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Happiness In Sobriety

Old 11-15-2013, 06:32 AM
  # 21 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by BackToSquareOne View Post
Do you think it's possible to just roll with the flow and be ok with whatever comes your way or is that a very elusive goal? I was listening to a Buddhist speaker talk about the folly of constantly chasing happiness. The attitude that I'll be happy when I do or get this or that, we will just replace the last thing with something new. Isn't that what drives us on tho? Don't know where I'm really going with this, any thoughts on any of it?
If you want to get that stuff that you think (how delusional is that?) will make you happy, you have to break doors down. If you want happiness to come to you, wait for doors to open.

To an outside observer, my life looks less successful than before I got into recovery. However, from an inside perspective, I am happy, joyous and free more often than not. Even more important, I don't feel like am am suffering near as often as when I was trying to rest satisfaction from life with forceful assertiveness. Thus the old Buddhist saying:

"In this life - pain is inevitable - suffering is optional."
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Old 11-15-2013, 06:57 AM
  # 22 (permalink)  
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I'm happy now unlike being sad all the time while drinking. I'm not happy all the time but I'm content in my sobriety. I'm almost 60 I'm sure some of my contented feelings come with age. When I was drinking little things could send me into a tizzy, now I just let them slide.
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Old 11-16-2013, 01:43 AM
  # 23 (permalink)  
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Originally Posted by BackToSquareOne View Post
Just curious, did happiness come easily for you in sobriety or is it something you really have to work at? Is happiness just a state of mind we can easily control or does the mind seem to go wherever it wants to, at times going all over the place?

Do you think it's possible to just roll with the flow and be ok with whatever comes your way or is that a very elusive goal? I was listening to a Buddhist speaker talk about the folly of constantly chasing happiness. The attitude that I'll be happy when I do or get this or that, we will just replace the last thing with something new. Isn't that what drives us on tho? Don't know where I'm really going with this, any thoughts on any of it?
Very deep questions BTSO, really got me thinking. Could it be that pursuit of happiness (mine) to the exclusion of all else, was at the root of my problem? Did happiness, back then, simply mean the daily satisfaction of my base instincts? Quite possibly.

Had I come to AA with the idea that I had a right to be happy, to continue that pursuit at a kind of contractual level - like "sure I'll do the steps but I expect to he happy as a result," would that attitude have brought me success?

In actual fact I came to AA with just a glimmer of hope that AA might have a way out for me. I was looking to survive, even though I did not believe it was possible. I was way beyond looking for happines.

As the result of following the simple directions with the sole intention of overcoming alcoholism, I now have what an earlier poster talked about, a meanigful life. I get to experience all emotions and feelings, including happiness almost as a by product.

It's more about the feeling of uselessness and sellf pity slipping away, a sense of purpose about my life that is immensely rewarding. My first inkling of this feeling was about two months in when I found I could actually be of use in this world.
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