E271: I Did Everything Right… So Why Is This Happening?

Ever feel like you’re doing everything right… and it still blows up anyway?

That’s what this episode is about.

This week, Matt and Steve talk about those moments when life hits hard even when you’re showing up, doing the work, and trying to stay on track. The kind of setbacks that make you question what the point is—and whether any of it is actually working.

They get into:

• Why doing the “right things” doesn’t guarantee smooth outcomes
• How to deal with frustration when things feel unfair
• And what it looks like to stay grounded when everything around you feels like it’s falling apart

If you’ve ever thought, “Why is this happening when I’m doing everything I’m supposed to?”—this one will land.

Transcript

Matt: 0:02

Welcome to the Silver Friends podcast, where we talk about sober topics. We can fit anywhere you to your sober journey. My name's Matt, and over there is Steve. Steve, welcome. Let's shake it. I don't even matter if I, uh, the button to play the music, I had moved the machine closer to me. I felt like I had every, every, every inch of my 3637 inch arms to get over there. I'm realizing I got to move the machine closer to me. Holy cow. Otherwise I'm good. Here's what I'm thinking today. Came across this topic, going through one of those PDFs of how do you plan a discussion meeting topic? And one of them was playing the action the result. Pretty common. It's a slogan that encourages focus entirely on the effort and steps taken to recover rather than worrying about the actual outcome, which is often beyond one's control. This spoke to me because at work, it's not always about just the action you take. It's what's, what is the end result you're looking for playing your action around that? This seems different. That's kind of a conflict or through my head kind of is, but I like it. This talks about managing the expectations, reducing anxiety, stay present in your recovery. So lots of good things here. And I figured out some pitfalls. Where does this hit you initially?

Steve: 1:55

Uh, this is a familiar topic or thought to me. I have a, we have a friend. You know, Jimmy, he used to come to Monday night still does army. Jim, um, and he always says planned the event, but not the outcome. That's his take on this, right? And he's, and his point. And it's really, really helped me. It really has like his statement. He's the one I remember saying that. Maybe other people. It's always one of those things. Maybe other people have said it. Jim is the one I associated with in my life. Um, he would tell me plan the event, not the outcome. And it took me a while to figure that out. Right? And, and then I finally realized, like that is the way to handle this stuff. Like you can put a lot of effort into this thing. And what you said there was manage expectations. Right? If, if, if, if something that you're planning has to go a certain way for you to feel good about it or, or whatever, um, then it can, it can be, it can go sideways really fast. So I've gotten very much that as long as I put my effort in today, at least I have some satisfaction that I did a good job, right? Um, the second thing that hits me about it is that it also challenges me to put my effort in, right? Cause I don't want to get up where I have a bad event and go, oh man, I had a bad event cause I didn't take it seriously. I had a bad event because I didn't put time into it, you know? Um, so it's really has helped me a lot since I've sort of taken this on and started to realize what it means in my life and how I can, you know, how I can use it and, and actually make it so that I'm not so anxious over things. So yeah, a lot of, a lot of things to talk about. I've got some practical experience too, like within

Matt: 3:47

Mm hmm.

Steve: 3:47

my life outside of my program, but that this has worked out really well for me.

Matt: 3:53

You also just hit upon some pitfalls there, which I want to talk about. I had an experience this week where I was planning out a presentation. I also was a bit diffused and doing other things, but I was sure I had done enough of a dry run of this presentation I would be fine, it also was a presentation where I didn't have a PowerPoint talk track. So I knew the things I'm doing. I'm talking through some stuff, but it was a little bit different and it didn't go the way I would like and I also have my boss chirping on the side in our teams chat about you need to do this, you need to do that, which totally threw me off. I also realized afterwards I was getting a migraine and when I have a migraine, one of the symptoms can be I can't get the words out that it just I freeze there. So there's a little bit of that, but there is a little bit of tension there that I put the effort in, but I didn't get the result. Maybe I didn't put enough of the effort. I don't know. I think there's something there around if you put the effort in, you don't have to worry about the end result because it's going to get there regardless. It should follow along.

