Projection Is the Second Most Useful Tool in Recovery — Behind Prayer – Bill B.

Welcome, everyone. Let's have an AA meeting. My name's Tim, and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting at the NAVA Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language and their own point of view the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight, listening later on aabluechipspeakers.org, desperately in need, will hear our speaker, and we believe it is only by fully disclosing ourselves that we will be able to hear his or her story. And our problems, that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I'm one of them too, I must have this thing. And tonight, first off, let me tell you, Bill, I love you. I love you, man. You've made a big difference in my sobriety. He got this thing back in 93, and he wanted to spread the word, I guess. And I was working for a friend of ours, and he came in one day, and he wanted to tell me about his sobriety. And it fell on deaf ears, but he planted a seed. And I knew when my time came where the solution was. And thank you, Bill. Now, Bill told this story on his 15th. Is it the month? It's the month of his 15th birthday. And he was here on his 20th. And tonight is his 25th. So, I'm sure he was going to tell you that. I hope he tells you that again. Please, Bill, come to the podium. Hello, good evening. I'm Bill Barnes, I'm an alcoholic. Did I tell you I was here on my 15th, then I was here on my 20th, then I was here on my 25th. I just celebrated 25 years last month, which is amazing. And it's amazing to me, you know, because when I first got here, and this room was one of the first places I ended up coming. It's great to see a bunch of familiar faces here tonight. This, the Napa Club is where the guy that I ended up working the steps with came every morning to the 930 meeting. His name was Lawrence Potts, and he unfortunately passed away of cancer some years ago. But he was a great sponsor, and he had a tremendous sense of humor. But, and every time he shared, and he kind of was known for this, that at some point during his sharing in a meeting, he would always say, this is serious business. And he was right. You know, we have a lot of levity around here, and we have a lot of laughter, but this is serious business. And the cool part is, is I get to do this stuff, I don't have to do it. So, I'll talk more about that. I said I'm an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic. And I really... I really support the singleness of purpose here. My story includes some other things, which will kind of come into my story. So, I hope I don't offend anybody about that. And if I do, please talk to your sponsor. And they'll help you with that, hopefully. Because my understanding is a drug is a drug is a drug. Alcohol is a drug. Anything else is a drug. It's just all the way to change how I feel. So, I don't differentiate myself. I include myself into being an alcoholic. So, I'm going to spend... The book talks about... We talk about what it was like, what I did, and what it's like now. I'm going to spend just a little bit of time on what it was like, because if you're sitting in this room, and you're one of us, you already know what it was like. But I'm going to qualify myself, so you'll know I deserve and earn one of these seats. I was a late bloomer. I know there's probably so many in here that started drinking when they were four years old. I was not one of them. I took till I was 18 years old when I started. I started drinking, but boy, did I make up for lost time. And my disease, and I really do believe this is a disease that I did not ask to have. And while I'm thinking about it, one of the best definitions of our disease I've heard recently was that our disease is fatal in nature, but when the patient is treated properly, they come out better than if they had never had the disease. I want to say that again, because it took me a second time to hear it. It's a disease, alcoholism and drug addiction is a disease which is fatal in nature when untreated, but when treated properly with the tools that we learned here, the person comes out, the patient comes out better than if they had never had it. When I am out in the world, and I think the whole purpose of getting sober is to get back out and live in the world. It's not just to be cloistered here forever. I have some very good friends that I've developed over the years. Thank you. And when the time is appropriate, and if they want to ask me about it, and I choose to disclose, I'll talk to them about being an alcoholic. And I'll actually say this to them. I'll say, you know, I'm grateful that I'm an alcoholic and drug addict. And they look at me like some of you probably are looking at me like, are you crazy? And I really mean that, and here's why. There are many people out in this world that I've run into from time to time that don't have a drug and alcohol problem. But they don't have a set of tools or a clue how to go through their day in a comfortable, peaceful, healthy self-esteem, healthy self-respect kind of day. They're just unhappy people with no clue how to go through their day. And I would have been one of those people. I was bouncing off of life with my character defects. I was totally self-centered, just bouncing off of life. You know, me, me, I want what I want, and I want it now. And how do I get the next thing? And how do I be? Nice to you, so you'll give me what I want. And all the typical things of our disease, how