Living the Twelve Step way is a twenty-four-hour-a-day opportunity.

Twelve Step programs expose us to ideas that seem foreign. It takes time to embrace a new value system we can live by every day. Absorbing and using these principles for every decision and action removes the worry from our lives.

Changing how we’ve thought and acted doesn’t happen overnight. Changing one thing at a time is enough at first. Perhaps we’ll give up our feeling of hopelessness. The Second Step tells us that God can free us from our insanity, our hopelessness. All we need do is ask for help, and hope will come. Maybe we decide the urge to take over someone else’s life must end.

Change

 

It only takes one person to change your life - you.
  —Ruth Casey

Change is not easy, but it's absolutely unavoidable. Doors will close. Barriers will surface. Frustrations will mount. Nothing stays the same forever, and it's such folly to wish otherwise. Growth accompanies positive change; determining to risk the outcome resulting from a changed behavior or attitude will enhance our self-perceptions. We will have moved forward; in every instance our lives will be influenced by making a change that only each of us can make.

We have all dreaded the changes we knew we had to make. Perhaps even now we fear some impending changes. Where might they take us? It's difficult accepting that the outcome is not ours to control. Only the effort is ours. The solace is that positive changes, which we know are right for us and other people in our lives, are never going to take us astray. In fact, they are necessary for the smooth path just beyond this stumbling block.

When we are troubled by circumstances in our lives, a change is called for, a change that we must initiate. When we reflect on our recent as well as distant past, we will remember that the changes we most dreaded again and again have positively influenced our lives in untold ways.

Change ushers in glad, not bad, tidings.

Its Ok To Be Me

Time after time newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their lives . . . they have turned to easier methods . . . But they had not learned enough humility . . . 

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, pp. 72-73

Humility sounds so much like humiliation, but it really is the ability to look at myself - and honestly accept what I find. I no longer need to be the "smartest" or "dumbest" or any other "est." Finally, it is okay to be me.
 

 It is easier for me to accept myself if I share my whole life. If I cannot share in meetings, then I had better have a sponsor - someone with whom I can share those "certain facts" that could lead me back to a drunk, to death. I need to take all the Steps. I need the Fifth Step to learn true humility. Easier methods do not work.

Daily Reflections

WALKING THROUGH FEAR

 If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 76

When I had taken my Fifth Step, I became aware that all my defects of character stemmed from my need to feel secure and loved. To use my will alone to work on them would have been trying obsessively to solve the problem. In the Sixth Step I intensified the action I had taken in the first three Steps - meditating on the Step by saying it over and over, going to meetings, following my sponsor's suggestions, reading and searching within myself.
 

Lend a helping hand

 

Someone will be helped today by our kindness. Compassionate attention assures others that they do matter, and every one of us needs that reassurance occasionally. The program has given us the vehicle for giving and seeking the help we need—it's sponsorship.

Not all of the people we encounter share our program, however. Sponsorship as we know it isn't a reality in their lives. Offering words of encouragement to them, or a willing ear, can be unexpected gifts. They will be deeply appreciated.

THE FOREST AND THE TREES

 

. . . what comes to us alone may be garbled by our own rationalization and wishful thinking. The benefit of talking to another person is that we can get his direct comment and counsel on our situation . . .
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 60

I cannot count the times when I have been angry and frustrated and said to myself, "I can't see the forest for the trees!". I finally realized that what I needed when I was in such pain was someone who could guide me in separating the forest and the trees; who could suggest a better path to follow; who could assist me in putting out fires; and help me avoid the rocks and pitfalls.

I ask God, when I'm in the forest, to give me the courage to call upon a member of A.A.

CLEANING HOUSE

Somehow, being alone with God doesn't seem as embarrassing as facing up to another person. Until we actually sit down and talk aloud about what we have so long hidden, our willingness to clean house is still largely theoretical.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 60

It wasn't unusual for me to talk to God, and myself, about my character defects. But to sit down, face to face, and openly discuss these intimacies with another person was much more difficult. I recognized in the experience, however, a similar relief to the one I had experienced when I first admitted I was an alcoholic. I began to appreciate the spiritual significance of the program and that this Step was just an introduction to what was yet to come in the remaining seven Steps.

HEALING HEART AND MIND

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 55

Since it is true that God comes to me through people, I can see that by keeping people at a distance I also keep God at a distance. God is nearer to me than I think and I can experience Him by loving people and allowing people to love me. But I can neither love nor be loved if I allow my secrets to get in the way.

It's the side of myself that I refuse to look at that rules me. I must be willing to look at the dark side in order to heal my mind and heart because that is the road to freedom.