Lecture 68 with Geoff from CA:
When I came into Underearners Anonymous, all I knew was that I didn’t have any money and I didn’t feel comfortable asking for money.
I learned that underearning is a disease that goes back to childhood. I grew up in an alcoholic home. In that environment, I got wounded. I was a wounded animal. I didn’t realize I got wounded. I got into a great college. I got great grades. As I got older, the things that worked for me in childhood, how I managed my environment, no longer worked, so that by the time I was in my 30s, I had a small life. I couldn’t build a career and I couldn’t have a relationship.
Underearning is cave-dwelling. Growing up in a household, we developed a wound and became scared to get out into the world with the other healthy animals, so I retreated into the cave. I feared playing with the healthy animals in case I got hurt or killed. The problem with living a small life is that it is unfulfilling. Recovery is uncovering those wounds and healing those wounds.
When I recover, I can step out into the world and become more visible.
How this disease manifested in my life was a sapping of vitality in pursuing my vision.
As I got older, I saw friends getting married, I saw friends getting promotions, and I couldn’t seem to get off the ground. I’ve come to realize this is not my fault. I had this weird patterns that would not permit me to tap the energy in my life.
I moved to Los Angeles to become a writer. In the beginning, I did OK. I would attract toxic bosses. I would attract in toxic work situations. I got an agent who wouldn’t work for me. I was always sabotaging myself. I sold a movie script for all this money and at the same time, I got into a dysfunctional relationship and it took my attention off my writing and getting bigger with my career. I was scared to get bigger. Every time I had an opportunity to get bigger, somehow it didn’t work out. My life kept getting smaller. In my 30s, I had $37 in my bank account and I was two months late on my rent and I didn’t know what to do.
My Al Anon sponsor told me about DA (Debtors Anonymous). I didn’t really click with the symptoms of DA. I was an under-earner. I lived in extreme deprivation. I started hearing about under-earning. Underearners Anonymous had a share day in Los Angeles. I learned that this disease was about time and an inability to build a life.
Some people can take the right steps to get bigger. They can market and get bigger and I couldn’t do that. The symptoms of underearning really connected with me.
1. Time Indifference – We put off what must be done and do not use our time to support our own vision and further our own goals.
2. Idea Deflection –We compulsively reject ideas that could expand our lives or careers, and increase our profitability.
3. Compulsive Need to Prove – Although we have demonstrated competence in our jobs or business, we are driven by a need to re-prove our worth and value.
4. Clinging to Useless Possessions – We hold onto possessions that no longer serve our needs, such as threadbare clothing or broken appliances.
5. Exertion/Exhaustion – We habitually overwork, become exhausted, then under-work or cease work completely.
6. Giving Away Our Time – We compulsively volunteer for various causes, or give away our services without charge, when there is no clear benefit.
7. Undervaluing and Under-pricing – We undervalue our abilities and services and fear asking for increases in compensation or for what the market will bear.
8. Isolation – We choose to work alone when it might serve us much better to have co-workers, associates, or employees.
9. Physical Ailments – Sometimes, out of fear of being larger or exposed, we experience physical ailments.
10. Misplaced Guilt or Shame – We feel uneasy when asking for or being given what we need or what we are owed.
11. Not Following Up – We do not follow up on opportunities, leads, or jobs that could be profitable. We begin many projects and tasks but often do not complete them.
12. Stability Boredom – We create unnecessary conflict with co-workers, supervisors and clients, generating problems that result in financial distress.
It was suggested to me that I read the symptoms to a friend and share on them. I did that. Every one resonated. Especially time indifference and isolation.
Nothing really changed…until I got a sponsor and worked the steps. I realized this was life and death. I started going to the 5:30 am meeting on the main phone line. That meeting is my rock.
The Tools are wonderful unless I really work the 12 Steps, unless I can establish a spiritual foundation and look at all of my fears and resentments.
1. Time Recording – We must be conscious of how we spend our time. We keep a written record to increase awareness and support our focus on goals and the actions required to achieve them.
2. Meetings – We attend UA meetings regularly to share our experience, strength, and hope in order to help ourselves and others recover from underearning.
3. Sponsorship – We actively seek sponsorship with someone who has worked the Twelve Steps in UA and is willing to guide us in our recovery.
4. Possession Consciousness – We routinely discard what no longer serves us in order to foster a belief that life is plentiful and that we will be able to provide ourselves with what we need.
5. Service – Giving service is vital to our recovery. It is through service to others, and to the Fellowship, that we keep what has been so generously given to us.
6. Goals Pages – We set goals for all aspects of our lives, write them down, measure our progress and reward achievement.
7. Action Meetings – We organize action meetings with other UA members to discuss our earning concerns and to generate actions that will bring more prosperity into our lives.
8. Action Partner – We connect regularly with action partners regarding earning concerns in order to provide each other with accountability, continuity, and support.
9. Solvency – We do not debt one day at a time. Debting leads to underearning.
10. Communication – We contact other UA members to seek support, to diminish isolation, and to reinforce our commitments to action.
11. Literature – We read Twelve-Step literature to strengthen our understanding of compulsive disease and the process of recovery.
12. Savings – Saving money demonstrates faith in the future and acceptance of the fact that money is a tool vital to our prosperous vision. We create and follow a savings plan on whatever scale we are able.
It’s not what I can take from life but what I can put into life. Before the program, my life was about looking good.
When I get scared, I need to throw myself deeper into the program and put in more service.
I was spending my time in traffic and I had no energy to pursue my vision.
You don’t have goals, you just want to get rid of the pain for today.
I rented a room in Glendale. I had a mattress on the floor. My printer on the floor. Mismatched lamps. No furniture. My landlord has thrown out the mattress and I had taken it from the garbage and there was a coil sticking out of the mattress and it was scrape against my thigh and I would wake up bleeding.
My life looks very different. I got a job. It came from an action meeting. I told my action partner what I wanted to make in a month and he said [looking at what was being earned in various odd jobs], you need a job. I wouldn’t have come up with that on my own.
I need all of this program. I need the tools.
They call underearning a disease of confusion. I use the time sheets to map out my week. I don’t just fritter my time away.
I wanted my time to be more conscious. They say in UA that if you are recording your time, you’re doing it right.
I’m bringing people into my recovery. I’m 35 yo and I have it in my head that the period in which I was supposed to make it as a writer is over and it is too embarrassing to market myself and try to reconnect with alumni, but if I bring people into my recovery, and say I have no artistic community, and a woman in my action group said you can make five outreach calls.
My to-do list doesn’t come from me. It comes from people outside of me who have a better grasp on it.
I heard in a workshop that as underearners, we lack the tools to navigate our lives and to take the right steps. We bring other people into our recovery to get the ship out of the port. I have a sponsor and action partners and an action group.
