On Addiction: Four Realities

Transcript of a Sage Hill Live Fully Podcast conversation with Dr. Chip Dodd. Lightly edited for readability; speaker labels omitted.

You're listening to the Sage Hill podcast on addiction with Dr. Chip Dodd and Phil Herndon. This is a new weekly podcast recorded at the Center for Professional Excellence. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Sage Hill podcast. This is Phil Herndon along with Chip Dodd. Hello, Chip. Hey, Phil. From our, I guess you say studio. Studio, my office at the Center for Professional Excellence. Hey. Don't say my office. Just stick with studio. Studio. It's our studio. A studio. Yes. Your office. It's a multipurpose room. Yeah. Boy, is it ever. A lot of CPU guys are going, yeah. Sure he is. Yeah. So, welcome back. Glad to have everybody today as we're continuing our addiction series. Those of you familiar with 12 Step Recovery and those of you just familiar with good old fashioned colloquialisms or familiar with, phrases like, you know, ego, egomaniac, that whole world revolves around, that kind of stuff. But one of the most universally known slogans in the world is, you know, there are there aren't any guarantees except death and tax. Only certain things in the world, death and taxes. Yeah. So today, we're gonna talk about four others. Yeah. That's not really true. Now there are four realities or four truths

about how life works, and we're gonna run through them today, get kinda quick. Yeah. And maybe later on. Twenty minutes or so. Yeah. Something like that. So Hopefully, we'll come back and go into more depth about, you know, living with them, how to do them, those kinds of things. The same things that we struggle with all the time because we're gonna struggle. Right on. Okay. So if you would start, and we're gonna like I say, we're gonna move them pretty quick. But we just around here, we really have never we talked about just before we turned our machine on here that we we've not ever really done a lecture or teaching or a talk or whatever on, okay, these four things. Realities. But for years, we've been talking about these four realities like crazy. So if you start with start with that. Like, what do you mean by the four realities of living and then then take off? Yeah. You know, that that idea that,