Steve: 5:23

Yeah, there's a couple of ways that I put this to use. One is recently at our district meetings for AA. We do a tradition and a concept each month. Somebody speaks on them. And I take that commitment on a regular basis like I'll do it two, three times a year probably, you know, take a different one, which is a lot considering there's 40, 50 people there. I shouldn't have to take, you know, I mean, most people don't want to do that kind of stuff. And when I take it, okay, I put time into it. Like I spend time researching it. Like it's supposed to be a three minute speech, a three minute talk, right? That's why they want to keep, just to keep the meeting moving. I may spend three hours on it, right? I may spend three hours. I literally get a script down. I put it together. I read through it and make myself familiar with it. Now lately, I've been finding I go up there and I don't, and I always feel rushed because I do try to hold to the three minutes because I can't stand it when people get up there and they talk for seven minutes because they're not prepared. But I feel good that I've done some work on it, right? That's for me. I comfortable. I've done some work every. I walk over like, Oh, I never got to that park. I don't read. I sort of just give a talk. I made a glance out on my paper. I don't read word for word, what I've written down. And like the last time I got to like, Oh, I missed those last three pieces before I sat down. Not a big deal. But my point is I feel good. I don't feel like I'm walking up there unprepared. I see it happen all the time. Right? People like, Oh, I'm going to talk about the third tradition and they go up there and they literally read what the third tradition is. Maybe they say a couple of words on it and they said, like, they didn't do any work. They didn't look at the history. They didn't look at why it was like that. They didn't look like what was happening in the 1950s when they wrote these things. Right? No history behind it. So I feel good about that. You know, regardless of how it comes out. Right? Because I, like, look at it. I prepared. Now, if I have trouble with it, then I got to ask myself why did I have trouble with it? Why am I missing stuff? So I could work on that. Right? I can work on that. But I, like I said, I always feel like when I go up there, I'm not nervous. I'm not. I feel like I have done my work, I've done my investigation. So, you know, that's that's always a comfortable feeling to me is when I do that. And then I just, you know, that's the other thing is when I do stuff, if I do all that prep work, I can just let the chips fall where they fall. Right? Like I could let the outcome be the outcome. And then I can be dis and this is the whole point. That doesn't mean the outcome is going to be good. That doesn't mean the outcome is going to be what I want. It's not, it doesn't mean the outcomes going to be satisfying. Right? But it'll allow me to handle that disappointment better if that's the case. Right? Well, I did my part. I did everything I could do. Nothing else I can do on it. Right? So, it's really, again, it's become a really big part of my life when I have that as a fort front as I'm planning a project. It's like, remember, you can do a lot of work and you can still get a shit storm at the end.

Matt: 8:41

I used to forget all it's, I would volunteer for that and I'd never remember it until.

Steve: 8:47

Yeah.

Matt: 8:47

Walking into the meeting of, oh crap. I got to talk about this.

Steve: 8:51

You're right.

Matt: 8:51

Yeah. And I'm pretty good at BSing that

Steve: 8:54

Yeah.

Matt: 8:54

as I'm waiting I can scan through and say, all right, I'll hit this, this, this, and this. Here is how it means to me. But I just would forget every single time and I needed to write it down. If I had that task now and this, this would be part of my prep, I would probably, as I volunteer for it, it into cloth and say next month I have

Steve: 9:17

put

Matt: 9:18

this presentation. I need three minutes. Can you help walk me through some points that would make sense? And I would have something that would be very usable. I'm like you, I'm not going to read a script because it really looks like I'm reading a script when I do that, but I would want some bullet points and I can pull from that and I could also go left and right based on how I'm feeling in the moment. So I'm really hearing in a lot of that, it's put the prep in, trust the prep. But now if it doesn't go right, there could be things out of your control.

Steve: 9:55

Yeah.

