Thoughts To Help You On Your Recovery Path

[MajestyJo]

Words to Live By

Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.

Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.

Eat a live toad in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.

If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.

If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

Never buy a car you can't push.

Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you don't have a leg to stand on.

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. just get up and dance.

The early worm gets eaten by the bird, so sleep late.

When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

Birthdays are good for you; the more you have, the longer you live.

Ever notice that the people who are late are often much jollier than the people who have to wait for them?

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the world to one person.

Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.

Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened. We could learn a lot from crayons: some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, some have weird names, and all are different colors but they all have to learn to live in the same box.

A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

Happiness comes through doors you didn't even know you left open.

Have an awesome day, and know that someone has thought about you today.

Think this is a rerun but definitely a good reminder...

[dwmoeller]

[MajestyJo]

Live With Integrity

Live with integrity and you'll deal with a lot less stress in
your life. Because dishonesty, deception, cheating --
aside from their obvious moral implications -- require
constant, nerve-wracking upkeep...covering your tracks,
deluding others, living with the spectre of getting caught.

However small our dishonesties (and who among us is
guiltless?), they will exact a costly toll in undermining
our sense of security, well-being and self-respect. Which
may explain why some of the most honest people we
know -- regardless of their circumstances -- are also the
happiest.

When we come clean, and live clean, a huge burden is lifted.

~unknown~

[MajestyJo]

Time for Joy - Book - Quote

I trust God's plan for me today. I know that I am being guided at all times. I know all I need to know in any given moment.

Sometimes I tend to forget this. I find myself asking my God, "Can't you give me a little hint so we both will know?

I looked at my horoscope in the paper today and it said go to dinner and take the evening as it comes. I went to bridge, had a buffet supper, and came third and won more silver points. It was the first time playing with my partner and she figured we did so, so and left before the scores were calculated.

It seems like a small things, but those small things add up to peace and contentment.

Resentments are the number one thing that takes us back out, followed by guilt. So grateful that I have learned over the years to listen to that voice coming from within, yet I can still discount it because I am caught up in busy and I go along my merry way, then I generally it a wall, a block and I don't know how to handle it or I realize I just don't want to go there. So glad a day can start any time. I can go back to Step One and get honest, surrender and accept, not just what is, but my God's Will for me, instead of running off at the mouth, running away from home, running to something that will allow me to stuff a feeling, a thought, or something that will distract me, because I don't want to be where I am at.

I had to learn to stay in the moment, turn it all over to my God, and let go and let my God, lead me in the way He would have me go.

[MajestyJo]

Positive Self Esteem by Increased Self Acceptance

I am a person of value and worth. I was born with this value. My worth does not decline throughout my life; it remains the same. Only my feelings about my worth can change. My value and worth is the same as anyone else s's.

I am not my behavior. If I fail at something, it does not mean that I am a failure. I will always make mistakes because I am just a person. I can try to do better but I will sometimes make wrong or selfish decisions. I need not feel guilty about old past failures. I accept myself even though I make mistakes.

I cannot control or change the past. It does not help me to worry about my past and it certainly does not help me to punish myself by dwelling on past mistakes, making myself feel guilty or calling myself names. I acted in the past only in light of my knowledge and state of mind at the time. Circumstances may also have affected my behavior. My worth is not based on how many or how few mistakes I have made.

I cannot control other people. They may not treat me as I would like but that may have little to do with who I am. Other people do not have to meet my expectations. My self worth is not based on how other people feel about me. There will always be some people who reject me or dislike me but my value remains the same. I will focus on those people who do like and respect me. Other people's feelings do not control my feelings.

It is okay for me to like myself. It does not hurt anyone else for me to have improved self-esteem. Liking myself does not make me arrogant or conceited. In fact, if my self-esteem is better, I will be more calm and pleasant with others. I give myself permission to like myself just the way that I am.

It is okay for me to make and effort to fulfill my own needs. My needs are as real and legitimate as anyone's. It is alright for me to sometimes: indulge, make mistakes, wast time, not fulfill other's expectations, be lazy, change my mind, dream, be inadequate and present a poor image. I give myself permission to be just a person with all of the weaknesses, failures and moments of selfishness that go along with being human.

I feel warm and loving toward myself. I approve of myself. I am allowed to be less then perfect. I recognize that no one is exactly like me. I can always try to improve myself, but for now, I accept myself for who I am today.

