Intention

Are your habits stronger than your intention? If the answer is in the affirmative, then work on strengthening your will. A pearl of wisdom I just gleaned from my ex-wife and maybe she was talking about me but that doesn’t matter because it hit me like a lightning bolt. I asked myself how much of my good intention over the years had gone awry when I had seemingly good motives to start with? Well if I look at some of my bad habits it becomes quite clear. I became sober but I was still engaging in bad habits and without me carrying out the discipline of not drinking into all of my affairs all I was a sober drunk.  The key was for me that by using my will to stay stopped I had all I needed to work on the other character defects that kept intention always out of reach.  

A.A. teaches us that it is our self will run riot that gets us into trouble. But that’s not the will she was talking about. It is the path the will must take if it is going to be successful with the intention we set out for. When some of us began to drink it was not with the intention to get drunk, it was to have fun and be convivial with our socializations with others.  But what happens to the alcoholic is that instead of loosening our tongue alcohol became the path of destruction where intention of any kind was lost.  

  When we stopped drinking we used the tools of A.A. to get sober: Meetings, phone calls, a sponsor and staying away from people, places and things that brought us closer to the drink.  However, breaking the habit of drinking took discipline and a strong will to change the compulsion of picking up. And once the habit of alcoholic drinking was broken we were on the path of our intention and that was to stay sober. But we couldn’t stop there because we were still plagued with bad habits some that were a result of drinking and some that were due to our dysfunctional personalities. We may have been dry but we were still not making sober decisions. Strengthening our will is putting the horse before the cart and not the other way around.  Armed with a strong will our bad habits fall away and intention becomes not only easier but crystal clear as well.