April 25, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

 

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

— Oscar Wilde

Just as we don’t have the right to judge someone else, we don’t have the right to judge ourselves. Our addictive script in the past was that when we did something we felt ashamed of, we judged ourselves guilty. All too often, we then punished ourselves.

Was that behavior an expression of our shame and sadness because we’re addicts? Punishing ourselves won’t stop the addiction; loving ourselves will.

We are grateful that our recovery has taught us the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt lets us feel remorse and sadness when our actions violate our values. Guilt helps us know when we’ve acted badly. But shame leaves us hopeless. To give in to shame and self-hatred only harms us and intensifies the power of the addiction. There is a better way, and that’s to learn to love ourselves.

Higher Power, please step in when I feel the urge to take things out on myself. May your love for me teach me to love myself instead.

Hazelden Foundation

April 25, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: Step by Step

 

Step by Step

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Today, understand we cannot claim credit if someone we sponsor or to whom we have carried the message finds sobriety. Likewise, let us not feel that we have failed a sponsee or co-member who continues to drink. To claim credit for anyone else’s recovery or to blame ourselves for their continued drinking fires our ego and, because of it, we break the command of being a carrier of the message. Just as we cannot credit anyone for our sobriety other than the Program or to blame our drinking on someone or something other than ourselves, we cannot claim credit for another person’s recovery or lack ot it. Today, let us remember that we are the messenger, not the message. And our common journey continues. Step by step. – Chris M., 2023

April 25, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: Twenty-Four Hours a Day

 

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

AA Thought for the Day

I don’t believe that AA works because I read it in a book or because I hear people say so. I believe it because I see people getting sober and staying sober. An actual demonstration is what convinces me. When I see the change in people, I can’t help believing that AA works. We could listen to talk about AA all day and still not believe it, but when we see it work, we have to believe it. Seeing is believing.

Do I see AA work every day?

Meditation for the Day

Try saying: “God bless her (or him)” of anyone who is in disharmony with you. Also say it of those who are in trouble through their own fault. Say it, willing that showers of blessings may fall upon them. Let God do the blessing. Leave to God the necessary correcting or disciplining. You should only desire blessing for them. Leave God’s work to God. Occupy yourself with the task that He gives you to do. God’s blessing will also break down all your own difficulties and build up all your successes.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may use God’s goodness so that it will be a blessing to others. I pray that I may accept God’s blessing so that I will have harmony, beauty, joy and happiness.

Hazelden Foundation

April 25, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: A Day at a Time

 

A Day at a Time

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Reflection for the Day

I have much more to be grateful for than I realize. Too often, I don’t remember to give thought to all the things in my life that I could enjoy and appreciate. Perhaps I don’t take time for this important meditation because I’m too preoccupied with my own so-called woes. I allow my mind to overflow with grievances; the more I think about them, the more monumental they seem. Instead of surrendering to God and His goodness, I let myself be controlled by the negative thinking into which my thoughts are apt to stray unless I guide them firmly into brighter paths.

Do I try to cultivate an “attitude of gratitude?”

Today I Pray

May God lead me away from my pile-up of negative thoughts, which make for detours in my path of personal growth. May I break the old poor-me habits of remembering the worst and expecting the most dire. May I turn my thoughts ahead to a whole new world out there. May I allow myself to envision the glory of God.

Today I Will Remember

Keep an attitude of gratitude.

Hazelden Foundation

April 25, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: The Eye Opener

 

The Eye Opener

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Man is a pretty smart duck, but after all these centuries of study, experimentation and reasoning, we still don’t know what we are, where our life came from or what happens to it when we die. True, we have certain faiths and beliefs, but who can say with certainty and with personal knowledge exactly what the answer to the Great Enigma really is?

We have unlocked many of the secrets of Nature, but we still don’t know what we are, how we got here or where we will go when we leave.

God still has many secrets. If man knew them all, there would be no incentive to know God better.

