People-Pleasers

Have you ever been around people-pleasers? They tend to be displeasing. Being around someone who is turned inside out to please another is often irritating and anxiety- producing.

People-pleasing is a behavior we may have adapted to survive in our family. We may not have been able to get the love and attention we deserved. We may not have been given permission to please ourselves, to trust ourselves, and to choose a course of action that demonstrated self-trust.

Turn it over

Thought for the Day

When we came into A.A., the first thing we did was to admit that we couldn't do anything about our drinking. We admitted that alcohol had us licked and that we were helpless against it. We never could decide whether or not to take a drink. We always took the drink. And since we couldn't do anything about it ourselves, we put our whole drink problem into the hands of God. We turned the whole thing over to that Power greater than ourselves. And we have nothing more to do about it, except to trust God to take care of the problem for us. Have I done this honestly and fully?

Meditation for the Day

Alcohol poisoned my........

Thought for the Day

After I became an alcoholic, alcohol poisoned my love for my family and friends, it poisoned my ambition, it poisoned my self-respect. It poisoned my whole life, until I met A.A. My life is happier now than it has been for a long time. I don't want to commit suicide. So with the help of God and A.A., I'm not going to take any more of that alcoholic poison into my system. And I'm going to keep training my mind never even to think of liquor again in any way except as a poison. Do I believe that liquor will poison my life if I ever touch it again?

Meditation for the Day

Patience, humility, and peace.

Thought for the Day

One drink started a train of thought that became an obsession, and from then on, we couldn't stop drinking. We developed a mental compulsion to keep drinking until we got good and drunk. People generally make two mistakes about alcoholism. One mistake is that it can be cured by physical treatment only. The other mistake is that it can be cured by willpower only. Most alcoholics have tried both of these ways and have found that they don't work. But we members of A.A. have found a way to arrest alcoholism. Have I got over my obsession by following the A.A. program?

Meditation for the Day

Waiting

A.A. Thought for the Day

If we're going to stay sober, we've got to learn to want something else more than we want to drink. When we first came into A.A., we couldn't imagine wanting anything else so much or more than drinking. So we had to stop drinking on faith, on faith that some day we really would want something else more than drinking. But after we've been in A.A. for a while, we learn that a sober life can really be enjoyed. We learn how nice it is to get along well with our family, how nice it is to do our work well, whether at home or outside, how nice it is to try to help others. Have I found that when I keep sober, everything goes well for me?
Meditation for the Day

THE LIMITS OF SELF-RELIANCE

 We asked ourselves why we had them [fears]. Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 68

All of my character defects separate me from God's will. When I ignore my association with Him I face the world and my alcoholism alone and must depend on self-reliance. I have never found security and happiness through self-will and the only result is a life of fear and discontent.
 

True Ambition - and False

We have had a much keener look at ourselves and those about us. We have seen that we were prodded by unreasonable fears or anxieties into making a life business of winning fame, money, and what we thought was leadership.
 
So false pride became the reverse side of that ruinous coin marked "Fear." We simply had to be Number One people to cover up our deep-lying inferiorities.

Control

Sometimes, the gray days scare us. Those are the days when the old feelings come rushing back. We may feel needy, scared, ashamed, and unable to care for ourselves.

When this happens, it's hard to trust ourselves, others, the goodness of life, and the good intentions of our Higher Power. Problems seem overwhelming. The past seems senseless; the future, bleak. We feel certain the things we want in life will never happen.

Mental Allergy

Thought for the Day

If alcoholism were just a physical allergy, like asthma or hay fever, it would be easy for us, by taking a skin test with alcohol, to find out whether or not we're alcoholics. But alcoholism is not just a physical allergy. It's also a mental allergy or obsession. After we've become alcoholics, we can still tolerate alcohol physically for quite a while, although we suffer a little more after each binge and each time it takes a little longer to get over the hangovers. Do I realize that since I have become an alcoholic, I cannot tolerate alcohol mentally at all?

