An Irritating Example

Set an example:  To behave so as to be a pattern or model for others to imitate.


One of the things that helped me when I was getting sober and receiving incredibly irritating advice from guys who had been sober longer than me was the fact that these guys were following their own incredibly irritating advice.  Today I try to pass that incredibly irritating advice along when I tell any newer guys who I'm currently irritating what they should do.  The fact that they don't want to do these things is what makes the advice so irritating; that and the fact that it's coming from me and it's not delivered gently, by and large.  Nobody wants to be told what to do by someone who doesn't feel that they have to do the exact same thing -- it seems insincere and hypocritical.  Me personally, I don't want to hear any advice from anyone, irregardless of the person giving it to me.


"Yeah, YOU have to do this thing, but not me.  I'm special," they say, or that's what I hear, anyway.


But if someone is doing something hard and irritating themselves it's less likely that it's going to stick in my extraordinarily narrow craw.  The fact of the matter is that when I'm giving someone advice -- which I may or may not be doing myself --  I try to listen to what I'm saying and apply it to my own life.


"Do me a favor," I'll say, putting a warm and supportive arm around the slumped shoulders of someone who is telling me how much trouble they're in over an argument they've had about an unimportant matter with someone who is smarter than they are.  "Try not to talk today.  At all.  Try not to open your mouth at all.  Your day will go better.  Whatever you think you need to say you definitely do not need to say."  I know they'll go ahead and run their mouths anyway.  Nobody listens to me.  They have to suffer the consequences of their mouth running themselves, repeatedly, before they'll learn the lesson, if my experience is any guide.


The point is that when I tell someone what to do I'm telling myself what to do.  When it comes right down to it, really, what do I care if someone else continues to talk when they shouldn't be talking and this causes problems for them?  Frankly, if it's not about me I could care less.  I know that I need to keep MY mouth shut most of the time.  It's amazing to me how often I ignore the intuition that I shouldn't say anything and that I should stop talking after I've started to say the thing that I shouldn't have said in the first place and then continue to press my point even after I've suffered the consequences of saying the very same thing.


Try not to talk.