We try to reason with them. We’re sure if they can just shift their perspective and see the bigger picture, as we do, they’ll stop their destructive behavior.

Of course we think this way. Our world runs on reason.

When we disagree with someone we seek to persuade them; we elect our politicians by discourse and rational debate; we educate by reason. Reason makes the world go around.

We are used to others responding to argument, debate and informed opinion.

We expect to be able to enter into a similar kind of reasoned discourse with the addict.

It won’t happen. By time we realize that it won’t, our loved one could be dead, incarcerated or on the streets.

Addiction makes mincemeat of reason. It chews it up and spits it out.

Think of addiction as your extremely right wing, deeply political Conservative, Christian Fundamentalist brother-in-law at the Thanksgiving table pretending to listen politely to your Liberal nieces impassioned plea for amnesty for all illegal immigrants. Nothing is penetrating.

If you abandon reason as a tool in dealing with the addict what, then, are you left with? How about emotion?

If you have someone dear to you who is addicted you’ve probably done your fair share of crying, threatening, pleading and demanding. Any of it work for more than a couple of days?

How about bribes, manipulation, sleight of hand? Think – hiding bottles, canceling credit cards, “outing” the addict to other family members. Any of it work?

What works, ultimately, is taking the focus off of the addict and putting it squarely where you have an unassailable right to put it – on yourself.

Here’s where you take the 12 Step Serenity Prayer to heart. You actually have zero control over what anyone else does or does not do - but you have absolute control over your own actions.

You can’t control whether someone else drinks or uses. You can control the fact that you refuse to participate in what is, essentially, an assisted suicide, in the life of your loved one. You can control whether or not you will continue to prolong their support, continue to facilitate and even fund their access to drugs, and continue to put up with their b.s. You can control whether or not you do things which hurt you and cause you anxiety or stress.

When dealing with the addict, it definitely takes two to tango. They need to be supported and enabled; you need to support and enable them. One of you has to step out of the game. They won’t - so you must.

Just say no.

When you’re true to your own values and quietly and firmly take a stand that you’re no longer going to continue with your past enabling behavior because it’s not good for you – you’re untouchable and beyond manipulation. You’re not threatening, cajoling, giving ultimatums, crying, manipulating. You’re just saying – sorry – but this is hurting me and I have to take care of myself. You may not choose to have a healthy, aware life – but I do.

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It’s that place where you are restless, anxious, ill-at-ease or in some way in your head and you feel a deep need to soften the discomfort with something or someone.

It’s not enough to be in the present.

Chodron also reminds us that there is no greater teacher than this present moment right now and, lucky for us, it is with us all the time wherever we go.

Her teachings bring to mind a wonderful definition of addiction that I once heard:

“A consistent neglect of self in favor of someone or something else”.

This definition tells us that we are all addicted in one way or another.  It’s a continuum.

The ability to stay with where we are, regardless of whether it is giving us pleasure or pain, can be strengthened with self-awareness, meditation and practice.

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All of these are action steps.  By definition, action steps take you away from where you are.  Nothing wrong with this, except when the answer to a particular situation lies right where you are here and now.  Which is usually the case.

An effective alternative to  “movement” coaching is based on the TIbetan meditation “Stay”.

It takes courage and stamina to stay where you are when every nerve and instinct is telling you to move, change something, look outside yourself for an answer or in some way move away from discomfort.

Only by being with the dis-ease and  only by allowing it to stay around long enough can you watch it fall away.  When you have the experience of seeing that the discomfort is transient and not a permanent state; when you realize that it will subside by and of itself if you don’t distract yourself from it  – it loses its power over you.

Sometimes the appropriate action to take is that of no-action. Sometimes the thing to do is nothing.

As Pema Chodron says “This perfect moment is the best teacher.  And lucky for you it’s right here with you all the time.”

So how can you be coached to do nothing?  Simple. Think of a metaphor of repetition.  Whatever works for you.

Buddhists use the metaphor of dragging an ox along a path.  The ox doesn’t want to go to market or to work.  He wants to meander off into the sweet grasses and weeds at the side of the path.  His owner keeps pulling him back onto the path over and over and over again.

It’s debatable whether the ox learns to stay on the path or whether he just tires himself out. or gives up.

It doesn’t matter.  What is true is that the paradox of “Staying” can move you forward, doing nothing can produce  possibility.

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One dozen long-stemmed deep yellow roses to be exact; Valentine’s day roses. Not having a large enough vase to accommodate all 12 together, I put 6 in a vase in the living room and 6 on a Chinese step cabinet which I use as a bedside table.

The 6 in the living room lasted a good 5-6 days, not bad for supermarket-bought flowers. The 6 in my bedroom were eerily fresh and unwilted at the end of the second week. Next to the bedside flowers was a photo of Thich Nhat Hanh.

If you don’t know what he looks like, he has the kind of face that is occasionally, and only, seen on long-time Buddhist practitioners. It is unwrinkled. There are no frown lines, no deep vertical clefts on either side of the mouth. He wears a perpetually serene and unsurprised expression. I keep this photo by my bedside because I like to see it when I wake up, before I get out of bed and take on the day.

