nothing has changed. They continue to live an unsatisfying life where they experience insufficient reward or peace, and have not honed skills to effectively change their situation beyond escapism and/or denial.
Then I thought of you. I do not want any of you to experience something tragic in order to learn how to make life more fulfilling. Perhaps worse, I do not want you to live a life of unfulfilling, quiet despair — and actually believing that is how life is supposed to be.
It seems reasonable that if people were given some of the basic life skills taught in recovery in the first place, perhaps a tremendous amount of tragedy could be avoided. Who needs a false stimulus or sedative when you are already high on life and have peace about what you can control in your future?
I hope you go from learning how to drink from your sippy cup directly into learning some principles on how to handle your Fuddle Cup. The thought of that gives me incredible joy and peace. Should these concepts not make their way to you until you are much older, remember that you are never too old to learn or change things — sometimes it just hurts a little more to stretch yourself later in life.
One Life — One Life-Long Drinking Problem
“You get one lifetime to live. You have one shot to live out your purpose in one body…and one reflection in the mirror that accounts for the culmination of everything you do in the different areas of your one irreplaceable life.”
So how does the Fuddle Cup drinking problem get started?
I figure it begins sometime when we are still wearing diapers. If I had to pick the exact timing, I would say it is the first time we refuse to let Mom or Dad hold the bottle for us. In that precise moment, when we fitfully yank the bottle from our parents’ hands and insist on doing it ourselves, we do not just grab for the bottle — we just grabbed our Fuddle Cup.
That bottle-snatching moment is when we decided to become independent and make our own decisions. Do not misunderstand me — independence is essential to being a happy person and productive member of society. The problem is, we human beings are awfully impatient creatures and we try to take independence farther and faster than we can handle.
We are anxious to make all kinds of decisions for ourselves — and those that affect others — even when we have not thought through all of the impacts.
I know at least one of you kids is playing devil’s advocate while reading this. I can almost hear you thinking, “There are plenty of people who are not interested in being independent and who avoid making decisions.”
That is true. Perhaps you have heard, “Indecision is a decision in itself.” Indecision is still an independent choice and subject to the same responsibilities and consequences as an active decision.
We are so anxious to get to where we are going — even if only to get to instant gratification or to go nowhere at all — we overcomplicate some of our roles and responsibilities in certain aspects of our lives. As a result, we underplay and disregard other connected life aspects.
Not surprising, we then feel imbalanced and search for the appropriate fix for the effected area of trouble in our life. Sometimes it works as simply as that. Too often, however, we pick the quick fix — which addresses one aspect of life, but causes issues for other aspects. This is not dissimilar to how prescription medication potentially causes side effects.
With the quick fix, you need a solution for your solution. You need another prescription for the new side effects, which causes more side effects…Well, you get the idea.
We all do it on some level. Why? Because we are overwhelmed — often by our own doing — and in survival mode. When you are in survival mode, you tend to make a lot of reactive decisions based on immediate fear, which can ultimately entrench you deeper into your circumstance instead of solving it.
It is either the problem of being overwhelmed, or unfortunately, just looking for the easy way — shortcuts to money, success, instant gratification, and the easy way out — that lead to fixating on one area of your life and the quick fix method of problem solving. Again — I do not recommend these courses of action for living an extraordinary life.
Either way, you have your Fuddle Cup in full swing — rushing to drink from one of the cups and spilling all of the others in the process.
Compartmentalization
compartmentalization: isolation or splitting off of parts in the mind with lack of communication and consistency between the other parts.
Compartmentalization is a favorite coping mechanism when we are overwhelmed. It is also a big time accessory to the crime of justification; the moments when we are compelling ourselves to make a choice we know is selfish.
We compartmentalize in an effort to lighten our mental or emotional load. We split off and then decidedly ignore any other aspects of our life other than the most pressing aspect in our mind. Often, to a point of detriment. Moreover, we do not even realize we are doing it. To make matters even more difficult, we sometimes confuse our actions of compartmentalization with a decidedly different and truly helpful action — focus.
focus: a point upon which attention, activity, etc. is directed or concentrated
The two words are unquestionably not synonymous. Although both describe your thoughts isolated to one issue or area of life, there is an extremely large difference between the two.
Compartmentalization is similar to your first glance at a fuddling cup. You are unaware the cups are, in fact, connected to each other, and you direct your attention only to whichever singular cup from which you wish to drink.
Focus, however, is like being a seasoned Fuddle Cup drinker. You are thoroughly aware that the cups connect and choose to concentrate your attention toward a singular cup. Although you focus on one particular cup, you never entirely lose sight of the other connected cups. In fact, if you truly focus, you will factor in the surrounding cups as an advantage to your strategy.
In Review:
Compartmentalization is a short-sighted approach which involves fixating on one aspect of your life and ignoring the others, causing potentially detrimental effects. When you make decisions this way, you are spilling your Fuddle Cup all over yourself and everyone around you.
Focus is a well-considered strategy, prompted by concentrating on one aspect of your life, with continual respect for the other connected aspects. Moreover, it involves the other life aspects as advantages for your solutions. That is the ideal model of Fuddle Cup drinking success, with minimal spillage.
Kids, the object of this book is to help get you focused on the different aspects of your Fuddle Cup — without losing sight of the other vital aspects attached — so you can create successful strategies for whatever parts of life you wish to concentrate.
Remember