Original Source Unknown

Suggested as a daily reading

[MajestyJo]

Sleeping is a sign of depression. Depression is also a part of grief. Being in early recovery, you go through a stage of depression, and as you go through more changes in recovery, letting go of people, places and things, you will experience more.

The knowingness and awareness of it will help you adjust in your new life. So many people go to a doctor and say, "I am depressed!" They are given a pill with no thought of the root cause. A chemical imbalance needs medication, and depression brought on my grief does not. The only medication it needs is a Twelve Step Program and some MEDITATION with your Higher Power.

I think that is why people fight "change" in their life because they don't like the process, yet when you get to the other side, the time and effort has always been worth it for me, especially when I accept what "is" in the moment.

I am continually going through grief as a result of my fibromyalgia, some of that is my trouble accepting that I cannot do what I want to do, when I want to do it! Which means I need to take it to my Higher Power for an attitude adjustment. I am going through the loss of my aunt who just passed away. Not just my aunt herself, but the things I use to do with her. i.e. picking up the phone and asking how you bake this or that, having lunch with her, etc.

Written in 2004

Sleeping is a sign of depression. Depression is also a part of grief. Being in early recovery, you go through a stage of depression, and as you go through more changes in recovery, letting go of people, places and things, you will experience more.

The knowingness and awareness of it will help you adjust in your new life. So many people go to a doctor and say, "I am depressed!" They are given a pill with no thought of the root cause. A chemical imbalance needs medication, and depression brought on my grief does not. The only medication it needs is a Twelve Step Program and some MEDITATION with your Higher Power.

I think that is why people fight "change" in their life because they don't like the process, yet when you get to the other side, the time and effort has always been worth it for me, especially when I accept what "is" in the moment.

I am continually going through grief as a result of my fibromyalgia, some of that is my trouble accepting that I cannot do what I want to do, when I want to do it! Which means I need to take it to my Higher Power for an attitude adjustment. I am going through the loss of my aunt who just passed away. Not just my aunt herself, but the things I use to do with her. i.e. picking up the phone and asking how you bake this or that, having luch with her, etc.

I have a friend who relapsed as a result of his pain and now he is back in the program grieving the loss of his drug of choice, which took away the pain, but so much more from his life. In today, he is grieving the loss of his leg which was amputated three days ago as a result of not taking care of his diabetes. We abuse our bodies for years and often when we sober up, we find out the results of that neglect. He has had heart and leg surgery several times over the last few years.

Frog means cleansing and Dog means loyal friend, so I will say, "Keep up the good work my clean and sober friends, keep doing the do things, one day at a time!"

They say don't make any major decisions in your first year. i.e. If you want to move that is okay, just remember you take you with you. Geographical cures are a part of recovery, often they don't work, it depends on the motive and intent behind them.

I have a friend who relapsed as a result of his pain and now he is back in the program grieving the loss of his drug of choice, which took away the pain, but so much more from his life. In today, he is grieving the loss of his leg which was amputated three days ago as a result of not taking care of his diabetes. We abuse our bodies for years and often when we sober up, we find out the results of that neglect. He has had heart and leg surgery several times over the last few years.

Frog means cleansing and Dog means loyal friend, so I will say, "Keep up the good work my clean and sober friend, keep doing the do things, one day at a time!"

If you want to move that is okay, just remember you take you with you. Geographical cures are a part of recovery, often they don't work, it depends on the motive and intent behind them.

Depression can keep us in our disease and the 12 Steps are applicable because we have so many losses and change in our life. It is normal. Better to work the steps than popping a pill, unless it is clinical depression. Even if you need medication for your depression, the program helps you to live with it.

[MajestyJo]

Do you belong or do you just take up some space on a chair and just come before the meeting starts and leave when it ends. (There is nothing wrong with that if that is all you can do, but there is no much more) For me to belong to a group, it means extending your hand to another member, to member from another group, and to a newcomer. To belong is helping setting up the group by helping making coffee, putting up the chairs and taking them down, putting out literature and putting it away, standing at the door and greeting people as they come and saying goodbye as they leave. One of my favourite is asking, "Do you do hugs?"

Service is done by rotation of leadership. No service position should last more than two years. Do you volunteer? Do you unvolunteer and allow someone else to have an opportunity to do service too, to get the experience that helped you. Are you willing to share what was so freely given to you?

The meeting starts when you get there and ends when you leave. Are you missing out on the meeting before the meeting and the meeting after the meeting?

