Daily Motivations 4-27-11

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Today's Gift

Crying only a little bit is no use. You must cry until your pillow is soaked. Then you can get up and laugh . . . —Galway Kinnell

Many of us were raised to deny our feelings; that is, we might have been allowed to describe them politely, but we were not allowed to express feelings on the spot by wailing, jumping for joy, or dancing. This is often considered rude. In a proper home, we often hear, if people have feelings, they have them quietly. But many of us have suffered living this way.

We need a full and thorough expression of a feeling in order to know it, experience it, and move beyond it. This is the way we let go of sadness, for instance.

Feelings come and go. If we are not afraid to let them have their moment, we will not be afraid to express them.

What am I feeling right now?

From Today's Gift: Daily Meditations for Families ©

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Twenty-Four Hours A Day

 

Walk in Dry Places

Personal relations.

 

Happy People are likable.
Who are the people we really like, and to be with? Most of the time, they are happy people, people who like themselves and others. Being happy is almost the entire secret of being likable. Though no person can expect to be liked by everybody, likable people have the inside track most of the time.

 

How do we become happy and thus likable? We're continuously told that happiness cannot be found in property, power, and prestige. It is rooted instead in self-acceptance. In feeling loved and wanted, and in giving genuine service, maybe just in the form of very useful work.

 

Twelve Step programs are structured to make us happy if we persevere long enough in working the individual steps. While it may seem contradictory, even people with heavy burdens and personal sorrows can find underlying happiness in the program. A great deal of this also hinges on our belief in a Higher Power and a confidence that we have a place in the universal system.

Action for the Day: I can be happy today in spite of things that others would consider burdensome and depressing. Happiness really comes from within, and it also serves to attract friends into my life.

 

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One Day At A Time

 

Demands
Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands,
we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration.
Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means
of reducing these demands.
- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 76

Thought to Ponder . . .
Once we understand ourselves, the rest of living falls in line.

AA-related 'Alconym' . . .
S W A T = Surrender, Willingness, Action, Trust.

 

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Daily Motivation

Most challenging

The more excuses you come up with to avoid doing it, the more important it is to get it done. After all, if it didn’t really matter, you wouldn’t bother with all the excuses.

Whatever you feel yourself resisting, is what you must find a way to do. Because when you can get past the resistance, what you’ll be able to create is great and fulfilling value.

It is much, much easier to give in to the excuses. But then all you’ll be left with is regret.

It is much more difficult to do those great and wonderful things you know you’re capable of doing. Yet from that difficulty comes the golden experience of the life you know you are meant to live.

Go ahead and feel the fear, feel the doubt, feel the frustration and discomfort and apprehension. Then, take all that energy and lovingly, joyfully, enthusiastically turn it around.

Step confidently forward in precisely the direction that is most challenging to you. Because in that same direction, you’ll also find what is most rewarding to you.

Choose to forego what is easy right now. And deliver yourself into the realm of what is truly great and fulfilling.

— Ralph Marston