Be Who You Are
When I meet people or get in a new relationship, I start putting all these repressive restrictions on myself. I can't have my feelings. Can't have my wants and needs. Can't have my history. Can't do the things I want, feel the feelings I'm feeling, or say what I need to say. I turn into this repressed, perfectionistic robot, instead of being who I am: Me. —Anonymous
Sometimes, our instinctive reaction to being in a new situation is: Don't be yourself.
Who else can we be? Who else would you want to be? We don't need to be anyone else.
The greatest gift we can bring to any relationship wherever we go is being who we are.
We may think others won't like us. We may be afraid that if we just relax and be ourselves, the other person will go away or shame us. We may worry about what the other person will think.
But, when we relax and accept ourselves, people often feel much better being around us than when we are rigid and repressed. We're fun to be around.
If others don't appreciate us, do we really want to be around them? Do we need to let the opinions of others control our behavior and us?
Giving ourselves permission to be who we are can have a healing influence on our relationships. The tone relaxes. We relax. The other person relaxes. Then everybody feels a little less shame, because they have learned the truth. Who we are is all we can be, all were meant to be, and it's enough. It's fine.
Our opinion of ourselves is truly all that matters. And we can give ourselves all the approval we want and need.
Today, I will relax and be who I am in my relationships. I will do this not in a demeaning or inappropriate way, but in a way that shows I accept myself and value who I am. Help me, Higher Power, let go of my fears about being myself.
From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©
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Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Big changes are happening to us, but we can trust that changes will bring good things. After all, what have we got to lose? We have lived through the days and years of our addiction. Now, with the help of our Higher Power, the pain of those days has ended. We have no reason to worry.
Yet, recovery won't make our lives perfect. Hard things still happened. But we never have to lose hope again. We never have to feel alone with our problems. What will come next? We don't know the details, but we can be sure the future will be good if we stay on our path of recovery.
We are not saints.
The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.
The principles we have set down are guides to progress.
We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.
- Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 60
Thought to Ponder . . .
Give Time . . . time.
AA-related 'Alconym' . . .
H O W = Honest, Open, Willing.
Daily Motivation
Think a positive thought
Think a positive thought, and you’ll take a positive action. Take a positive action, and you’ll get a valuable result
Thoughts can often seem easy, light, and inconsequential. After all, on its own a mere thought doesn’t have the power to do anything.
However, you most certainly have the power to do many things. And your thoughts are what determine and direct the actions you take.
If you continually focus your thoughts on the things you don’t want, those things will surely find their way into your life. By the same measure, focusing your thoughts on your most positive possibilities enables you to make those possibilities real.
When life brings you disappointment after disappointment, it’s easy to make all your thoughts negative ones. Yet it is just as easy, and far more empowering, to respond with positive thinking.
If you had the power to change your life for the better, would you use that power? You do indeed have that power, and it is in the thoughts you choose to think.
— Ralph Marston
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