it manifests itself in our lives. So I'm actually grateful that I hit a bottom sufficient enough to come in and meet you guys. And then to find that sponsor, because I learned a set of tools here that have enabled me, one, to stay sober for 25 years. That's, again, makes me tear up. That's amazing to me. And to have a life that I never, ever dreamed was possible. My sponsor, Lawrence, was very good at explaining things. And he said, Bill, one of the things I can't explain to you is that if you stood up here and you show up and you do the things, take the actions. This is an action program. If you take the actions that we take here and make it the most important thing you do, these cool things will come out of left field and right field that will happen in your life that he could not explain. And he was absolutely right. And it has not stopped for 25 years. This stuff keeps happening. So if you're new here, suit up, show up, and get busy. I always talk about that all recovery is, is a change in perspective. And what I mean by that is that the world out there is not going to change. You know, my wife is going to be who she's going to be. My job's going to be what it's going to be. Traffic is going to be what it's going to be. And that's my hard one. I don't know if y'all struggle with traffic. It's going to be what it's going to be. So, and, and, and alcohol and drugs are out there in the world. So if I want to be comfortable in my own skin and have some healthy self-esteem and healthy self-respect, what have I got to do? I've got to change the way my perspective on how I look at myself and how I look at everything else out in the world. And that's what recovery gives us. And it comes directly from the program. And the program is the 12 Steps. This is the fellowship. This is not the program in my understanding. The program is the 12 Steps. If I'm going to 12 Step meetings and not working the 12 Steps, I can't call myself in the program. And that's where the magic happens. This is where I get exposed to the things I'm going to talk about. This is where I get exposed to a great sponsor. This is where I get exposed to hearing some change in perspective, some solution. One quick story. In 2005, my wife and I were blessed to go for a safari in Africa. And I've been going to meetings for 25 years. I never stopped going because I look at it as I don't have to go, I get to go. And out in the bush in Africa, there are no meetings. So after about 10 or 11 days, I could watch my thinking change. So my perspective was changing. So it's one of the reasons I stick around you guys. So I started late. At 18 years old, I was 18 years old. And then for the next, from 18 till I was age 40, I was a binger. I would drink Jack Daniels every day. And then I would, that would lead me to other substances. And then when I got on with other substances, I would go for two or three days without coming home. So I am married happily for the fourth time. I've been married to this wife for 21 years. And very happily. I burned three marriages down in my addiction. And I look back on it, it was an interesting set of numbers. I would take a hostage for a year. I would marry her. And then three years later, I would get divorced. I'd meet another girl. First of all, I think, never going to meet anybody. Because, you know, it's not. But I always would. Date him for a year. Married three years. Dated a year. Three years. And that was the history of it. The first two, I left at the end of three years. Because I didn't have a set of tools. And just knew that I couldn't keep doing what I wanted to do if I was still married. So I divorced the first two. The third one had some health to her. Not that the other two didn't. But the third one had some real health to her. And the last year of our marriage, excuse me. If, um. She never said. To me, Bill, if you do this again, I'm leaving. But when I look back on it after I got sober. She was saying things that kind of meant that. So, my history was. I would go on a bender. Bender. I'd stay out all night. And I would stay out. Past. On purpose. Past the time she would go to work. So I could come in and sleep it off. And then hope when she came home. All I'd be looking at is. Are you. You know. What's going to happen. You know. Isn't that a great way to live? The person I'm supposed to be. The closest to you. The person I'm supposed to trust the most. The person that's supposed to trust me the most. I was totally untrustworthy. Based on this disease. So this last time. I came home. And, um. I'd stayed out all night. And she had come home from work. And I was just looking for that. That look. That look in her eyes. And she had been to see a counselor. And she sat down and said. Bill. I still love you. But you have killed the in love. With you. I am no longer in love with you. And I'm out of here. So. She left. And. To back up a little bit. Actually about. Ten years. I had had a problem. I knew I had a little problem. So I'd gone to. A 30 day treatment program. And I know they exposed me to AA. But I don't remember. Much about it. But. It certainly didn't click with me. And I didn't. Go. Oh yeah. I'm an alcoholic. Yeah. I can't. I'm glad I found you guys. And so. I stayed sober for about 60 days. Once I got out of that treatment center. And then for 10 more years. I was back out there. So I knew when she left this third time. I knew I had a problem. So. Classic alcoholic and drug addict thinking. I'm sitting in my condo by myself. I'm