Matt: 9:56

And how do you, how do you accept that? I kind of want to hit first upon the after action review that you may have put in the prep. You may have planned the action, not the result. The result is not what you wanted than one. Is it a case that you beat yourself up, which I did this week, but then I also looked at it and say, I can't undo the result. What did I learn from this? And what I learned from this is some of these presentations where there's not a talk track, I got to write something out for me, not for the rest of the team for me. And that will keep me on track. I did a little of that because I had a similar presentation and the team said I hit it out of the park.

Steve: 10:44

You know, I'm thinking that we're talking about this like, okay, we're talking about life stuff and like where does this fall and recovery stuff? And it just sort of hit me like, this is this is the perfect the perfect topic for eighth and ninth step work, right?

Matt: 11:02

Okay.

Steve: 11:02

This is the perfect topic for that because you think about it, right? We go to an eighth step and we write down people we've harmed and then we we decide that we need to make a mens to them. And if you're really doing a good job with this, you're making some plans, right, for a lot of these people. Like you're planning your men's you know what you want to talk about. It's like you're you're getting ready for a little speech, right? You are basic.

Matt: 11:25

Yes.

Steve: 11:26

You're getting ready for a speech. Um, and you want to hit some points like here are the points I want to hit. I want here's what I want to make sure and you know, then you want to go to the stuff. Well, I want to make sure that if they start coming at me, I don't react like you have to go through all of this planning up front. And then once you get there and you do that a mens, you have no control on how it goes, right? You have no control. You have no control how that how that person's going to accept it, take it, whatever, um, whether it's going to be accepted, whether it's going to be good, whether it's going to be bad, whether you're going to feel good about it or not feel good about it when you get done. And then what you just talked about is doing that post evaluation of like, ooh,

Matt: 12:08

Mm hmm.

Steve: 12:08

what did I do? Did I do something wrong? This with my presentation. We're in in that. And then that's when we start talking about it, where my motive's wrong. What was I doing there? What was I trying to get out of it? So, um, it's the perfect way to go through an eighth and ninths that process. And it's also the reason why I think and most people would agree that you should have a sponsor or somebody that you're sort of helping you guide you through.

Matt: 12:33

Absolutely.

Steve: 12:34

Right? This is where you should have that. And before you do, especially any complicated of a mens, you should absolutely be running it by somebody saying, Hey, here's what I gotta do, you know, and this was a sponsor for here's here's the mens I gotta make. I'm going to make it to, you know, in my case, say my ex-wife. Here's the things I want to talk about. You know, and you know, some of those can be tricky. And, uh, and then you can say, you know, if you talk to somebody about it, they may say, that's, that sounds like a good plan, or maybe I stare away from this or. Um, but I, you know, I've been lucky with my amends in XK, so I haven't had any go bad. I haven't, I haven't had any go, but you do hear people where they go bad. And I think that's, you know, what I'm trying to, uh, express here is that it's really, really important. when you're doing your step work and you're doing that type of stuff, that it is the prep, it is the process, you know, trust the process, right? And then do that process and then you can come back when you're done. And again, you can re-evaluate it. You can talk to your sponsor. Was it good? Was it bad? And then, and then we learned from it, right? Like, like I said, when I, when I was doing my stuff

Matt: 13:47

Right.

Steve: 13:47

last time, I felt rushed, and I don't need to be rushed up there. Right? If I take five minutes to do this thing, we're supposed to do three, everybody's still happy, right?

Matt: 13:55

That

Steve: 13:55

They're happy with five minutes. They don't want nine minutes, right? So I can take my time and not rush through it. And, again, that makes me want to do it again, so I could practice that part more, right? Um, so that's the other thing is that, you know, by me doing that, I can try to get better at that. And again, that brings me back to the eighth nine step. Like, I can do it. I can make some mistakes on doing some amends, and then go, okay, I need to get better at that. I need to, I need to figure out some stuff. And so, it's really, really important. Again, I'll come back to what you said, managing expectations. Right?

