Easy never did it.

Yeah you’re right. good stuff is not easy. but deteriorating because we refuse to grow up is even harder!!
Nice post.
when stuff seems like too much, just do it for 5mins at a time, or one minute at a time.
Its a cinch an inch but its hard by the yard.
and making things ‘easy’ gets them DONE. living life like a clenched fist just makes EVERYTHING difficult. you have to surrender to win. let go, to get in to the groove and get the job done. nervous energy just drains valuable resources away from the job at hand. thats how i understand what ‘easy does it’ it teaching me. I TRY (!!) to do things ‘lightly’ as opposed to ‘intensely’. The journey never ends really. there is always something scary looking on the horizon if we refuse to hide under the duvet!
Good luck with your new chapter of stuff!

I have never heard “Easy does it” as having anything to do with how “easy” something is. I hear it as referring to the manner in which one does things. I think it arose from those with a bit of time under their belt (though only a few years when the Big Book was written) noticing how the newcomer would often try awfully hard to leapfrog into the state of longer term sobriety. Trying to tackle their 4th step or make their amends when they had a couple of weeks sober, and thinking themselves somehow inadequate if they weren’t farther along, faster. I think it’s is the gentlest of suggestions to simply take things a day at time, not to force things, and taken that way, it is an excellent suggestion for anybody. Somehow going from that to a contrary position that if it isn’t hard, it isn’t worth doing, seems to me a rather tortuous (and defensive) leap of logic.
Acceptance mean staying out of the “should” — that place of inadequacy one feels when things aren’t happening the way one thinks they should–as if that equals some sort of failure. You’re the one who characterizes the results in your life, and it’s completely possible to accept them for what they are, without constantly interpreting them as a negative reflection on you. It’s all right to be in pain without thinking somethings wrong with you for being in pain, it’s also all right to not be in pain. But it’s a lot easier to let go of that when you don’t define yourself in relation to how much pain you’re usually in, when you let go fear that without your pain, you won’t know who you are.
There a diamond under that coal, my friend. It’s the case for everybody in recovery, but you need to be willing to see yourself as the diamond not the coal, so that you chip it off instead of hold onto it. The good news, no matter what you do, stay sober, and it will get better. Could you have even imagined how you would be now, a year ago, vis a vis IFX for example? In another year you will be equally unrecognizable to yourself.

This post is right on. I wrote about the same topic a few days back, to say, basically, that life’’s lessons don’t seem to originate in the pleasurable, easy, trouble-free moments of our lives. Can you think of a profound, life-changing lesson that occurred as a result of something hugely pleasurable or right happening in your life? (Ok, maybe becoming a Dad is an exception.)

So I have to give thanks (gulp!) for the royal screwups I’ve committed, for the grim chapters where I made ALL the wrong decisions and was behaving the worst I could behave. Because that laid the foundation for a new person to emerge.

Thanks for your blog. I really enjoy reading it.

Thanks for stopping by my site, which gave me a chance to discover yours. Wow! I love your writing and your clarity. And most of all I see a true willingness to work with others. I think this is the area where the fellowships that follow in the “tradition of AA” are lacking. That is one of the primary reasons I want to work through my steps and recovery. Sponsorship is good for me and for the people I am able to work with. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and humility here.

“I don’t know who I am even with the pain.”
Right. My contention is that when you (or me, or anyone) doesn’t have a sense of who they are, they tend to create definitions based as mostly from the negatives, like they are the outlines against which they feel most real.
What I want to encourage you to do is to make sure if someone asks you for the 5 traits that best characterize you, you can list 5 positive things first. Because I get the feeling that what first comes to mind is stuff like: “I’m someone who can’t, won’t, doesn’t [INSERT].” And you’re smart, funny, loyal, open, perceptive and sensitive for starters. See’s that’s 6, right there. Why don’t you add 4 more positives and carry a list of them around? Don’t forget a 4th step is an inventory of your defects AND assets. I think you owe it to yourself to make sure that last part gets equal time.