that only two guarantees in life or only really only two realities in life, you have to pay death and and you have to pay death. If you have to pay taxes, you gotta face death. Well, those are those are are funny, and there's truism in them. And yet there really are truly four realities that that we do have to contend with, we have to face, and frankly, we're made to have feelings about them. Mhmm. And we're even made to have to struggle with them because we don't like them, and yet they're here. And the reason we don't like them is because I think it's because we're made for, more. I think we're made, with sort of eternity in our hearts. And also, we're made to wish for a place that's painless, whether you think of that as heaven or God birth or God born or carrying the Imago Dei or just wishing, you know, that because nobody likes pain. It doesn't make any difference except that, you know, you and I believe it's eternity in our hearts that puts us in conflict with the four realities we're about to talk about. But so there's our conflict. It's four realities, and it's four experiences that actually put us in a position of having to face powerlessness. That's what these four realities do. And number one, that the best we ever get in life is clumsy. I remember years ago, I was talking to a group of us. You know? You mean by us? I know. People who have had to face these four realities. Alright? And I said, you know, the closest we ever get to living, life is like giraffes running on ice. And the picture itself is about multiple conflicts and the terms used that giraffes don't live around ice. And the idea of them out running on ice, they see them it's almost like it becomes a children's book or a picture metaphor of a a draft line on the ground splayed out with all four legs, another one in knots, and next twisted up. And then all of a sudden, you put them on ice skates and put scarves around their necks and skating around and learning the flourish of living and then still kaboom, crash. There they go all in a pile of, of wishes gone awry, you know Mhmm. Hopes, vanquished. But I remember, we're in conflict with this reality of clumsiness, because, I remember William, when he's eight years old, he he he playing in a baseball game, he gets four hits and four tries. Right? Four times at the plate. And after the game, he said, you know what, dad? I bet I don't strike out the rest of the season. Right? Now that's an eight year old. Okay? Gets a scholarship to Belmont, and he's he's a freshman, and he plays in the game, and he gets three hits. After the game, this freshman in college says to me, you wanna go ahead and guess? Hey, dad. I've been I don't strike out all season. And I remember shaking my head going like, I love this. And especially the the 18 year old saying it. You know? And it it it, because he knew, but he didn't want to have to face, feel, and see and and and that it's coming. Mhmm. And so life, clumsiness is reality, which means no matter how much we strive for perfection, eternity is going to elude us. And after resting and evaluating and getting up and then reaching again, that's what we're made to do. That's the marker of success in life is, honestly it it doesn't mean just once you've been thrown from the horse, get back on it. It's once you've been thrown from a horse and you're going to because you gotta learn how to ride, you gotta ask all the questions, Cry your guts out, and then get back up and reach again for, not necessarily the horse, but reach for life. Mhmm. Secondly, second reality is that we have to learn how to live life on life's terms. That, you know, we're meaning that we have to face that life is gonna be a struggle and difficult, and at the same time, we work against clumsiness through coordination. We work against mistakes through trying to, you know, fix what we break. We work against inability by becoming capable. We work against limitations by finding solutions. So so that's a conflict Mhmm. But dictated by the willingness to struggle. I mean, we say, okay. Yeah. I I get it. I remember asking my brother who had a big construction firm that, you know, later on, years later, he he, you know, gave up the business. But the bigger he got, the more trouble he had. Right? But the bigger he got, the more he could build. Of course, the more money he could make, but he could just do it. Mhmm. I remember asking him. I said, what's it like every day you walk out into the the working world, as we all do, but his was more like concrete. It's gonna rain. A hole is gonna get filled with water. The gravel is not gonna be delivered on time. A hose is gonna break. Hydraulic fluid is going everywhere. A man is not gonna show up. I mean, go down the list. I said, how do you do it? He said you know, he kidded right. I said, Pepto Bismol. There's probably some truth in that. But it's it's here's some truth in that. I see the Pepto Bismol whiskey and the praying and cussing. I mean, there you know, the but it means it means that there's a struggle. Life on life's terms means the courageous step into it knowing full well a hydraulic hose is going to burst. Mhmm. So we we we can't make perfect decisions and we can't necessarily make right decisions, but we can make good decisions and work to make them right. You know? And and and it really is not just about doing your best, which is perfect. It's about showing up completely, you know, with your hands, head, and heart, knowing it's it's gonna hurt. But guess what, man? Life on life's terms, if if if you do fight, which means live, you're gonna get hurt because you're gonna get hit. And so there really is the good days and not so good days, but, being able to live life on life's terms is like showing up for it and dealing with, there we are, admission, surrender, and acceptance. See, these things, these four realities introduce us to possibility instead of the negative only. I mean, you they can turn into the negative fast. But anyway Yeah. The third So far so far, you're describing something called the New Testament.

Say more. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, best to ever get is clumsy, neediness, I can't do it right, the the most outside of Jesus, the most famous person in the New Testament probably, Paul says, you know what? I do what I can. Oh, yeah. And then I can't you know, I I wanna do the right thing. I can't do it. Roman said, yeah. Do it again. That's, that's giraffe on ice. It's clumsy. And then life keeps happening. It's going to be a fallen place tomorrow like it is today. Yeah. And it's just not gonna stop for me because I'm blank in recovery or doing well or whatever. And that doesn't make it bad. That doesn't make me have to give up. Mhmm. But it does make it,

