Why I Pray In The Shower

We need to work on overcoming our fears and insecurities. It helps us to become stronger people and find greater happiness. Life can be scary depending on what our past was like, and perhaps even more frightening when we worry about what our future holds. However, all we really have is the present. Living in the here and now is where we find our strength to make amends for our past, not worry about our future, and work on any other fears and insecurities we may have. It’s also where find greater happiness.

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Tags: fears and insecurities, greater happiness, living in the moment, the here and now

There is so much information out there on substance abuse and addiction that anyone with questions can become more knowledgeable about it. The best question I ever heard personally about drug use was asked of me many years ago. “Why do you need a drug to be happy?” I tried to be happy using alcohol, but over time I actually became less happy. I finally tried another way, and over time without alcohol, I found more than just happiness. I found a way of life that makes me feel good about myself. Feeling good about ourselves can lead to a self-love that if felt long enough can lead to what I call true happiness. Loving ourselves enough to be happy with who we are.

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Tags: addiction, drug abuse, Happiness, loving ourselves, substance dependency

“When I talk to people about happiness, I make sure to explain that if we expect to become truly happy in life, growth has to be a very important part of it. I wrote in an older post called “Grow for Happiness” that there is both spiritual and personal growth we can acquire. Personal growth can be obtained by education, but there is more to it than just becoming more knowledgeable about certain things. For example, our experiences in life combined with our reactions to them can help us grow as a person. Although good experiences can help us grow so can what we call bad experiences. It need not matter if we react well in the beginning to these types of experiences as long as we strive to learn from them and try to improve on how we think and react to them in the future. There is also spiritual growth, but because some people don’t believe in god, this type of growth may not always be favorable. However, if we look at spiritual growth with the idea of it being nothing more than trying to be a better person than we were before, it can be easy for an agnostic or even some atheists to attempt to grow in this way as well. For me, it also helped to be open minded and believe in the possibility that there may be something more than just this world. If you read my book, you would know how a search through science actually helped me to believe this. My point in all this is that growing both spiritually and as a person enables us to love ourselves enough to be happy with who we are, and is what I call true happiness. However, I recently talked with some people who while claiming to be happy, also said that drinking made them even happier, and this made me wonder if they’re actually as happy as they could be. Now I will tell you that I refuse to judge anyone who drinks, and I don’t really care if they do, but I do care when someone abuses alcohol and has an obvious dependency on it. Science and medicine has proven that alcohol and drugs changes a person’s brain chemistry over time by depleting the chemicals that helps make all of us feel happy in life. Science and medicine also tells us that some people become dependent on alcohol and drugs because they no longer find joy in some of the things that they used to in life without using a substance. Unfortunately, when this cycle goes on for too long, it can interfere with family, work, or a person’s health, and become what most experts call addiction. Now my purpose for this post wasn’t to give anyone a lesson on growth and happiness, or addiction so I’ll finish by making clear what my belief is about true happiness. I believe that life is about levels. There are different levels of wealth among people, and there are different levels of good and bad in all of us. There are different levels of education people obtain, and people have different levels of intelligence and common sense. There are different levels of spiritual and personal growth among people, and some people never try to grow at all. Now to bring my point home about true happiness, and hopefully truly end this writing. There are different levels of happiness in life too, and as I eluded to earlier, some people claim they’re as happy as they can be because of their drinking. I know how they feel because at one time in my life I really believed I was as happy as I could be and that drinking only made me happier. However, I also drank when I was sad or angry, and many times because I was full of fears and insecurities. When I look back over my sobriety now though, I can honestly say that personal growth helped me to experience a level of happiness that I never knew, and growing more spiritual helped me to experience a level of happiness that I didn’t believe possible. I can also say that for some of us happiness doesn’t grow on trees. We need to work on it until like some trees, even when we waver in stormy weather at times, we still remain standing as strong as we were before.

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Tags: addiction, alcoholism, Happiness, personal growth, spiritual growth

I didn’t always believe in myself or in a creator that gave me the ability to be happy. I remember when I was 24 years old and in the Army, feeling quite afraid and quite unhappy because I missed my wife so much. At one point, I cried while mopping the Army mess hall after this song began playing over the sound system that was throughout the eating area. It was 1984, and I had joined the Army in February of that year to support her and our two children. After only one day I became very homesick, and a few weeks later I would hear this song and cry. Not only did I miss my wife, but I also missed my little girl and boy, and there were days when I felt so sad and afraid that I didn’t know what to do. It’s been twenty seven years since I first cried to this song, and although it’s no longer for the same reasons, the emotions I feel when hearing it today can still make me cry. I was drinking during the time I mentioned, and although I thought going into the Army would help me quit, it didn’t. I wanted so desperately to be a good husband and father back then that I had tried many times before to quit drinking, but even though I loved my family sooner or later the urge to drink would come back, and I’d choose drinking over being with them almost every time. Although this is part of the reason why the song still makes me cry today, it’s also because I feel very grateful to be sober. I’m coming up on my 15th year of sobriety soon, and I’m so glad I no longer feel the way I did back then. I had so many fears and insecurities that sometimes drinking was the only way I could cope in life and feel happy. Speaking of feeling happy, look at how happy the people at this live concert held in Budapest in 1996 seem to be. It’s the same year I would finally quit drinking for good and begin my journey from fear to belief in myself. I would also feel more happy and alive that year than I had ever felt before.

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Tags: creator, feeling alive, Happiness, kool and the gang-live in budapest 1996, sobriety