Fear

We all experience fear. Sometimes we fear small things that only seem large at the time, like a test in school, or meeting a new boss, or going to the dentist. Sometimes we fear big things like serious illness or death, or that someone we love will come to harm. Fear is healthy, and we all feel it. It keeps us from doing foolish things sometimes, but too much fear can also keep us from doing what we need for our growth.

If we have faith in God and in ourselves, we can turn and face whatever frightens us, believing we can, with help, do what seems impossible.

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.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism and its control over our lives stands seriously in the way of our growth and well-being, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically. Life's lessons come through failures probably more than successes. Through our failures we learn humility. We learn to look to others for help and guidance. We learn how to let others fail, too. We fail because we are human.
When we no longer fear failure, we are free to attempt greater feats. We dare to learn more, and life is fuller for it—not just our own lives, but the lives that we touch.

The New Year

Make New Year's goals. Dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life this year. This helps you do your part. It is an affirmation that you're interested in fully living life in the year to come.

Goals give us direction. They put a powerful force into play on a universal, conscious, and subconscious level.

Goals give our life direction.

What would you like to have happen in your life this year? What would you like to do, to accomplish? What good would you like to attract into your life? What particular areas of growth would you like to have happen to you? What blocks, or character defects, would you like to have removed?

Has it been a year of growth?

As any year draws to a close, we should reflect on how we have grown in sobriety. We should also identify changes during the year that enabled us to overcome bad habits and to move closer to better patterns of living.

Though we never are guaranteed favorable outcomes, we should always remember that sobriety is its own best reward. We want a full life, of course, but it must begin with a decision to seek and to maintain sobriety at all costs.

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.

Freedom to choose

How awesome is our power, personally, to choose our attitudes and our responses to any situation, to every situation. We will feel only how we choose to feel, no matter the circumstance. Happiness is as free an option as sorrow.

Perceiving our challenges as opportunities for positive growth rather than stumbling blocks in our path to success is a choice readily available. What is inevitable - a matter over which we have no choice - is that difficult times, painful experiences will visit us. We can, however, greet them like welcome guests, celebrating their blessings on us and the personal growth they inspire.

Growth

"It seems to me that the primary object of any human being is to grow, as God intended, that being the nature of all growing things. Our search must be for what reality we can find, which includes the best definition and feeling of love that we can acquire. If the capability of loving is in the human being, then it must surely be in his Creator. Theology helps me in that many of its concepts cause me to believe that I live in a rational universe under a loving God, and that my own irrationality can be chipped away, little by little. This is, I suppose, the process of growth for which we are intended."
Bill W., Letter,  1958
c. 1967 AAWS, As Bill Sees It, p. 295

Thought to Consider . . .

             All you have to do to change your life is change your mind.

AACRONYMS
WHO ME?
Willingness, Honesty,
Open-mindedness, Must Exist

Where is God ?

AA members have always had a difficult time explaining the "God business." We didn't want to be considered religious, but at the same time we've always believed some contact with a Higher Power is necessary for real personal growth.

There's nothing wrong – for our purposes – in simply visualizing God as a Higher Power that has always been within us and around us. "Before they call, I will answer," goes an old saying, and that was true even in our darkest days. Many of us can look back to realize that a certain force was moving us toward recovery long before we knew we needed any recovery. Many of us also believe that a Higher Power helped bring AA into being and move it along to become a worldwide force for good.

Oldtimers

"Many oldsters who have put our A.A. 'booze cure' to severe but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. To attain this, we must develop real maturity and balance (which is to say humility) in our relations with ourselves, with our fellows, and with God."
Bill W., AA Grapevine, January 1958
c. 1967 AAWS, As Bill Sees It, p. 244

Thought to Consider . . .

Newcomers are the lifeblood of the program, but our oldtimers are the arteries.

AACRONYMS

C H A N G E
Choosing Honesty Allows New Growth Every day

New beginnings

When we embark on a new career, open an unfamiliar door, begin a loving relationship, we can seldom see nor can we even anticipate where the experience may take us. At best we can see only what this day brings. We can trust with certainty that we will be safely led through the "shadows."

To make gains in this life we must venture forth to new places, contact new people, chance new experiences. Even though we may be fearful of the new, we must go forward. It's comforting to remember that we never take any step alone. It is our destiny to experience many new beginnings. And a dimension of the growth process is to develop trust that each of these experiences will in time comfort us and offer us the knowledge our inner self awaits.