thinking. Third wife has left me. I have a drug and alcohol problem. Who in the world has ever been alone. Be with me. And my life's over. So I did what any good alcoholic would do. I got on a plane. Went to the Caribbean with a credit card that was overdrawn. And it's a little bit of money. I had some other people's money. And I went and tried to burn it down and tried to buy friendships. Act grandiose, full of ego, you know, just lonely as I've ever been in my life. Um, and finally, after some period of time, I think I, I was, uh, drinking out Jack Daniels. Daily and shooting cocaine for 48 straight days. So first up, I burned the seat. Okay. And finally I ran out of money. Couldn't borrow any more money. Um, and somehow I still had a plane ticket home. And, um, while I was gone, the, uh, my family and some friends had moved me out of a condo. And some buddies of mine met me at, uh, at the airport and they said, we got a place for you to go, which is a miracle. A lot of people don't have that. And I'll tell you about that in a minute. I, you know, I'm talking about treatment centers. I ended up in a place called Marr, which is my opinion, a world-class place. And, um, they gave me the real start that I, that I needed. Um, treatment centers, some people may have gone, maybe not have gone. It's not a requirement, but, uh, what it did for me is it gave me a jumpstart on education that we have a disease called alcohol and drug addiction. When in the throes of those, that disease, I do things I would not ordinarily do. My sponsor helped me with that early on. Cause I thought I was just a bad guy. You know, look how I treated all these people and burned the business down and spent all this money and I'm a bad, just a bad guy. And I've been sober two or three months. And he said, Bill, are you still out there robbing, cheating, stealing, doing all this stuff you used to do? I said, no. He says, well, that shows me you're not a bad guy. It shows me you're a sick guy. And so I could start taking the disease concepts and start hanging all the shame and the guilt for all the things I had done over on the disease. And my job then was to try to learn how to do the sober thing, um, one day at a time. So treatment centers are a great place to learn how to get a jumpstart on, on, uh, learning about sobriety and getting, getting, you know, required to go to meetings and, and required to get a sponsor, all that great stuff. But, and, and again, Mars, a world-class place for that. Um, but, um, it's just a start. And, and I, if I had, I got very blessed. I got exposed to a meeting like three weeks in, um, up in North, up in Norcross called the, and I walked into this meeting, which didn't happen my first time around. And I saw people on the step out front and they were laughing and telling stories. And they, um, and I went to the meeting and they were talking about solution and they were talking about, and I could just tell, um, they were different than I was. They were the same as I was. They were alcoholic and drug addicts, but they were not in the same place mentally as I was. They were in a good place. And so the program talks about where, it's attraction, not promotion. I was attracted to what I saw. So, and that was, that was a real blessing. So if you're new here, um, the suggestion is, is go to enough meetings to where you find that kind of meeting. Where you, um, you, you, you hear solution. There are good meetings in this world and there are bad meetings and there are really terrific meetings. And if, if I'm smart, if I go to my first few meetings and I hear somebody share that sounds like they, they've got what I'm looking for. If I go up to them and say, Hey, where are the good meetings? They'll know where they are. Okay. And very quickly, if I do the same thing, I go up to somebody who I like what they share and I say, who are the good sponsors here in this room? Um, they know who they are. They know the guys that are doing the deal and, and, and willing to do the work. And then I need to go ask one of those guys to do that. So, because that's the key. So, um, so I got, I went to treatment. I started going to the meetings and then I started listening to what you guys said. And, um, but before that, I, I believe that when I was in treatment was when my recovery really started and I got a story that kind of illustrates it. For those that have been in treatment centers every couple of, you know, maybe once or twice a week in the evening, they'll have a thing called a community meeting. It's where they all come together with a counselor and all the guys in your, in my case, there was 10 guys, two apartments, and they were talking about Johnny stole my G. And Jimmy, Jimmy's not cleaning his bathroom and, you know, all those kinds of fun things and more often, more serious stuff, you know, and so, uh, real issues would come up. And, and so for the first 45 days I was there, um, I wasn't willing to, I didn't want to be them to talk about me. So for the last, for the few days before the next community meeting, I, I kissed ass. That's what I did. I was nice as I knew how to be, just gave people rides and, you know, just so for one meeting, they would not talk about me. Well, y'all know what happened. They started on one side of the room and they started jumping in my stuff and I'm not hearing a word they're saying. I'm getting angrier and angrier and angrier and angrier. Got around to the counselor. I'm thinking maybe he'll save me. He jumped right in. I