Sane and Happy Usefulness

Hello and welcome. I am your host, Joseph Devlin, and today on our show, we're going to discuss having a life that is sane, happy and useful.

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So let's get at it.

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Recently, I'm in this season of really looking and exploring and seeking out, what are the spiritual principles that I live on and in today's society, many people talk about, hey, I'm a spiritual person, or I live a spiritual life. And for me, that coincides with spiritual principles. What are they and how am I living by them? So I right out ask God to show these to me in my life. And when I'm looking for them, I do find them. And this just happened to me the other night. I was reading a book with a group of folks, and one of the things I do when I'm reading a book is I highlight things. And sometimes in the moment when I'm highlighting something, that word really jumps out and it gets implanted in my heart and becomes a part of me, and other times it's when I'm highlighting things or underlining things, it gives me the opportunity to go back and read what it was, reread what it was that I was reading, and and see what was Was there something more there that I needed to tease out or I needed to chew on? So the other night, as I'm going through this, I'm looking at this one page that I had some highlights on, and as I read through my highlights, I realized that it was almost like forming a sentence. And I just really want to share this with you. And I'd say it's more kind of like a sporadic idea, but I think you'll get the gist of it once I read it. So here are the things that I had highlighted. It said, with God on his side, it is well firm foundation consciousness of the power of God in our lives. Come to believe, firmly planted on Earth, we have found nothing incompatible between a powerful spiritual experience and a life of seeing and happy usefulness.

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Right away, I said,

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Thank you, God,

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that is what I'm looking for. I'm looking for those spiritual principles. I'm living by them, by even simply some of the books that I'm choosing to read. I'm finding I'm learning to live on these foundations and believing the fact that, hey, I can have a spiritual experience and still be sane and happy and useful to society, to myself, to my family, and as I was just in awe of enjoying the moment, I started thinking about, okay, so what are the foundations? What's a foundation that I'm living off of? And right away, boom, that thought of listening when I'm communicating just so important. And listening is a skill that I have been working on and developing over the past, you know, many years,

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and I

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have been definitely guilty of, you know, being in the midst of a conversation and just waiting for that person to stop talking so I can tell them my great idea. And I can't tell you how many times that, you know, you know, I think of a time. I mean, there's so many times, but there's this one time that comes to me that I'm thinking about, you know, there was this guy who was sharing this problem he was having at work, and the communication between staff and the supervisor and and, you know, they just keep missing and, you know, they're not really finding a place to connect. And everybody on the team is getting all like, jammed up about this, and I'm thinking in my head, oh, my goodness, same thing happened to me. I know exactly what to tell him to do. This is how we solved it, you know, and it worked out great for us. And it was like, you know, this this great epiphany, and everybody got along really great. And so the person kept talking and talking, and all this anxiety is building up inside of me, I'm feeling anxious. My heart's pounding. I'm like, Oh, come on, come on. Is he going to stop talking? Is he going to stop talking? I just want to share this. This is going to solve all his problems. He's got this. So all of a sudden, finally, you know, he breathes, and I jump in and I share, oh, my goodness, we did this thing. You know, everybody when we had lunch breaks right after our team meeting. We got in, and we spoke for five minutes. We were able to air out some of the problems that we had and get them really quickly done. Doing this in less than 15 minutes, we were able to get them back to the supervisor, and everybody really felt heard. And I could just see, as I'm finishing up, you know, telling them how this great idea worked for my entire team,

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I could just see this blank look fall over his face,

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and I'm like, Oh, he didn't hear anything. I had to say. I was like, what happened? How is he not getting this gold, this gold information that I'm giving him right now? It's going to change his life, and it's going to help his team, and he's going to be the star guy going in there, but he's just not getting it, you know. And I play, you know, in my head after I left that man, my goodness, next time am I supposed to say something different? Am I supposed to really go maybe step one, step two, step three, step four, like, how could I really jam this idea down, down, down his throat? And quite frankly, if I just gave him more of the same of you know that that information, I'm still going to get the same result. He's still going to have this blank stare on his face. And really, what it was, he didn't feel like I heard him. And if folks don't feel like you've they've been heard, there's no way like that they can trust you or want to listen to what your solution is. There's really no foundation there. And I'll share there was a, you know, recent experience. I had somebody came up to me and they said, Hey, what's new with you? And I started telling them, Oh, my goodness, my Oh, my goodness. I took my my son to this parade. It was this huge celebration. We were having a great time. We got positioned in these awesome place to see everything. I mean, our view was just amazing. I mean, it was so great. Even, like, you know, everybody was cheering and, you know, even one of the players came out and gave us all high fives. And this is, it was so great. I mean, this is a memory, you know, that we're going to have for a lifetime, me and my son and and the person, as soon as I stopped talking, they said, Oh, I could have went there, but yeah, I just decided not to. And I was like, it just didn't feel right. And I was like, Huh, you know, so kind of ended the conversation. I had to kind of walk away from it. And I was thinking, like, Huh? I wonder what that was about. Why don't? Why am I not? Why is that that feeling awkward to me, and it was because they weren't really listening to me.

