Me, me, you?

Day 260

“If you ever want to be unhappy, just sit down and think about yourself all day.”

When I heard this in a meeting it resonated, but it’s amazing how quickly I forget.

Living in a pre-Copernican state of mind where the universe revolves around my life is the fast track to going nowhere.  Self-talk makes my world so small; there’s no room for growth, and there’s certainly no room for anyone else.

In trying to obtain what I “needed” this past week to make me “happy,” I made myself extremely unhappy.  What I was seeking most vehemently was validation from others to placate my own insecurities.

If permitted, unrestrained self-centered fears will throw raging pity parties in my head; I’m not smart unless someone says so, I’m ugly until someone tells me I’m not, I’ll buy clothes to make me feel pretty, then traffic on the way home from buying clothes I couldn’t afford becomes the biggest inconvenience on earth. Then after wasting so much time on myself, an AA meeting becomes burdensome and I grow resentful of the meeting and everyone involved.  (Not me…everyone else.)

This cycle has run me around before and it will run me around again, anytime I fail to see people beyond my vision of falsified self-importance.

A wave of relief washed over me when I received the opportunity to help someone today–it was like a spell being broken.  Oh yeah, I thought, this is what it’s all about.

There’s that cliché saying, “It doesn’t matter what’s on the outside, it’s the inside that counts.” And that’s true…in terms of appearance, but not in the cognitive sense.  Sometimes I need the outside to fix the inside, so I can spend the day standing up to help others, not sitting down and thinking about myself.