stood up. I said, F this. I walked out the door to the apartment next door. Where I was living, walked into the bedroom where I was, pulled the closet up, put my suitcase out, threw it on the bed, threw it up and said to myself, I don't have anywhere to go. And I'm grateful I didn't. I sat on the stoop out there until the meeting was over. And then I, here's when my recovery started. I pulled each person in my community out on the stoop one by one. And I said, what am I doing wrong? Here's the key phrase for me. At that point, I became willing to hear what I didn't want to hear about. Me. Before that, if you said, hey, Bill, you might want to look at you. Don't always tell the truth. I'd make it about you. You know, why don't you look at your own damn self? For it takes one to know one. And I wouldn't look inside and say, well, maybe he's right. I don't tell the truth all the time. At that point, I became willing to hear. And amazingly, and really unamazingly, they all told me the same stuff. They could all see these things I call blind spots. Things about myself that I would change if I could see them. One of the beautiful things about recovery is, is that I will be. Willing to hear it. My people in my network will tell me what I need to look at. I call them zingers. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good. But it's a gift. My treatment center taught me this. That the times that I'm the most uncomfortable is the chance for me to grow the most. If everything's just rocking along, there's no chance for growth. So I started welcoming that kind of feedback. So they all told me. It's basically the same thing. And so I started taking action on what they told me. And things immediately started getting better. I then came and found the sponsor that I told you about earlier. Because in the meetings I was going to, it was a really good meeting. They talked the solution. You know, people would talk in the meeting about what they were struggling with. But then they would talk about what they were doing about it. I talked earlier about this is an action program. I cannot. Y'all taught me. I cannot think my way into. Sober. Living. Behavior. I've got to behave. Act my way. And just over thinking. So y'all taught me these series of things to do on a daily basis, which I do without fail. And those are. I say the third step prayer. First thing in the morning. I've gotten this thing that y'all. Jim sent me today. This is very similar. I think called the ponderables, which is a series of good readings in the morning. So before I get out of bed, I prop myself up, pull my phone up. I read the ponderables. Which. And then I get on my knees and say the third step prayer. And the reason I do that is because if I get up and go to the bathroom or go get coffee or whatever, where's my head? It's already in the day. It's already. What am I going to do about this? What am I going to do about that? But if I started off in a spiritual way about looking at how to change my perspective and how to apply this stuff towards what I'm going to go through in the day, then I have a better day. And so I don't miss doing that. I go. I talk to several recovering people every day that has served me very well. And again, I heard this in a meeting. Nothing you're hearing tonight, by the way, is original to me. It's all stuff I have heard in meetings. And I just have my own way of putting it. One of the great changes in perspective that I heard was a great example of it was in a meeting. I don't have to go to meetings. I get to go to meetings. I don't have to get a sponsor. I get to get a sponsor. I mean, how awesome is it for me to go up to somebody and ask them to sponsor me? And they're there genuinely to help me. They're not there. They don't want anything in return. They're going to be honest with me. They'll tell me what I don't want to hear if they're a good sponsor. Hopefully they do it in a gentle way, but not always. And that's OK. So I get to do this stuff. So I'm going to talk about that. Told you nothing's original to me. But through the years. I've kind of come up with for me, which is kind of a recipe for both getting sober and staying sober. And I'm going to go through them quickly and then I'm going to back up and walk through each one of them. The first one is go to meetings. Second one is get a competent sponsor. Third one is work all 12 steps. The fourth one is learn how to pray. The fifth one is work with others. And the sixth one is learn how to have fun sober. So if I if I do those things, I will. I have a chance to get sober and I can stay sober. So back up going to meetings, you know, however old I was when I got here for that period of time in my life before I got here. I had learned a certain way to think and behave. So it's just like going to school and anything else. If I want to if I want to get a degree in biology, I went to school every day. Am I going to get the degree quicker than if I go once a month? Yes. So I go to. I find those. So I was in a meeting every day for at least the first year because I wanted to give myself every opportunity. I talked earlier about making this stuff the most important thing I do. My sponsor said to me one time, he said, Bill, I've never met somebody that can't find at least an hour in their day to do something really important. Have you? I said, no, never. You know, no reason why I can't. He says, well, there it is. So. I was in a meeting every day because I wanted to learn the new perspective. So