Touchstones

"All A.A. progress can be reckoned in terms of just two words: humility and responsibility. Our whole spiritual development can be accurately measured by our degree of adherence to these magnificent standards. Ever deepening humility, accompanied by an ever greater willingness to accept and act upon clear-cut obligations - these are truly our touchstones for all growth in the life of the spirit. They hold up to us the very essence of right being and right doing. It is by them that we are enabled to find and to do God's will."
Bill W., Talk, 1965
c.1967 AAWS, As Bill Sees It, p. 271

Thought to Consider . . .

The solution is simple. The solution is spiritual.

AACRONYMS
 
S O B E R
Staying Off Booze Enjoying Recovery

Acceptance

A magical potion is available to us today. That potion is called acceptance.

We are asked to accept many things: ourselves, as we are; our feelings, needs, desires, choices, and current status of being. Other people, as they are. The status of our relationships with them. Problems. Blessings. Financial status. Where we live. Our work, our tasks, our level of performance at these tasks.

Resistance will not move us forward, nor will it eliminate the undesirable. But even our resistance may need to be accepted. Even resistance yields to and is changed by acceptance.

Acceptance is the magic that makes change possible. It is not forever; it is for the present moment.

Impending change

The specter of change builds dread in most of us. We fear the effects on our personal lives. We lack faith that the impending change will benefit us. Only time can assure us of that. And it will, just as every change we've survived up to now has done.

Changes are gifts, really. They come as hallmarks to our present attainments. They signify successful growth. And they announce our readiness for more growth. How we struggle to understand this, and how quickly we forget it once we have adapted to the change. The struggle is then repeated the next time change visits us.

We long for permanence, believing it guarantees security, not realizing the only real security available to us come with our trust in God, from whom all change comes as a blessing on the growth we've attained.

Wisdom

Wisdom begins in seeing how much we do not know. Sometimes it's a painful blow to our egos to face what we still have to learn. Many of us have believed we know how to live. Yet, when we look at our lives, we see something has been missing. When we continue to have great stress, when we haven't made progress in simplifying our lives, when our lives seem full of crises - perhaps then it is time to open ourselves to some new learning.

We can talk to sponsors and get ideas from group members. Perhaps they have noticed our blind spots and will tell us if asked.

Recovery is a process

Recovery is a process, one that rebuilds our lives. And the Twelve Steps provide the foundation to support our growth as healthy, productive women. But each Step must be carefully and honestly worked, or the whole foundation will be weakened.

How lucky we are to have found this program and the structure it offers. We looked for structure in our past. We searched, maybe for years, running from one panacea to another, hoping to find ourselves. Booze - pills - food - lovers - causes; none gave us the security we longed for. We couldn't find ourselves because we hadn't defined ourselves.

With each new day

We can't recapture what is no more. And the minutes or hours we spend dwelling on what was or should have been only steal away from all that presently is. Today stands before us with promise. The opportunities for growth are guaranteed, as is all the spiritual help we need to handle any situation the day offers.

If today offers us a challenge, we can be grateful. Our challenges are gifts. They mean we are ready to move ahead to new awarenesses, to a new sense of our womanhood.

Taking responsibility

We encounter the experiences we need in our lives. It's sometimes hard to believe that when we're grappling with disappointment, anger, or loss. Yet everything that comes our way is material for our growth.

Many of us entertain a fantasy that some person can complete us. We don't believe that we're complete in ourselves. Only when we do will we become able to share in a life-enhancing partnership with another person.

Leaving Room for Feelings

We are people, not robots. An important part of us - who we are, how we grow, how we live - is connected to our emotional center. We have feelings, sometimes - difficult ones, sometimes disruptive ones, and sometimes explosive ones that need to be worked through.

By facing and working through these feelings we and others grow. In relationships, whether it is a love relationship, a friendship, a family relationship, or a close business relationship, people need room to have and work through their feelings.

Some call it "going through the process."

GROWTH

When we're out of sorts with everyone and everything and we realize that we're the one who needs to change, that's growth.

When we mind our own business and don t take the inventory of another, that's growth.

When we don't expect anyone to change their opinion simply because it differs from ours, that's growth.

When we think we're right at one moment and are proven wrong the next, and are happy about it because we've learned something, that's growth.