Sunday, October 19, 2025

 


Saturday, October 11, 2025

 


Our mind is a garden. Our thoughts are the seeds.

We can grow flowers … Or we can grow weeds.

 

 

        The Problem Is Always Me

 

What???   I'm the problem??? I don't think so!! 

After all …

HE fired me! ... SHE stole my savings! ... HE never stops yelling at me ... 

THEY are spreading lies about me ... HE's the one having the affair ... 

SHE won't believe me ... HE broke his promise ... SHE’S my sister and treats 

me like dirt ... My father lied to me ...  SHE blabbed my secret ...

 

We can play that blame game forever, but if we want emotional sobriety - 

aka: serenity - we may want to look at what our A.A. program teaches us. 

Like this from the 12&12:

 

It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are

 disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is 

something wrong with us.

 

And this from the Big Book:

Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, 

we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us,

seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in 

the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed 

us in a position to be hurt. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.

 

In the A.A. magazine The Grapevine, Bill W. himself was quoted as saying:

If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the 

root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand. 


Let us, with God's help, continually surrender these hobbling liabilities. 

Then we can be set free to live and love; we may then be able to twelfth-step

 ourselves, as well as others, into emotional sobriety.

 

Yeah, sure. Easy for Saint Bill to say, but not so easy to do if you're just a

 struggling drunk like me.

 

 But remember, it was "Saint Bill" who actually wrote those words we hear 

at every meeting: "We are NOT saints." We'll have to step back here and

 remember Bill W. - who gave us so much - was an unsaintly drunk just like

 the rest of us.

 

Sure, he was inspired - many say God inspired - when he and Dr. Bob put our

 incredible program of recovery together.  And there is no doubt both men 

were highly intelligent, strong-minded, high-achieving individuals. But the

 same can be said of many A.A. members. The difference is, our founders

 recognized that to stay sober they had to let go of any hint of being victims.

 

When we were still ignorant about addiction, we were victims of its power,

 but once in recovery we are no longer ignorant so we are no longer victims. 

No matter what we've lived through, we're still here. That makes us now 

survivors working on becoming better people.

 

 Our history has taken us from victimhood to victory. By climbing our steps of

 recovery, we get to the places offering life's finest views.

 

The moment we fall back into old behaviors and start playing the blame game it's

 time to rein ourselves in. We do it by looking at our part in whatever situation

 is causing us unrest.

 Because, clearly, the statement Every time we are disturbed,

 no matter what the cause, there is something wrong

with us. - offers no loopholes.

 

I wish I had a crisp dollar bill for how many times I’ve heard someone in A.A. 

say “My family doesn’t understand me.”

How could they? We defied all understanding when we drank.

But our A.A. “family” understands us perfectly and they tell us, regardless of

 what’s happening around or to us, we have the responsibility to look only at

 our part.

Others in our lives may seem unreasonable, but - just as holding onto

 resentments is dangerous for us - so is holding onto the blame game. We must

own our part in any life problems we're experiencing.

 

Easy to do? Nope. Acceptance is seldom easy. It can often feel like submission;

 but it’s not. Acceptance is actually when we acknowledge the facts of a

 situation and then decide what we need to do about it.

 

When we regularly do our Tenth Step nightly inventory we will start to see our

 part in our problems with others. It’s where we learn we must stop judging

 others and ourselves.

So, throw the stick away you still beat yourself up with and start acknowledging you have good qualities, too.

(Yes, this means you).

 

We are not always in the wrong, but our self-respect will be enhanced every

 time we act on the phrase: ... when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

 

Our Tenth Step work teaches us the person upsetting us the most is our best

 teacher!!! Our goal is to mentally thank that person for offering us so much

 to learn about ourselves. (I'll be working on this one till the day I die,

 but I'm better than I used to be … progress, not perfection).

 

The 12&12 states that all of us Are to some extent emotionally ill as well as

 frequently wrong, and it urges us to develop tolerance so we can learn ... 

what real love for our fellows actually means.

When we don't learn from our mistakes, we remain driven by them. 

Freedom is the absolute discovery of the joy to be found in living our own way,

 but better.  Freedom is actually obedience to our inner Higher Self, the

 One seeking expression through us.

 

The program of AlAnon, made up of those amazing souls who have to deal 

with us drunks (wet or dry), while maintaining their own peace of mind, 

teaches that everyone is to some extent emotionally ill.

One of the AlAnon sayings is:

 

Don't take anyone's inventory but your own.