if you knew, again, go find those seven meetings through trial and error to where it become a part of the meeting. My sponsors and other people have always said I go to three meetings a day. And I said, what do you mean about that? They said, you go to the 15, 20 minutes before the meeting. That's a meeting. You go to the meeting itself. And then you stay 15, 20 minutes after and you go to that meeting and you get connected. So if I don't, I go to Biscayne room Monday night. Horrific men's meeting on at eight o'clock over on Buford Highway. I don't suggest you quit this one, but that's over there if you ever need one. And I go to another meeting on Tuesday night called the Log Cabin Club up in Norcross. So if you were to ask my wife tonight, where will be Bill be next Monday? She said, Biscayne, where's Bill going to be next Tuesday at the Log Cabin? It's just it's called designing my life around my meetings, not my meetings around my life. I've seen it many, many times. People come in here. They're beat up. They're willing. They. They are willing to do some work. They come in and they go to some meetings. They might get a sponsor. They might even work the first three steps and 30, 60, 90 days. And one, they're alcohol free. And so they're feeling better physically. Their family might be talking back to them again. They might have a job, might have a buck or two in their pocket. And they're going, hey, everything's great. I don't need to do anything else. And invariably, those people are back out there. So I go to meetings. And then I talked about earlier about the program. The program is the 12 steps. And that's where where the change in perspective happens. And I remember working, working the steps with my sponsor. And he was a really good sponsor. And he he caught me one day looking up on the wall, reading the next step that we hadn't worked yet. And he said he made this suggestion. He said, Bill, why don't you just be willing to work the step and see what it does for you instead of trying to figure out what it's going to do for you before you do it? And he was absolutely right. I had no I could read the English of the step. But I had no clue until I worked each one with a competent sponsor of what they were going to do for me. That change in perspective. So work in the 12 steps. Again, if I'm going to 12 step meetings and I've got disease, alcohol and drug addiction, I'm not working the 12 steps. I have basically, in my experience, zero chance of of getting the life that this can give us. And I have not much of a chance to stay clean. So on the other side of it. Here's another. Change in perspective. People always talk in meetings about what happens when I realize all the bad stuff. And if I don't do this, I'm best at what I always like to talk about is what all the good stuff that happens when I do do this stuff, you know, we end up having relationships. You know, the my understanding is that the relationship that the richness of life is the relationships I have with people. Before I got here, it was let me get this car, let me get this money, let me get this and I'll be happy. And what I came to learn is that that's all stuff. And stuff gets old and that's not going to make me happy outside stuff. Nothing wrong with what nice things if I can afford them, but I need to understand they cannot make me happy. That comes from inside. That comes in from doing the work we're talking about here. So go to meetings, get a competent sponsor, work all 12 steps through that. Here's the big one. The big God word. You know, that was just such a huge thing for me when I got here. You know, my brother is a man of the cloth. So you can imagine. The conversations I had before I got here on, you know, and and I look back over before I got here and I can remember thinking about it and I wouldn't even let myself start to go towards a higher power because I knew what I wanted to do and I knew that wasn't going to fit into something spiritual. So I wouldn't even willing to go there. And when I got here, one of the brilliant parts of this program, the steps is, is it is a higher power of my own understanding. It is not of your understanding. It's not a this or that. It's whatever I choose it to be. And that was brilliant because if y'all if I had come in here and y'all said, you must believe in so and so higher power, I would have been probably out of here. And so what I did is I used the group. It's a log cabin. The group of people is my higher power. And the way I could do that was the realization that a group of people with a common purpose to stay clean was a greater power than me trying to do it by myself. So. First, the group of people was my higher power. And so I started talking to that, checking things out with that group. And a good way to practice that is to say, pick five people in the program that I really respect and put them up here on my left shoulder. And as I go through my day, if I'm struggling about what I should say or what I should do, if I look up there and go, what would they think about what I'm going to say or what I'm going to do? I can check my thinking. And that goes into steps two and three. Turning my thinking over to a higher power. That group of five people has a more a better way of looking at the world than I do by myself. So I'm going to look to them to check my thinking and behavior out. And so that started working for me. And so, as the book said, says, I started having not quite so much contempt prior to more