[bluidkiti]

February 12

You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
Oh, a trouble's a ton, or a trouble's an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it, And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, But only how you take it. --Edmund Vance Cooke
Once, a woman decided to throw a problem-exchange party. As guests arrived, they shed all their personal problems and tossed them onto a pile with everyone else's. After all had discussed their own problem for others to hear, the party ended with guests selecting from the problem pile those they wished to carry away. Each person left with the same troubles he or she had brought to the party.
We who worry a great deal about our problems are always sure no one else has troubles as bad as ours. Too often, we complain, "If you had my problems, you'd really hurt." Our problems are tailored to us, and geared to help us learn by solving them. No one else's would be quite right.
When we cope with problems, rather than wailing about them, we discover that our own are minor irritations compared to those we see in others.
What problems am I lucky to have?


You are reading from the book Touchstones.
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have.
--Abraham Lincoln
With too much focus on control, we men have been preoccupied by our overemphasis on outcomes. We say winning is everything, and the way we play the game doesn't matter. We give honor to a man who has accumulated great wealth, regardless of how he has lived. We develop sexual problems because we focus on performance and achieving orgasm rather than on the joy of loving.
As our integrity grows, our emphasis changes. It is not crucial that we always be right, only that we be honest. We do not have to be winners or high achievers so much as we have to be real human beings. Conquest is not as important as connection. We do not always have to compare ourselves and be better than the next guy. We can exchange and appreciate the communication.
Today, I will grow in my relationships with others by being more true to myself and less driven toward a particular outcome.


You are reading from the book The Language Of Letting Go.
Letting Go of Those Not in Recovery
We can go forward with our life and recoveries, even though someone we love is not yet recovering.
Picture a bridge. On one side of the bridge it is cold and dark. We stood there with others in the cold and darkness, doubled over in pain. Some of us developed an eating disorder to cope with the pain. Some drank; some used other drugs. Some of us lost control of our sexual behavior. Some of us obsessively focused on addicted people's pain to distract us from our own pain. Many of us did both: we developed an addictive behavior, and distracted ourselves by focusing on other addicted people. We did not know there was a bridge. We thought we were trapped on a cliff.
Then, some of us got lucky. Our eyes opened, by the Grace of God, because it was time. We saw the bridge. People told us what was on the other side: warmth, light, and healing from our pain. We could barely glimpse or imagine this, but we decided to start the trek across the bridge anyway.
We tried to convince the people around us on the cliff that there was a bridge to a better place, but they wouldn't listen. They couldn't see it; they couldn't believe. They were not ready for the journey. We decided to go alone, because we believed, and because people on the other side were cheering us onward. The closer we got to the other side, the more we could see, and feel, that what we had been promised was real. There was light, warmth, healing, and love. The other side was a better place.
But now, there is a bridge between those on the other side and us. Sometimes, we may be tempted to go back and drag them over with us, but it cannot be done. No one can be dragged or forced across this bridge. Each person must go at his or her own choice, when the time is right. Some will come; some will stay on the other side. The choice is not ours.
We can love them. We can wave to them. We can holler back and forth. We can cheer them on, as others have cheered and encouraged us. But we cannot make them come over with us.
If our time has come to cross the bridge, or if we have already crossed and are standing in the light and warmth, we do not have to feel guilty. It is where we are meant to be. We do not have to go back to the dark cliff because another's time has not yet come.
The best thing we can do is stay in the light, because it reassures others that there is a better place. And if others ever do decide to cross the bridge, we will be there to cheer them on.
Today, I will move forward with my life, despite what others are doing or not doing. I will know it is my right to cross the bridge to a better life, even if I must leave others behind to do that. I will not feel guilty. I will not feel ashamed. I know that where I am now is a better place and where I'm meant to be.


As I let go of all the negative tapes that block my truth, I trust and follow the energy that leads me to peace and joy. --Ruth Fishel

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Journey To The Heart

Fill Your World with Color and Beauty

Fill your life and your world with the colors, textures, scents, and objects that are beautiful to you, that have meaning to you. Remember that we are connected to our environment. The objects and the colors in our world have energy and meaning. They have an impact on us.

