Honesty is a big topic! I feel like Im a generally honest person. I dont do the obvious dishonest things loke steal or manipulate etc. But i do struggle with being honest to people sometimes. I sometimes worry about others reactions and so I will occasionally minimize the truth or not mention it at all. I have to work on that. I find once I start “lying”, its easier to continue that bad habit. I want to be an honest person thru n thru. And not only honest with others but with myself too.
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Yessss, exactly that with the 2 different lifetimes in one!! It’s truly incredible we get to do that. 
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NA Just For Today
Learning how to live again
“We learn new ways to live. We are no longer limited to our old ideas.”
Basic Text p. 54
We may or may not have been taught right from wrong and other basics of life as children. No matter, by the time we found recovery, most of us had only the vaguest idea of how to live. Our isolation from the rest of society had caused us to ignore basic human responsibilities and develop bizarre survival skills to cope with the world we lived in.
Some of us didn’t know how to tell the truth; others were so frank we wounded everyone we talked to. Some of us couldn’t cope with the simplest of personal problems, while others attempted solving the problems of the whole world. Some of us never got angry, even when receiving unfair treatment; others busily lodged complaints against everyone and everything.
Whatever our problems, no matter how extreme, we all have a chance in Narcotics Anonymous to learn how to live anew. Perhaps we need to learn kindness and how to care about others. Perhaps we need to accept personal responsibilities. Or maybe we need to overcome fear and take some risks. We can be certain of one thing: Each day, simply by living life, we’ll learn something new.
Just for today: I know more about how to live than I did yesterday, but not as much as I’ll know tomorrow. Today, I’ll learn something new.
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THE TREASURE OF THE PAST
Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which makes life seem so worth while to us now. Cling to the thought that, in God’s hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have—the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 124
What a gift it is for me to realize that all those seemingly useless years were not wasted. The most degrading and humiliating experiences turn out to be the most powerful tools in helping others to recover. In knowing the depths of shame and despair, I can reach out with a loving and compassionate hand, and know that the grace of God is available to me.
From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.
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“Living just for today relieves the burden of the past and the fear of the future.”~Unknown
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Walk In Dry Places
No Justified Resentments-Personal Inventory
One of the greatest hurdles in sobriety is the so-called justified resentment. We feel that we have a right to be angry at somebody who has hurt or offended us. This feeling might be correct if our anger could remedy the matter and bring it to a just conclusion, but this hardly ever happens. If we are angry, we usually want revenge more than we want justice. Uncontrolled anger will make us behave as unjustly as those who harmed us did. This means more trouble.
Whether revenge is sought or not, anger also poisons our own lives. Emmet Fox compared it to the insane practice of drinking prussic acid. People cannot take a drink of acid and then assign it to the person they detest. They will bear its effect in their own bodies. In the same way, our anger produces its own acids, which destroy our peace of mind and make us ineffective.
We can deal with “justified resentment” by reminding ourselves that there’s no justification for the pain and sickness a festering resentment will cause in our lives. There is no justified resentment.
Today I may have to swim against the tide by not getting upset over matters that enrage others. I will not let myself be drawn into the angry currents around me.
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I’ve been reading a book called Forgive for Good, by Dr. Fred Luskin, an academic researcher at Stanford. Well, he maybe retired now, it’s not a new book. Anyhow, he refers to “unenforceable rules” as the causes of interpersonal unhappiness, and it took me a while to realize that these are the source of resentments, justified or not: behaviors we demand / expect / wish of others, but have no control over. It’s been a useful book for me, and fits well with the steps.
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“Life is a mirror: If you frown at it, it frowns back; If you smile it returns the greeting.”
“Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past.”
“Maintaining my spiritual condition is like building a spiritual bank account, upon which I can draw. The problem is, I never get a statement from the bank, so I have to be careful to keep putting in, or some dark day I’ll find myself overdrawn.”
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That statement about right action has a very Buddhist quality, like the merit-making acts that lead to a better karmic condition. This, and a reading on today’s Meditations thread, reminded me that I really need to get back to a state of Beginner’s Mind. To restart my journey as though it were the first day, and not ground hog day! Beginning with gratitude.
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“Maintaining sobriety is like feeding a parking meter. It’s all about change.” ~Unknown
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“It is in the silence of the heart that God speaks.”~Mother Teresa
“Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be.” ~Abraham Lincoln
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