investigation. And I became open to the idea that there was something universal that I could I choose to call God today. And there it was all the time. And so I've learned. So if you're struggling with the spiritual stuff, to me, it's a practical, useful tool to use in my everyday life that makes my life better. It is not some mystical, magical. My higher power, my God is not going to because he gave me free will, which is the ability to think and behave however I choose. He is not going to reach inside me and go, you will behave this way. You will think this way. So if I want to align my voice, talk about aligning our will with this higher power, I've got to I've got to be willing to check out my thinking and behavior by looking at those five people. Or I sit God up here now the same way and saying and checking things out. And if I'm still confused, I've got people in the program I respect to go talk to. So so I learned how to pray. And that third step prayer is a wonderful prayer. So how to get out of me and working with others is the fifth. You know, I've been very blessed to get to work with some guys since I've been sober and they've helped me way more than I've helped them. What do you think it does for me when I'm sitting talking to a guy about the first step or the third step or whatever step? And I'm explaining after I hear what they think it is and understand it to be. I get to explain what I think, what I understand it to be and how to practice it. What do you think it does for me? It helps me grow my understanding of this stuff. My. Sponsor was really good, as I said, and and whatever understanding I got from him, it's become vastly larger by working the steps over and over again with a bunch of guys. So we work with others and there's a real joy in that. Watching somebody's the light go on and go on in them and watching their life unfold and get married for the fourth time. Happily. So we'll be those men learn how to have fun sober. Is a big deal and and I found that people in the in the in recovery sometimes really struggle with that. And so the example I like to give is if I'm here and I've got a sponsor that I respect and I'm looking for a meeting on Monday nights that I don't know, I don't have one. And I go up to Tim and I say, Tim, where's there a good meeting on Monday night? Tim says, well, there's a blue chip speaker meeting at Nava. Well, because I'm. I'm willing, I'm going to look up how to get here. I'll walk through all the feelings of this. Life is what I feel and the feelings of how do I get here? And is it going to be a good meeting? Are the people going to be welcoming? Is it going to be a solution meeting? All those things that come with going to a brand new meeting. And so because I'm willing, I find out how to get here. I show up, I sit down, I hear a great story. And it's a good meeting. Well, I'm willing, I'm still willing. So I'm willing to come next week or the second week and I had to get here. But I still don't know people. I'm not connected yet. So so I still have some of those feelings, new meeting, all that stuff. But I'm willing. So I'll walk through those feelings. And then after I go to the 10th or 15th blue chip speaker meeting, guess what? I'm looking forward to it. I'm just going to the meeting and I feel connected. It's exactly the same way with learning how to have fun. There are a bunch of people. That I know that if I had trouble with that, which I don't, by the way, I have a ton of fun. I can ask them, what do they do for fun? And they'll tell me. And then I need to walk through those feelings to learn how to have fun, because it's my experience. If I don't learn how to have fun, I'm not going to stay sober. One of the things I've learned here is that we're taught to get out of self, taught to be of service to our people in recovery, to our families, to our work. And so. If I don't learn how to go fill myself back up with something fun at least once a week, eventually I'm going to burn out. And so I think it's a very healthy thing to go have that that hobby to to go do once a week or more to something I look forward to that is fun, that I can go fill myself back up. Then I have more to give and I'm not going to burn out. So those are the six things. And again, it's my understanding if I'm willing to practice those things and make it the most important thing I do every day, I will get sober. And then if I'm willing to practice those things and keep them the most important thing, I will stay sober. The thought is, you know, when I got here, there's no question this was real work. I had people saw that work the steps and it should not surprise me that early on. This is all new to me and it's all foreign and I'm having to really change how I look at the world and how I behave towards it, especially how I look at myself, because I was harder on myself than anybody else was when I got here. But I'm here to tell you, if you do this stuff for a while, it quits becoming so much work and just becomes who you are. And there's so if you're working hard when you first get here, it does get much easier and then it becomes easier and easier. And then as the readings say, we start to know how to handle situations which used to baffle us, and that's what they're talking about, I think. So. So I'll talk about one more tool, another tool that my sponsor taught me, that's been I call it the second most useful tool in recovery behind prayer, and it's called learning how not to project. Projection is worried