We need to be thankful

 

Reflection for the Day

No matter what it is that seems to be our need or problem, we can find something to rejoice in, something for which to give thanks. We need to be thankful. Thankfulness opens new doors to good in our life. Thankfulness creates a new heart and a new spirit in us. Do I keep myself aware of the many blessings that come to me each day and remember to be thankful for them?

Today I Pray

May I be filled with the spirit of thankfulness. When I express my thanks, however fumbling, to my Higher Power or

Results of Prayer

 

"As the doubter tries the process of prayer, he should begin to add up the results. If he persists, he will almost surely find more serenity, more tolerance, less fear, and less anger. He will acquire a quiet courage, the kind that isn't tension-ridden. He can look at "failure" and "success" for what these really are.
 

 Problems and calamity will begin to mean his instruction, instead of his destruction. He will feel freer and saner. The idea that he may have been hypnotizing himself by auto-suggestion will become laughable. His sense of purpose and of direction will increase. 
 

  His anxieties will commence to fade. His physical health will be likely to improve. Wonderful and unaccountable things will start to happen. Twisted relations in his family and on the outside will improve surprisingly."


GRAPEVINE, JUNE 1958

Who am I to judge other people

A.A. Thought for the Day

Who am I to judge other people? Have I proved by my great success in life that I know all the answers? Exactly the opposite. Until I came into A.A., my life could be called a failure. I made all the mistakes one could make. I took all the wrong roads there were to take. On the basis of my record, am I a fit person to be a judge of other people? Hardly. In A.A. I have learned not to judge people. I am so often wrong. Let the results of what they do judge them. It's not up to me, Am I less harsh in my judgment of people?

Meditation for the Day

In our time of meditation, we again seem to hear: "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and

Spiritual development

In our spiritual development, we learn to think about time in new ways. Many of us have come to our healing journey stuck in the past, imprisoned by fears or angers that arose years ago. We live in the past through regrets and griefs about things that can never change, and we translate them into the future with fears and foreboding. Yet we all know that life is only in the present. All we need to do is live today.

Our memories shaped us, but our development is not finished. Today, we don’t have to deal with all the problems we can foresee in the future. Today, we are given a hand to play, and we can play the cards we have as we choose. With the spiritual guidance of our recovery path,

I-S-M in Alcoholism

 

Alcohol is only a symptom of the disease alcoholism. You can take the alcohol out of alcoholism but what is left is the “ism” part of this disease. The ism is why we drank, the ism is what drove us to bad neighborhoods in our mind, who drove our bus. The ism will quickly get you drunk again if not addressed in recovery. The disease—the ‘ism’ of alcoholism—involves more than the act of drinking. The ism is what the successful recovering alcoholic addresses daily in their reprieve from alcohol in their journey of sobriety.

What is this ism part of alcoholism? Good acronyms for ism are : I, Self, Me or I Sponsor Myself or Internal Spiritual Malady, or Incredibly Short Memory or InSide Me or I Sabotage Myself. In short the “ism” is all about the alcoholic and how they cope with the many things encountered in life. This ism is one of self-centeredness taken to the extreme. The ism involves more than the act of drinking. Feelings of inadequacy, isolation, restlessness, anxiety, depression, fear and guilt are just a few of the “isms” that the alcoholic wrestles with daily. Other isms rears its ugly head showing over-reaction or just reacting, blaming others and defending yourself from perceived threats and fears. All of these feelings are internalized and exposed in twisted forms of alcoholic reality to friends and family and treated with alcohol by the alcoholic still suffering from the disease of alcoholism.

No matter what when you take away the alcohol, you still have the traits and characteristics that go with it. The ism is why we drank. The ism has to be addressed. We need a whole new way of life.

The Steps

Each day that we thoughtfully make choices about our behavior and our attitudes, we offer ourselves as examples to others—examples of strength.

As men and women on recovery paths, we find encouragement from one another's successes. No one of us met our experiences very successfully before discovering this program. In most cases we lacked the structure that comes with the Steps. Direction was missing from our lives. Too often we passively bounced from person to person, job to job, drunk to drunk.

When working the Steps, we are never in doubt about the manner for proceeding in any situation.