Daily Motivation 11-1-10

Monday, November 1, 2010

Today's Gift

 

Transformation through Grief

We're striving for acceptance in recovery - acceptance of our past, other people, our present circumstances, and ourselves. Acceptance brings peace, healing, and freedom - the freedom to take care of ourselves.

Acceptance is not a one step process. Before we achieve acceptance, we go toward it in stages of denial, anger, negotiating, and sadness. We call these stages the grief process. Grief can be frustrating. It can be confusing. We may vacillate between sadness and denial. Our behaviors may vacillate. Others may not understand us. We may neither understand our own behavior nor ourselves while we're grieving our losses. Then one day, things become clear. The fog lifts, and we see that we have been struggling to face and accept a particular reality.

Don't worry. If we are taking steps to take care of ourselves, we will move through this process at exactly the right pace. Be understanding with yourself and others for the very human way we go through transition.

Today, I will accept the way I go through change. I will accept the grief process, and its stages, as the way people accept loss and change.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©

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Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Walk In Dry Places

Inventory

Thinking about Blame.
Which is worse: blaming ourselves or others for things that go wrong? A better question might be, Is anyone to blame?

We're really better off, in 12 Step living, to begin dropping the idea of placing blame for our thinking altogether. Even is someone's responsibility for a mistake or wrong is fully evident, we get nowhere by pointing the finger at him or her. What often happens, in fact, is that the person becomes defensive... just as we do... And retreats into denial or anger.

Another problem is that placing blame quickly becomes the sticky business of taking another person's inventory. Let's leave such matters to courts and prosecutions and focus instead on solving our own problems.

Today's Action: I'll not waste time today thinking about who's to blame. My focus will be on what can be done for general improvement.

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One Day At A Time

 

Risk
Meditation is a venture into the unknown, a gamble with my pride. . .
I love the risk of failing in meditation. I love the risk of succeeding in meditation.
I love the risk of not knowing the difference.
I love the risk of being lost and sober in completely new territory.
The results are worth all those risks, and more.
- The AA Grapevine, November 2010, p. 27

Thought to Ponder . . .
Meditation is our step out into the sun.

AA-related 'Alconym' . . .
H O P E = Heart Open; Please Enter.

 

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Daily Motivation

 

Live in gratitude

 

Fear of loss is what creates loss. Love of possibilities is what drives the fulfillment of those possibilities.

 

What good is it to have something if you constantly live in fear of losing it? In some ways, that's worse than not having it at all.

 

Instead of living in fear, live in gratitude. Fill your heart with love and thankfulness for all that you now have, so that there is no space left for fear.

 

Fill your mind with thoughts of the very best of what is possible for your world. Fill your spirit with a bright, sparkling vision of how good you know life can be.

 

Sure, the superficial things will come and go, so don't let those things define you. Instead, treasure the values that transcend every moment and every circumstance.

 

The genuine person inside is much more powerful than your ego that always feels so threatened. Live in gratitude and let the real, authentic, courageous person you are, always come shining through.

 

-- Ralph Marston