Life lessons from twelve-step programmes, post 1 of many

I work a twelve-step programme.

I’m not going to be writing about this in detail, because the twelfth tradition is important. But I will probably refer to it a lot, because I think that everyone should work a twelve-step programme, and When I Am In Charge it will be taught in schools. It’s not just useful in recovery from addiction. It’s useful in all aspects of life, including the workplace.

The The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous has this to say: It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. That’s where yesterday’s post comes from.

It’s easy to say, and hard to get to grips with. Most people, including me, find it very counter-intuitive and resist it fiercely. What about all those people who have done terrible things to me? Are you saying that’s my fault? It’s particularly difficult if I think about things that happened when I was a child. How can I possibly be held responsible for that?

The answer is, of course no-one’s saying that’s my fault. But what I choose to do about it now is my responsibility. I can play victim and let it blight my life, or I can make different choices, choices that set me free of my past. I’ve done the former for most of my life, and now I’m slowly learning to do the latter.

It’s complicated. And in a different context, I’d be playing for the other team here. If someone suggested that SJ’s workplace problems are down to her, I’d be at their throat in an instant, because that’s a mindset that enshrines privilege rather than challenging it. But for me, I’ve learned that the person who can change my experience is me. Nobody else, just me.

I’d love it if someone rang me up and said, ‘create your own job, name your salary, we think you’re so wonderful you can do what you want’. At least, I think I’d love it. I probably wouldn’t, though. I’d probably feel exactly the same way I’ve felt in all my previous jobs, because I’m still me. As I change, I’m starting to see all those jobs differently and to see what I did to contribute to them going wrong. Similarly with relationships and friendships and other circumstances. I’m not saying I could have fixed everything that happened to me by responding to it differently, but I think I could have fixed a great deal. Most importantly, I think I could have changed the way I felt about things, so that I minded much less and was therefore able to get on with a great deal more.

When I feel disturbed now, no matter what the cause, I assume that there’s something wrong with me. (And this happens a lot. Several times a day, at least. I’m learning here but I have a long way to go.) It’s proving to be a great way to fix the disturbance, every single time, because I can’t change other people but I can change me. That doesn’t mean that everything that other people choose to do is okay, but it does mean that I feel a whole lot better about it.

Is it them? Or is it me?

SJ and I were talking about what happens when work goes wrong. Has work gone wrong for us because we’ve been in the wrong jobs? Or would it feel like that whatever we did?

I’ve done a lot of different jobs, and many of them have gone wrong. I’ve never actually been fired – at least, I don’t think I’ve been fired – but I’ve often stagnated in the backwaters, wondering what was going wrong. Why didn’t they value me? I worked hard. I was nice to people. I had some reasonably good ideas. Most of all, I was loyal. I cared whether or not my projects were successful, my clients happy. My employers did well out of that loyalty. They should have valued me. Surely I was more than fulfilling my part of the bargain?

Anyway, how could it be my fault if things weren’t working? Employers have all the power. They make the decisions. I can’t force them to value me, to promote me, to appreciate me, to give me the projects I want.

So I concluded that I was in the wrong place. Maybe corporates just weren’t right for me because my face didn’t fit. I was too clever, or not clever enough. Too English, too female, too loud, too quiet. And I had different values – I could never really convince myself that the cult of the share price makes the world a better place. So I resigned myself to being a star-shaped peg in a round hole.

And then I had a mid-life crisis and quit working and started studying. And studying felt like a star-shaped hole. It’s about thinking rather than doing. It’s a cause I believe in. It’s a field that’s dominated by women. All my excuses fell away, one by one.

And, guess what?

I still felt like a star-shaped peg in a round hole.

So I’ve been forced to the conclusion that actually, the problem doesn’t lie with my employers after all. It lies with me.

This is somewhat disconcerting. Is it really my fault that I haven’t enjoyed the last fifteen years, that I haven’t felt like a success? I feel rather stupid, and as if I’ve wasted a lot of time.

But it’s also liberating as hell. Because, for the first time in a while, I’m starting to believe that maybe I could go back into the workplace one day. Maybe I’m not completely unsuited to corporate life. Maybe I’d be fine in corporate life if I could just grow up a bit and take responsibility for myself.

I’ve got some ideas about how to do that, and they’ll no doubt be the subject of future posts.