Hazelden Foundation

April 25, 2023 – Good morning to a grand and beautiful Tuesday

 

Good morning with hopes of a terrific and productive Tuesday for everyone — and don’t waste any of the day on people and things who don’t rate our attention

April 24, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

 

Monday, April 24, 2023

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

— William Shakespeare

Our recovery program tells us to “Act as if.” If we wish we had more faith, we will act as if we had it and see what happens. If we wish we were more honest, we will tell the truth and see what happens. If we wish we were brave, we will take the actions a brave person would take and see what happens.

Face it. Few of us are as good, kind, brave, generous, honest, and loyal as we would like to be. But the way we become who we want to be is simple. First think about how we will act in a difficult situation, then do it. In the beginning, it feels a little phony, but that’s okay. Our program also says it’s a good thing to “Fake it ’til you make it.” Hey, we can do that! We can’t remake ourselves and fix everything all at once, but we can fake it a little. We can act like a kind person. We can do what a brave person would do. We can say what an honest person would say.

Let’s just call it practicing the program.

Prayer for the Day

Higher Power, help me recognize times to practice “Acting as if” today. Help me act as if I were already the kind of person I hope to be some day.

Today’s Action

I will be aware today of the chances to act the way I would like to act instead of the way I am used to acting. I will write a sentence or two about what I learned.

Hazelden Foundation

April 24, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: Step by Step

 

Step by Step
Monday, April 24, 2023

Today, the link between consequences and responsibility — and the reality that I and I alone am responsible to the consequences of my behavior and choices, including drinking, and that excuses and justifications will not spare me either consequences or responsibility. The Program’s 12th Step suggests I “practice these principles in all (my) affairs” — to live by AA’s principles and not weasel out of owning my feelings, actions and behavior and the consequences of each. If, for example, I slip or relapse, I cannot blame anything but myself because, in the end, I made the choice to drink. No one tied me down and poured it down my throat, and I and no one else will endure the physical and emotional consequences of my choice to drink. Today, I am mindful that all I say, do and feel will bear consequences and that I alone am responsible to those consequences. And if I want to avoid responsibility to the consequences, the “out” is clear: don’t do what I don’t want to suffer consequences for. And our common journey continues. Step by step. – Chris M., 2023

April 24, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: Twenty-Four Hours a Day

 

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Monday, April 24, 2023

AA Thought for the Day

It’s been proved that we alcoholics can’t get sober by our willpower. We’ve failed again and again. Therefore, I believe there must be a Higher Power which helps me. I think of that power as the grace of God. And I pray to God every morning for the strength to stay sober today. I know that Power is there because it never fails to help me.

Do I believe that AA works through the grace of God?

Meditation for the Day

Once I am “born of the spirit,” that is my life’s breath. Within me is the life of life, so that I can never perish. The life that down the ages has kept God’s children through peril, adversity and sorrow. I must try never to doubt or worry, but follow where the life of the spirit leads. How often, when little I know it, God goes before me to prepare the way, to soften a heart, or to overrule a resentment. As the life of the spirit grows, natural wants become less important.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that my life may become centered in God more than in self. I pray that my will may be directed towards doing His will.

Hazelden Foundation

April 24, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: A Day at a Time

 

A Day at a Time

Monday, April 24, 2023

Reflection for the Day

We come to know in The Program that there is no deeper satisfaction and no greater joy than in a Twelfth Step well done. To watch the eyes of men and women open with wonder as they move from darkness to light, to see their lives quickly fill with new purpose and meaning, and above all to watch them awaken to the presence of a loving God in their lives — these things are the substance of what we receive as we carry the message of The Program.

Am I learning through Twelfth Step experiences that gratitude should go forward, rather than backward?

