Friday 31 May 2019

Just for today


Keep it simple

“We live a day at a time but also from moment to moment. When we stop living in the here and now, our problems become magnified unreasonably.”

Basic Text, p. 99


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Life often seems too complicated to understand, especially for those of us who’ve dodged it for so long. When we stopped using drugs, many of us came face to face with a world that was confusing, even terrifying. Looking at life and all its details, all at once, may be overwhelming. We think that maybe we can’t handle life after all and that it’s useless to try. These thoughts feed themselves, and pretty soon we’re paralyzed by the imagined complexity of life.

Happily, we don’t have to fix everything at once. Solving a single problem seems possible, so we take them one at a time. We take care of each moment as it comes, and then take care of the next moment as it comes.  We learn to stay clean just for today, and we approach our problems the same way. When we live life in each moment, it’s not such a terrifying prospect. One breath at a time, we can stay clean and learn to live.

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Just for today: I will keep it simple by living in this moment only. Today, I will tackle only today’s problems; I will leave tomorrow’s problems to tomorrow. 
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Tuesday 7 May 2019

Change Your Attitude

Today’s Gift



Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.

—Henry Ward Beecher

Once there was a boy who always looked on the bright side and always expected the best. He expected to like brussels sprouts before he had ever tasted them, for instance, and to like his teacher on the first day of school. Because he had such a sunny outlook on things, he was rarely disappointed.

But the boy’s father thought he wasn’t realistic, so one Christmas he decided to test him. On Christmas morning there were many presents, all but one small one were for the boy’s brother. The brother opened his gifts with glee – a train set, a toy robot, a cowboy outfit, even his own TV.

Through all this, the boy smiled expectantly, confident the contents of his small box would equal the splendor of his brother’s gifts. When it was his turn he ripped the box open to find only a pile of hay and some very smelly animal droppings.

To his father’s astonishment, the boy clapped his hands with joy and ran immediately to the backyard. “Yippee!” he cried. “There must be a pony here somewhere!”

If I expect the best, just for today, what wondrous things might happen?
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