Page 146 - 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself

They pressed on, and they said come on! They said there were newcomers to

recovery who were scared too, but they were scared that they couldn’t live
without their drugs and alcohol. That they probably were not going to have any
life at all. They asked what exactly I was scared of. Was it that I’d look foolish
by not being a good speaker? They told me to stop thinking of myself and to
think of the others. That persuaded me.

So I pushed past my fear and my fever and I walked up the steps to get to the
podium to face that huge hall of people. I started hesitantly. Then I remembered
what my sponsor had told me just before I got up there. “Just tell the truth,” he
said. “Just tell everyone what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like
now.”

So I started telling the crowd what it was like. All the tragic and comic
death-defying dysfunctions I participated in while drunk. The blackouts. The

time in jail. Standing before the judge. The lies and sickening betrayals. And for
some odd reason the people in the hall were roaring with laughter. There was
something about my story, my sad life, that made them laugh and laugh. I looked
out over the audience and saw the happiest faces I had ever seen. What was
happening? I was just telling the whole truth. And maybe my fever was helping
me, was feeding me with a weird kind of manic energy.

Then I told what happened. The miracle of recovery. The total eclipse of the
heart. The turnaround of a life. Clean and sober and free with three lovely
daughters and a second chance. I told how I did it. How the steps of recovery
were taken.

After that talk, I was given a standing ovation and surrounded by people for
an hour afterward. They said I explained how to take the steps better than
anyone they’d heard in a long time. What was the formula? Mix fever with fear
and add a huge shame-based desire to help the newcomer to recovery? No.
Steps. Steps were the formula. The steps I walked up to the podium. The three
steps of a connective talk that were told to me ahead of time by my sponsor: 1)
What it was like, 2) what happened, and 3) what it’s like now. Steps.

So, thinking about what work and what steps make me happy, I thought
about that night and I decided right then and there that I would be a teacher of

recovery. But not just from alcohol and drugs. But from all the other less lethal
addictions, such as sadness, regret, procrastination, lack of wealth, lack of
clients, career problems, and inadequate goal achievement. And so it happened
that knowing where happiness comes from by allowing my own life to be an