Episode 022 – How I Restored My Relationship With God

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Note: This blog post serves as an accompaniment to the corresponding podcast episode of A Changed Mind, where we’ll distill down the core ideas of this week’s theme, along with additional distinctions and insights. If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, you can go here to do so.  Enjoy.

We’re all addicted to something.  For some (myself included, it’s an addiction to substances like drugs and alcohol.  For many others, it’s the addiction to our chronic stress, anxiety, overwhelm, comparing ourselves to others, fear, and a myriad of other emotions and patterns of thinking and behavior that we know aren’t serving us in creating the lives we truly want to live.

Today I want to share with you the principles that have helped me overcome both of these types of addiction.  In particular, I want to talk about how connecting with a power greater than ourselves is often the remedy for experiencing profound levels of healing and transformation – regardless of the source of suffering in our lives.  

Stick with me, as this isn’t necessarily a religious conversation.  Whether you believe in God, Allah, Buddha, the Universe, Spirit, Infinite Intelligence, or any other omnipotent entity – or you’re at least open to the idea that there’s something else out there watching over us – this conversation might point you in the direction to living a more meaningful, connected, purpose-driven life in the pursuit of your greatest growth, prosperity, and potential.

The Symptoms Vs. The Dis-Ease

Let’s start with the basics.  Whenever we’re experiencing things like stress, anxiety, or overwhelm and whenever we find ourselves looking for coping mechanisms (like alcohol) to alleviate ourselves of them, we’re operating from a primal, sympathetic nervous system.  Our bodies aren’t meant to sustain these “fight or flight” tendencies for extended periods of time.  Yet most of us – in one way or another – find ourselves operating this way for the majority of our lives.  

In my opinion, these things are all symptoms of a disease taking place – and that disease is being created by a spiritual disconnection.  We try to go to battle with these emotions and patterns of thinking by controlling our external environments or using willpower to push through them.  But if you’ve been experiencing stress for 20 years, for example, clearly our “go to” solutions aren’t working out so well.

The problem is that we often try to solve our problems from that same place of stress, anxiety, or overwhelm – but that’s impossible.  Like Einstein said: “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”.  So if we want to improve our lives, overcome our suffering, and make it to the other side of our challenges, we need to find a way to shift our consciousness back to our natural, powerful, parasympathetic state of rest, relaxation, and peace.  This is where connecting with – and trusting in – a higher power comes in.

A big part of our individual spiritual journeys and personal growth is learning how to be aware that whatever’s going on in your life is actually working for you – never against you – even when it’s difficult to see at the moment.  That means that when we’re feeling stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, or any otherwise primal emotion, one of the best things we can do is to step away from the problem, give it time, and trusting that it’s going to work itself out.  If you look at your life now and really think about it, things have always worked out – haven’t they?

Pause, Trust & Surrender

Allow me to share the first 3 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which has helped me tremendously with my personal growth and spiritual journey:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

If you put this into plain-speak and replace the word ‘God’ with whatever higher power you believe in, you can look at these steps as a way of saying:

1. I’ve got a problem and what I’m doing isn’t working for me
2. Something greater than me may offer a solution to my problem
3. Decide to trust in that higher power 

The key here is to trust and surrender.  If your ordinary thinking, emotions, and habits aren’t serving you, one of the easiest things to do is to step away from them, even if it seems counterintuitive or challenging to do.  Nine out of ten times, continuing to push against the problem is just going to make the problem itself worse and make you feel worse about it.

When you can create that space, you create an opportunity for the Universe, Infinite Intelligence, or God to intervene – and it’ll present you with the thoughts, ideas, connections, coincidences, resources, and circumstances that might just help you solve that problem.  Again, the goal is shifting our consciousness back to a powerful state, because the energy that created our challenges isn’t the same energy that’s going to alleviate ourselves of them.

The Importance Of Fellowship

One of the reasons I go to AA is because I’m able to connect with a higher power when I’m in fellowship with other people who “get” what I’m going through and share the same line of beliefs and thinking.  My version of God often speaks to me through what other people have to say.

We’ve all had this experience in one way or another – especially if you’ve gone through personal development coaching programs or attended live events before.  We don’t always need to be the ones asking the questions ourselves.  When someone else articulates a problem in a way you haven’t been able to, you get the benefit of getting the answer you’ve been looking for.

This is why fellowship is so important.  When we take the opportunity to put ourselves in environments with healthy people moving in healthy directions, we open ourselves up to hearing and receiving what our mind has been too busy to hear.  It doesn’t really matter where or what it is for you – a church group, a men’s or women’s group, a business networking community – nothing beats having people gather in one place who are all oriented in the same direction.

Finding Your Spiritual Program

Sometimes we go through relationships that we thought were “the one”, but they weren’t – and we had to go through that experience to eventually attract our soulmate. Sometimes we go through health challenges in order to learn more about how the body works and the opportunity to be introduced to an alternate modality for healing. something so that we can.  Sometimes we go through business contractions to teach us about the things we should and shouldn’t be focusing our efforts on, which eventually results in a more profitable, scalable business.

In between all of these situations is an opportunity for us to trust, surrender, and allow something greater than ourselves to teach us and guide us along the way.  I’ve found that the solution is rarely something tangible, intellectual, or practical – it’s not taking a different action or using a different strategy.  Instead, i’s developing a practice of stepping away from our “typical” way of navigating through life from time to time so that we can come back and reconnect with things with a different level of consciousness.

When I was going through recovery, that meant that every time I wanted to pick up a drink, or pick up a joint, or take a look at pornography, or do whatever I was doing to make myself feel better, I said, “I don’t need to do that”.  Instead, I’m going to surrender all the feelings, emotions, and challenges that are triggering this in me to a power greater than myself.  So I would go to places where I felt connected to my spirituality. I would call someone else in the program and say, “Hey, this is how I’m feeling”.  And they would either remind me or I would remind myself that the way forward is my spiritual program.

Your Higher Power Has Your Back

At the end of the day, the intermediary between us and our higher power is our brain.  So the best “work” we can do is to notice when our thinking is not aligned with a loving universe and all of the abundance, health, prosperity, and goodness that comes with it.  That allows us to realize that a new level of consciousness is required and believe that a higher power is supporting us – no matter how challenging our circumstances may be.  On top of that, we need to actively put ourselves in a community – in fellowship – because as tribal beings, there’s no better avenue to reorient ourselves, to recalibrate, to rewire, to reestablish that connection with a power greater than us.

My encouragement with all of this is to seek spiritual solutions to what may seem to be material problems.  Meditate more.  Participate in a spiritual community.  Get into recovery if you need to.  The promises of AA and the 12 steps is applicable to everyone, regardless of what you’re going through.  Ultimately, the things we want to change in our lives are symptoms of a disconnection between you and a higher power – and choosing to take these principles and double down on your spiritual connectedness might be the simplest yet most profound thing you ever do.