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And

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you know, there's sometimes I have to realize that there might be people who aren't going to listen to me, but I don't want to be one of those people. I want to be one of those people who creates a foundation of trust, of joy, of usefulness to others, and as I'm looking to do that, I can purposefully listen to people and connect with them, and I'll take a flip to this. It's like, okay, so how do we do this? And you know, one of the the simpler things I can do is, I mean, like I said, I've been at this for a while, and I share this story that, you know, I had, I was working with somebody, and they had chosen to stop drinking for a little while, and they're about three weeks into to not drinking. And I'm, you know, and I'm meeting with them and and they're telling me, they're like, oh, man, I got this thing at work. I was like, I can't believe there's going to be an open bar. It's like, I have to show up. If I don't show up, I mean, this could be detrimental to my career. I don't know what I'm going to do. I can't believe that this is happening. If I start letting people know, like, are that? What are they going to say if I they see me not drinking? And, you know, I just don't know what's going to happen. And and I'm so frustrated. And of course, I had to stop drinking three weeks ago. Why couldn't this have party you've been, you know, a month ago, it wouldn't be a problem. And they're just, you know, they're hurting.

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And when they paused,

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I said,

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Hey, Mike, I feel your frustration.

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What happens if you do nothing? And

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it kind of like shift it? And he was like, what? He's like, Well, I can't do nothing, like I told you, like I had to go, and I have to do this. And. And I have to figure out a way to get around this, because it's going to be tough for me not to be able to drink and and he's like, you know, maybe I can, you know, just, just leave early. Because, you know, everybody, you know, they get crazy as it gets later on in the night, and this way the boss won't think I'm one of those crazy people anymore. And he's like, What do you think I should do? And that's when I could share with him information. He invited me back into that conversation. You know, he wanted to be heard, and at that point I could share with him, you know, strategies that some of them he knew, and some of them I just had to kind of help him out with. You know, arriving late, leaving early, having somebody call him during the event, so he could kind of walk away from things, you know, different things he could and couldn't drink. And, you know, we unpacked this a little bit more, and the things that he wanted to do, what was so essential, if I had just jumped in, he would not have heard me. And I just want to tell you that the key things that I did there was, you know, with that simple phrase that I said to him, you know, I was able to, you know, relate to him with some empathy, no letting him know where he feels. I said his name, which, you know, our name, you know, I say, Hey, Mike, you know, that was, that's the name that he wants to hear the most. The most appealing name for the most appealing word for any of us to hear is our own name. And once that happens, that neuroscience behind that is the fact that we are going to release dopamine, those feel good chemicals in our body, and that's so essential for somebody who is in addiction or somebody who's in recovery, is to be able to experience it, those those good feelings. And once we did, you know, once that was said, that also allowed them to get into that creative mode, because once that you start feeling good, we get into that creative mood, and they could start thinking about some other options that they that they could do. And that's why I said, What happens if you do nothing?

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as you can see, like he was able to develop a plan and it was his own. We could work on it together. I gave him a few suggestions, and he was really successful with being able to go to that meeting. And it was a foundation that started for him to be able to do this for future holiday parties and family parties. And it was just something that he now has implanted in his heart. He knows what he's got to like, what he's going to do for himself. And you know, this same thing can happen, the same way of speaking. Can happen when in our families, when something, you know, kind of wacky is going on at home, especially with our loved one, who may be in the addiction, or who are, who is early on their recovery, you can just kind of flip around those questions a little bit and just kind of, you know, hear them out of, you know, I mean, because that question is a really, really good question, as if we do nothing, you know, doing Nothing sometimes will kill people, and sometimes doing nothing will really save somebody's life, so but we allow them to know that they've been hurt. And you know this, like I said, it also happens with any member of our family. When we think about it this way, it's like, you know, there was another person I was working with, and, you know, she, you know, her, her husband was, you know, in addiction. And she was just talking about her daughter, who, you know, who was struggling. She was always kind of like complaining about things. Yeah, I should complain about not wanting to go to bed, you know, 10, you know, 10pm is too, too early. And, you know, complaining about TV shows that she was why I don't never get to watch this, or I never get to talk with my friends. And, you know, oh, the woman will call her Amy, you know, Amy was like, I don't know what to do. Like, I, you know, I know it's the problem, but I I'm still trying to firefight over here with what's going on with my husband. And, you know, I don't know what to do with my my own family, my own immediate family. And, you know, we all know this is, you know, this is a family disease. So it's like, okay, what can I do with my daughter here, and she's like, you know, my the simple thing is that, you know, she was always just kind of giving her the solution to things. And hey, you know, or this isn't fair. And you know, Amy would say, Look, you know, just go ahead and, you know, ignore that person. Or. Or, you know, don't worry about it. You'll go to bed earlier. You know, she'd always be providing the solution, rather than just listening to her daughter. And so I challenged her, and I said, Hey, Amy, listen next time your daughter says something. I said, matter what it is, just say, Hey, I've I feel your frustration. What happens if you do nothing?

