Wednesday, January 9, 2012
Today's Gift
Life gives us so much time to collect bizarre thoughts and feelings. —Claire Weekes
As we go through life, we run into all kinds of negative messages: teasing on the school bus, insulting nicknames, and other put-downs. Pretty soon we may discover that some of these messages stick in our minds, repeating themselves over and over like broken records. These messages can make us feel bad about ourselves.
But when we hear one of these tapes playing inside us, we have the power to push the STOP button. Then we can record a new message. We can even say it out loud, so that our voice settles emphatically into our thoughts. We can't make others stop saying these things, but we can stop listening to them. They only have power over us when we give it to them. We have the ability and freedom to let negative thoughts float by us, like water going downstream.
What positive message can I send to myself?
From Today's Gift: Daily Meditations for Families ©
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Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Walk In Dry Places
Restoration
Finding New Values
Recovering alcoholics sometimes waste time and energy brooding over lost opportunities, and we do have a record of many lost opportunities! Bill W., the co-founder of AA, once made it big on Wall Street before crashing in the 1929 cataclysm. He later drank away two wonderful chances for a comeback. Most of us can recall similar opportunities we lost by drinking. We can eliminate these regrets by practicing gratitude for the recovery we have made. Without rationalizing, we can remind ourselves that few opportunities would have benefited us if we had continued to drink.
We can take comfort, too, in the clear evidence that there's a wonderful restoration going on in our lives. While not every one gets aback a lost job or rebuilds a business, manly of us do find sufficient prosperity and productive work in our new lives. Some even find satisfying second careers or businesses after getting sober. Best of all, most recovering people discover that sobriety gives them the ability to appreciate their opportunities without worshipping material success.
Action for the Day: I will make the best of my opportunities today and see them as stepping stones toward a more abundant life. I will not regret the past, because it brought necessary lessons.
Easy Does It
If a strong inner core of peace, patience, and contentment
looks at all desirable to you, it can be had.
Remind yourself once in a while maybe "Easy Does It"
is this day's ideal speed.
The change can start right now, remember?
- Living Sober, p. 46
Thought to Ponder . . .
Patience is passion tamed.
AA-related 'Alconym' . . .
P U T = Patience, Understanding, Tolerance.
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Daily Motivation
Limitless value
Your life has limitless value. You are a bundle of the best possibilities you can ever imagine, and you are fully capable of bringing those possibilities into reality.
Think for a moment about what that means. Then go beyond thinking, and feel all of what it means to be you.
Realize that you are life itself, experiencing itself, and improving on itself. You are able to not merely think about love and joy, but to actually be love and joy.
Your life has limitless value, and with your actions you can translate that value into any good thing you imagine. Your life has limitless value, and you have the opportunity to share that value far and wide, with countless other people.
Visualize a life that’s full of joy and love, meaningful achievement and real, honest satisfaction. That life is yours to live the moment you choose to embrace its value.
Connect with what means the most to you, and go for it with everything you have. Your life has limitless value, so focus that value in ways that will lift your whole world.
— Ralph Marston
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