I once spent a week in the presence of Thich Nhat Hanh at a retreat held at his Deer Park Monastery. He gave daily three hour dharma talks and I was close enough to watch him and become familiar with the way he moved and talked. He seemed to choose his words and his movements carefully. In other words, they didn’t choose him.

There’s more.

The flowers were not for me. I had bought them for someone very dear to me, to provide a visual manifestation of how much he was loved. He wasn’t inclined to believe that he was loved because he was in a deep depression; so deep that as the days wore on he spent much of his time lying on my bed sleeping or looking out into space – at the flowers.

At the end of the first week I commented on the roses staying so fresh.

“It’s the photo,” he said.

At the end of the second week this person so dear to me left to get more help, medical and otherwise, than I could give him.

The day after I put him on a plane, the remaining yellow roses started wilting. They were gone in a day or two.

If I have to dabble in some kind of duality, it would be to divide the world into people who matter-of-factly accept that the flowers lasted just long enough to provide some kind of a visual reminder of hope and love in what was, for at least one person, a very cold, bleak world.

Others might point to a differential in the light, air temperature or the shape of the two vases as explanation.

This is my litmus test. Not Democrat/Republican; not Christian/Buddhist; not carnivore/vegan.

My litmus test is those who believe, or don’t believe, that true compassion is not constrained by time, or by distance, or the five senses. My litmus test is those who choose to see that the practice of peace and Bodhichita heart is manifest all around us on a moment by moment basis, and those who require empirical proof that it even exists.

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In one of the classic texts on the subject, Loosening the Grip: A Handbook of Alcohol Information by Jean Kinnney, the author asserts that this is no longer considered necessary.

The addict needs to be convinced, by a preponderance of experiential and anecdotal facts that the diagnosis of alcoholism is true – he doesn’t need to be happy about it. (Who would be?)

This is a significant departure from formerly accepted theory.  No longer need time be spent trying to get the addict to emotionally accept the fact of his illness.  It’s enough that the professional provide irrefutable proof of addiction, such that the addict cannot dispute it.

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Reserve your slot now.

Don’t miss out. I only offer this three month, deep-discounted, laser coaching program through March 1st.

Go here for more details.

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If you’ve had a hard time keeping Resolutions in the past take a long, hard look at how you keep personal commitments to yourself throughout the rest of the year. When only you and your bathroom mirror know about it do you keep your promises in a responsible fashion or do you find yourself re-negotiating, back-pedaling and making excuses?

Many New Year’s Resolutions are born of disgust or exasperation after a year of failed attempts and procrastination. We make them in a punitive mindset of self-judgment. If you’ve been falling on and off of diets all year it may make sense to you to make a stern year-end commitment to empty your refrigerator and set the alarm for 5 AM to hit the gym.

But consider this hypothetical situation. You just loaned $20.00 to your brother-in-law who made a commitment to pay you back on Monday. Instead, he spent the whole week dodging you. How would you feel about loaning him an additional $100? If he hasn’t shown any ability to keep the smaller commitment would you throw good money after bad? Perhaps you’d like him to demonstrate his responsibility on the small matter before trusting him further on a larger amount of money.

So the first tip to making New Year’s Resolutions you can keep is:

1. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Set yourself up to win by committing, initially, to the minimum possible. You’re probably thinking that this flies in the face of conventional wisdom that New Year’s Resolutions should be BIG life changes. But is this realistic?

Let’s look at the weight loss scenario as it’s a big one for many people. You make a resolution to trudge an hour each day on a treadmill and drop all fats and sugars from your diet when you haven’t jogged more than a half hour a week until now. Exactly who are you trying to kid? Better to commit to 4 hours of exercise a week and salad lunches three times a week to ease yourself into your new lifestyle. You can always up the ante later. Choose a level of commitment that will stretch you but not overwhelm you.

2. Chunk it down. Chunking down is a process by which you take a large, difficult to manage project and break it down into more easily handled tasks. Don’t make one Resolution for the whole year. Make a resolution for the month of January. On February make a second one. Move incrementally. For the weight loss scenario, if you started off easy you could make a commitment that on February 1st you add in weight training and switch to only whole grain carbs.

3. Tap into your support system. Let everybody know what you’re trying to do and ask for their help. Tell your spouse you’ve made a commitment to spend 5 hours a week learning new software skills and that you’ll be doing this each evening from 8 PM to 9 PM. Ask him to hold you accountable and listen to him when he does. Tell your usual crowd you’re trying to quit smoking, or cut down on the beer or lose carbs. Ask for their help and give them permission to bust you if they find you in the stockroom with a boxful of Krispy Kremes or a pack of Marlboro.

4. Write it down. Studies of small business people show that those who wrote their goals down were 20% more likely to actually achieve them. After you’ve written down your Resolution put it everywhere. Write it on each day of your daily planner. Post it on your bathroom mirror. Put it in your sock drawer and in your wallet next to your money. This will help you avoid “going unconscious”. If you’ve committed to cutting way down on buying CD’s, it can be chastening to be reminded of this when you’re reaching for the plastic in Tower Records.