about something in the future or in the past that I can do nothing about at this moment. The way I got taught it was I had gotten out of treatment. I told you all I burned completely burned my financial. Life down. I'm a commission. I was a commission sales guy. And so I was back the second day at my lucky to go back to my job where I was. And I had less than I was less than I was past broke. I had I went through bankruptcy and recovery. And but there was tens of thousands of dollars that I could not bank. So the second day back at work, four o'clock in the afternoon, I am sitting back in my chair looking out the window. I'm going, how in the world am I ever going to pay all this money back? And I was getting miserable about it. So you know what I did? Anybody know? Call my sponsor. There's the ticket. I had somebody that was willing to help me. So I'm struggling to call my sponsor, a good sponsor. If he has experience, he'll give it to me with the steps. If he doesn't, he'll send me to somebody who does. So I call my sponsor. I said, I'm miserable. He said, why? I said, because all this money and I'm going to pay it back. He said, well, that's projection. And he went on to explain this definition. He said, projection is when I'm in my thinking, worried about something in the future or in the past that I can do nothing about today, nothing about at this moment. He said that is a useless, harmful exercise. It has no possibility of making things better and every possibility of making things worse. What gave me the ability to start practicing using this tool was when he said he asked me the question, he said, Bill, you worried about this money right now. Is it have any possibility of making that situation better? I said, no. So if worried about it could have made it better, I might not have bought the tool. But because I understood that it could not make it better. I became willing to practice it. He also gave me an example of why I can make it worse. And the hypothetical is I say I'm married with kids and I'm out of a job. And projection would be if I don't get a job, I'm losing my house. My kids are going to go hungry. All the bad stuff we can project about in the future. That's not happening at this moment, but that's what could happen. But I'm doing some work. So I've gotten an interview for a week from now. So projection would be then to worry every single day. I've got to have this job, got to have this job. If I don't get this job, I've got to have this job. If I sit in six days worth of this kind of thinking, how do you think the job interview is going to go? It's going to be I'm going to be desperate. I'm not going to ask the right questions, see if I want the job. I'll be willing to take less money than it probably was worth. And it's going to be a bad scene. Conversely, if I say if I'm supposed to get this job in God's plan, I'll get it. In the meantime, I need to bring this part to it. There's a difference between planning and projecting. Planning is a good thing. If I'm worried about the job, the planning is, OK, what can I do right now that will have a positive effect on the job? I can go look for a job. So so in that illustration, so if I'm supposed to have to get this job, I'll get it. In the meantime, I'm going to keep looking for another job in case my higher powers found one different that might be better than the one I'm going to go looking for. And a real quick story is the treatment center I was in and their wisdom said, we don't want you to go back and be your grandiose job, we want you to go get a job unrelated to your field. And I was willing. So I went out with applications at shoe stores and in Bowling Alley and wherever, you know, totally unqualified for any of this stuff. But I kept willing and I put application after application after application and had all the feelings, got a good job, all that stuff. Well, I ended up getting this job two or three weeks later. I was selling ice cream and sandwiches at a Gorin's ice cream shop. And this is an example of I do the footwork. My higher power has the has the results. So I start working at this place and to learn two big lessons in this one. One is the thing I feared the most. I was in the real estate business and I did leasing and stuff. And the thing I feared the most, the second day I was there, a lady walked in, I've done a lease with the year before. Here I am selling ice cream. I did not handle it well. I went and hid in the kitchen until she was gone. And then I started learning what Mara was trying to teach me, which was humility. And the humility is realization I'm no better and no worse than anybody else in this world. And I got to a place fairly quickly that if somebody walked in, I knew if they had asked me, which they never did, and people did walk in, I knew if they'd asked me, what are you doing here? I said, I'm going to live in it. And I was OK with that. The second thing I learned, it was it turns out there was a Chinese fellow that owned. This was a freestanding location. There was a Chinese fellow that owned a shopping center, owned a Chinese restaurant next door in a shopping center. And he owned the Gorons that I worked in and his cousin ran it. So after his lunch rush, he would come over to the Gorons to check on his business. And I got to know him. And after a while, he learned what I did for a living, which is commercial real estate. And when I got time for me to leave, when Mara thought I'd learned what I needed to learn, he said, Bill, would