On Choice & Doing Life On Life's Terms

“Why can’t you just let me be miserable?” This could’ve come from anywhere: real life or fiction. But in this case, it’s a line Seth Rogan’s character says to Olivia Wilde’s character in the recent movie The Invite. A little context without hopefully any spoilers. Wilde and Rogan’s marriage is contentious, at least in part because Rogan’s life hasn’t exactly gone according to plan. The couple invite their neighbors over for an evening and late in the plot that opening line comes out.

Flashback to a couple years ago at thirty-seven, I thought my life was baked. Not stoned, more set in stone. I worked a good job, but one that felt increasingly misaligned with the person I was becoming. And I was staring down something that everyone seems to: another twenty-eight years until retirement. It might not be ideal, but I could get through it.

And then, I couldn’t anymore. The misalignment prickled me more and more, a big piece being that even though I was sober, marketing alcohol was a significant part of my job at the time. I could have tried to take a different role at the company, but by this time last year, I was just done. That career opportunity was perfect for the twenty-eight-year-old version of me that took it, but I wasn’t that version of me anymore.

If we time traveled a few years back before that, the movie of my life would’ve shown a guy who felt all that dissonance just mentioned, but couldn’t express or admit any of it, even to himself. So instead, I would self-medicate with alcohol each day. But I didn’t call it self-medicating because I was just living my life and what well-adjusted adult man doesn’t drink alcohol? I couldn’t see how unhappy I was because I numbed those feelings. And I couldn’t experience much joy because you can’t selectively numb the lows, the highs go with them.

And if you asked me at the time, I would have looked you straight in the face and told you that my drinking didn’t impact me negatively. Just like I looked my therapist in the face around that time and said the two martinis each night didn’t have any negative impacts on sleep, life, anything really.

But looking back now, I can see how much I couldn’t see. That season was my version of Seth Rogan’s “why can’t you just let me be miserable?” Can’t you see I’m not aligned with my life anymore and this is the way I cope with that reality? Even though I couldn’t name that to myself.

In the inner recesses of my mind, somewhere I had hidden it even from myself, I saw myself as a victim. I was another cog in the machine of the world and it would churn on and spit me out just like it does to everyone. Maybe there are a lucky few who get to enjoy it, but that wasn’t me. I couldn’t change it, it was written in the stars. Better to just accept my fate.

And then I stopped drinking. You can read the story here and check the rest of the archives for more of the early journey. Once I stopped numbing my pain, I couldn’t escape it as easily. I spent a little time in AA and even though it didn’t resonate with me as a recovery program, I picked up a few lines along the way, like “life on life’s terms.” Which I understand to mean, when you’re sober and in recovery you have to start being honest with yourself and with your life. You can’t deny the pain you’re feeling: relational, professional, personal, whatever. Because to deny it would only build resentment, and build up enough resentment and you’ll either be consumed with rage and become embittered or head back to your bottle.

So, I started living life on life’s terms and it was pretty miserable. Year one of not drinking I couldn’t imagine how life could be good without alcohol. Celebrations, commiserations, European vacations, how could they possibly be properly enjoyed without an alcoholic beverage in hand? I was physically sober, but not emotionally sober.

If you’re not in recovery, that distinction might be a bit confusing. Physically sober makes sense: you stop putting alcohol into your mouth, and therefore your body. Emotional sobriety is the work you do after that. It’s beginning to acknowledge discomfort, pain, and remember that you have feelings. And those feelings are information, your body’s way of telling you something before your mind can put it to words. In a drinking scenario, I would grab a drink whenever those pesky feelings popped up, whether I knew I were actively doing this or not. But without the old faithful crutch, these feelings have to be faced, acknowledged and processed. Or again, they’ll consume you.

As I started to learn about and do the work of emotional sobriety, I began to see that I had power, I had choice. In a course offered by The Luckiest Club, called “The Sober Life,” we worked through limiting beliefs and simple stories. The core idea is that we tell simple stories to make sense of the world. “That jerk cut me off in traffic” is a simple story. What else could be true? Maybe they really had to use the restroom and were worried they wouldn’t make it home. Or, maybe they’re on their way to the hospital to see a loved one who is being life-flighted there. We can’t know the full story much of the time, but asking “what else could be true” allows us to widen the aperture and imagine other possibilities.

So, this time last year, when I worked through my own limiting belief around being set in the job I was for the rest of my career, I didn’t expect anything to change. I had journaled about the topic, talked to my wife ad nauseam, and spoken with others about the situation. Why would this time change anything? But despite my skepticism, something did. Maybe it was the supportive environment or maybe I was just ready to finally admit that the simple story I told about my life was something I had a choice in. I could decide to continue telling it, or to try to tell a more powerful story.

And about a year ago right now, I spoke to my boss and set an end date and transition plan out of my employment there, something I had contemplated for a couple years. I would explore other opportunities: namely writing and starting a coaching practice. And I want to name the gratitude I have for this experiment and also the privilege that goes into it. But I also want to name: nothing changed magically last August that allowed me to leave that career path. I could have done so a couple years prior, but I didn’t have the courage or emotional sobriety to, and also my wife and I hadn’t run the numbers to see what was even possible. Instead, I spent those intervening years repeating the story that I was stuck and this was my life.

I don’t know what your life looks like, I don’t know what simple stories you’ve told recently, or maybe your whole life. Even if the path I’m taking holds no interest to you, there is a way to shift your life, maybe starting in small ways, by asking what else could be true? And really spending time exploring those possibilities. Is the relationship you’re in destined to be this way forever? Maybe. Or, maybe you change and then your partner will respond to that, or not, and then you can decide whether to shift this relationship or pursue a different one.

Do you really have to live there, and not at the beach? Maybe, or maybe there’s a way, hard to believe though it might be, to live near some beach in some capacity. And maybe not. But maybe in that exploration you discover another possibility, maybe even a desire underneath that desire for the beach: to spend more time in nature, or to shift something about your lifestyle.

Whatever the thing is: you get to decide. Yes, you can choose to be miserable. Or, you can choose something more empowering. It might feel like good news or bad news, but ultimately, the choice is yours.