Thursday, April 14, 2016
Today's Gift
Self-esteem comes from honoring your healing journey. --Francine Ward
My life is not perfect. I make a lot of mistakes. Sometimes, I stumble and fall. I am a work in progress. And when I remember that simple fact, I am better for the experience.
It's easy to start on a path of change and get so busy doing what we need to do that we forget to stop, breathe, and acknowledge the effort we've already made. We forget to honor our own healing journey.
There are times when I have to be reminded to do for myself what I do for others. The other day, a friend caught me denigrating the work I put into a project because it wasn't done perfectly. When they asked how it was coming along, I said, "I can't seem to get it down perfectly. It's horrible." I then spent ten minutes - which was as long as they could tolerate my ranting - downplaying the work I had put into the project so far. They couldn't believe they were listening to me. "You could be one of your own clients," they said. And how right they were. I needed to be coached at that moment in time. And after our conversation, I called my coach.
Healing is hard work. It takes great effort to stay on a path that leads to purposeful self-discovery. It takes energy - persistent energy - to be an active participant in the creation of our lives. A healing path requires having the courage to shine a light or allow a light to shine on parts of ourselves that we'd rather keep private. It means having the courage to see the work that still needs to be done. Honoring our healing journey invites us to appreciate the effort that has been made.
It's important to heal and to honor the work done.
From the book 52 Weeks of Esteemable Acts © 2005 by Francine Ward
From: Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation - Thought for the Day http://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/recovery/thought-for-the-day
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Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Keep It Simple
A person who is looking for something doesn't travel very fast. --E. B. White
What do people really want? What are we seeking? Many of us have felt driven and still feel restless or compulsive at times. We frantically followed our impulses to self-destructive extremes. Even those painful actions of our past were motivated, at the bottom line, by a spiritual search. What did we really seek in the bottle, or in the passionate bed, or in our work? Slowing down enough every day to let ourselves know what we are looking for gives us a much better chance of finding it.
Today we can slow down by taking twenty minutes for solitude and quiet, for meditation or prayer. We can call a friend simply for a moment of contact. We might read something to give ourselves some ideas to ponder, or we can listen to music which will transport us to another world. Perhaps we can simply walk more slowly from our cars or the bus stop to our homes. Often it is not the events in our lives that bring change but the space between events.
Action for the Day: Today, I will try to remember that slowing down may help me find what I am seeking.
From: Bluidkiti's Alcohol and Drug Addictions Recovery Help/Support Forums
Daily Recovery Readings - http://www.bluidkiti.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=2
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One Day At A Time
The Costume and the Mask
I realized I'd been living outside myself for so long I'd almost become a walking vacancy.
In my prized AA sobriety, I was still running a kind of circus which had numerous, highly believable posters plastered all over its outside --
See the Spectacular Non-Drinking Person! Watch How Movingly He Can Recite the Twelve Steps!
-- but had nothing much going on inside the tent.
I've been working hard to shut that circus down ever since with varying degrees of success.
- The Best of the Grapevine [Vol. 3], pp. 237-238
Thought to Ponder . . .
The monkey’s asleep but the circus hasn’t left town.
AA-related 'Alconym' . . .
P R I D E = Personal Recovery Involves Deflating Ego.
From: AA Thought for the Day (courtesy AA-Alive.net)
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Daily Motivation
Excerpt of The Daily Motivator
Inner perspective
by Ralph Marston
Everything you know, everything you experience, is within the context of your own inner perspective. What you think of life determines how you experience life, literally, from moment to moment.
From your point of view, nothing can really be objective. Everything is filtered through your assumptions, your preferences, your fears and your love.
Though you cannot escape your own unique perspective, you can shape it in whatever way you choose. Though outside influences act upon you, inner choices determine how it all affects you.
You will always live whatever you focus upon. Focus on love, on goodness, on respect, compassion, value, joy, and your experience is filled with those good qualities.
No, you cannot change iron into gold merely by thinking it to be so. What you can do is much more powerful, much more beautiful.
You can transform despair into joy, hatred into love, boredom into passion, emptiness into fulfillment. Take care how you think of life, because from your perspective, it affects everything.
From The Daily Motivator website at http://greatday.com/
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