difficult, even tragic. And, that can put us in a position of in spite of you remember that, years ago, Desiderata? Desideratum? It was, written by a monk, I think, in the fifteen hundreds. And what he's saying is that in spite of destruction, death, darkness, and and despair, life has a lot of light and wonder and creativity and courage in it, and let's celebrate it and live it, through and but that's gonna require developing an emotional being able to process life and spiritual life. I mean, there's you can't avoid it and live these realities because there's no ladder tall enough to climb out of it. You know? No. There's no ladder perfection. So The third one So Besser ever get us clumsy. We live life on life's terms. Mhmm. And? And then the third one is that for all of our efforts, the what we're gonna be doing throughout this life is practicing. And that is really frightening. But if we could admit powerlessness over controlling life, if we could admit surrender you know what I'm saying? Let ourselves fall into surrender, which means give back over what we took. It means to render over. Right? To give back. Almost like giving back to god, what we took from god. Like, we we became self sufficient, independent from neediness. If we got good at at sort of, like, admitting, clumsiness and living life on life's terms, we could bring everything we are without the worry of what people are thinking because other people around us have the empathy of recognition that we're practicing. Because look, even doctors are practicing. Mhmm. And that I use that example because they're the ones that cut us open. You know? So you can imagine right before, you know, somebody an anesthesiologist and surgeon, they they put Sheila to sleep and say, oh, by the way, miss, ma'am, we wanna let you know before we cut you open, we're practicing. That's so nice. So it's like, oh my god. Call my mama. Uh-huh. So, so but the reality is that that our best efforts, we think about nobody sabotaged the space shuttle under you know, remember Reagan's administration and the seven went up, and none of them came back. I believe there were seven. Mhmm. It was an o ring, I believe. Mhmm. And some kind of oxygen something transfer Yeah. A tiny little nothing. And on on international, communication, international television, it exploded Yeah. Practice. So, I mean, I know it's scary, but, I mean, basketball players are practicing. Doctors are practicing. Lawyers are practicing. And guess what? Even parents are practicing. And and we as parents face we're practicing, that even our greatest perfectionistic pictures and the evidence of how good we're doing is our children. See, that's sick. Yeah. So practicing means I I remember my mother said to me, I'm I'm in the fourth grade. I was in trouble for something. I said something smart aleck to her. And I remember she said, hey, Chip. This is my first time to be a mama. And I thought well, actually, I wasn't smarter. I've got an older sister. I wasn't smarter to say, hey. You already have a child. You you you, you know, I could've shamed her. You you You already practiced. You should be better by now. But, and she said, this is the first time I've been a mother, and, I I I don't know how to do it perfectly. I don't know how to do it that well, so I need your cooperation. I remember that disarmed me to the core, and it didn't advance codependency. It advanced the recognition of humanity. Like Through through recognition. Like, this is your first time through life, so you're practicing too. So there was a moment I never forgot. Yeah. You know? Yeah. That that went in. You know, some of those things we'll see it with with they go in. So, we're practicing, and that actually increases tolerance For sure. And also lowers the possibility of malpractice lawsuits. Yeah. You know? And in shame,