you help me buy the shopping center that I'm in with my Chinese restaurant? I said, I'd be happy to. And so I brokered the deal and he bought a shopping center and that gave me a nice little commission to start back in my life. So the lesson in that, if I'd gotten the first job, the bowling alley job, the whatever job, the other job, God had a plan the whole time. I just needed to stay willing to show up for the right one. And when I did, he worked his magic. So if you're struggling with any of that, stay out of projection. So projection is a useless, harmful exercise. I call it the second most useful tool in recovery, but it's also the hardest one to practice. My sponsor never told me to overdo anything except this. He said, Bill, start looking at your thinking and ask yourself, human beings are the only animal I can look at. What am I thinking? Am I thinking the right thing? I can actually look at my thinking. He said, look at your thinking and ask yourself, are you worried about something in the future or in the past? You can do nothing about it this moment. If you are, take a different lane of thinking. Call somebody else up. Greatest way to do this with using thought or this kind of stuff is to call somebody else up, ask them how they're doing and be genuinely interested. Get out of me. When I'm projecting, I'm sitting in total self-centeredness. So I hope you'll use that tool. It's been incredibly useful to me. Talk about what my life is like now. I told you I was married. For the fourth time, I met a girl two years sober. The funny story is that her dad's Greek. She's half Greek and and it got to the time we were dating and it was time for me to go sit down and talk with the parents and I said when I was able to do this, I was able to go sit down, talk to them and say, I love your daughter, but I need you to know I've been married three times, I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. I was able to do that and they have loved me for a long time because I treat their daughter how this program teaches me to treat her and so whatever you're going through or whatever bottom has hit, if you think you can't go new places and meet new people and become a success, it's just not right. All I had to do is all I had to do was to look around the rooms when I first got there and see the miracles that happen every day in this program. So I started practicing the principles. I told you about that business. I started working in it and started practicing the principles. Y'all taught me and it grew it into a business way beyond my wildest dreams. I got so good I was able to retire very, very comfortably last May and that couldn't have happened without this program. I have a ton of fun in my life and I have these incredible relationships with people. You know, y'all taught me that the basis of any healthy relationship is trust. If I can't trust what you say or you can't trust what I say, how can there be a basis for a healthy relationship? There can't. So that's the basis for healthy relationships. Standing on the old log cabin when I was first getting sober, I would have to learn how to tell the truth literally. I would be standing on the front porch and I wanted you to like me so badly that instead of going to lunch with Jim at the Crystal, I would say met the Maharaja on a private helicopter and went down to India for lunch, you know, just so you would like me. And what I came to find about that was that the only people that were impressed by that were other very sick people and that the healthy people, all they really cared about was when I opened my mouth, does the truth come out? So I learned how to develop, I call them recovery filters, things we can put up here that kind of filter what comes out. And for a long time now, there's a recovery filter. It filters as it comes out. Is this the truth? Is this the truth? And what y'all taught me is, you know, the truth works just fine. And other thing is, when I tell the truth, I don't have to have a memory. I have to remember what I lied about, you know, just tell the truth. So, so this program, if you do the six things and make them the most important thing we do, life is incredible. And so, again, I'll close with this is that people, when you listen to the next meetings you go to, my experience is you'll hear a lot of the stuff and every relapse and all the all the bad things that are going to happen. Think about all the good things that will happen if I do this stuff. It's not going to be easy. Life still happens. But what recovery gives us is the tool to go through anything and everything that happens in my life. And what I can tell you, the good times, the peace and serenity and healthy self-esteem and healthy self-respect, which is I didn't know I was going to get. I got here, which is the biggest gifts come if we do this stuff. And those times and feelings far outweigh any of the bad stuff that happens. And today, for a long time now, it's not when I get up in the morning, do I go I want to drink or do drugs today? It's how do I make today a little better? And how do I grow the relationships I have with people? And how do I enjoy life? Thanks a lot. Thank you, Bill, for the good news. There was a time when we didn't use that term with you. Yeah, but he came in my first year. He came here and told the story in January 2008, January 23rd. It's 15 years. So it made a big difference. And you know what? The story wasn't much different. He's just telling the truth. You believe it.