Don’t Think So Much Sometimes … Just Do

I had always prided myself on my intellectual prowess, my ability to discern and apply specific lessons to a wider field, and my ability to remember and to “connect the dots.” Now I was basically being told to ignore my intellectual strength and just follow simple directives.

They also said over and over: “If you want what we have do what we do.” They did not say, “Think about doing what you think we are doing.” They simply said, “Just do what we do.” These old-timers also said: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Do the steps – don’t think about the steps, memorize the steps, opine about the steps. Just do the steps and you’ll change and, eventually, come to understand that you have had a spiritual awakening. You will no longer be the same person – and you will probably be the last person in the room to recognize how much you have changed. They also reminded me: “Work the Steps, live sober today, and the rest of your life is none of your business.”

So, if they said “Jump!” I jumped. If they said, “Get here early and make coffee,”I got to a meeting early and made coffee. I did what I was told and I got better. My compulsion to drink left me – although I couldn’t remember when that happened. I began thinking of others. I became aware of my impact (or not) on others depending on how I had acted. All these things were new to me, a little uncomfortable to me, and always a little awkward for me.

And then I had a marvelous experience during the early years of my recovery.

While I was still drinking, a young man from my university (although many years behind me) came to work as a software developer on a project of which I was the Test and Integration manager. Several years later, now sober, I was a Program Manager overseeing 7 different projects. I hired this same young man, Joel, to be a project manager over two of the projects. Our client, a federal departmental director, was very difficult to work with. He called and wanted me to fire Joel and to cancel our work. Joel and I went to see him. After the meeting the client not only rescinded his request for terminating our effort, but had actually expanded our scope of work. Later that day, Joel asked if he could discuss something privately with me. We went to lunch.

Joel told me something like this: “When we worked together 3-4 years ago, I got to know the Don O’Dell from North Texas State University. You still look the same and still smoke a pipe, but everything else about you is absolutely different. What has happened?” I told him about my recovery in AA. We became very close friends.

That acknowledgement of how much I had changed was such a wonderful gift to me. I had just been doing what I had been told, and here was a total “outsider” who was amazed at how different I had become. It was such a cherished bit of feedback.

Blessings, Don
April 4, 2024