Matt: 14:37

Right.

Steve: 14:38

It's the, it's the biggest thing we have to do, probably in all aspects of our life. I don't do the saying out there that I won't get, but it's like expectations are resentments of the future or

Matt: 14:50

that.

Steve: 14:50

something like

Matt: 14:51

Mm-hmm.

Steve: 14:51

Having expectations. And it's the truth, right? We have expectations. And then, if they don't meet whatever the event or person, place or thing doesn't meet our expectation, then we end up disappointed. And maybe a resentment somewhere down the road.

Matt: 15:06

There's just so much there of what you said.

Steve: 15:08

Yeah.

Matt: 15:09

And everything hit there. And I feel like I have to, oh, I want to take like part by part apart there, because there's so many subtopics. One of the things, if I'm presenting at a district meeting on concept or what did they do with the concepts, they do this, this, the, the tradition.

Steve: 15:30

Right. Those, those two is what we do now.

Matt: 15:33

It, here's another reason why they limit it to three minutes because it might be boring.

Steve: 15:39

Mm-hmm.

Matt: 15:40

You can do nine minutes on that.

Steve: 15:42

Oh, yeah.

Matt: 15:43

And it could be very, if you've planned it out right, that could be a nice little TED Talk. The problem is you're eating into other things that need to happen, but people don't like long speech is not because they're long, but because they don't go anywhere. At a certain point, I try and, if I share at a meeting, I'm thinking in my head. what are the least amount of words I can use to get out what I'm looking for? Get in, get out, and keep it interesting. So there is, is that aspect? The doing an amend really hit me as well. When you're saying your amends didn't go badly, I think that has a lot to do with your preparation for. You can't control every aspect. There might be some people who you legitimately are fearful of, and you put an extra prep just because of that. Because you know that the possibility of this one going badly or I may even say going badly means something damaging happens to me. Not necessarily that they react poorly, because you might have done something where them replying poorly, is to be expected in a sense. So I have to prepare for that. I have to mentally prepare for the storm that's going to come, but I'm going to do the right thing. But I'm not going to hurt them. And maybe part of them responding badly is them getting it out. It's not even a bad result for them. They're getting it out. And I'm kind of facilitating And once it's out, it's out. But this is really where the prep comes in. Talking to a sponsor, talking to somebody else, of thinking, they may they may vent at me. Okay. What do I need to do to get myself in the best frame of mind that even if that happens, I'm going to be okay. And I think it really does come back to the preparation lead you to the result you're looking for, or at least a result that you can be satisfied with. But those amends can go awfully bad if you're winging it. And I know that because I've listened to one meeting after another where somebody steps up and gives the warning because it happened to them.

Steve: 18:10

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes that that pushback, that anger, whatever it might be when you're doing those is an appropriate response.

Matt: 18:19

Yeah.

Steve: 18:20

Right. I mean, if you've heard someone and you've never discussed it and you've ignored it for 10 years or whatever it might

Matt: 18:28

be,

Steve: 18:29

yeah, by bringing that up, it might be painful. And, you know, and yeah, and the pushback could be appropriate for them. And you do have to be prepared for that. And that's where I go back to again. One of the things I was very much coached by my sponsor was mode of mode of motor, right?

Matt: 18:51

Mm-hmm.

Steve: 18:51

Mode of, you know, when I went into my amends, I wasn't looking for absolution, right? I wasn't looking for anybody to forgive me. I wasn't. I wasn't. I was looking to, hey, here, I was looking to acknowledge my errors. And the hurt that I've caused these people, whatever it might be, and then take responsibility for that. That, that, that is it. I mean it. Like if they, if these people wanted to forgive me, it went, that was up to them, right? Forgiveness is on

Matt: 19:23

Absolutely.

