John Du Cane

Spark Your Day

The Gratitude Attitude

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“Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.”—A.A. Milne

When we hit a patch of road construction, do we protest the inconvenience—or do we find it pleasing to contemplate the smoother rides ahead? Can we be thankful—grateful—for whatever we are confronted by? After all, this is the hand we’ve been dealt to deal with… We always have the choice to transform that moment, with an attitude of gratitude—or to resist that moment and suffer accordingly…

In our using days, it would have seemed preposterous to be grateful for every single moment of our unfolding lives. We were in way too much pain, much too guarded, to open ourselves to the attitude of gratitude. However, as we entered the gates of recovery, we came to believe that to be grateful in attitude was to stimulate an immediate response from the world around us. Be grateful to the world and it will shower its grace back at you. We discovered that our leap of faith into gratitude was quickly rewarded in kind.

For today then, let’s welcome whatever we have in front of us with this greeting: “Pleased to meet you. How can I help?” In recovery, we learn to offer help and accept help as the currency of a healthy spirit. The butterfly sips from the plant. Pollinated, the plant spreads its seed… That’s the natural way—and the natural way is a profoundly perfect way for those of us in recovery, is it not?

Gratitude Butterfly

When we broadcast gratitude, life transforms before our eyes. What’s magical is the speed with which this transformation happens—because it happens with the speed of light.

The gratitude choice is triggered from the mind—but its current comes from the heart. In our using days it was hard for us to love—to come from the heart—when all we were really thinking about was ourselves and our next chemical hit.

The arrival of love in our hearts was one of the nice surprises for many of us when we began our recovery. “Love exists! Who knew?” we exclaimed in wonder to ourselves—as our wounded souls bathed in the love we could not formerly feel or give… To nurture this heart energy is to nurture our recovery—big time.

With today’s internal movement method let’s be grateful for our bodies, just as we find them in this moment… And let’s in the process send our bodies some loving attention.

Lie down on a comfortable surface. Put your right palm over your heart area. Take a long, slow inhale through the nose. Sense the breath penetrating with the help of your attention deep into your beating heart. Hold your breath for about five seconds, feeling your heart. Exhale slowly. Smile gently while you send the energy out from your heart to every cell in your body. That would be the energy of love, the energy of gratitude… Hold your breath after the exhale for about another five seconds, feeling your entire body. Repeat for a total of ten cycles.

It’s empowering to acknowledge that I can transform each moment of my life by simply switching on the attitude of gratitude.

Fear of Failure

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“There’s no success like failure and failure’s no success at all.”—Bob Dylan

Success is a leaf blown hither and thither by the gusts of opinion and belief. Success is a shape-shifter. Success is the canny chameleon, changing colors to match the melting rainbow of our desires. Ever-elusive, success mocks our vain attempts to possess her. One fleeting gasp, it seems, before she slides away again, beyond our grasp…

And failure, by its nature, is always yelping at the heels of success. Failure dogs and mocks our hopes. In our dreams, we can feel the fingers of failure falling on our shoulder—just waiting for us to stumble…

For those of us in recovery, it’s important to recognize the elastic relativity of success and failure. And we need to protect ourselves from getting too caught up with either the allure of success or the perceived ignominy of failure. For our sanity and our serenity’s sake, let’s stay modest in what we define as success and failure. Our overarching need is to protect ourselves and our recovery from undue vulnerability. The irony is that our fear of failing can make us more vulnerable—which can put our recovery at further risk.

Fear of Failure

We have seen how our fear of failure is a brilliant recipe for just one thing: more failure. So, let’s choose to face our fear of failure in the same way we’d eat an elephant—one bite at a time. Let’s face our fear in manageable increments. What we imagined to be a looming shadow of disappointment, then disappears when looked at in the light.

Over time—and taking it gently—we can recalibrate our definitions of success and failure. We can measure success and failure against our core recovery values and priorities. We save what protects us and exalt it. We discard what is destructive and stick it with a warning label.

Let’s take a minute today to reflect on a failure we are fearing for ourselves. Could we be giving this fear some undue power?

The movement for today is an old stand by for strength building—and is also a movement that lends itself to fear of failure. That movement would be the push-up. Any way you cut it, the push-up eventually becomes a toughie… The push-up dares you to succeed—while it waits to envelop you in a cloak of failure. The answer today, is to come close to the precipice of failure without making the leap.

Here’s the success strategy we will employ: determine the number of good-form push-ups you can perform with significant effort. Aim to hit that mark. However, give yourself permission to recalibrate success, by stopping one rep before you would utterly fail to perform that extra rep. Voila, you have succeeded in the teeth of failure…

Kneel on the ground. Place your hands on the floor at shoulder’s width. Raise your knees up and extend your legs until your whole body is in a plank-like posture. Keep your butt in line with your spine. Tighten your abs. Take about two seconds to gently lower yourself down until your chest almost touches the floor. Push up into your original position. Inhale and hold your breath on the way down. Exhale when you push up. If the full push-up is initially too challenging for you, perform the movement while resting on your knees.

It’s exhilarating to face a fear of failure—and win the face-off!

Quick Fixes and The Perils of Hacking

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“In the soil of the quick fix is the seed of a new problem, because our quiet wisdom is unavailable”—Wayne Muller

The notion that we can hack our way to faster physical transformation has gained widespread currency in our modern Want It Now culture. But, while there are undoubtedly effective hacks to be had, is the hacking mindset a safe one for those of us in recovery?

In our using days, we were bedeviled by our hunger for the quick fix. To lurch back onto the path of instant gratification—physically, spiritually or emotionally—could set us up for disappointment, impatience, frustration or irritation. None of these emotions are exactly supportive of our serenity!

The urge to hack for quick results is essentially immature—a product of the teenage impulse. We are creatures of the natural order—much as we try to wriggle and scam our way out of it… The natural order dictates a path for growth which, across nature’s board, is slow and deliberate. Consider how plants grow over time. Consider animals in the wild. Consider our own kind, in the earlier years. We see a gradual growth, a gradual maturing, a gradual strengthening.

Many of us, though, remained stuck in the house arrest of teenage impulsivity. We kept on punching and punching the quick-fix buttons in our play box. We stubbornly continued to trick and trigger our way into pleasure hit after pleasure hit after pleasure hit.

Perils Of Hacking

The hacking mindset tends to deny the need for consistent effort over the long haul to reach our goals. And yet, the Way of Resilience and of Stable Strength—be it of body, mind or spirit—is the deliberate application of time-tested wisdom on a daily basis. Let’s seek that resilience and stability and maturity of outlook, to better safeguard our recovery!

There is finally no magic fix to getting and staying stronger and more resilient. But, there is a secret: persistent, consistent effort. Regular, daily movement—however minimal—is a sure-fire way to maintain that all-important, multi-dimensional resilience.

Let’s buttress our recovery today, then, with some sweet and sweaty effort:

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Cross your arms over your chest and squat down as low as you can, preferably below parallel and eventually with your thighs touching your calves. Keep your knees from bowing in by aligning them with your feet. Keep your back as straight as possible. Come back up and lock out your legs and hips completely. Squeeze the muscles in your legs as tightly as possible for a second, relax and repeat the squat. Inhale and hold the breath as you descend. Exhale as you ascend. Do three sets of twelve repetitions. Rest at least a minute between each set.

It feels so good to be making steady progress with my health and strength, by committing to consistent, daily movement.

The Dark Healer

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“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”—Friedrich Nietzsche

Too often, Dark gets a bad rap. We prefer to rush with open arms into the embrace of his sister, Light. We sigh with relief to be held in that shining brightness—safe, we think, from the prowlers stalking us in that forbidding gloom. And yet… And yet… The truth of the matter is somewhat more subtle and mysterious, is it not? For without the dark, there can be no light—as there can be no darkness without the light to pierce it.

Dark Healer

So, let’s welcome the healing power of darkness. The Dark Healer rules by night, as we sleep and dream. It is as we sleep that The Dark Healer weaves his magic of restoration and regeneration and recovery and growth and cleansing. Without this diligent restorative work behind the scenes we’d quickly be dead in the water.

Darkness is nature’s natural time for rest and recovery. When we partied, we pretty much ignored the concept of rest and recuperation. We blazed through the night snorting and boozing and toking with our customary abandon—heedless and uncaring of the damage we were wreaking on our indignant bodies. Talk about burning the candle at both ends!

