Daily Reflections & Daily Readings

[MandiH]

July 20~Language Of Letting Go

Letting Go of Resistance

Do not be in such a hurry to move on.

Relax. Breathe deeply. Be. Be in harmony today.

Be open. There is beauty around and in us today. There is purpose and meaning in today.

There is importance in today—not so much in what happens to us, but in how we respond.

Let today happen. We learn our lessons, we work things out, we change in a simple fashion: by living our life fully today.

Do not worry about tomorrow’s feelings, problems, or gifts. Do not worry about whether we can trust ourselves, life, or our Higher Power tomorrow.

Everything we need today shall be given to us. That is a promise—from God, from the Universe.

Feel today’s feelings. Solve today’s problems. Enjoy today’s gifts. Trust yourself, life, and your Higher Power today.

Acquire the art of living fully today. Absorb the lessons, the healing, the beauty, the love available to us today.

Do not be in such a rush to move on. There is no hurry. We cannot escape; we only postpone. Let the feelings go; breathe in peace and healing.

Do not be in such a hurry to move on.

Today, I will not run from myself, my circumstances, or my feelings. I will be open to myself, others, my Higher Power, and life. I will trust that by facing today to the best of my ability, I will acquire the skills I need to face tomorrow.

[MandiH]

July 20~NA Just For Today

Step One

“We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Step One

The First Step begins with “we,” and there’s a reason for that. There is great strength in making a verbal
admission of our powerlessness. And when we go to meetings and make this admission, we gain more
than personal strength. We become members, part of a collective “we” that allows us, together, to recover from our addiction. With membership in NA comes a wealth of experience: the experience of other addicts who have found a way to recover from their disease.

No longer must we try to solve the puzzle of our addiction on our own. When we honestly admit our
powerlessness over our addiction, we can begin the search for a better way to live. We won’t be searching alone - we’re in good company.

Just for today: I will start the day with an admission of my powerlessness over addiction. I will remind
myself that the First Step starts with “we,” and know that I never have to be alone with my disease again.
pg. 210

[MandiH]

July 20~Keep It Simple

Living so fully. I can’t image what any drug would do for me.—Joan Baez

When we were using alcohol and other drugs, our lives kept getting emptier. We tired to keep new things out of our lives. We were scared and tired. We saw feelings as bad. So we got high instead of feeling them.

Now we can live fully every day. We don’t want to block our feelings. We aren’t afraid to opening up to
new things and people.

And the more we open up, the happier we are. Our feelings are free. They bounce around. They don’t get stuck. We feel alive. Sure, we feel pain and fear sometimes. But we feel joy, love, and laughter too. And, more and more often, we feel alive.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, please help me live fully today. Help me notice my feelings.

Action for the Day: Today, I’ll list five things I’ve enjoyed in the last twenty-four hours.

[MandiH]

July 21~Daily Reflections

A PRICELESS GIFT

By this time in all probability we have gained some measure of release from our more devastating handicaps. We enjoy moments in which there is something like real peace of mind. To those of us who have hitherto known only excitement, depression, or anxiety – in other words, to all of us – this newfound peace is a priceless gift.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 74

I am learning to let go and let God, to have a mind that is open and a heart that is willing to receive God’s grace in all my affairs; in this way I can experience the peace and freedom that come as a result of surrender. It has been proven that an act of surrender, originating in desperation and defeat, can grow into an ongoing act of faith, and that faith means freedom and victory.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

July 21~Language Of Letting Go

Being Is Enough

We are not always clear about what we are experiencing, or why.

In the midst of grief, transition, transformation, learning, healing, or discipline—it’s difficult to have perspective.

That’s because we have not learned the lesson yet. We are in the midst of it. The gift of clarity has not yet arrived.

Our need to control can manifest itself as a need to know exactly what’s going on. We cannot always know. Sometimes, we need to let ourselves be and trust that clarity will come later, in retrospect.

If we are confused, that is what we are supposed to be. The confusion is temporary. We shall see. The lesson, the purpose, shall reveal itself—in time, in its own time.

It will all make perfect sense—later.

Today, I will stop straining to know what I don’t know, to see what I can’t see, to understand what I don’t yet understand. I will trust that being is sufficient, and let go of my need to figure things out.

