If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. I’m mostly publishing free pieces right now, but paid subscribers do have access to monthly premium pieces—such as THIS comedy special about my 10 favorite addiction/sobriety jokes!
I was at the gym this week and there was a big guy lifting weights with a trainer that I know. The big guy was ripped and had on a T-shirt that said “Dummy mindset” on it. When he left later, I asked the trainer what dummy mindset means.
He said that that guy has a belief that even though he’s in very good shape and used to be a personal trainer himself that he is better off being completely open-minded about training. So he got a gym membership, signed up to work with a trainer and has tried to embrace the idea that he knows lots of stuff but is going to put it off to the side and listen to a new voice.
Holy s**t. That is so hard to do, isn’t it? I’ve written on here often about how much I love the Set Aside Prayer, which basically asks for the ability to forget everything I think I know about sobriety, about my relationships, about God, about the world, about everything. The goal is to begin every day, every conversation, every email, everything, with an open mind.
The key part of that prayer—and that guy’s T-shirt and mindset—is that it just encourages you to put your knowledge off to the side and listen. I don’t have to forget about anything forever. I just need to open up my ears and listen for new opportunities to learn and grow.
For that dude at the gym, he went to a new gym and got a new trainer. That’s the epitome of open-mindedness. In recovery, I like to go to different meetings sometimes and get phone numbers of new voices. I often don’t learn anything radically new. But I also don’t fall into my same patterns, hearing the same thing, feeling stagnant, sometimes.
And honestly, the notion of setting aside knowledge is a pretty awesome thing to do in all walks of life, not just with fitness and sobriety. At work, do you ever catch yourself waiting to jump in with your opinion? Do you ever complain about the way something is done in the office without fully considering why it might be done that way? Do you ever catch yourself being wildly wrong about stuff in your personal life? Do you ever tell somebody to do something one way and they should have done it another way?
The answer to all of those questions is probably yes for most of us. We’ve all most likely had a moment where we were certain of something and it turned out we were wrong, or at least too hard-headed about being set in our ways.
So I guess I need to maybe add some “Dummy mindset” T-shirts to my wardrobe!
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
The emergency department physician asked the nurse on duty about the condition of a drunk who'd been brought in after swallowing a spoon.
"Doctor," she replied, "he hasn't stirred."
(Credit: Grapevine, May 2008, by W.C. of Mississippi)
Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.