5. Celebrate yourself when you reach your milestones. Most of us are hard on ourselves when we don’t reach our high standards; we’re brought up not to sing our own praises. If you set out to achieve something that is difficult and important to you it only makes sense to pause and acknowledge your effort when you succeed.

Anyone else would show you a little more consideration than you show yourself. Your boss would take you out to lunch or give you a raise. Your students would send you thank you notes. Take yourself out to dinner or away on a weekend trip and appreciate your achievement. Tell everybody you succeeded and accept their compliments graciously without downplaying your accomplishment.

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This is not suffering. This is just pain. Suffering has a dimension beyond pain.

We label things as problems and react. When we identify problems in our lives and react to them, we generally create suffering.

The cause of this suffering is that we insist on forming permanent attachments to things which are not, by nature, permanent.

To understand this better, try to come up with one thing you have today that you can be absolutely sure you will have tomorrow.

Not your job. You could be fired or your company could lay you off.

Not your health. You could find out tomorrow you have cancer.

Not your family. Your spouse could divorce you; your kids could move away.

Not your house. It could be lost to fire, flood or weather.

Yet, these may be the most important things in your life today.

Does this mean that you shouldn’t cherish and appreciate the people and things that are precious to you? Far from it. We all gravitate towards pleasure and comfort and we all want nice things. Part of the intrinsic nature of being human is that we want good things to last and bad things to go away.

So, to acknowledge that all things fade and pass away in time doesn’t mean that you’ll never have great pleasure in life and that you’re doomed to be unhappy. But the inescapable fact is that everything, the good and the bad, goes away over time.

Nothing is permanent and everything is transitory. No feeling is ever final. It’s just that we don’t act as if this is the case. We live as if certain things are promised or owed to us. Then we’re surprised and hurt when life does what it does and these things are taken from us. We end up with something other than what we think we signed up for.

The obvious solution to this dilemma is to drop the attachments to what we already have and what we want and to accept our lack of control over the realities of life.

This is one of the more helpful little nuggets of advice a businessperson can take away from Buddhism. It seems counterintuitive, but in fact it’s perfectly logical when you think about it.

When I suggested to a CEO recently that his employees would be better served if they lost attachment to the outcome of their work he had a typical reaction.

Was I nuts? Where would their motivation come from? How could he suggest that they not work towards goals? Was I seriously suggesting that they should just stop trying?

But of course I wasn’t suggesting that they not try an do their absolute best to achieve a desired outcome.. They should know what they want and work as hard as they possibly could to get it with the knowledge that they didn’t have control over the outcome. So if things didn’t turn out they way they expecte they’d at least have the satisfaction of a job well done.

The idea of lack of control was another stumbling block for our CEO.

Wasn’t it true, I asked him, that he didn’t really have control over the outcomes of any of his projects anyway? He denied this. But he was open-minded and willing to go a little further down this road. And I had had too long a run as a business person myself not to know that deals sometimes go sour for the flimsiest of reasons.

“Haven’t you ever had a deal just crash and burn”, I asked?

“Sure” , he said.

“Why did you do that”, I asked?

“I had nothing to do with it,” he responded” the other guy got bought out by”… then he stopped and caught himself with a smile.

Okay, so there was one time he hadn’t had control over the outcome. And if he could find one example – then there were more.

In fact, unless you have 100% control over every detail which may affect your project including the weather, the economy, the exchange rate, not to mention the health, life and death of all participants – the outcome is never secure.

Our CEO then volunteered that his staff had been devastated when several months of hard work had gone down the tubes. I could sympathize. It’s hard to come back from a blow like that. It’s tough to have to walk into the office the next day and start all over.

“But what if”, I suggested, “your staff had still worked themselves to the bone and done all they possibly could to achieve their desired outcome with the knowledge that it may or may not happen?

What if they would have gotten intrinsic satisfaction from a job well done as they went along? What if they would have celebrated the quality of their work, the camaraderie, the small triumphs of teamwork and ingenuity along the way?”

He thought about this and nodded slowly.

“Sure, he said “if the outcome would have been successful that would have been gravy. But all they were focusing on was outcome, outcome, outcome – not the process of doing.

So when the outcome was whipped away from them they had nothing to take away from the experience but heartache”.

Loosening our death grip on “the way things should be.” is not surrendering to fatalism. Acknowledging that what we desperately want to have happen may not happen is not giving up.

We influence the future day by day, minute by minute by our present actions. We take productive action to move towards our purpose knowing that there’s no guarantee we will get there.

We do the very best we can. It’s all we can ask of ourselves and others.

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1. It’s way bigger than a breadbox and it’s in your visual field not between your ears.
2. It presents no problems only opportunities for action.
3. It has what you need when you need it.
4. It doesn’t require anything of you except your presence.
5. You can’t lose it.
6. You can’t fight it.
7. Everybody’s got one.
8. It’s never right or wrong.
9. It supports you whether you like it or not.




10. It’s right there under your nose!

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