[MandiH]

July 21~Keep It Simple

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise. —Gore
Vidal

Many of us used a “know it all” act to keep people away. We kept everyone around us on edge. They
were afraid of our judgments, just we were secretly afraid of theirs. Why were we so busy with everyone
else’s life? So we didn’t have to look at our own! We were afraid of what was happening to us. But we
didn’t want to see how sick we were becoming.

Now we’re not afraid. We don’t need to keep people away. We don’t need to run their lives. We have our life to live. And we’re enjoying it.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, You are the expert, not me. Teach me. I am Your student.

Action for the Day: Today, I’ll list the ways I chased away those who cared about me… I’ll work on the
Steps on these items for the next week.

[MandiH]

July 21~Each Day a New Beginning

I wake each morning with the thrill of expectation and the joy of being truly alive. And I’m thankful for
this day. --Angela L. Wozniak

Being open to the day’s offering, all of it, and looking for the positive experiences therein, becomes habit
only after a firm commitment and dedicated practice. Today is special for each of us.

These next twenty-four hours will be unlike all others. And we are not the persons we were, even as
recently as yesterday. Looking forward to all of the day’s events, with the knowledge that we are in the
care of our higher power, in every detail, frees us to make the most of everything that happens.

We have been given the gift of life. We are survivors. The odds against survival in our past make clear we
have yet a job to do and are being given the help to do it. Confidence wavers in all of us, but the strength
we need will be given to each of us.

In this day that stands before me, I can be certain that I’ll have many chances for growth, for kindness to others, for developing confidence in myself. I will be thoughtful in my actions today. They are special and will be repeated no more.

[MandiH]

July 21~Daily Reflections

“THE GOOD AND THE BAD”

“My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad.”
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 76

The joy of life is in the giving. Being freed of my shortcomings, that I may more freely be of service, allows humility to grow in me. My shortcomings can be humbly placed in God’s loving care and be removed. The essence of Step Seven is humility, and what better way to seek humility than by giving all of myself – good and bad – to God, so that He may remove the bad and return to me the good.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

July 21~Language Of Letting Go

Learning to Trust Again

Many of us have trust issues.

Some of us tried long and hard to trust untrustworthy people. Over and again, we believed lies and promises never to be kept. Some of us tried to trust people for the impossible; for instance, trusting a practicing alcoholic not to drink again.

Some of us trusted our Higher Power inappropriately. We trusted God to make other people do what we wanted, then felt betrayed when that didn’t work out.

Some of us were taught that life couldn’t be trusted, that we had to control and manipulate our way through.

Most of us were taught, inappropriately, that we couldn’t trust ourselves.

In recovery, we’re healing from our trust issues. We’re learning to trust again. The first lesson in trust is this: We can learn to trust ourselves. We can be trusted. If others have taught us we cannot trust ourselves, they were lying. Addictions and dysfunctional systems make people lie.

We can learn to appropriately trust our Higher Power—not to make people do what we want them to, but to help us take care of ourselves, and to bring about the best possible circumstances, at the best possible times, in our life.

We can trust the process—of life and recovery. We do not have to control, obsess, or become hypervigilant. We may not always understand where we are going, or what’s being worked out in us, but we can trust that something good is happening.

When we learn to do this, we are ready to learn to trust other people. When we trust our Higher Power and when we trust ourselves, we will know who to trust and what to trust that person for.

Perhaps we always did. We just didn’t listen closely enough to ourselves or trust what we heard.

Today, I will affirm that I can learn to trust appropriately. I can trust myself, my Higher Power, and recovery. I can learn to appropriately trust others too.

Quoted from the app The Language of Letting Go.

[MandiH]

July 23~Daily Reflections

I ASK GOD TO DECIDE

“I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows.”
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 76

Having admitted my powerlessness and made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understand Him, I don’t decide which defects get removed, or the order in which defects get removed, or the time frame in which they get removed. I ask God to decide which defects stand in the way of my usefulness to Him and to others, and then I humbly ask Him to remove them.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

July 23~Language Of Letting Go

Making It Happen

Stop trying so hard to make it happen.

Stop doing so much, if doing so much is wearing you out or not achieving the desired results. Stop thinking so much and so hard about it. Stop worrying so about it. Stop trying to force, to manipulate, to coerce, or to make it happen.

Making things happen is controlling. We can take positive action to help things happen. We can do our part. But many of us do much more than our part. We overstep the boundaries from caring and doing our part into controlling, caretaking, and coercing.