They say there is no such thing as a dumb question, only those not asked. How can you know what you haven't been taught. Ask a long-timer, they will guide you as to what you need to do to belong to a group and become a true member of the fellowship.

[MajestyJo]

Too often, we look only for friends who are much like ourselves, and we tend to avoid those who are not. This kind of narrow-mindedness isn't fair to others or ourselves. We are each unique, like the pieces of a puzzle. We are each necessary to the whole picture.

Today's Gift

When we come into recovery, things can be very overwhelming and it is so important to stay in today, and just live in the moment. I had to learn about the short and long view of things. It is strange I often had short view and couldn't see the end result or the whole picture and yet there were times I couldn't see what was right in front of my face.

I could often see the long view, but didn't know how to get there. Because things seemed unattainable, I would do nothing not knowing that it takes small steps and that I had to learn to crawl before I could walk.

For me, it is good that I can see both sides of the street. Having been raised in an alcoholic home, lived an abusive alcoholic marriage, and having the disease of alcoholism myself, even though I have been in recovery for a few 24-hours, I have been there, done it, wore the T-shirt and don't want to go back there. I don't want to look back, although it is sometimes necessary to heal in today, I need to live in the moment and not project into the future or lament over my past.

I didn't get this way overnight, and the program isn't a quick fix. All I am asked to do is try to do the best I can for this 24 hours. The support is there. I had to surround myself with sober friends, detach from (in my case family and friends), until I could get a firm foundation and allow myself to detox, get a grip of the program and how it works, got myself a sponsor to call, and friends who could be there for support. It wasn't about next week, a month away, next year, it was about today. Just for today, I choose to stay clean and sober.

The whole picture, making my space clean and safe for me. A safe place to put me in and my belongs in. A place to go, where I was safe to heal, change and grow. That was the picture that I wanted to see, someone free from the bondage of addiction.

[MajestyJo]

Fact

from: "A Vision for You"

"Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come, if your own house is in order. But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got. See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the Great Fact for us."


© 2001, Alcoholics Anonymous, page 164

For me, this says it all. This is a spiritual program. Each day I get up I invite my God into my day, I ask for help and He puts people, places and things in my path to show me how to live in today clean and sober. He will guide my thoughts, direct my path and it is up to me to build a working relationship with the God of my understanding.

I used people, places, and things all of my life. I looked outside of myself for something to make me feel better, when in fact all I had to do was look within, and the answers were revealed to me, a day at a time.

The sad thing is, that sometimes I didn't always trust that person, vision, thought, or guidance, and I discounted it forgetting that it was God given and it was for my Higher Good. If I doubt myself, I am doubting my God.

[MajestyJo]

LIVE AND LET LIVE

This is a reminder that most of us need- often.
We need to make ourselves realize that we are
not equipped to judge or criticize others for what
they are or do.

My only concern should be my own conduct, my
own improvement, my own life. Each of us are
entitled to his own view of things, but we have
no right to inflict it on anyone else.

An important slogan to apply to my life to maintain my sobriety (soundness of mind). The first word is the key, "Live" my own life and allow other to live their lives. For so many years I lived my life through others, put my life on hold for others, and I just existed instead of living. I was just marking time, not realing livig my life to the fullest.

Some one asked me what made me happy and I didn't know. I thought what they wanted made me happy. I told myself, if they where happy, I was happy.

I think I posted something like this somewhere else not to long ago. It is surprising how much denial we can live in when we don't want to face the truth.

[MajestyJo]

Our masculine side is our survivor side. I didn't know I could set boundaries and let alone expect them to be respected and adhered to. I didn't know I could reset them when they got trampled on.

My recovery is about me. There is no right way or wrong way to work my program. It is doing what is good for me and when the time is right. I don't have to be pushed into something that I am not ready for. I came, I came to, and I came to believe that the program will work for me. Until I can take those steps honestly, I am not ready to move forward. Honesty, Open-mindedness, and Willingness are the keys to recovery and without them, I can not able to work the rest of the Steps to the best of my ability, to bring about the change in attituded necessary to aid recovery.

I found that when I had doubt, I was continually looking for that way out, that excuse, and go back into the blame and shame game because it was easier to look at what you did than what I did.

When people step over my boundaries and get into my 'face' I allow them control and give up my power to them.

In regard to a Touchstone quote posted in 2010

[MajestyJo]

There is no right way or wrong way to work my program. It is doing what is good for me and when the time is right. I don't have to be pushed into something that I am not ready for.

