, that's good, but think of more. And she kept saying that for like two months. Two months she had me keep r remembering things and remembering things. I would have to go back farther and farther and farther and farther into my memory to rem to remember all these things. And yes, this is a very painful process. I was crying and thinking thinking of all the all the things that I had done throughout the years that just were were painful for others, not just for myself, but I caused the pain that I had done to cause pain to others. That was really, really hard. But I did it, and um that afterwards, then you go to step five afterwards. After step four, you realize all these things, you say, Yes, I've done all these things. Oh my god, what kind of a person am I? And then you can move on to step five, which says, Step five, we admit wrongdoing. We admit we were wrong. Yes, we were wrong. We had done these things to others, these terrible things to others, these things that we should have never done to others, we admit wrongdoing. And once you admit wrongdoing, it some people can't ever admit to be wrong. Some people think that they're right all the time, and um, I'm not really one of them, but um a lot of people think that they um they can't admit to being wrong, and to let go of that always having to be right, always having to be perfect, always having to be this, always having to be that, getting rid of that and saying, Yes, here I am, I admit to be wrong, I'm here, I'm not perfect, I'm an imperfect person. Once you get rid of that, it's like this weight off your back and you feel so much better. I mean, yes, I there were times when I should have admitted wrong and I didn't, where nobody's perfect. Working the steps with my sponsor really helped with that. Working the twelve steps with my sponsor helped me understand why I had done all these awful stuff. I mean, it I still don't understand some of them that I did, but I understood but I do understand that I was just angry. But it doesn't stop at that point. The steps also help us understand that we are human and we must forgive ourselves. To me, that's part of the being honest with ourselves bit. I guess, yeah, you could get sober or clean on your own, watch a video, get an idea that this is what you need to do, but is it really the same as working with a sponsor, a human being who cares about you week after day after day, week after week, and who has gone through the same experience as you and they've helped others along the way to sobriety or to being clean? Is it the same thing? I don't think so. I really think that help working with a sponsor is really the way to go. And this is a person that you can get in contact with, that you can if you're having problems or you need to talk something over with, they should be always available for you. And that really helped. Um these are difficult things and many times go against our booze-filled minds. We have to admit that there is something greater than ourselves. It's understanding that that was one of the first things that I understood when I got in. I and I I didn't understand it or accept it at first, but I just said, okay, I'm gonna start thinking that way. And to start think thinking that there is something greater in the world than me, than humans, there's something greater than that, that actually really helped bring down the walls that I had built around me, and it s slowly made me come back to life. I felt like I had life where I hadn't felt that I had that life for a very long time. Um you may never believe in a deity or anything higher power or or anything, and that's fine. But to be truly sober, it's a good idea to accept that you and me or anyone else are not the center of the universe. And that's uh that's a problem that I I had when I was an active drunk. We think that uh drunks and addicts always think that the world revolves around us. Do you ever notice that there's always more drama around an addict or an alcoholic? There always is. Things that you and I would shrug off become the biggest deal in the world to them. They need to be the center of attention. It takes over any common sense and respect for others as well. Being truthful to ourselves is is so important. It really is the key to all. If we hurt people and ourselves in our active alcoholic lives, if we make a commitment to be truthful to ourselves after we stop drinking and we stick to that commitment, we can maintain sobriety. I truly believe this. You know, and being truthful in all aspects of our lives includes our running. These are some questions that you can ask yourself. Are you really trained enough for that race or can you uh drop down to a lesser distance? Do you really want to drop out of the race or are you just tired? Don't you need to train tonight after work or would you rather skip it? See, these are just some things that you can ask yourself and be honest about. I brought up the question, are you injured? Are you or are you just gonna go um run anyway and maybe hurt the injury more? But they're big decisions and small decisions, and sometimes the small small decisions uh lead to big ones because you didn't make the right one. I mean we're not perfect, right? Sometimes we're gonna make wrong decisions, but