Removing the Victim

 Don’t others see how much I’m hurting? Can’t they see I need help? Don’t they care?

The issue is not whether others see or care. The issue is whether we see and care about ourselves. Often, when we are pointing a finger at others, waiting for them to have compassion for us, it’s because we have not fully accepted our pain. We have not yet reached that point of caring about ourselves. We are hoping for awareness in another that we have not yet had.

Controlling

It is very hard for most of us to see how controlling we are. We may feel uptight or careful, but we haven't seen it as controlling ourselves or controlling how people respond to us. We may be worried about a loved one's behavior or safety, but not realize our hovering over that person is a controlling activity. We may be keenly aware of other people's controlling behavior with us, but unaware we have equaled their control by monitoring them and trying to change their behavior.

Letting Go in Love

Gentle people, gentle souls, go in love.

Yes, at times we need to be firm, assertive: those times when we change, when we acquire a new behavior, when we need to convince others and ourselves we have rights.

Those times are not permanent. We may need to get angry to make a decision or set a boundary, but we can't afford to stay resentful. It is difficult to have compassion for one who is victimizing us, but once we've removed ourselves as victims, we can find compassion.

Revenge

Where do we direct our energy? Are we spending time and thought on how we have been wronged? On the unfairness of life? Those who consume their resources in this way have few left for growth and development. Their wounds stay open for years, and they block the healing.

What will we need to set aside our resentments and hateful attitudes? Perhaps we have been passively waiting for the other guy to make amends.

Alcoholics who are living in a blind alley

Thought for the Day
Alcoholics who are living in a blind alley refuse to be really honest with themselves or with other people. They're running away from life and won't face things as they are. They won't give up their resentments. They're too sensitive and too easily hurt. They refuse to try to be unselfish. They still want everything for themselves. And no matter how many disastrous experiences they have had with drinking, they still do it over and over again. There's only one way to get out of that blind alley way of living and that's to change your thinking. Have I changed my thinking?

Meditation for the Day

Light from a Prayer

We treasure our "Serenity Prayer" because it brings a new light to us that can dissipate our oldtime and nearly fatal habit of fooling ourselves. In the radiance of this prayer we see that defeat, rightly accepted, need be no disaster. We now know that we do not have to run away, nor ought we again try to overcome adversity by still another bulldozing power drive that can only push up obstacles before us faster than they can be taken down.
GRAPEVINE, MARCH 1962

Vigilance

Deliver us from temptation must continue to be a prime ingredient of our every attitude, practice, and prayer. When things go well, we must never fall into the error of believing that no great ill can possibly befall us. Nor should we accuse ourselves of "negative thinking" when we insist on facing the destructive forces in and around us, both realistically and effectively. Vigilance will always be the price of survival. Bill W., November 1960 c. 1988 AA Grapevine, The Language of the Heart, pp. 316-17

Living life

Living life means responding, wholly, to our joys and our pitfalls. It means not avoiding the experiences or activities that we fear we can't handle. Only through our survival of them do we come to know who we really are; we come to understand the strength available to us at every moment. And that is wisdom.

When we approach life tentatively, we reap only a portion of its gifts. It's like watching a movie in black and white that's supposed to be in Technicolor. Our lives are in color, but we must have courage to let the colors emerge, to feel them, absorb them, be changed by them.

Change

How many of us would presume to declare, "Well, I'm sober, and I'm happy. What more can I want, or do? I'm fine the way I am."
 

  We know that the price of such self-satisfaction is an inevitable backslide, punctuated at some point by a very rude awakening. We have to grow or else deteriorate.
 

For us, the status quo can only be for today, never for tomorrow. Change we must; we cannot stand still.

 

Bill W., April 1961c. 1967 AAWS, As Bill Sees It, p. 25

Thought to Consider

Backsliding begins when knee-bending stops

C H A N G E

Can Helping Attract New Gifts and Energy?

Personality Change

"It has often been said of A.A. that we are interested only in alcoholism. This is not true. We have to get over drinking in order to stay alive. But anyone who knows the alcoholic personality by firsthand contact knows that no true alky ever stops drinking permanently without undergoing a profound personality change."

We thought "conditions" drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn't do so to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we became alcoholics. It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were.

As Bill Sees It

1. LETTER, 1940

2. TWELVE AND TWELVE, p. 47

Our lives can be like a battle

Our lives can be like a battle between darkness and light. The darkness might be in our moods when we wake in the morning with feelings of despair. Then we can turn to the light of a prayer for openness: "God help me feel your love and acceptance." The darkness is there when we are tempted to take advantage of a clerk who gives us too much change. Perhaps we tell ourselves, "Everyone does it, it won't matter if I do."

Then the light comes as we remember that this program demands rigorous honesty, and each choice for honesty promotes our growth. The darkness may be when someone we care about is hurt or in danger, and we think, "I have to step in to prevent bad things from happening."