Steve: 19:23

their part, right? It's up to them. Plus forgiveness is for them, not for me. So really having an understanding of what you're doing is so helpful in those situations because I was able to walk out of there and go, hey, I did a good job with that. That's it. I did a good job. You know, I, I had an amends to make. And the biggest mens I made was to my ex-wife, right? I mean,

Matt: 19:51

me not.

Steve: 19:52

That was a tough one.

Matt: 19:53

Your hard one.

Steve: 19:54

It was a hard one. It was, it was a hard one. Because, you know, she was a, she still is a very good woman. And unfortunately, she caught me, you know, caught me at the tail end. You know, we had, obviously we had great aspects of our relationship. But when I slipped, when I slid down into my alcoholism, you know, all better off. Right? All better off. And I wasn't a good person and she deserved so much better than that. And it took me a while. I mean, I had to come to terms with a lot of things. I had, you know, and again, that goes back to doing all the steps that I had to come to terms with some of the things of who I was of the person during them. I had acknowledged those. I had owned those and then I had to go and say, Hey, you know, that was really shitty of me. And I just needed to let you know. And then it's, you know, And then what I do is I make living amends from them and that is that I don't do that

Matt: 20:50

yep.

Steve: 20:50

again and I'm nice and all those type of things. The other thing I just want to say a little bit off is that I've talked about this before. I've talked about it at meetings, but my, my wife and I will, we have done, we do projects. Anybody have homeowners, right? We do projects around the house. And sometimes our projects are individual projects and sometimes their projects we do together. And any projects that we big projects, we try to do them together. Because I've learned over the years If we both have an input into a project like, and I'll just tell you two different projects we did, one, we re-did our, we did a refresh of our kitchen a little bit, my wife did, which my wife did all by herself because I was busy, my sister was sick dying of cancer, I just had too much on my plate, and my wife wanted to do it and she did it. And there are things about that project that I don't like. I felt like, and I accept them, I did not overly, but I felt like, I mean, there's things about it that she did a great job on, but there's a few things that I don't like about the project. And I always tell her like, we do a project better when we do it together, because we get some feedback. We also did a bathroom over, which, right, and in both of us were involved with that. There was a ton of that bathroom that I don't like. There's a ton of it that I don't like, but you know something? It doesn't eat at me because we planned it, we did it, we talked about Those were the choices we made at the time. It's like, yep, if I had to do it again, I would not make those choices again.

Matt: 22:21

it,

Steve: 22:21

But

Matt: 22:21

right.

Steve: 22:21

I don't, but they don't, they don't, you know, eat at me, where if I did that alone, and she had to look at that stuff, or she did it alone, I had to look at the stuff, there'd be resentment, and there'd be blame. And like, hey, you shouldn't have done this. You shouldn't have done that. So that's the other thing about that, right? Because I realized that at any we're going to do anything like that. I'm like, hey, honey, let's do this together. So we can avoid those pitfalls, right? And that's the same point. We can plan it. We can do the work, but we can't plan the outcome, and it may not be exactly what we like. So it's, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of trip wires and those type of things that you could be that, that couldn't trip you up and send you off in a different way that that's not healthy and not helpful, especially for alcoholics, right? It's really, we don't want to be stewing and resentment, or being pissed off. Not that I don't do that, I still do that way too often, but I need to try to eliminate that as much as possible.

Matt: 23:25

I would make the case that you did do the kitchen together, because you had to delegate whether you thought or not, you had to delegate everything to your wife, because you were doing something that was more important, caring for your sister. You couldn't do it together. So you had to delegate everything to her, and if you think it through that way, you can get to acceptance of there are going to be some things about this project that I may not be happy with or are going to bug the crap out of me afterwards, because it wasn't involved. And I'm going to accept that because the project wouldn't get done if she just didn't do it. It had to be this way, and I think there's also something to be said and this speaks to me because I'm not great with this, of it's not going to be perfect, and I need to learn for the next time. A lot of times it's like, I should have already learned this lesson. Therefore, it's already a failure, I'm a failure. Or I could look at it and say, it is an incremental step. All right, she did the kitchen herself. She gets huge props because she put her nose to the grindstone. She planned this out herself. It's pretty awesome. I would have done this differently. I don't like this piece. I'm going to scroll that away for next time. If she has to do it herself, here is an input I can give her in passing of think about this, or if you do the bathroom together, it's like, God, we did it together, and still there are things I don't like. But at least you have that buy-in of, I don't like but at least I had a hand in this. But then it is also, yeah, I would have done this differently, but you can't know all that. And that goes back to the topic of, you know, planning the action not the result. I can't cover every eventuality because I'm a human being.

