Keep On Smiley-ing!!!!

Daily Dose of Dov
Dov is sober in SA for over 13 years. See his story here.

If I look down, I'll fall and die
 
Counting the days we are clean can be wonderful for some, but I hope you realize that it can also be - deep within our hearts - a counting of how long we can actually tolerate the (inevitable) buildup until the next time we act out. I believe this is very frequent. It is exactly like climbing up a ladder. I am afraid of heights. If I look back down as I am climbing, once I get to an impossibly high height, my hands and feet begin to shake. I know that I would fall.... so I never climb that high! How high do you want to climb in sobriety? If you are looking back, you will not get very high. We all know that being sober 5 years in a row is just plain impossible... for each of us, the last barrier is the "impossible height". Sure it's BS, but our feelings do not care about sechel very much. It's our Reality, so why pit ourselves against so powerful an adversary? 

Instead, my experience in sobriety is like that of a guy walking across an abyss on a 2x8. Now, I have no trouble at all balancing on a 2x8 if I see it's on the floor! But if I see that it is suspended between two high buildings I will certainly panic, lose my balance, fall, and die. Looking down is just plain ossur. So I don't. And I do not count. 
 
For about three years, I didn't mention my starting date in the groups. I'd just introduce myself and say , "...and I am grateful for today's sobriety"... till my sponsor suggested I start saying my starting date (Feb 28th, 1997) in order to encourage newbies that it really is possible.

Sometimes I find myself reading peoples posts just to see where I can "stick in my two sense". I find myself, too often, thinking not how I can help the person, but rather how I can serenade everyone with my brilliant words of wisdom.  I am so selfish.

usualy when you give your two cents, every reader enjoys the post
so its a two way enjoyment

It would be nice though to give advice purely because I cared and wanted to help.

Yossi.L. wrote on 22 Dec 2011 16:40:

We all have selfish motivations to one degree or another.  Don't beat yourself up over it.

gibbor120 wrote on 22 Dec 2011 17:05:

i'm with Gibbor on this

I try to remind myself that I am a sick addict and have  irrational,sick thoughts all the time.Try to remember the stupid senseless actions you have taken before you share your brilliance and please keep on sharing  you are a good person that i love to hear your ideas.

Mechazek,

Thank you for your thoughtful, caring, unselfish words. Your post is exactly the kind I posts which I have a hard time posting. It's really not about the 'post'. It's about my inability to feel the feelings that might come easy to others. It's my incapability to love and care for people here without the big 'me' involved. It's painful for me to realize how many times a day I do completely selfish actions, or say completely selfish words just to prop up my big fat false ego. My posting is just one manifestation of this selfishness. I know that recovery and unselfishness go hand on hand; and I'm realizing that the cleanliness per say is not as difficult to to mysel of as the selfishness is. I'm not just a sick addict. I am sick SELFISH addict.

Yossi

Yossi.L. wrote on 22 Dec 2011 02:14:

I could be saying that....
gibbor120 wrote on 22 Dec 2011 17:05:

I needed to hear that...
In short, this whole exchange is about me, me, me, me.
And Yossi, thanks for being there for me, buddy.

The following is a powerful article I read recently in the WSJ. The author is Jonah Lehrer. The only thing I edited is I changed C----mas to X-mas. PLEASE READ; I guarantee you will enjoy it!

We live in an age that is obsessed with things. We fill our homes with the latest gadgets and fashions and then, when we run out of space, rent a storage unit.

This obsession is most vividly on display during the holidays, especially now that the weeks after Thanksgiving have become a frenzy of mad sales, long lines and endless emails promoting free shipping. X-mas has become a collective excuse for consumption, as if the best way to celebrate the spirit of the season is to rack up credit-card debt buying stuff for others. The implicit assumption is that happiness can be gift-wrapped.

Here's the problem: Material things can give us jolts of pleasure, but that pleasure isn't rooted in the thing itself. As a result, we end up squandering X-mas looking for joy in all the wrong places.

Consider a new experiment led by the Oxford University researchers Mengfei Huang and Andrew Parker. They were interested in the different neurological reactions triggered by a genuine Rembrandt portrait and a fake one, painted by one of his pupils. Though the canvases might look similar, real Rembrandts are worth about 100 times more.

We pay such different prices for these paintings because we assume that there is something special about an authentic Rembrandt, that the Old Master filled his art with discernible flourishes. Though we might not be able to identify these minor differences, we think we can still appreciate them, which is why we hang Rembrandts in the finest museums and consign his imitators to the basement. We sense great art!

But that's not what the researchers found. When their subjects were shown real and fake paintings while being monitored in a brain scanner, there was no detectable difference in their sensory reaction. The masterpiece didn't excite the visual cortex any more than the knock-off did.

The scientists did locate a pattern of brain activity, however, that appeared whenever subjects thought a painting was authentic. There was a spike in activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, a chunk of brain just behind the eyes that's often associated with perceptions of reward and pleasure. What's interesting is that this area responded just as robustly when the stamp of authenticity was applied to a fake.

This principle doesn't just apply to art. In a 2009 experiment, Caltech scientists gave people in brain scanners a range of California Cabernets, priced from $5 to $90. Not surprisingly, the subjects consistently reported that the more expensive wines tasted better. Here's the catch: the scientists had reshuffled the labels, so that subjects were sometimes given a $90 bottle filled with cheap jug wine. But the pleasure areas of the brain responded solely to the perceived price. A fancy label can make even the cheapest plonk taste great.

Similar results have been achieved with shoes, tequila and jewelry. In study after study, the actual products seem to matter less than our superficial beliefs about them.

Does this mean that the only gifts worth giving are those plastered with prestigious logos?

Quite the opposite. The real moral of this research is that even the most wonderful things in the world—and what's more wonderful than Rembrandt and fine wine?—aren't wonderful for purely material reasons. Instead, the joy and beauty we find in these objects depend on all those feelings and beliefs we bring to them, infusing the lifeless possessions with the life of mind. It really is the thought that counts.

Given this psychological reality, we should reassess our holiday priorities, spending less time shopping and more time with the people we're shopping for. As the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman observes, "It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you."

So put down those presents—you're missing the best part.

yossi you are fascinating.good night

great article and great message
thank you yossi!

I was looking at a news site and on the side of the site there was an inappropriate link to see a trailer for a new rated R movie. I battled with clicking on it and I lost the battle. As Im clicking on it I said to myself go to GYE's website immediately you are in the danger zone! And thank god Hashemite gave me the strength to go to this website. I checked my posts and there was two appreciative comments from mechazek and zemiros shabbos. Those. Ice comments gave me the.chizuk I needed. Thank you.