Empowerment

You can think. You can make good decisions. You can make choices that are right for you.

Yes, we all make mistakes from time to time. But we are not mistakes.

We can make a new decision that takes new information into account.

We can change our mind from time to time. That's our right too.

We don't have to be intellectuals to make good choices. In recovery, we have a gift and a goal available to each of us. The gift is called wisdom.

Difficult People

Few things can make us feel crazier than expecting something from someone who has nothing to give. Few things can frustrate us more than trying to make a person someone he or she isn't; we feel crazy when we try to pretend that person is someone he or she is not. We may have spent years negotiating with reality concerning particular people from our past and our present. We may have spent years trying to get someone to love us in a certain way, when that person cannot or will not.

It is time to let it go. It is time to let him or her go. That doesn't mean we can't love that person anymore. It means that we will feel the immense relief that comes when we stop denying reality and begin accepting. We release that person to be who he or she actually is. We stop trying to make that person be someone he or she is not. We deal with our feelings and walk away from the destructive system.

We learn to love and care differently in a way that takes reality into account.

Rejoicing

A quality we all share, a very human quality, is to expect perfection from ourselves, to expect the impossible in all tasks done. We must rejoice for the good we do. Each time we pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, our confidence grows a little bit more. Recovery is best measured by our emotional and spiritual health, expressed in our apparent confidence and trust in "the process."

We need to recognize and celebrate our strong points, and they'll gain even more strength. Likewise, we need to practice prayer and listening to guidance first to develop our ties to God, but more importantly to be able to acknowledge when help is at hand. We can do all we need to do with God's help.

Awareness

When we first become aware of a problem, a situation, or a feeling, we may react with anxiety or fear. There is no need to fear awareness. No need.

Awareness is the first step toward positive change and growth. It's the first step toward solving the problem, or getting the need met, the first step toward the future. It's how we focus on the next lesson.

Awareness is how life, the Universe, and our Higher Power get our attention and prepare us for change. The process of becoming changed begins with awareness. Awareness, acceptance, and change - that's the cycle.

Learning self-acceptance

Learning self-acceptance, and then loving the selves we are, present perhaps our two biggest hurdles to the attainment of emotional and spiritual health. Fortunately, they are not insurmountable hurdles. The program offers ready assistance.

Women everywhere are making great strides in self-love and self-acceptance. We are learning self-love. And we are changing. The support we can give our sisters, and the support we receive, multiplies many times the healthy energy created - healthy energy that touches us all.

Emotional and spiritual health are gifts promised by the program, when we work it. We must move beyond our perfectionism and relish our humanness.

Gift of freedom

Reflection for the Day

Among the many gifts that we are offered in The Program is the gift of freedom. Paradoxically, however, the gift of freedom is not without a price tag; freedom can only be achieved by paying the price called acceptance. Similarly, if we can surrender to God's guidance, it will cost us our self-will, that "commodity" so precious to those of us who have always thought we could and should run the show. Is my freedom today worth the price tag of acceptance?

Today I Pray

May God teach me acceptance - the ability to accept the things I cannot change. God also grant me courage to change those things I can. God help me to accept the illness of my addiction and give me the courage to change my addictive behavior.

Today I Will Remember

Accept the addiction. Change the behavior.

You are reading from the book:

A Day at a Time (Softcover) by Anonymous

Anxiety about Change

When we find ourselves going through any kind of change in our lives, our natural response may be to tense up on the physical, mental, or emotional level. We may not even notice that we have braced ourselves against a shift until we recognize the anxiety, mood swings, or general worried feeling toward the unknown that usually results. There are positive ways to move through change without pushing it away, however, or attempting to deny that it is happening. Since change will occur in almost every aspect of our lives, we can learn to make our response to it an affirmative one of anticipation, welcoming the new while releasing the past with grace.

One thing we can do is change our perspective by changing the labels we use to identify our feelings. We can reinterpret feelings of anxiety as the anxious butterflies that come with eager expectation. With this shift, we begin to look for the good that is on its way to us.

Acceptance frees us

Conflict can result from trying to change a person or situation that we don't like. And conflict causes stress and agitation, both of which limit our lives. They steal our ability to be open to opportunities for growth and change.

Why is it so hard to accept situations we don't like? Twelve Step programs tell us it's because of our ego. We feel diminished when others don't agree with our plan or our opinion. Our self-worth is tied to other people's reactions.

But we can change. We can let the success stories we hear in this program inspire us to let others be.

See the good

Thought for the Day

A better way than judging people is to look for all the good in them. If you look hard enough and long enough, you ought to be able to find some good in every person. In A.A. I learned that my job was to try to bring out the good, not criticize the bad. Every alcoholic is used to being judged and criticized. That has never helped anyone to get sober. In A.A. we tell people they can change. We try to bring out the best in them. We encourage their good points and ignore their bad points. People are not converted by criticism. Do I look for the good in people?

Meditation for the Day