Steve: 25:18

Right. Absolutely. And one of the other thing I've learned as I've gotten older is I give myself a lot of grace these days. I really do. Like, I give myself the grace to make mistakes to be tired to really go, you know, something, yeah, I should care about this, but I just don't like I don't have the emotional bandwidth to

Matt: 25:42

Yeah.

Steve: 25:42

care about it. And that happens to me a lot. Like, it does nowadays like, you know, people know I've been talking about, I've been caring for my wife for the better part of a year. And I, I even say that to them, like, I just don't about some of the stuff anymore. I don't I don't care about it. And, and I used to bother me that I wouldn't care. And perfect thing is like, again, the go sidetrack, but like my yard work stuff, like I do it. But I don't care about it anymore. I don't even care to do it anymore. I think about all the time about hiring people and all that. And I used to drive me nuts. And now it doesn't. It's like, I just don't care. Yeah. And, you know, I told my wife, like we talk about some new plantings, I'm like, here's, here's, here's, here's my qualifications for a plant. Do I need to prune it?

Matt: 26:30

Mm-hmm.

Steve: 26:30

Do I need to water it? Right? Do I need to, do I need to take care of it? I don't want it. I don't want it. I want to be a plant it. So once it gets established, it doesn't mean I don't cut it down in the fall or do something. But I don't want to have to be constantly caught and making something look pretty. It's not what I want to do at my time. Some people like that stuff. I don't like it. So, so I give myself the grace to go, you know, something I don't care about that. I don't care. My bushes don't look the best. And, and I'm able to, and that gives me some peace. It gives me some peace. It gives me some emotional bandwidth to take on some other stuff. And, and this day and age, I can have my wife do projects, right? I can say to her and she, and she can with me. She does with me too. Like, hey, you do it and we just live with the results, right? And I do it. Like, yeah, you did, you did your best, whatever, or whatever, even if you didn't do your best. Like, I turned it over to you. You did what you wanted. There it is. I'm done. I don't need to be emotionally connected to it. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of things. But it is about, well, again, I'll, I'll say it for a third or four time. It's all about managing those expectations.

Matt: 27:41

Yeah.

Steve: 27:42

What do you think the outcomes should be? And when you, and when you let go of those expectations, when you really do, when you really can let go of those expectations, man, life becomes a lot easier. It becomes a lot simpler to be able to say, yeah, we're going to do this. And we'll see how it turns out.

Matt: 28:02

I like what, so this is, if you're hearing this of, like, why are you guys talking about your personalize with this, because the program, we use the program and all aspects of life. Not just alcoholism and these little things lead you to alcoholism, and you talked about prioritization. I'm not going to prioritize the lawn work, and I did that in my front yard. I went because I had all this help cleaning up the front yard and the round the house, and the fact that I have this enormous backyard on a quarter lot. And well, I can't, I would love to have the perfect lawn.

Steve: 28:41

Yeah.