we can learn to make better decisions if we are more honest about them. And the more honest decision is a better decision. These may seem like small things, but if we are not honest with ourselves, too many times they can become big things. If you start skipping a lot of training runs, what will happen in your race? Will you have to make up an excuse or will you be honest about why you didn't do well? This happens a lot in races. I mean, we have to figure out if we're going to be honest about why we didn't do well. It's humiliating, but if we're honest, it shouldn't be that bad. Everybody does it. Everybody DNFs sometimes. Everyone does. And as I like to say, if you haven't DNF'd at least once, you're not trying hard enough. I don't get these runners who are proud saying, I've never had a DNF. So I want to say, Oh, so you haven't tried very hard. Okay, got it. If you watch my short video on the YouTube channel, then you'll know that I was faced with a devastating challenge last week. I was laid off my job. So I need to find another one. I don't have the finances to retire now. Sure, I could retire, but I'd be living in bitter poverty as moving would take everything that I have. And I just need a little bit more. Just not ev probably wouldn't take everything, but it might take a lot of what I have. And Lord knows I n what kind of vehicle I could buy. I gotta save for that one. And I I just need about a year, year and a half more, and I'll be ready. But if I work one more year, about a year and a half, and get a bit of a cushion, it will make all the difference. So I'm going to get back into the job market and see what I can do. I know I'm old and I'm being very honest with myself about the difficulty older people have in the job market. I know that my age works against me, but I've been very active in my life, and I've been working throughout my whole life, and I have a great resume, so I hope that helps me. Um I'm scared of this. I don't like looking for work, uh, but I'm gonna put my faith in my higher power to help me along the way. So hopefully I will be good with that. And then um I'm just hoping that it works out okay and that I can get a decent job. It was really devastating to be laid off because I I certainly didn't expect it. Um I liked where I worked and it just kind of sad. I I I worked with really great people, and I'm gonna miss them. So that was a real bummer. That and then I also got I I got a new crown on a live tooth, and that was fine, but two days later, after I got the crown, it started hurt there started a pain really bad. And I went back to the dentist and he said, Oh, okay, the gums are are inflamed, they're just a little sore. Try this uh medicated mouthwash. And the mouthwash didn't do anything. And I came back to him two days later and said, Look, it's really, really hurting. So he took um an x-ray and he found a little, little, little shadow on on the tooth, just a teeny little one, and he gave me some really strong antibiotics, so I'm hoping that wipes out that little shadow, because if not, it's root canal time, and I can't really afford that. I really can't. Just have them I might have to just have them pull the tooth and just leave it at that, if it comes to that, because I can't afford a whole lot of dentist work right now. If it's one thing, it's always another thing. And another and another and another, I swear. But I'll get through this. It's okay. I did get a nice walk in yesterday. I didn't run because I'm thinking with these antibiotics, I don't want to really push my running too much. I I want to all my energy going to uh getting rid of this infection on my tooth. I think it's really important for me to do that. So, but I did get a nice walk in yesterday, and that was really, really cool. That was a lot of fun. So I I enjoyed that. So um I'll probably go out for another walk today and and hopefully um if my tooth, my tooth is feeling better. I think the antibiotics are working. I have I have this is I started Friday, Saturday. This is my third day, so I have seven more days after this. So hopefully I'm gonna use up all the antibiotics and it'll be feeling perfect after uh another week. So cross your fingers for me, please. If there's a plus with with losing this job and me getting another job, it would be that I can get a normal nine to five Monday through Friday job and not work 12-hour days and not work weekends anymore. That's a big plus. If I can do that, that would be great. If I could get a remote job, that would be perfect. Or even a hybrid remote job where I work at home a couple days, work in the office a couple days, that would be fine too. I'd take that. But I think that this is a good thing that I can get back to a normal work schedule and not have to work 12-hour weekend days. That was tough. I did not like that at all. Uh, I didn't mind having a lot of days off, but I didn't like working those weekend hours, just really, really rough. And I'm just hoping that I don't have to do that anymore. So um that is it. And anyways, I've rambled enough. So that's it for today's show, and thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it. I always appreciate it each and every week. And on that note, let's tie up our shoelaces and go for a run.