The power of "operating principles" and why I don't currently have any
Something has been on my mind for ages, and I’d love to know your thoughts.
When I was 20, I was having a tough old time. I was a couple of years into recovery and my emotions were all over the place. Honestly, I was such a mess that I think many of my friends in recovery didn’t quite know what to suggest. I was, and there is no better word for it, fragile.
I was working a 12 step programme but I already had a sense that I needed more. Then, one fateful evening in a meeting in Shepperton, a friend gave me a flyer for a workshop called The Awakening. I remember it with absolute clarity because it talked about something that gave me a genuine lightbulb moment. It said:
This workshop will shift you from a thought system based on fear to one based on love.
In an instant, something clicked. That’s why I love words so much. Sometimes, all it takes is one simple statement to shift your entire existence on its axis.
I realised that I had spent most of my life immersed in a thought-system based on fear. My head was full of fear-based thoughts all day long and I felt scared all the fucking time. Big things like travelling the world scared the shit out of me, but so did little things, like hanging out with a group of friends and just being together (I’m finally making some progress on that one!).
Lots of you know me and my story, so you’ll know already that I went off to do that workshop, which changed my life in more ways than I can acknowledge. It’s where I met my now ex-husband, a man who I loved and who was a central part of my life for many years. It’s where I made friends with some of the best people I’ve ever encountered – too many of you to name, but you know who you are. I found community because of that workshop. It’s where I took much of my trauma and shame and was gently and wonderfully held. It’s where I learned a lot about how to hold others. And it introduced me to A Course in Miracles, which, particularly after I left 12 step fellowships (more on that soon), I lived my life by for many years.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about what that means – to live your life by something.
For me, it meant organising my life around a set of principles and applying those principles and trying to practice them on a regular basis. I’m a ‘Scanner’ personality; I get pretty restless and am always on the hunt for the next book/idea/system/etc, so I never do anything that religiously, but ACIM was one of the constants through years of trying a zillion crazy things. Whenever I got upset or angry, scared or bothered by something, the ideas from that blue book would be what I turned to, to help me make sense of it. Ideas like…
Teach only love, for that is what you are
I am willing to see this differently
Choose once again
We are all innocent; we have simply forgotten it
There is nothing to fear
You either see the flesh or recognise the spirit
And one of my favourites,
A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one.
These were the words and ideas I lived my life by. I studied them, taught them, counselled and coached according to them, and built, with my ex, our relationship and later marriage on their foundation.
As the years passed, and particularly from 2015 onwards, a restlessness started creeping up on me. I became very resistant a lot of the time to the structure I had once relied on and loved. I wanted to just wake up in the morning and not have to ‘do something’ to feel okay. I pushed back a lot. There were a lot of heated debates in our house about my supposed lack of discipline. I refused to meditate sitting still – yoga, walking and dance have always been much more accessible routes to meditation for me. I felt like I had to constantly justify myself.
And now, I don’t.
* * *
When I left my husband, I stopped a lot of things that I’d been doing for a long time, and I started doing some things I hadn’t done for a long time. I no longer study A Course in Miracles. I am not vegan anymore. I don’t do cold showers. I don’t go to the gym. I don’t ride a bike. I don’t even listen to the same kind of music anymore (and think my taste has vastly improved, thanks in large part to my boyfriend Nick introducing me to loads of stuff). It was a time of unleashing, untethering and unhooking myself from a way of living that didn’t feel like mine anymore.
Letting go – not just of where I lived, of all my furniture, of most of my clothes and many of my belongings, and eventually of my ex-husband’s surname – was big and needed, but the changes that took place when I left my marriage were massively internal too.
Now, I no longer organise my inner life around the ideas and operating principles that I lived my whole life by for many years, and at Christmas, I really noticed the void. I noticed that while I am mostly still clear on my values, I don’t really know anymore what I believe. I don’t really know if I believe that the universe is a friendly place. I don’t filter things through the ideas of A Course in Miracles, or, in fact, any “spiritual” ideas at all. I feel a bit allergic to it all, as if I’ve developed an intolerance to it from being over-saturated with it for too long.
It doesn’t mean I’m not doing my work. I’m still so dogged by Complex PTSD symptoms that I can’t just get on with life. I have to self-reflect, I have to process stuff with my friends and my boyfriend. But I don’t know whether I could answer the question right now that I used to ask my podcast guests, “What’s one operating principle you live your life by, and why does it matter to you?”
It also doesn’t mean I’m not happy or doing well. My life feels in so many ways the best it ever has.
I have so needed the last 18 months. I needed to find my centre again. I needed to unhook from an entire way of living so that I could find my way of living. What I once loved – waking up and studying something spiritual, doing regular ‘check ins’ and processes, following a programme and having discipline and structure in my life – is gone.
I have felt the loss of it all as I have written these words. Processing loss takes a long time, doesn’t it, even when it’s something you chose.
I know that like the Phoenix, that part of my life had to die so that something new could be born.
Thinking about this has got me wondering what operating principles I will be living my life by in the next five or ten years.
And that made me wonder about you. Do you have ‘a system of thought’ that you live your life by? Do you have a set of ideas, principles, values, ways of thinking about yourself, others and the world that you turn to on a regular basis? If so, I would love to hear about them. Not because I’m looking for what to believe, but just because I’m curious.
As always, thank you so much for reading. I so nearly didn’t write today, and I’m so glad I did.
(Image source: Google images. I couldn’t find the original photographer. If you know who it is, let me know so I can credit them.)