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And Amy came

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back the next week, she see me, and we're talking, and she's like, you're never going to believe this. She's like, My daughter came home and she's, she's she came home, she's complaining about this kid who's always causing trouble in school, and it was the same kid. We know the kid, and, you know, just call him, you know. Let's call his name Matt. You know, Matt. He was, you know, he's always causing problems. And so my normal answer to my daughter is, just ignore him and he'll go away. You don't feed him. You know, there's a lot of wisdom in that. And she said, but I thought about what you said, and I just stopped for a moment. I listened to her tell the story, and I said exactly to her, once I had that moment, I said to my daughter, hey, I feel your frustration.

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What happens if you do nothing?

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And my daughter went on, and she know she's telling me how her daughter goes on, and she's telling her, oh my goodness, I can't do that like that. This happened today, and it happened to her math. And I have problems in math, and I think I'm going to blow that assignment. And if I blow every assignment, I'm going to fail. And even if I blew the assignment today, I know I'm gonna fail, and this could just just destroy my whole, whole grade point average, and this is I'm just such a failure, and boom, got to the point of what's really going on. You know, we see over and over and over again that, you know, in families that have a loved one with an addiction, right? There's, there's certain characteristics that the children take on, and one of them is perfectionism. And by not dismissing and saying, hey, just ignore the kid who's always getting in trouble, by asking them that question, they were able to go deeper into that and and, you know, and Amy was able to talk with her daughter a little bit more about, hey, listen, you know, understanding the frustration, right? But also talking to them in regards to, like, Hey, what are the things that they can can do about this and that, you know, hey, one grade is, yeah, we understand that it's weighty, but we have multiple grades. They were able to talk that thing through, but her GPA can come up even if she did bad. But they were able to also devise a up like a plan. And her daughter said, hey, you know, because when she's talking to her, hey, what can we do when something like that happens? And her daughter came up with a solution. Her daughter says, what happens? I get all distracted. I get all anxious. I don't know what to do. And I get distracted from my math, and I can't do anything. She's like, but if I went in the back of the room for, like, I don't like, a minute or two, and then come back up to my seat, you know, as long as he's kind of at least settled in by that point, I think that would help me re situate. So, hey, you know, with the you know, with the help of her mom, you know, they outreach the teacher, they came up with the plan, and that's exactly what they did. You know, her daughter was learned a technique to utilize in schools. It's just like breathing techniques that we had, you know, I had taught Amy and Amy had taught daughter, and it's like they were doing them together. And so now she knows how to her daughter, now knows how to handle a difficult situation, be able to advocate for herself, remove herself from the situation and come back and be productive and not get all sidetracked from this. And it all happened just because she asked a question. And

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you know, I

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this is the things that I love. You know, as I found that, as I seek things, I find them. And, you know, I started off this episode and I told you I was asking God, just to show me, you know, where are these spiritual principles happening in my life. And lo and behold, here it goes. It was something from reading to coming up to, you know, listening and communicating, and I was able to share these experiences with all of you and how life changing, these in this simple listening and asking a question can change the lives of so many people around us. And so if you found that this episode has been helpful to you or even to anybody you know, please share it with them. If you would like to try and explore explore even more deeper. Ways to be able to actively listen and actively engage in conversations. Please reach out to me. You know I'm I'm here to help talk and discuss with you. You know ways that you know, ways that I've made mistakes, but also ways that I've been successful, and share them with you so that you can really help accelerate a life for you that could be sane, happy and of usefulness. And you know, it's always in the seeking we find, and that's exactly what happens. And I'm so glad that you were here with me here today and until our next episode, remember, sobriety is a family affair.