Controlling is self-defeating. It doesn’t work. By overextending ourselves to make something happen, we may actually be stopping it from happening.

Do your part in relaxed, peaceful harmony. Then let it go. Just let it go. Force yourself to let it go, if necessary. “Act as if.” Put as much energy into letting go as you have into trying to control. You’ll get much better results.

It may not happen. It may not happen the way we wanted it to and hoped it would. But our controlling wouldn’t have made it happen either.

Learn to let things happen because that’s what they’ll do anyway. And while we’re waiting to see what happens, we’ll be happier and so will those around us.

Today, I will stop forcing things to happen. Instead, I will allow things to happen naturally. If I catch myself trying to force events or control people, I will stop and figure out a way to detach.

[MandiH]

July 23~Walk In Dry Places

Sensing Rejection

Self-Esteem and Maturity

We laugh when a recovering person tells how he “learned to quit just before he got fired.” We sometimes can tell when a rejection is coming, and we take steps… such as quitting… To avoid further pain and humiliation.

In the recovery process, there still may be times when we sense a coming rejection. If it does come, we must remember that rejections is part of living. People receive rejection for all sorts of reasons, including wrong ones.

When we do sense any kind of a rejection in the works, our best course is to let it happen, accept it, and put it behind us. If we are living our program, we don’t need to feel pain or humiliation, as rejection is simply part of normal human experience.

I’ll try today to be as accepting as possible in everything I do. If others choose to reject me, I will also accept this without resentment or self-reproach.

[MandiH]

July 23~Each Day a New Beginning

For this is wisdom; to live, To take what fate, or the Gods, may give. --Laurence Hope

We can’t control the events of our lives, but we do have mastery over our attitudes. The chances will be
many, today, to react negatively or positively to circumstances we find ourselves in. We can consider that each circumstance has something special in it for us.

Positive expectations regarding the planned as well as spontaneous activities of the day will influence the activity’s flow, our involvement with it, and our interactions with the other people involved. A positive attitude seems to breed positive experiences. In other words, we attract into our lives that which we expect.

How often do we get up angry, feeling behind when the day has only begun, short-tempered with our children, “ready” for a tough one at work? And we generally find it.

The Serenity Prayer offers us all the knowledge, all the wisdom we’ll ever need. We can accept what has
to be, change what we can, and not get confused between the two. We can inventory our attitude. Are we taking charge of it? Our attitude is something we can change.

I won’t get trapped today by a negative attitude. I will accept the challenge of turning my day around.

[MandiH]

July 24~Daily Reflections

HELPING OTHERS

Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers, depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 20

Self-centeredness was my problem. All my life people had been doing things for me and I not only expected it, but I was ungrateful and resentful they didn’t do more. Why should I help others, when they were supposed to help me? If others had troubles, didn’t they deserve them? I was filled with self-pity, anger and resentment. Then I learned that by helping others, with no thought of return, I could overcome this obsession with selfishness, and if I understood humility, I would know peace and serenity. No longer do I need to drink.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

July 24~Language Of Letting Go

Denial

Denial is a powerful tool. Never underestimate its ability to cloud your vision.

Be aware that, for many reasons, we have become experts at using this tool to make reality more tolerable. We have learned well how to stop the pain caused by reality—not by changing our circumstances, but by pretending our circumstances are something other than what they are.

Do not be too hard on yourself. While one part of you was busy creating a fantasy-reality, the other part went to work on accepting the truth.

Now, it is time to find courage. Face the truth. Let it sink gently in.

When we can do that, we will be moved forward.

God, give me the courage and strength to see clearly.

[MandiH]

July 24~Each Day a New Beginning

… The idea has gained currency that women have often been handicapped not only by a fear of failure–
not unknown to men either, but by a fear of success as well. --Sonya Rudikoff

It was our practice, before coming to this program, to eat, drink, and smoke our fears away. What we
came to realize, profoundly, was that the fears couldn’t be escaped even while high. This program is
helping us to understand that fears are human, normal and survivable when we let God and our friends in the program lend a helping hand.

Drugs and alcohol distorted our perceptions. Our fears, whether large or small, were distorted. And we
still distort those fears, on occasion, because we move away from the spiritual reality of our lives.
Remember, we are confronted with no situation too big to handle, no experience for which we are
unprepared, if we but turn to that greater power that the program offers us.