Like this, it is an old reading and the link will take you to a new link for today, but that is okay too.

http://www.hazelden.org/web/public/t...iew?catId=1902

I needed to read the old one. Things happen as they should, it isn't good for me to try to make them happen for the time is right. Just because I want them to be, doesn't make them right. It is God's time, not mine.

[MajestyJo]

Food for Thought
Overeating is Hell

When we fall into the trap of compulsive overeating, it is as though we are driven by some malevolent, diabolical force against which we are powerless. We know with our minds that we should stop eating, but by ourselves we cannot. A binge may start out pleasantly enough - just a taste here and there - but it eventually becomes torture.

Because we know what we are doing to ourselves, we feel guilty while we are bingeing. We hate ourselves because we cannot stop. The more we eat, the more uncomfortable we become physically and mentally. Clothes constrict and we are stuffed and bloated. Our minds begin to race along old, negative, and irrational tracks. Anyone who gets in our way can be the object of our anger. We lose control, we are separated from our Higher Power, and we are in Hell.

Let us not forget every day that the first compulsive bite opens the gates of Hell.

Certainly can identify with the feelings. I am guilty of thinking, "Oh what is the use!" Then I tend to give up on myself at which a time, God and I have to have a little talk. I have a difficult time with swelling, not just in my feet, but all over. Right now I can't put on my boots to go out even if it wasn't storming. With the swelling, I think and see fat and it can put my in a hellish mind frame. I don't want to eat because I am fat. Bloat and swelling aren't fat. I have to remind myself it is part of my fibromyalgia.



A post from 2009 on another site

It is good to go back and hear myself. When I was at the doctor's the other day I was disappointed to find that I was 10 lbs. over where I had it in my mind that I was. I thought I had lost weight, and then immediately got angry and said, "It is all this swelling!!!" Which in truth, was true because it was one of my better days.



It is my eating that can take my thinking to hell and back!

[MajestyJo]

I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, and fear. I wish to be simple, honest, frank, natural, clean in mind and clean in body. . . to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed and unafraid.

--Elbert Hubbard

Growing up, we learned there were many places to make wishes: the first star, a well, candles on a birthday cake. We saw Dorothy return from Oz after she wished she were back home. Fairy tales taught us wishes can come true.

We don't have to stop wishing, even though many of our wishes never came true. We may have wished for the impossible when we said "I wish things would get better at home." But we may have gotten our way when we said, "I wish this pain would end." Our dreams came true with the program.

Our best wishes can be about ourselves and the lives we want to have. We can wish for riches and find friends with hearts of gold. We can wish for comfort and health, and get a night of uninterrupted sleep. Whatever we wish for, we can receive.

You are reading from the book:

Night Light by Amy E. Dean

"If life is a bowl of cherries, what am I doing in the pits?"

-- Erma Bombeck

When I saw this, I thought it read, "What am I doing with the pits?"

Both are worth thought and require action on my part. The 12 Steps are applicable to both.

Am I practicing the principles in all my affairs? Do I work the Steps into my daily life? Do I just think program in meetings and leave my program at the door when I go home, to work, or out into the community?

Do I think, oh woe is me? I am an alcoholic. I am so hard done by, forgetting that I should be grateful that I have found this new way of living. If I wasn't an alcoholic, I wouldn't have known that there was a chance at recovery.

Do I sometimes need to eat my words? Do I give others a second thought? Am I so caught up in self that I don't have time for others?



Sorry if some of these are repeats. I post on three sites and in different sections, and have senior moments and forget what is where.

[MajestyJo]

WE CAN HANDLE ALL THAT COMES TO US

We are never divorced from our past - we are in company with it forever, and it acquaints us with the present. Our responses today reflect our experiences yesterday. And these roots lie in the past. We look at the past, check that which appears to be negative and mentally correct it by handling it in our mind as we would now. Then release it and begin again fresh and new. Everyday is offering us preparation for the future, for lessons to come, without which we'd not offer our full measures to the design which contains the development of all of us. Our experiences, past and present are not coincidental. We will be introduced to those experiences that are consistent with our talents and the right lessons designated for the part we are requested to play in life. We can remember that no experiences will attract us that are beyond our capabilities to handle.

PEARL S. BUCK wrote, "One faces the future with one's past."

Are you able to recognize situations in your past and mentally correct them now?

- Antestian Newsletter

As The Promises in AA say, "We will not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it."