Help your brother across the stream and you’ll find yourself on the other side.
Speaking without thinking is shooting without aiming. --French Proverb
“You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.” --Leo Aikman
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. --Leo Buscaglia
Keep It Simple
Little things affect little minds.—Benjamin Disraeli
Before recovery, we liked things our way. We thought every new thing we tired should go right the first time. Little problems could really upset us. We let little things spoil our day. We let little things affect big things—our entire lives. And our bad moods affected people around us.
Funny how we have fewer of those problems now.
The program is teaching us to let go. What a relief when we know we don’t have to control every little thing. How nice when things get done without our “expert advice”!
We are starting to see what’s really important, and what’s not. One promise of the program is coming true: we know how to handle situations better.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me see what is really important for me today. Help me to stop worrying about what’s not.
Action for the Day: When I’m upset, I’ll ask myself, Is this problem really so bad? If I can’t change it. I’ll let go.
We are prisoners of our own resentments.
Forgiveness unlocks the door and sets us free.
“The time is always right to do what is right.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
My doubts and fears, will drive me back into the wilderness.
I must trust God.
When God calls, God makes a way.
–Lynn Sloan Barnes
Each Day a New Beginning
Love is not getting, but giving. It is sacrifice. And sacrifice is glorious! --Joanna Field
How easily we mistake attention for love. Even more easily, we trick ourselves into thinking our ability to control someone signifies love - especially theirs for us. But love is something far different from either attention or control. Far different.
Love frees others from our grasp–and lets them return on their own. Love is placing another’s personal needs above our own, without regret. Love is selfless, yet it exhilarates the self. Giving love softens our edges, completes us, and connects us to the people with whom we are fulfilling our destinies.
Wanting love is a normal human desire, not one we should deny. And we shall receive love, the less our emphasis is on getting it, the more on giving it. We invite love when we freely and honestly give it. Another invitation for love comes from loving ourselves; self-hatred, which trapped many of us for years, hampers us no longer.
Love inspires–ourselves and those we give it to. It brightens our way, lessens our burdens, makes possible our rightful unfolding.
I won’t look for love today. I will just give it. It will bless me tenfold
“Take time for solitude. How else can you contemplate the blessings of recovery,” --Abby Warman
As Bill Sees It
Dependence–Unhealthy or Healthy, p. 72
“Nothing can be more demoralizing than a clinging and abject dependence upon another human being. This often amounts to the
demand for a degree of protection and love that no one could possibly satisfy. So our hoped-for protectors finally flee, and once more we
are left alone–either to grow up or to disintegrate.”
<< << << >> >> >>
We discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself. We found that dependence upon His perfect justice,
forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where nothing else would.
If we really depended upon God, we couldn’t very well play God to our fellows, nor would we feel the urge to rely wholly on human protection and care.
Keep It Simple
God loves the world through us—Mother Teresa
In Step Three, we turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. How do we feel God’s care, God’s love? We feel God’s care and love through how people treat us. Our Higher Power works through people who love us back to life. With time, we begin returning this care and love to others. We feel this warm love flow right through us and out to others. We’re kind without trying to be. We smile at others for no reason. We comfort those who hurt just by holding them.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, use me to make Your love real to someone today.
Action for the Day: Fear sometimes keeps me from loving. I’ll list three things I’m afraid will happen if I’m “to loving.” I’ll share these fears with my sponsor.
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.
–Jim Rohn
“Happiness is not in our circumstances, but in ourselves.”
–John B. Sheerin
“Nothing is worth more than this day.”
–Goethe
“It is a sign of strength, not of weakness, to admit that you don’t know all the answers.”
–John P. Lougbrane
Each Day a New Beginning
The child is an almost universal symbol for the soul’s transformation. The child is whole, not yet divided. . .when we would heal the mind. . .we ask this child to speak to us. --Susan Griffin
Was there ever a time when we did not feel divided from ourselves? Occasionally we get a glimpse of what such spiritual wholeness would be like, but most of the time we struggle with feelings of conflict, unevenness, a divided heart. Perhaps, “the child” is a metaphor for a spiritual guide, like our own higher power, that can help us in our journey toward self-acceptance.
“I may not be perfect, but parts of me are excellent,” writes author Ashleigh Brilliant. If we can be happy with this proud, funny boast then perhaps we can stop berating ourselves for our imperfections. If we dwell on our own contradictory impulses, we give them too much important, too much power.
Let me trust to my glimpses of harmony and wholeness and be grateful for the richness of my spirit.
“Happiness is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with
it.”–Anon.
Courage can’t see around corners, but goes around them anyway.–Mignon McLaughlin
Walk in Dry Places
The Secret of Detachment
Dealing with others.
“Detaching with love” is what those close to alcoholics do when they realize they can’t change them.
The same principle should apply to any distressing situation, but how does it work? How can I detach from people who really bother me____ especially fellow workers, or perhaps a boss or customer?
The secret of detachment is expressed in the biblical charge, “Resist not evil.” We don’t fight or resist the other person, or even try to change their behavior. We stop believing that the other person’s behavior can really control us in the future.
We become impersonal about something that was once highly charged with resentment and bitterness. At no point, however, do we say that the others’ wrong behavior is all right, nor do we lie to ourselves about what the other is doing.
Detachment does not mean that the outcome will be recovery or change for the other person. That sometimes happens, and we’re grateful when it does. If we detach in the right way, however, the outcome will always be better than anything we could bring about by fighting the situation.
We have to count an outcome favorable if we stay sober and under control in the midst of an insane situation.
I will detach myself from conflicts with others if they arise today. I am not going to fight anything or anybody, and I know this will bring me closer to the ideal of living at peace with everybody.
