Category: Words To Live By

Two years ago my partner had an act of indiscretion that almost ended our relationship. But through prayer and hard work from the both of us, things are better than ever now between us, all except for one thing and it has to do with some of my own insecurities.

At the present time, I often feel like I’m coming up short at what I can offer in our relationship because of all the health issues I’ve been going through. Not having a job and not really even being able to do much activity in life these days has led me to have a decent amount of insecurity in our relationship. Unfortunately, sometimes that has gotten the best of me like it did a few weeks ago when I found myself looking through my partner’s cell phone and into a few other parts of his private life. Why I did this was solely because I allowed my ego and my insecurity to convince me that my partner was probably finding interest in someone else with less baggage.

I know that doesn’t justify my actions, as they were absolutely in the wrong and I definitely didn’t feel good about any of it, especially after I was done snooping and found nothing to satisfy my insecure ego. But thankfully I’m a very honest man today, as I did come clean to my partner about what I did the very next morning and made my amends in the process. But the fact of the matter is that even after I made that amends, I still had that insecurity and underlying fear that I don’t have much to offer my partner at the present time. My deepest concern being my partner might return to another indiscretion or leave me altogether for someone else.

Ironically, I know exactly where this worry is coming from. Those concerns are precisely how I behaved in all of my previous relationships. In each of them, I was on the flip side of the coin. When a partner was struggling greatly with various aspects of their life that ranged from health issues to financial burdens, instead of loving and supporting them as best as I could, I’d keep my eyes open for future dating prospects and did heinous sexual conduct behaviors that ultimately ended each of those relationships. Unfortunately, I’m now projecting these old behaviors onto my current partner and it’s not helping our relationship one bit.

Thus being in similar shoes of those partners I once dated who often told me they felt inadequate with what they were going through, I find myself doing the very same thing by asking myself why my partner continues choosing to be with me. Being that I never unconditionally loved and supported any of my previous partners in all the times they truly needed me the most, I have no healthy grounds to base my present situation on. But so far, my partner has not shown or done anything remotely close to what I ever did, of which I’m extremely grateful. Yet I also know that if I continue to live in this state of insecurity, I’m only going to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, I’m going to drive my partner away and that’s definitely not something I want to do.

So the only solution I have at this point is to work on turning this over a lot more to my Higher Power than I have been, especially the next time my ego tries to convince me to do anymore snooping. Because as far as I can see, doing something like that is only going to drive my partner either into doing those actual behaviors I used to do or away altogether. I am thankful though that I recognize these insecurities and can see where it’s stemming from. Now, I just need to walk through these fears and trust that God will help me move beyond them…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Do you ever find yourself getting emotionally charged at postings that show up in your Facebook newsfeed? I certainly do, which is precisely why I was grateful when I discovered its “unfollow” feature not too long ago.

As I’m sure just about everyone already knows, if you’re friends with anyone on Facebook, the default action with their postings is to show up on your scrolling newsfeed every single day. Thus one’s newsfeed is really but the conglomeration of what each of one’s Facebook friends are placing in their timelines on a daily basis.

At first I didn’t have an issue with this. But as time went on I began to see a lot of ego, drama, and negativity in much of what people were posting. And given that the Facebook newsfeed is always the very first thing I had to see every time I logged in, it was hard not to notice this pattern.

Not being one to normally read the newsfeed anyway, I initially tried to tune that pattern out and only check the status of my automatic blog postings. But somehow something always drew me in and at some point, I found myself developing various unwanted feelings every time I chose to spend time on my newsfeed. Sometimes it was only slight irritation over what someone had posted, but other times I actually found myself feeling a lot more than that. There were moments I felt jealous or envious, depressed, or even angry and at some point I finally had enough of it. It’s then I thankfully discovered the Facebook “unfollow” feature.

Using this feature was quite easy, as all I had to do was click the “unfollow” option and I’d remain friends with the person, yet I wouldn’t have to see any of their postings. So I began to do this with those I was most emotionally charged by in what they placed out on their timelines. But with so many others still connected to me overall on Facebook, I found plenty continued to show up on my newsfeed that I had no desire to see.

While I do believe in free speech and I’m all for people having their own opinions, I’ve learned in life that it’s far healthier for me to keep the outside ego, drama, and negativity to a minimum by shielding myself from it where I can. Of course, when I’m out and about in the world, that’s pretty hard to do, but when I’m by myself on my computer or on my phone, the last thing I need to see is more of it. And while I know there are vast amounts of good things that people do put out there on their Facebook timelines, I found it was rather hard to locate them more than not. I also found myself beginning to compare myself to everyone and everything on Facebook and feeling less than because of it. This is specifically why I ended up doing the most drastic action I could next.

I unfollowed everyone I was a Facebook friend with.

It was kind of funny at first to log into Facebook after I completed this action, because my newsfeed then became totally blank, except for my own blog postings. But as time went forward for a while like this, I found that I felt so much better whenever I had to log onto the social media tool. It’s then I began to notice my mood was remaining the same after logging out, as it had been when logging in.

It’s only been in recent weeks that I started adding back a few people here and there whom I know work hard on only posting positing and uplifting messages on their timelines, like my spiritual teacher does. And while I do occasionally go look at someone’s timeline that I’m not currently following, I find this has been a far better thing for me to do than being inundated with so many postings that emotionally charged me so greatly.

And while I do gear all of my own blog postings to be more spiritually positive than anything, I know there are some out there who probably still find them emotionally charging for whatever their reasons. Hence why the “unfollow” option is such a good tool to have on Facebook because I’m sure some have chosen to unfollow me as well.

So while I may not regularly see any of the places my Facebook friends are visiting or all the things they are eating when dinging out, while I may not learn of any of their religious and political opinions or all their frustrations they have in life, while I may not catch any of their jokes or video pranks they share or any of their new pictures either, I find I’m having a greater sense of peace and serenity in my life these days because of unfollowing the masses. And to be perfectly honest, I find that’s far more important to me than becoming emotionally charged with unwanted feelings from something as simple as some Facebook postings, as doesn’t life already have enough of that for each of us?

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Trying to maintain balance in life while in recovery from an addiction can often prove to be very difficult, especially given that most never had any balance whatsoever when acting out in that very same addiction. While there are definitely multitudes of ways to establish that balance, the one I have found to work the best is to maintain my spiritual balance.

What I mean by maintaining my spiritual balance is doing the work necessary to remain in conscious contact with my Higher Power on a daily basis. You see, when I was active in any of my former addictions, I rarely remained in conscious contact with my Higher Power, that is unless my world was going to hell and it needed rescuing.

Since coming into the recovery world though, I’ve found that if I continue to uphold a daily spiritual routine, I gain a much greater level of balance throughout my entire life. But as soon as I abstain from any part of that spiritual routine, I immediately find myself getting unbalanced and going back to old toxic behaviors.

So this is why I am quite the diligent one these days with the spiritual practices I follow, which include a 45 minute breathing meditation, a 20 minute audio meditation, 30 minutes of spiritual mantras, at least an hour of writing, doing a grateful journal, and of course praying on and off throughout the day.

I know that may seem like an awfully large amount of time and energy to expel, but the fact is not doing so has proven to be an even bigger drain on those things for me. Thus, I know I must continue to follow my daily spiritual routines day in and day out, because having balance truly is that crucial for me to maintain a healthy recovery in life.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson