The Habit of Making a Gratitude List: Advanced Version

I know many in AA who have found benefit by routinely making list of things in their life for which they feel grateful. It seems to help overcome a natural tendency many recovering alcoholics have toward self-pity and poor poor me attitudes, particularly when we're still beset with cravings for outside solutions to inside problems.

Writing down the good things in our lives helps us keep the so-called bad things in perspective and right-sized. I remember sharing this conventional AA wisdom with Dr. Earle sometime in my first couple of months of sobriety. I'd already learned to cherish this old man's unconventional views on what seemed to being pitched by many as the "right way" to do AA. At the time, I wasn't yet comfortable or confident in my own sometime dissonant views of recovery or of AA and listening to this particular old man, who'd taken his last drink two days before I was born (6/15/1953), was something I could never get enough of....

I'd expected Earle to poo-poo the idea of making gratitude lists, but he surprised me. I thought he'd downplay the practice because it seemed to me to be yet another subtle attempt by AAs to change their feelings because they were 'bad' and/or to artificially bring about the experience of so-called 'good' feelings.

While he nodded in agreement with these concerns of mine, it didn't deter him from finding potential benefit in the practice or exercise of making gratitude lists. He simply said that many people in AA had found great benefit in that routine practice. That seemed enough for him, but I suspected there was more to it.

Though he's long gone now (he died in January 2003 when I was almost 14 months sober...), I've been thinking about him recently and how what I learned from him might help me develop a new version or method in writing a gratitude list. One that might avoid the suspect path of trying to be or feel something other than was we are or what we feel. I'm confident Earle would like this new way of making a gratitude list, so I will dedicate it to him now and assume his blessing.

The basic idea is to make two lists: the first is the typical gratitude list of things for which was are grateful: things like being sober, being in relationships that are nurturing, having a job, having a friend, being alive, being healthy, etc. These are all things that we "feel" grateful for, things that we see good in. Things that we are thankful for. For our ability to love, to be kind, to be honest, to be forgiving, to be compassionate.

When that list is as long as you can make it, then start a second list of all the things that you don't feel grateful for, that you resent, that you regret, that make you sad. Things you grieve over. Things you wish hadn't happened in the past or things that you wish weren't happening now. For example, some alcoholics wish that they weren't alcoholics. If that's one of your regrets, write it down. It's ok, no one's looking. It's your list. Other regrets might be things that you might have said or done in the past which might have hurt you or others. Things which no amends seem to wipe from your memory. Memories of actions or deeds which make us wince now. The death of someone you loved (or hated). Let loose! Give yourself permission to remember (remember means to put the pieces of a human being back together: to re-member one whose had their members removed) back to all those "bad" things in our past or in our current experience. You might be without a job right now. You might have just ended a special relationship. If you don't have true gratitude for it, write it down. Think of the most annoying flaws in the person you love the most in the world: things you've been wanting them to change since the very beginning of your relationship.

The next step to the process takes time and is going to be different for each person. The next task is to become aware of the fact that nothing in our first list would be possible were it not for each of the things in the second list. In my experience, there are direct links between each of the items in my "bad" regrets list and each of the items in my "good" things list. The fact that I'm sober, which means everything to me now, would mean nothing were it not for the fact that I was a drunk and that I did every stupid and shameful act that I did when I was drinking or when I was "dry".

The sadness that I have over the fact that my father died of alcoholism years before I got sober, was the very foundation of the joy I felt when I sat across from my son and told him that while he had been getting clean and sober for the last year, I had been drinking on a daily basis and that I finally understood that I was an alcoholic and that I was going to try and do what my son had been doing successfully for five months: try to stay sober one day at a time. The joy when he smiled back at me and said, "Gee, Dad, that's great! We're BOTH addicts!" --- would simply not have been there were it not grounded in the knowledge of my own father's addiction and ultimate death due to this disease. His death wasn't a failure, it was a consequence. And one other consequence from his death was that I knew in my heart what laid before me if I continued doing what I was doing.

My wife's overly critical eye has been the bane of my existence since shortly after we got married over 28 years ago. It's only recently (by means of this gratitude process...) that I've been able to see that part of what annoys me about her critical eye is that she has pretty damn good eye sight! That is, much of her criticism of me is right on the money. Part of what I don't always understand about her is that she most likely saves her most harsh criticism not for me, but for herself. She beats herself relentlessly, although quietly and to herself alone. In comparison, her criticism of me is mild and gentle. To be honest with myself, much that I have accomplished and improved in my life is a direct result of her assistance and guidance. I'm basically a slug.

For me, the benefit of this two step process in making a Gratitude List is that gradually the items in these separate lists begin to meld together into one list. All is Good. Everything is perfect, just they way it is, has been and will be.

One day when Earle and I were waiting for the meeting to begin, he asked me how I was doing. I was only a few months sober --- so I lied: I told him that I was doing fine. He laughed and said to me, "You wouldn't lie to an old man like me, would you?" I smiled and answered, "Well, apparently I would!" I told him that I was regretting the fact that it took me so long to get sober and that I'd caused a lot of harm and hurt along the way, in particular with my wife and kids.

He nodded with sympathy and then told me that "Were it not for every single drink that you took in your life, every single drunk, every single stupid and hurtful thing that you did while drunk or sober....you would not be sitting here right now. And, were it not for every single drink that I (Earle) took in my life, every single drunk, every single stupid and hurtful thing that I did while drunk or sober in my life....I would not be sitting here right now. So if all of that hadn't happened in each of our lives, neither of us would have come to be right here, right now. And if that's true, then how can any of what has happened to either of us be bad?"

The meeting then began and my life had changed once again.

Take care!

Mike L.