Meditation for the Day

Valentine's Day

💕

For children, Valentine's Day means candy hearts, silly cards, and excitement in the air.

How different Valentine's Day can be for us as adults. The Love Day can be a symbol that we have not yet gotten love to work for us as we would like.

Or it can be a symbol of something different, something better. We are in recovery now. We have begun the healing process. Our most painful relationships, we have learned, have assisted us on the journey to healing, even if they did little more than point out our own issues or show us what we don't want in our life.

ABC's

(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.

 That says So much right there! I am an alcoholic and i couldn't as much as i tried to relieve my alcoholism and i depended on others to be my Higher Power.
  I was so defiant to try something new. I kept expecting different results in the same thing putting my faith in man and they let me down over and over.

Higher power

Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

"You can, if you wish, make A.A. itself your 'higher power.' Here's a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are certainly a power greater than you, who have not even come close to a solution. Surely you can have faith in them. Even this minimum of faith will be enough. You will find many members who have crossed the threshold just this way.

Letting Go of Sadness

A block to joy and love can be unresolved sadness from the past.

In the past, we told ourselves many things to deny the pain: It doesn't hurt that much.... Maybe if I just wait, things will change.... It's no big deal. I can get through this.... Maybe if I try to change the other person, I won't have to change myself.

We denied that it hurt because we didn't want to feel the pain.

Unfinished business doesn't go away. It keeps repeating itself, until it gets our attention, until we feel it, deal with it, and heal. That's one lesson we are learning in recovery from codependency and adult children issues.

Call on a Higher Power

 
Thought for the Day

Since I realized that I had become an alcoholic and could never have any more fun with liquor and since I knew that from then on liquor would always get me into trouble, common sense told me that the only thing left for me was a life of sobriety. But I learned another thing in A.A., the most important thing anyone can ever learn: that I could call on a Higher Power to help me keep away from liquor; that I could work with that Divine Principle in the universe; and that God would help me to live a sober, useful, happy life. So now I no longer care about the fact that I can never have any more fun with drinking. Have I learned that I am much happier without it?

Meditation for the Day

Reaction isn't action

Reaction isn't action - that is, it isn't truly creative.
  —Elizabeth Janeway

We must learn how to act rather than react. Unfortunately, we've had lots of training at reacting. And we're all such good imitators. We are a society of reactors. We let the good or the bad behavior of another person determine our own behavior as a matter of course. But the opportunities are unlimited for us to responsibly choose our behavior, independent of all others in our life.

Change is ours, if we want it. A scowl from a spouse need not make us feel rejected. Criticism at work doesn't have to ruin our day. An inconsiderate bus driver might still be politely thanked. And when we decide for ourselves just how we want to act and follow through, self-esteem soars.

Recovery is teaching us to think

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

Recovery is teaching us to think situations through to the end before we act. In the past, we often reacted first and thought later. Unable to wait out the pain, we tried to “fix” our problems by artificial means: drugs, alcohol, food, sex, excitement. Our only goal was to escape and get relief from the ups and downs of life. Rushing from one situation to another, we seldom slowed down enough to relax and really think through the consequences of our actions.

BOREDOM

Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Nietzsche

Boredom is a form of conceit. When we are bored we are saying, “Okay, life, you are not doing your job of keeping me entertained.” To think that life, or those around us, or the world itself is here primarily to keep us amused and entertained is “stinking thinking.”

Move Gently into Forgiveness

“I never knew how much I blamed and hated myself. I never knew how much shame and self-contempt I picked up from situations I’d been through until I really forgave myself and felt how that feels,” one woman said to me.

Loving yourself, forgiving yourself, accepting yourself– all of these feel different from judging yourself. Many of us have lived with so much judgement of ourselves that we take these feelings for granted. We just think that’s how we’re doomed to feel. Until we do forgive ourselves, we don’t realize how much we need to, and how good, how great, how absolutely terrific that feels.

