Ha -- great minds and all that. I just made a post about how recovery has taught me to handle dysfunction in the workplace better.
I really like this:
Recovery, for me, has been a place where I have learned discernment, better judgement skills, and has given me a place to comprehend what a boundary really is and what it means in reality TO ME. None of this has come easy. I didn't have boundaries. I was a people pleasing doormat and if you said jump, I'd ask how high and I wouldn't even consider the cost to myself. I do now. I think and discern and use wisdom before I take action, especially action that puts me in a position where I sacrifice my dignity or myself in some way for someone else.
Recovery has taught me so much, but one of the most important lessons I've learned is to draw boundaries between what's
my feelings and what is
other people's feelings. For most of my life, I would take on the "atmosphere" of whoever was the strongest emoter in the room and react to it. If someone was mad, I'd cower. If someone was sad, I'd be sad. I think recovery has given me the freedom to stop being a chameleon and actually being who
I am -- regardless of who everyone else around me is.
Recovery has also taught me -- just as important -- that I can't change other people. I accept them as they are, and then I determine whether I want them in my life. I don't agonize over a friendship with a person who goes hot and cold, who one day acts like my best friend and the other day doesn't speak to me -- I simply determine "that person's behavior is not something I want in my life."
Serenity is not a level you achieve and then stay at. But being able to find pockets of serenity in my life has made me a calmer, more joyful person on a very deep level.