We cannot fail in whatever we try today. The outcome of any task attempted is just as it should be. And however we succeed today, we will be shown the steps, at the right time, to make use of that success.

I shall not fear failure or success. I am not alone in experiencing either; both are stepping-stones on my
life’s journey.

[MandiH]

July 24~NA Just For Today

The Masks Have To Go

“… we covered low self-esteem by hiding behind phony images that we hoped would fool people. The
masks have to go”
Basic Text, p.32

Over-sensitivity, insecurity, and lack of identity are often associated with active addiction. Many of us
carry these with us into recovery; our fears of inadequacy, rejection, and lack of direction do not
disappear overnight. Many of us have images, false personalities we have constructed either to protect
ourselves or please others. Some of us use masks because we’re not sure who we really are.
Sometimes we think that these images, built to protect us while using, might also protect us in recovery.

We use false fronts to hide our true personality, to disguise our lack of self-esteem. These masks hide us from others and also from our own true selves. By living a lie, we are saying that we cannot live with the truth about ourselves. The more we hide our real selves, the more we damage our self-esteem.

One of the miracles of recovery is the recognition of ourselves, complete with assets and liabilities. Self
esteem begins with this recognition. Despite our fear of becoming vulnerable, we need to be willing to let
go of our disguises. We need to be free of our masks and free to trust ourselves.

Just for today: I will let go of my masks and allow my self esteem to grow.

[MandiH]

July 25~Daily Reflections

THOSE WHO STILL SUFFER

For us, if we neglect those who are still sick, there is unremitting danger to our own lives and sanity.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 151

I know the torment of drinking compulsively to quiet my nerves and my fears. I also know the pain of white-knuckled sobriety. Today, I do not forget the unknown person who suffers quietly, withdrawn and hiding in the desperate relief of drinking. I ask my Higher Power to give me His guidance and the courage to be willing to be His instrument to carry within me compassion and unselfish actions. Let the group continue to give me the strength to do with others what I cannot do alone.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

[MandiH]

July 25~Language Of Letting Go

Keep at It

Keep practicing your recovery behaviors, even when they feel awkward, even when they haven’t quite taken yet, even if you don’t get it yet.

Sometimes it takes years for a recovery concept to move from our mind into our heart and soul. We need to work at recovery behaviors with the diligence, effort, and repeated practice we applied to codependent behaviors. We need to force ourselves to do things even when they don’t feel natural. We need to tell ourselves we care about ourselves and can take care of ourselves even when we don’t believe what we’re saying.

We need to do it, and do it, and do it—day after day, year after year.

It is unreasonable to expect this new way of life to sink in overnight. We may have to “act as if” for months, years, before recovery behaviors become ingrained and natural.

Even after years, we may find ourselves, in times of stress or duress, reverting to old ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

We may have layers of feelings we aren’t ready to acknowledge until years into our recovery. That’s okay! When it’s time, we will.

Do not give up! It takes time to get self-love into the core of us. It takes repeated practice. Time and experience. Lessons, lessons, and more lessons.

Then, just when we think we’ve arrived, we find we have more to learn.

That’s the joy of recovery. We get to keep learning and growing all of our life!

Keep on taking care of yourself, no matter what. Keep on plugging away at recovery behaviors, one day at a time. Keep on loving yourself, even when it doesn’t feel natural. Act as if for as long as necessary, even if that time period feels longer than necessary.

One day, it will happen. You will wake up, and find that what you’ve been struggling with and working so hard at and forcing yourself to do, finally feels comfortable. It has hit your soul.

Then, you go on to learn something new and better.

Today, I will plug away at my recovery behaviors, even if they don’t feel natural. I will force myself to go through the motions even if that feels awkward. I will work at loving myself until I really do.

[MandiH]

July 25~Keep It Simple

If the spirit within us withers (dies), so to will all the world we build around us.—Theodore Roszab

This is what happened during our illness—our spirits were dying. Our relationships were dying. this is
because addiction is death.

And recovery is life! The Steps breathe like into us. Our groups breathe life into us. We start to heal
because we once again feel hope. We’re less afraid of what tomorrow may bring. As our hope grows,
others feel it too.

We’re starting to slowly rebuild our world. We’re building our world on the Twelve Steps and their
message of hope.

Prayer for the Day: I give myself to life. Higher Power, work with me as I rebuild my world.

Action for the Day: I’ll talk with a friend about hope. I’ll see my hope as a sign of how close I am to my
program.