Today I Pray

May my Twelfth Steps be as wholehearted and as convincing and as constructive as others’ Twelfth-Stepping has been to me. May I realize that the might of The Program and its effectiveness for all of us come through “passing it on.” When I guide someone else to sobriety, my own sobriety is underlined and reinforced. I humbly ask God’s guidance before each Twelfth Step.

Today I Will Remember

To pass it on.

Hazelden Foundation

April 24, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: The Eye Opener

 

The Eye Opener

Monday, April 24, 2023

The reasoning of the practicing alcoholic is in such foul shape that he is apt to take any attitude on the drinking question and usually does.

It is unreasonable to expect them to view their own or anyone else’s sobriety in a rational way. Naturally plain common sense is not possible in the midst of an alcoholic fog, but why — oh, why — do so many practicing alcoholics, including slipees, invariably persist in looking for the most insecure member of AA in their quest for a drinking partner?

If you are homesick for the gutter, go on back to it. But don’t take anyone with you.

Hazelden Foundation

April 24, 2023 – Rise ‘n shine for a marvelous Monday and brand new week

 

Good morning with confidence that there’s nothing another Monday and new week will serve up that we can’t handle …have a marvelous day, and don’t waste it on people and things who don’t deserve our attention

April 23, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

 

Sunday, April 23, 2023

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

— Step Four of Alcoholics Anonymous

The moral inventory called for in the Fourth Step is more like a practical accounting than it is a listing of criminal accusations. The point of taking the Fourth Step is to assess the facts about ourselves and how we have lived our lives. It is to pin down the truth about who we are so we can make better judgments about who we might become.

When we take the Fourth Step, we are looking for recurring patterns of thought and behavior. In searching for the story behind our story, we try to uncover the sources of chronic trouble within ourselves. Many times, these attitudes and actions are well concealed under layers of rationalization and denial. It isn’t easy to root them out and lay them on the table. It isn’t easy to be fearless. But it’s worth it.

The Fourth Step shines the light of truth through the clouds of inappropriate guilt and undeserved shame. Our willingness to face the negative also reveals our true merits, essential goodness, and numerous options – perhaps for the first time.

I now have enough self-worth to admit my character flaws.

Hazelden Foundation

April 23, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: Step by Step

 

Step by Step
Sunday, April 23, 2023

Today, reflect on the choices and responsibilities of sponsorship. If I have progressed in my recovery that I need to ask someone to sponsor me, where and how do I begin? My home group is fertile ground, and I may think about selecting three or four members, narrow them down to those I feel I can trust most and then approach that potential sponsor in confidence. If I am being asked to sponsor someone, however, I ask my Higher Power for the wisdom and responsibility before taking on such a sacred trust. Let me understand that sponsorship does not mean I am the sponsee’s pseudo-priest and that the job does not make me “preacher.” Today, I extend my recovery to include asking to be sponsored and, God willing, consenting to someone’s request to offer my strength, hope and experience to him. And our common journey continues. Step by step. – Chris M., 2023

April 23, 2023 - Readings in Recovery: Twenty-Four Hours a Day

 

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Sunday, April 23, 2023

AA Thought for the Day

Men and women keep coming into AA, licked by alcohol, often given up by doctors as hopeless cases, they themselves admitting they’re helpless to stop drinking. When I see these men and women get sober and stay sober over a period of months and years, I know that AA works. The change I see in people who come into AA not only convinces me that there must be a Power greater than ourselves which helps us to make that change.

Am I convinced that a Higher Power can help me to change?

Meditation for the Day

Cooperation with God is the great necessity for our lives. All else follows naturally. Cooperation with God is the result of our consciousness of His presence. Guidance is bound to come to us as we live more and more with God, as our consciousness becomes more and more attuned to the great Consciousness of the universe. We must have many quiet times when we not so much ask to be shown and led by God, as to feel and realize His presence. New spiritual growth comes naturally from cooperation with God.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that God may supply me with strength and show me the direction in which He wants me to grow. I pray that these things may come naturally from my cooperation with Him.

Hazelden Foundation