I have often and still often think, well, I'm practicing. Everybody else has kinda got it down. Yeah. You know, we compare our insides to other people's outsides, but we wind up not on Facebook. Yeah. Kinda like, oh, this is not an ESPN or a Facebook moment. Too too painful. So best ever gets clumsy. Life on life's terms. We're practicing as humans. But you said something too, Phil. We'll go to the fourth one in just a second. It's great. Move along too if you're good you're good at that. Well, I need I saw it. I'm so good at it. We're not doing it. But but if you said shame, I mean Mhmm. We are ashamed, which means we have contempt towards ourself for being and and and and, showing how god made us. Yeah. I don't mean doing. I mean being and showing. We're we we have contempt towards ourselves for being human. Mhmm. And these four realities are anathema, and yet they're the doorway into living fully. You know, I don't like them any more than I like feelings. I don't like the eight feelings. I just know that they're there and they're gifts. Uh-huh. So by admitting them, surrendering to the reality of them, and accepting them, I can use them. Pick them up instead of hiding them, I can use them to cry out with them. Right? Mhmm. So anyway, the fourth one to move along as you so beautifully do. We're so smooth. Yeah. You're smooth. I'm I'm I'm the clumsy one. I'm the one that say, well, hold on just a minute. I got something else I think. Just keep practicing. Okay. Alright. I'll I'll get there one day. Well, number four is and I really love this one because it advances mercy. It takes a lifetime to learn how to live. I put it forth because, well, it takes a lifetime to do it. And, Phil, and I don't like this one either because if we're climbing the ladder of success or the ladder of perfection or the ladder of achievement, what we learn learn along the way, if we have any wisdom within us at all or any childhood in us or any heart, is that my achievements will never love me back. Mhmm. You know? Mhmm. Like, I'm gonna achieve and become somebody. Turns out that I can achieve all those things, and I'm still not connected. I may be somebody, but those somebodies I can't eat. You know? Mhmm. So, it takes a lifetime to learn how to live means that a lot of the same questions about love and death and, meaning and substance and empathy and caring and fear and sadness and loneliness, I'm still gonna be struggling with. So, you know, really getting good at the questions of life and good at needing, others to have the answers Mhmm. Lets a person be practicing at 40 or 20 how to be 40, and at 40 how to be 80 Mhmm. Because we're asking people who've gone ahead of us, so what was it like, and how did you do it, and what did you learn? And and the great tragedy of old age is they forget, or in their shame, they pretend it never existed, or they believe in their shame that they're not worth hearing. Mhmm. Or because of their ignorance, they say things that are so stupid they're not worth listening to. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I do. So, because of bitterness and resentment and the practice of, you know, emptiness and so some of the greatest assets we have in this country are lost to themselves and lost to us or we ourselves soon will be the losers because we don't have anything to add and no one listening when actually we begin to have some of the best questions we can ever ask. So it takes a lifetime to learn how to live is permission to make mistakes, to permission to learn, permission to be needy, freedom to tolerate, freedom to offer mercy, just as the other three. Look, I'm practicing. It's gonna take me a lifetime to learn how to do it. I'm living life on life's terms, and I'm gonna be clumsy at this. So can can you deal with me like that? Mhmm. And anyone who knows the same things, of course, says, yes. In fact, I'm safer, better, more cared about, and more productive because you and I know the same things. You know? It it takes the pressure off. Yeah. And so so many people you and I have seen, have demanded something we can't give, looking for something we don't have, and expecting something we'll never find. Those three things have been often our leaders in our lives, and they didn't have it. They were pretending that somebody could find it. They were hiding that they didn't have it. They were demanding we live up to an image we could never achieve called theirs. And so it was just, God, you know the story. I do. It led us to disconnect from the four realities. So the four realities are painful. So guess what? The thing we need to learn how to live best is the feelings of life. They are our pain indicators, and our pain indicators through sharing, facing feeling, telling the truth about them, and giving ourselves to the process of how to live, those feelings turn into gifts, which is which is The Voice of the Heart, needs of the heart, keeping heart, books, the audiobook of, The Voice of the Heart. That's sort of the intro. And science is now we're about to wrap up here, but science is showing that the amygdala of the limbic system has got a warning system to keep people away from our hearts. We have to kinda ease past the wasp nest, the amygdala, to knock on the door of our hearts because the upon the door of the heart are the eight words of knowing how to live well in a place that's reality so we can live truthfully amidst reality. And truthfully means living emotionally and spiritually and relationally with each other and god. So, anyway, that's it for now. Right on. And it you know, to come kinda full circle,

How often have we heard guys come in with ego and all that says, you know, what what I need is humility. And the way to it, is a thing called healthy shame that people who live in healthy shame live according to for re accept those four realities and admit they're true and Yeah. And the surrender and freedom of it. And instead of them robbing us of motivation, they can live as free Mhmm. To decide, and face and imagine a life, lived well even though it's full of mistakes. It's freedom. Create and messes up because everything, sooner or later, comes apart. So let's build it anyway. Just build it. We're made to we're made to build. Alright. Well, that's, that's a quick four. Yeah. Admit, surrender, accept. The three that follow the four.

Four realities, three movements into it. So it's good. Really quick and brief, and maybe we double back sometime and talk about each one of these in more depth, but, it's really a great, you know, entry point into a whole lot of other living. Those four things that lead to these three steps, if you will. So, hey, thanks for joining us. Oh, you know what? Phil, one more thing. Ben said he he wanted a shout out to him. He wanted to be recognized, so You don't do that to Ben. No. No. He asked for it. I know he asked for it. He didn't mean it? Well, he meant it. He just kinda Go ahead. Go ahead. It's shout out from the eighties to Ben. Enjoy that, Ben. See you. I'll see you. Thank y'all. Hey, thank y'all for listening. Bye bye. See you next time.