When we came somewhat to our senses, surveyed the wreckage and decided to clean up our act, we didn’t always add a good dollop of restorative rest to our recovery mix. We would continue to run ourselves ragged—just without the chemical companions… More than we may ever realize, though, we need the deep healing that the dark can provide us. Fall in love with the Dark Healer that he may love you back.

We may find it simply hard to fall asleep. Our over-busy brains, our shot nerves, our worries, our various aches and pains conspire to keep the light on—at our health’s expense.

So, here’s a great method to help you sink gratefully into the friendly, restorative darkness:

Lie down on a comfortable surface. Make fists and tighten both arms until they are ramrod stiff. Hold for a couple of seconds, then relax completely. Tighten your buttocks, abs and pecs as hard as you can bear. Hold for a couple of seconds, then relax completely. Tighten your thighs into rigid posts. Hold for a couple of seconds, then relax completely. Ok, enough of that! Let’s move on to the second stage:

Place your right finger-tips gently on your breastbone and place your left finger tips just below your navel. Inhale gently, while imagining that the breath is flooding into your heart area. Exhale gently as you send your attention into the stomach below your finger-tips. Repeat from five to ten times (or more if you like.) Finally, place both palms over your navel. Inhale into your stomach area, exhale into your stomach for five to ten repetitions.

Don’t be surprised if you find yourself drifting off before you complete the full number of repetitions. Welcome to the embrace of the Dark Healer…

I celebrate the power of darkness as it helps restore and strengthen my recovery.

Radical Dishonesty

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“The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.”—Hannah Arendt

It’s sometimes remarked with a wry smile that one definition of an alcoholic is someone who lies even when they don’t have to. Let’s call this compulsive need to dissemble, “radical dishonesty.” Not a compulsion any of us would really like to live with, right? But, many of us in recovery will shake our heads at the extent to which we were once the poster child for radical dishonesty. Our self-induced suffering knew few boundaries to begin with—our compulsive deceit just pushed those boundaries to the further edges of the horizon…

The dance of deceit is an ever more complex dance to perform—as we prance away from the simpler patterns that would otherwise represent our truth. As users—out of shame or fear of legal consequences—we burrowed ever deeper into our hidden foxholes. When we finally got rousted, ousted and busted, the cobwebs of our lies seemed to lace us in their gray tangle. Over time—and with much help—we started to brush off the cobwebs and disentangle ourselves from the mess of our deceit. But habits die awfully hard—and the habit to lie was once our second nature…

Opening up to others and getting real with our stories is one key to a healthy recovery. Embellishment is good entertainment. But when we distort and hide even the simplest stories behind a veil of falsehoods, entertainment devolves into a hollow script of furtive secrets.

Dishonesty

Pill-popping, snorting, spiking, sucking, toking, glugging and other chemical endeavors numbed us to the full pain and foolishness of our deceitful behavior. As we cleaned up our chemical dependencies, we began to deep-clean the behaviors our chemicals had enabled. Tough stuff, but essential if we were to remain on the path of recovery.

Today might be a good day to reflect on one of the dubious stories we may still be telling ourselves and others. Let’s take a minute to hold that tall tale up to the light. Perhaps it still serves a worthwhile purpose. However, perhaps it does not—and we can now safely discard it without losing our sense of self. Each of us would be the best judge of our own stories in this regard…

Was it perhaps anxiety-provoking to confront a deceitful story we had been clinging to? That would be pretty natural! Let’s handle that right away with a powerful breathing method recommended by the Lung Institute, amongst others. It’s called Pursed Lips Breathing, or PLB. PLB has numerous health benefits, including a reduction of stress and anxiety:

Stand or sit, with shoulders down and relaxed. Inhale slowly through the nose for two seconds with your mouth closed. No need to labor for a deep breath—just take a normal, gentle inhale. Exhale through the mouth for four seconds (the extended time period is very important). When exhaling, purse your lips as if giving a kiss. While exhaling, keep the breath slow and steady. No force. Repeat ten to twenty times.

It feels great to relax out of holding on to a needless deceit.