Happiness is something we all deserve

I believe that a sign of maturity is accepting deferred gratification.
  —Peggy Cahn

It's okay to want to feel good all the time. Happiness is something we all deserve. However, there are often preparatory steps we need to take, a number of which will not bring joy, before we arrive at a place of sustained happiness.

The level of our pain at any particular moment has prompted us to seek short-term highs. And with each attempt at a quick "fix," we will be reminded that, just as with our many former attempts, the high is very short-term.

Stopping Victimization

Stopping Victimization

Before recovery, many of us lacked a frame of reference with which to name the victimization and abuse in our life. We may have thought it was normal that people mistreated us. We may have believed we deserved mistreatment; we may have been attracted to people who mistreated us.

We need to let go, on a deep level, of our need to be victimized and to be victims. We need to let go of our need to be in dysfunctional relationships and systems at work, in love, in family relationships, in friendships. We deserve better. We deserve much better. It is our right. When we believe in our right to happiness, we will have happiness.

Don't borrow from tomorrow.

Reflection for the Day

Before I came to The Program, I hadn't the faintest idea of what it was to "Live In The Now." I often became obsessed with the things that happened yesterday, last week, or even five years ago. Worse yet, many of my waking hours were spent clearing away the "wreckage of the future." "To me," Walt Whitman once wrote, "every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle." Can I truly believe that in my heart?

Will Power And Choice

 
“We A.A.’s know the futility of trying to break the drinking obsession by will power alone. However, we do know that it takes great willingness to adopt A.A.’s Twelve Steps as a way of life that can restore us to sanity.

“No matter how grievous the alcohol obsession, we happily find that other vital choices can still be made. For example, we can choose to admit that we are personally powerless over alcohol; that dependence upon a ‘Higher Power’ is a necessity, even if this be simply dependence upon an A.A. group. Then we can choose to try for a life of honesty and humility, of selfless service to our fellows and to ‘God as we understand Him.’

“As we continue to make these choices and so move toward these high aspirations, our sanity returns and the compulsion to drink vanishes,”

As Bill Sees It Letter, 1966 p. 88

Just for today

 
Pocket Sponsor Book
There is no right way to do the wrong thing. Whatever you were thinking of doing, you can not rationalize it into ‘right’ action by saying, ‘yes but this’ or ‘no but that.’ You know what’s right and you know what’s wrong-that gut feeling guides you.
When things go wrong, I don’t go with them.

“Walk Softly and Carry a Big Book” Book
Just because you’re having a bad day doesn’t mean you’re having a bad life.

Time for Joy Book
I am listening to the voice of truth and love today.

Alkiespeak Book
An attitude of gratitude cuts through analysis paralysis. – James A.

Hour To Hour Book
Putting pen to paper can be a pain, reading new material can be frustrating, making numerous phone calls can be an annoyance, getting to a lot of meetings can seem boring, BUT this is the way we start. We must remember what circumstances brought us here in the first place. Was that such a pleasure?
My I place one foot in front of the other to reach my destination of sobriety.

WISE MOMENT

(author unknown)

I must use the moment wisely for it soon will pass away,
And be lost to me forever as part of yesterday.
I must exercise compassion,  help the fallen to their feet,
Be a friend to the friendless, make an empty life complete
The unkind things I do today may never be undone,
And friendships that I fail to win  may nevermore be won.
 I may not have another chance on bended knee to pray,
And thank God with humble heart  for giving me this day
God bless all

Enjoying Recovery

What a journey!

This process of growth and change takes us along an ever-changing road. Sometimes the way is hard and craggy. Sometimes we climb mountains. Sometimes we slide down the other side on a toboggan.

Sometimes we rest.

Sometimes we grope through the darkness. Sometimes we're blinded by sunlight.

At times many may walk with us on the road; sometimes we feel nearly alone.

Ever changing, always interesting, always leading someplace better, someplace good.

What a journey!

Today, God, help me relax and enjoy the scenery. Help me know I'm right where I need to be on my journey.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie