Daily Motivation 2-22-11

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Today's Gift

 

Keeping our motives honest

Motives are important in dealing with other people. If we're frank with someone and that person gets upset, we might think he or she just can't handle our directness, our honesty. But "honesty" without love is more like brutal frankness. If we want to be confrontational, we have to put up with the consequences.

But what is the real reason for being confrontational ("honest"), for pointing out others' flaws? Are we perhaps afraid that our own flaws will be discovered? Are we protecting ourselves by focusing attention on others?

Are my motives always honest?

Higher Power, help me see where my motives are selfish or mean or petty, so that I stay honest in my program.

You are reading from the book:

Day by Day - Second Edition by Anonymous

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Twenty-Four Hours a Day

 

Walk In Dry Places
 
Staying on course___Power in purpose
When riding in an airplane on automatic pilot, I marvel at the way the aircraft stays on course even while bouncing and shaking through pockets of turbulence. Even more significant is the pilot's calm indifference to these minor movements as he checks occasionally to make sure the plane continues on the right course.

 

Many things that happen to us each day are no more important than the routine turbulence and aircraft encounters.  But as sick, compulsive people, we sometimes view every disturbance as a terrible storm and become panicky or enraged over things that are of little consequence in the long run.  "I could accept a major calamity, but a broken fingernail ruined my day,"  one speaker said at an AA meeting.

We can set our lives on "automatic pilot" by choosing continuing recovery as our major goal and letting all things fall in line with that. The turbulence of ordinary living cannot deflect us from our true course if we calmly accept it as natural, unavoidable, and non-threatening. Even if a real storm blows up and gives us anxious moments, we can stay on the recovery course we have chosen.

 

Disappointments and annoyances are part of the human condition. 

 

Action for the Day: I will be cheerful and optimistic today even if I am bounced around a bit.  There is within me an automatic pilot, through which my Higher Power leads me to continued recovery and true fulfillment as a person.

 

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One Day At A Time

 

Problems
I remember telling a friend years ago that I didn't have a drinking problem.
I had a stopping problem. We laughed. It was true,
but there was something else going on, something that never occurred to me
until I came to AA. I didn't just have a stopping problem.
I had a starting problem too.
No matter how often I stopped, or for how long, I always started drinking again.
- Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 372-73

Thought to Ponder . . .
Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.

AA-related 'Alconym' . . .
A A = Altered Attitudes.

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Daily Motivation

Positive power of happiness

It is simple and easy to be happy. The hard part is convincing yourself, and getting past your own resistance to happiness.

You might assume that just because things are one way or another, there is no possibility of happiness. Yet that assumption is entirely mistaken.

You know precisely how to be happy, how to create the feeling of happiness within yourself and how to express it within any context. You've done it many times in a whole lot of different situations.

Your happiness does not come from the moment, or the surroundings, or even from the people around you. It comes from you, and from your decision to feel its positive power.

Go ahead and skip right over all those reasons why you can't be happy. Instead, think of the times when you have been happy and recall the strategy you've always used to bring that happiness to life.

Activate that very same strategy right now. And bring the positive power of your own happiness to this very moment.

-- Ralph Marston