 

It's great advice! Do you know anyone who is physically, mentally or spiritually

 perfect? I don't and I don't expect I ever will.  If "they" aren't perfect and

 "we" aren't perfect, how can we expect emotional sobriety unless we learn to cut everyone some slack?

 

The best way I've found is to begin treating others as I would like them

 to treat me - as that high-valued yellow metal "rule” suggests. *

It's pretty much the gold standard for finding emotional sobriety.

 

 

 

*(The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.)

 

 

                                                         *****


Sunday, October 5, 2025

 



 Made A Decision


Peace with self is the treasure beyond measure.

 

                                      Balance

 

My definition of balance is being able to obsess equally in all areas of my life.

 

I read that above quote recently and, while it made me chuckle, it also felt waaaaay too close to the mark. Because the need to create a balanced life has been the one big challenging recurring theme of my entire time in recovery.

 

My Higher Power clued me it would be so during my very first sober year, because the word "balance" was everywhere.

If I turned on the radio, I'd find a lecture about "living in a more BALANCED way."

If I sat on the toilet there would be a box of detergent nearby bearing words printed in big bold letters: "For a BALANCED washing ..."

A television program offered, "... watch in amazement as this man BALANCES on the thin wire between these skyscrapers ..." 

A bank statement gave notice of a new and easy way to BALANCE my account …

And so on.

Fuzzy as my head was that first year, even I couldn't miss my HP’s message saying I needed more BALANCE in my life.

 

So, what does a balanced life look like?

It looks calm, centered and comfortable. It shows up when we use A.A.’s tool kit to develop our spiritual, physical and mental health and eventually even adopting habits associated with healthy living, like eating well, exercising (preferably out in the open air) and getting enough sleep.

 

We use ALL the tools of recovery - from step work to book study groups - to develop and keep our balance.

Avoiding the busy-ness of ALWAYS doing too much is one component.

Remembering the A.A. advice to H.A.L.T. - not allowing ourselves to become too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired - is another.

 

Alcoholics are too often excitement junkies, creating or seeking stress to boost our built-in drug, adrenaline. We use caffeine the same way. Achieving serenity isn't easily done when we're all jazzed up on either.

 

Balance can be achieved, and is worth the effort, but it remains subject to change as our conditions change. We are now - and always - (like that high-wire walker between buildings) in need of staying balanced (despite sudden gusts of wind).

Let's say our A.A. life has restored our family to us, and we again have a good job, along with a strong support system in our A.A. friends. We have regained respect in our community. All is good!

But then … we are diagnosed with a medical problem; our child overdoses on drugs; we learn a friend has gossiped about us; our company goes bust; our job gone; divorce papers arrive … What then?

How do we retain balance through these kinds of situations?

 

First, we check in with the Boss, the Top Guy, Amazing Grace, God, YANA (You Are Not Alone), or whatever we chose to call our Higher Power. We can complain there for a bit (God can take it) before surrendering the problem to our HP by asking for help.

We talk with our sponsor and our known-to-be-trustworthy A.A. friends. We'll step up our number of meetings and will talk there - honestly - about what's going on with us.

We may whine for a bit to God, and our friends, but then must get off the pity pot before it becomes our permanent habitat.

Besides (after using all our A.A. tools), we're ready to face whatever facts must be faced - and dealt with - about our changed situation.

That's our A.A. solution for every single life problem we will encounter in recovery. That's how we learn to live life on life's terms ... or ... as I prefer to think of it, live life on God's terms.

 

Fast forward now, one sober day at a time, when suddenly - to our amazement - old age arrives with a whole new set of adjustments to be made. We suddenly find ourselves unable to do daily tasks formerly so easy we never gave them a thought.

Finding our balance in the strange (and often hilarious) new world of hard-of-hearing, hard to remember, hard to get up from a chair, hard to walk very far, hard to even sweep the floor ... takes a lot of new adjustments.

(Seeing that Old Woman in the mirror where I’m supposed to see me takes even more!)

 Finding the balance - when losing it can mean a broken hip - takes a good bit of getting used to!

It's also hard to know how much of our "hand of A.A." is still required of us. How much should now be handed off to younger members, so they can also gain every benefit from our wonderful program that we have?

 

Re-evaluating one's life while busy living it is never easy, but it's always necessary when we feel ourselves getting out of balance once again.

I've spent a lot of time in prayer and thought (and conversation with trusted friends) about this old age balancing act this week. I've decided it’s time to step back from a lot of my A.A. commitments to finish organizing my many weekly blogs into a book. 

 This feels like my best way for giving back to our program now, and just making that decision - and writing it down here - has already made me feel more balanced.

            My work now - as always - will be to keep me that way!