Matt: 28:42

And I'd love to be able to do that in the backyard. But I can put all my effort into the front yard, where like a bag of 5,000 square foot fertilizer and herbicide, I can do that. If there are spot watering and you need to do, I can do that. If I do, if I put that all and spend the money on the backyard, it's going to go to waste because I can't water back there. It's too big to manage. So I'm like, OK, I'm going to forget the backyard. I'll know that I'll do my best. But in the front yard, I can make that look really nice. And I have the bandwidth for that. And I realize I'm like, why didn't I think about this 15 years ago? Well, I didn't think about a 15 years ago, because I had to go through that level of growth. But I have learned it now. The trap here is, and this is the trap that I'm always worried about the letting go is, well, I don't really have to put in the effort or I feel like I'm putting in the effort. But you know, my higher power is guiding me along. So, oh, well. And there is that fine line between absolute control and really lying to yourself about, are you really doing the work, because I think the higher power aspect is not. I'm putting in it's not, I need to control aspects of this and it better end up that way. That's when you know you're putting into much control. You're using your higher power. If it's. I have this project. I'm going to plan this out to the best of my ability and I'm putting a genuine effort in and I understand that there might be something I'm missing. That is a way of saying my higher power will help me out where my higher power there is to help me when it doesn't go exactly as I think. And it's going to keep me from losing my mind after. And that's the trap I'm always worried about. But I just talk myself through. That's how you know you're not just being lazy.

Steve: 30:48

Yeah, I mean, I'm always reluctant to say, you know, I'm a little reluctant to say, oh, I'm just going to let my higher power take over this thing. Right. Just not the way it works for me. Because I do believe that, you know, the way my higher power works. I have to do the work.

Matt: 31:10

Yes.

Steve: 31:12

But I do like the fact. And again, if you have a higher power, if you believe in God, whatever, whatever it works for you, I do believe in the fact that if you're like, well, the outcomes going to be the outcome, because I'm not in control that outcome, again, that works. Right. I mean, again, you're giving that up. And the reason why we talk about this in our regular lives is because of the fact, we talk about it all time, because we're alcoholics, right. And it's like, I need to manage these type of things. because of my alcoholism, right? My alcoholism is with me all the time and, um, so I need to manage these things so that I don't get too high and too low. One of the problems I had when I came into this program is I had huge expectations of other people. And what that did was, I still can, to a certain extent, but much less, much less. But what that did was, it would put me on this rollercoaster ride that I was either totally excited because things were going my way, or I was depressed because things were just shit, you know, and it was literally this up and down and up and down and up. And I was a mess. I mean it. I was a mess

Matt: 32:41

and

Steve: 32:41

and it was one of the first things I realized that I had to get off that ride, like I had to figure that out. And it took a long time, like I said, and I still struggle with it at times, I'm still not perfect with it. But usually the highs aren't so high and the lows aren't so low. So I got this little bit of a more stable life. And that's because I've been able to give up some of this. you know, thinking that the outcome is all in my control. Again, but when we talk about our program, you know, if we start, if we start thinking that the outcomes told in our total control, then we're playing God, right, we're playing God is what we're doing. And that doesn't mean we can't plan a project. We're not talking about that one. You know, we can't plan a project. But a perfect example is you could be saving, you could be saving for a retirement. Right,

Matt: 33:39

Yeah,

Steve: 33:39

this is the perfect thing. You could be saving for a retirement and you could be doing everything right. And then as you get close to there, you can have a tragic or catastrophic event in your life. You can lose a job latent life, you can have medical bills if you don't have the right insurance and that whole planning could be up and smoke because of events out of your control.

Matt: 34:06

Right.

Steve: 34:07

And that's the kind of stuff that I've gotten comfortable with, like I really had like that big so I've gotten comfortable with that, like that kind of stuff, I realized like, I don't have as much control over that as I think even though I've done a lot of planning and I've done a lot of invested like I still don't have a lot of control over that. But again, that doesn't mean I can't decide I'm going to go out and plant the garden, right. And then really and then have an outcome and then do the best I can and do some research and do some planning like we talked about and maybe ask Claude like, hey, I want to plant this garden. Here's what I want to grow. What do I need? Right. I want to work and try and try and try to try to figure out how to make that project to give it the best best success as possible. The most chance of success is possible. And then what we do, like everybody else, we got it, you got to tweak stuff as it goes, I got a little frustrated because sometimes I do think, oh, I did it, it should be done. I should never have to think about it again.

