Love this Its very true that dealing with problems in sobriety can be handled much better and with much more ease, than those in active addiction (in fact I rarely dealt with my problems when using as I was on a mission to escape/numb).
But bcuz of the 12 step program, I came to understand a Power greater than myself, which over time, transformed into a relationship with God. God gives me a solid foundation to stand on in which we (God and I) can handle problems today. I dont have to do this alone. I try to remember that. Just bcuz I may not feel prepared for the incoming “storm”, doesnt mean God hasnt already provided what I need to work thru it.
You must find the ideas that have some promise in them…it’s not enough to just have ideas. --George E. Woodberry
Each day we’re flooded with ideas. Everyone seems to have found the truth, and now they want to share it. We may feel loaded down with all these ideas. Who and what do we believe?
We’ve fallen on a set of ideas that hold great promise: The Twelve Steps. The ideas of the program have much promise because they’re simple. They ask nothing that isn’t good for us. They have been proven to work.
Now we’re people with more than ideas that work. We’re people with good ideas that work. When we find ourselves wondering how to live, all we need to do is look to the Steps.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me to put my energy into working the Steps.
Action for the Day: Today, I’ll list what is right about the Steps for me. What promises do the Steps hold for me?
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” ~Helen Keller
“The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. It’s connection.” ~Johann Hari
Funny about ideas. This has been a weekend where when I let go, and simply listened, there were so many Godwinks that I was beside myself. There were no accidents, and no mere coincidences. By listening without ideas or agenda, and remembering to consider God and the steps, I was treated to magic on an ordinary work day. Extraordinary. No ideas required, beyond sincere desire to discern and do the next right thing. Blessed.
Resentment is the Number One offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have also been spiritually ill. When our spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.
In dealing with our resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions, or principles with whom we were angry. We asked
ourselves why we were angry. In most cases it was found that our self-esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions, our personal relationships (including sex) were hurt or threatened.
“The most heated bit of letter-writing can be a wonderful safety
valve–providing the wastebasket is somewhere nearby.”
Life didn’t promise to be wonderful. —Teddy Pendergrass
Life doesn’t promise us anything, except a chance. We have a chance to live any way we like. No matter how we choose to live, we’ll have pain and we’ll have joy. And we can learn from both.
Because of our recovery program, we can have life’s biggest wonder—love. We share it in a smile, a touch, a phone call, or a note. We share it with our friends, our partners, our family. Life didn’t promise to be wonderful, but it sure is full of little wonders! And we only have to open up and see them, feel them, and let them happen.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me see the wonders of life today, in nature, in people’s faces, in my own heart.
Action for the Day: I can help make a wonderful things happen for others, with a smile, a greeting, a helping hand. What “little” things will I do for somebody today?
“Serenity isn’t freedom from the storm, it is peace within the storm.”
"When we release the bitterness, judgment and blame of the past, whether of ourselves or others, the past becomes a stepping stone to spiritual growth, to increased compassion, understanding and love. Today, repeat several times, “I bless my past and see it as a stepping stone to greater good.” -Mary Manin Morrissey
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” -William Arthur Ward
“Our false self constantly seeks outward affection, recognition or praise, but we secretly believe we don’t deserve it.” BRB p. 7
Many of us spent ‘forever’ trying to portray an image of having it all together, seeking approval by acting or dressing a certain way. We looked to those who seemed more confident to tell us how to think and feel. By doing so, we learned not to trust our own intuition. We were completely at the mercy of others. We were disconnected from our physical and emotional selves.
When we finally received some recognition, perhaps on the job after working nearly around-the-clock, our sense of satisfaction was short-lived. Deep down we “knew” we didn’t deserve that recognition because our inner critical voice was saying, “If they saw the real me, this wouldn’t be happening.”
But as life changes in recovery, we now look for our self-esteem within ourselves and in our relationship with our Higher Power, not other people. We let the peace of the ACA program grow inside of us, one day at a time, through rigorous honesty, striving to know and understand our Inner Child. We stop people-pleasing because it deeply damages us. We have finally become the center of our own lives with an inner loving parent who won’t abandon us.
On this day I put myself first and let others think what they will. I am enough just where I stand right now.
“We have become very grateful in the course of our recovery… We have a disease, but we do recover” Basic Text, p. 8
Active addiction was no picnic; many of us barely came out of it alive. But ranting against the disease, lamenting what it has done to us, pitying ourselves for the condition it has left us in—these things can only keep us locked in the spirit of bitterness and resentment. The path to freedom and spiritual growth begins where bitterness ends, with acceptance.
There is no denying the suffering brought by addiction. Yet it was this disease that brought us to Narcotics Anonymous; without it, we would neither have sought nor found the blessing of recovery. In isolating us, it forced us to seek fellowship. In causing us to suffer, it gave us the experience needed to help others, help no one else was so uniquely suited to offer. In forcing us to our knees, addiction gave us the opportunity to surrender to the care of a loving Higher Power.
We would not wish the disease of addiction on anyone. But the fact remains that we addicts already have this disease— and further, that without this disease we may never have embarked on our spiritual journey. Thousands of people search their whole lives for what we have found in Narcotics Anonymous: fellowship, a sense of purpose, and conscious contact with a Higher Power. Today, we are grateful for everything that has brought us this blessing.
Just for today: I will accept the fact of my disease, and pursue the blessing of my recovery.