The more we see how connected we are, the more carefully and thoughtfully we may want to choose the items we place in our home, or our space at work, if we have a special area, because these objects and colors can reflect how we feel about ourselves and what is important to us.

Objects have energy. They have energy already in them when we obtain them, and they have the energy and meaning we attribute to them. Choose carefully the possessions you want around you, for they tell a story all day long.

Fill your world, your life, with objects that are beautiful and have special meaning to you. What articles and hues have you surrounded yourself with at home, at work? Is there a special article you want close to you, on your desk, in your locker, in your pocket? What story do these things tell about you, about what you’re going through, about your place in your journey?

Choose objects and colors that make your heart smile.

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More Language Of Letting Go

Starting over

How many times do we have to start over?

Many changes in our lives signal a major ending or beginning: death, birth, graduation, marriage, divorce, moving to a new home, getting sober, losing a job, or beginning a new career. We look around and think, Here we go. I’m starting over again.

Sometimes we don’t catch on at first. Sometimes it just feels like day after day of the same old thing as the old fades away and the new begins. Sometimes it feels like our lives have just stopped. Whether we believe it or not, when one cycle ends, a new one begins.

If life as you have known it is disappearing, it may be time to let go. Even if you can’t see it now– and you probably can’t– a new life will begin fading in to take its place. You and your life are being transformed.

How many times do we have to start over? As many times as life as we know it ends.

Say woohoo. You’re being born again.

God, help me trust that a new life awaits me if life as I’ve known it is fading away. Give me the patience and trust to sink joyfully into the void.

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Acting Together for Good
Cooperation

by Madisyn Taylor

Cooperation is allowed to flow more easily when we let go of the necessity to be right all the time.


Cooperation seems simple: working together toward a common goal for the benefit of all involved. But amazingly it can be quite challenging, even when we have so many successful examples all around us. Human society is based upon the concept of cooperation, but finding a balance to ensure the good of all members of society is difficult. In nature, symbiotic relationships form between unlikely allies: a bee and a flower, a bird and a rhinoceros, small fish and sharks. Yet nature also shows us instances of constant competition in which only the strongest survive. Given the choice, it seems most people would choose the more peaceful path of cooperation. Intellectually, we know that together we can create something greater than what one could do alone, but cooperation still seems to be one of the greatest challenges people face. We don’t always agree on how goals can be reached. Our priorities may be different, or our methods, but in the end, cooperation offers the best chance fo! r success.

So how can we learn to cooperate with each other? We can gain greater perspective by trying to understand one another’s point of view, perhaps even putting ourselves in their place. We can search for commonalities as well as differences, and look for the good in different approaches. There is always more than one way of doing things, and some approaches are better suited for certain situations than others. All this is easier when we let go of the necessity to be right and to call others wrong. More important, we must believe that there is a solution that benefits all involved, not just one side.

The results of cooperation can be as simple as effortlessly getting everyone in your household to their appointments to large-scale social shifts to changing minds and hearts or policies that affect the future. Published with permission from Daily OM

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A Day At A Time

Reflection For The Day

I am grateful for my friends in The Program. Right now I am aware of the blessings of friendship — the blessings of meeting, of sharing, of smiling, of listening, and of being available when needed. right now I know that if I want a friend, I must be a friend. Will i vow, this day, to be a better friend to more people? Will I strive, this day — in my thoughts, words and actions — to disclose the kind of friend I am?

Today I Pray

May I restore in kind to the fellowship of The Program the friendship I have so hungrily taken from it. After years of glossing my lonely existence with superficial acquaintanceship, may I learn again the reciprocal joys of caring and sharing.

Today I Will Remember

Be A Friend.

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One More Day

I am where I am because I believe in life’s possibilities.
– Oprah Winfrey

During the years of our youth we were continually reminded, “You can do it. Just set a goal and then reach a little beyond it.” Many of us were better at this as youngsters than we are as adults. We each have fought our own battles — to become educated or perhaps to achieve a promotion or new job. We tend to get a little short-sighted when a new variable enters the picture — a changing health pattern.

Too many of us back away, fearful the we’ll have all we can do to just orchestrate our own health care. It’s imperative that we continue to believe in ourselves as human beings with great potential — it matters less that we reach each goal. It matters most that we try.

I am setting new goals that offer challenge and the chance for success.