Matt: 35:05

Right, yeah,

Steve: 35:08

right, which doesn't work. I

Matt: 35:09

no

Steve: 35:09

planted, I had, I had a small garden. I planted some stuff. I hated gardening. So I decided I was going to put some blueberry bushes in there. So I did. I just took them and I'm not a big gardener. I just took them and I put some blueberry. And I cannot get my soil where it needs to be, which is acidic for blueberries, to a place where my blueberry bushes will thrive. And I've tried tons of different stuff. I've tried the fertilizers. I've tried the, everything. And I don't know why I can't get it. I mean, that honestly, I don't know why that I can't change the, the, you know, the makeup of the soil, but I just have not been able to do it. But I keep trying, right, I keep trying. And I'm like, all right, what am I going to do this year with it? Like, how am I going to do it? You know, I did pine needles. I did a bunch of

Matt: 36:01

pine needles doesn't work.

Steve: 36:03

Yeah. think

Matt: 36:04

People

Steve: 36:04

well it, yeah, it will

Matt: 36:06

it.

Steve: 36:06

get

Matt: 36:06

Your issue right now. I'll try and solve your issue because this

Steve: 36:09

is

Matt: 36:10

fashion

Steve: 36:10

the

Matt: 36:10

of mine.

Steve: 36:11

I know it is.

Matt: 36:12

Pine, people think pine needles are acidic, but once they drop, they go neutral. That's why.

Steve: 36:17

Okay, yeah, but I've tried all this stuff right and I have to use I have you some fertilizers I tried a different fertilizer last year and it's and it warn you said you know be careful with it and it did Well happen was they never bloomed right like they I don't know what happened right but anyway That's a better sign thing so my that's my point it but I'm not as frustrated with that right and my point is Because of this I'm like hey, I'm doing some work on it. I keep trying it My next thing is like I wonder if I should make this a raised garden product drugs right get it out of the ground And put it in a their own separate soil But anyway, this is a tangent that I'm on but my point is listen. I'm trying this I'm planning it and the al and this is my guess this is my point the outcome has not been what I wanted to be right I've done planning. I've done effort. I've done all this and I'm not totally Frustrated by yeah, that's what I mean. I won't hit a point where I'm not frustrated with it But I'm not and this been going on. I don't know. I was probably the fourth year of Adam Maybe the 50 years that I had him and I planted them for my grandchildren They come up because they they will bloom some and I don't get a lot of blueberries But they're small and they come up and if the blueberries are I don't know I'm going there and pick them and eat them right off the bush, you know it's been fun It's always about expectations about doing the work prehand and, uh, yeah, letting the chips fall where they fall

Matt: 37:45

So this is an interesting moment because now I'm warmed up And we got in the show at a certain point you got it you got to end things so I would love to hear from you Going off topic is brought to you by sober not mature If you love this show, I'd like a couple things go into apple or Spotify Spotify give it five stars or a thumbs up or whatever they do in Spotify Apple give it five stars Right out of quick review and it's a reminder I got to go into Apple. I don't get them sent to me anymore I want to see what are people writing because it is helpful in getting feedback and Allowing people to to see the show and I always love to hear from you haven't had an email in a while But I know people are listening because I saw that down those downloads are pretty good right now We had some shows that have performed really

Steve: 38:44

well

Matt: 38:44

really

Steve: 38:45

Great,

Matt: 38:46

so I'd love to hear from you Matt at soberfriends pod calm and I do listen Mitzi who who contributes to the show on a monthly basis is never shy about what Mitzi likes And I like that Sometimes I agree sometimes they don't but it gives me some thought Alright Steve Haven't

Steve: 39:06

alright Matt.

Matt: 39:06

Day and week

Steve: 39:07

Yeah, you too. See you everybody.

Matt: 39:10

See you next week