Life deals more rigorously with some than others. --Lewis F. Presnall
How often we think about a friend, He sure is lucky! And probably just as often we say to ourselves, Why did that happen to me? It’s not fair! The truth is, life isn’t always fair. We don’t all get the same experiences, the same lessons. But we each learn what we need to learn in order to fulfill our destiny.
We have to learn to trust. Maybe a bike gets stolen or a friend moves away. It’s not easy to accept such things as these, but we must all learn to understand and accept losses in our lives.
Perhaps we fail a test. The lesson we learn from this may be to study harder or to consider a different course of study in school. There are always reasons for why things happen, but we don’t have to know them.
Seeing the Big Red Book cited, and the next post being from NA, was surprisingly emotional for me. I went to ACA/ACoA meetings bc I thought that was part of my challenge. I went to NA bc I belonged, and bc my sponsor said their workbook was incomparable. The contrast was stark: in-person ACA meetings here were whine-fests, adults hell-bent on preserving their fluency in the language of victim-ese, while the recovering/recovered NA’s were powerful, restored to agency and to the acceptance of full responsibility for their own lives, under the care and guidance of a merciful HP. I still find the Laundry List helpful as a measure of my self-will vs my variable humility and reliance upon God. But although I haven’t shut the door on my past, I see it as the pain-point of surrender and growth. Nothing to complain about or wish different, even though it ‘should’ have been different. I have a new Employer, worthy of my trust, attention, and work. Grateful. Editing to add: I’m by no means saying all ACA meetings are like this, or that never do AA / NA meetings get away from the Primary Purpose and become sessions for the culture of complaint. It seems that in AA / NA we have better levers to refocus ourselves on the steps, or ppl who enjoy kvetching rather than recovering will stay, while the rest move on to BB & step focused meetings. After all, as they say: All you need to start a new meeting is a coffee pot and a resentment.
I too found some of this common in the ACA room I joined, so I didn’t stay too long. But it definitely hits home sometimes and I appreciate their literature. I have felt at times like I should do the step work there, but haven’t yet. More will always be revealed! Thank you for sharing your experience, strength and hope so freely!
There may be a hidden meaning in that bumper sticker that reminds us to “Do it Sober,” but we can also read it to mean that real sobriety should guide everything we do today.
Real sobriety is emotional sobriety. We have it when our principles protect us from overpowering feelings growing out of greed, fear, and resentment. Even without the bottle, an attack of fear or resentment can distort personal judgment and lead to foolish mistakes. Whatever we do, whether it’s sweeping a factory floor or leading a corporate board meeting, we should do with confidence and calm self-control.
When we work in this way, we help others. We only harm them if we bring bitterness and resentment into their space. True emotional sobriety helps us set a better example and assures others that AA really works in people’s lives. One AA member was pleasantly surprised when he was complimented for remaining calm in confrontations with angry people. He realized that his AA principles had been at work in his workplace, helping him to maintain a calm dignity that made him assertive and effective. Whatever we do sober, we always do better.
Today I’ll remind myself to stay emotionally as well as physically sober. So-called Dry Drunks are not slips, but they destroy my effectiveness and should have no place in my life.
There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing. --Mary McCarthy
We understand today ideas we couldn’t grasp yesterday. We are conscious this year of details of our past that we may have glossed over at the time. Our blinders are slowly giving way, readying us for the truths we couldn’t absorb before.
“When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” And the teacher comes bearing truths that we need to assimilate into our growing bank of knowledge. The truths we may be given today, or any day, won’t always make us happy immediately.
We may learn that a job is no longer right for us. Or that a relationship has reached an end. And the impending changes create unrest. But in the grand scheme of our lives, the changes wrought by these truths are good and will contribute in time to our happiness.
Let’s celebrate the truths as they come and trust the outcome to God. We are traveling a very special road. The way is rocky. The bends limit our vision, but we will be given all the direction we need.
The truths I receive today will guide my steps. I shall move in peace.
"Too much of my life has been spent in dwelling upon the faults of others. This is a most subtle and perverse form of self-satisfaction,
which permits us to remain comfortably unaware of our own defects.
Too often we are heard to say, 'If it weren’t for him (or her), how happy I’d be!"
Our very first problem is to accept our present circumstances as they are, ourselves as we are, and the people about us as they are. This is
to adopt a realistic humility without which no genuine advance can even begin. Again and again, we shall need to return to that
unflattering point of departure. This is an exercise in acceptance that we can profitably practice every day of our lives.
Provided we strenuously avoid turning these realistic surveys of the facts of life into unrealistic alibis for apathy or defeatism, they can be the sure foundation upon which increased emotional heath and therefore spiritual progress can be built.
Tomorrow doesn’t matter, for I have lived today. --Horace
Life is found in the present. One of the first things we hear when we enter the program is, One Day at a Time. We break life into short time periods. This give us the power to change. We’re not sure we can stay sober for a lifetime. But we know that with God, and our program, we can stay sober for today.
This holds true for many other things in out lives. We’re not sure we can go a lifetime without feeling self-pity, but we can give it up for a day. By living One Day at a Time, we become more sure of our strength. We have the power to change things only in the present. The present holds much for us, if we get a hold on it.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, You are found in the moment. You are here. I will stay with You minute by minute.
Action for the Day: I will ground myself in the present. Today, I’ll not worry about the past or the future.
Its very true that dealing with problems in sobriety can be handled much better and with much more ease, than those in active addiction (in fact I rarely dealt with my problems when using as I was on a mission to escape/numb).
