Do not reveal your thoughts to everyone, lest you drive away your good luck.
—Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 8:19
We've had problems in our lives with limits. We have done some things to excess and others we have endlessly postponed. Sometimes we haven't had good judgment about what we ought to tell someone or whom we ought to tell. We may have kept secrets that made us lonely and sick. Other times we exposed too much in inappropriate situations and hurt someone else or ourselves. Developing these internal limits is a quiet change that comes with recovery. Gradually, we gain a stronger feeling of self-respect and become more intuitive about when to express something and when not to.
Secrets are links in our chains of bondage to isolation, addiction, and codependency. Yet, when we are compelled to tell everything, we lack the feeling of self-containment that comes from maturity. We need a sense of privacy, which is the freedom to choose what and when to confide in a friend. What does our intuition tell us today about our privacy and our openness?
Today, I will listen to my inner messages about what I need to discuss with others and when I need to withhold.
From Touchstones: A Book of Daily Meditations for Men ©
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Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Keep It Simple
Happiness is not a goal; it is a by-product.---Eleanor Roosevelt
Most of us want to be happy. We just don't know how. We aren't sure what happiness is. We've learned the hard way that some things we wanted didn't make us happy. We're learning that happiness comes when we live the way our Higher Power wants us to live. That's when we’re honest. When we do our best work. When we are a true friend. We make happiness; we don't find it. Sometimes we don't even know we're happy. We're too busy with our work, our recovery program, our friends and family. We need to slow down and know that when we do what we need to, happiness comes.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me know that I'm most happy when I listen to You and do Your will. You know better than I do what makes me happy.
Action for the Day: What parts of my program am I most happy about? Today I'll think of these and enjoy myself.
I try to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart
cannot entertain great conceits.
When brimming with gratitude, one's heartbeat
must surely result in outgoing love,
the finest emotion that we can ever know.
- As Bill Sees It, p. 37
Thought to Ponder . . .
There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy.
AA-related 'Alconym' . . .
T H I N K = The Happiness I Never Knew.
Daily Motivation
Life is good
Life is difficult, life is unfair, life is challenging and sometimes painful. And life is so very good.
There are frustrations, tragedies, disappointments, setbacks, heartbreaks, and absurdities. The simple joy of being outweighs them all.
Life is good, because within its realm, anything is possible. Life is good, because no matter how far you fall, there is always a way to climb back up again.
You can complain, fret and worry about all the problems in your life, but you’ll be wasting your time. Or, you can choose to focus on why and how life is so good, and on what you can do to take that goodness and make it even better.
Not only is life good, it’s uniquely good for you in your very own way. The possibilities for expressing your purpose are limited only by your imagination.
Remind yourself often of the great and wonderful value that you already, always have. Life is good, and in this moment that’s bursting with possibilities, life is yours.
— Ralph Marston
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