Today, if I get frustrated or overwhelmed by the responsibilities with which sobriety has entrusted me, I will slow down to remember gratitude and humility, if for no other reason than I once could not be trusted with the responsibilities that I have in sobriety. Getting sober and, more importantly, recovery have given me a purpose and sense of inclusion that addictive drinking took from me. But although sober and (hopefully) getting better emotionally and spiritually day by day, I must guard against a reckless or stupid moment in which what I have gained is destroyed – by me. Today, even if the candle burns at both ends, I will be grateful that my candle now even has a flame. And our common journey continues.
Step by step. – Chris M., 2014
THE FOREST AND THE TREES
. . . . what comes to us alone may be garbled by our own rationalization and wishful thinking. The benefit of talking to another person is that we can get his direct comment and counsel on our situation. . . . .
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 60I cannot count the times when I have been angry and frustrated and said to myself, “I can’t see the forest for the trees!” I finally realized that what I needed when I was in such pain was someone who could guide me in separating the forest and the trees; who could suggest a better path to follow; who could assist me in putting out fires; and help me avoid the rocks and pitfalls.I ask God, when I’m in the forest, to give me the courage to call upon a member of A.A.
Reflection for the DayIf I am troubled, worried, exasperated, or frustrated, do I tend to rationalize the situation and lay the blame on someone else? When I am in such a state, is my conversation punctuated with, “He did..”, “She said…”, “They did…”? Or can I honestly admit that perhaps I’m at fault. My peace of mind depends on overcoming my negative attitudes and tendency toward rationalization. Will I try, day by day, to be rigorously honest with myself?Today I PrayMay I catch myself as I talk in the third person, “He did…” or “They promised…” or “She said she would…” and listen for the blaming that has become such a pattern for me and preserves delusion. May I do a turnabout and face myself instead.Today I Will RememberHonesty is the only policy.© 1989 by Hazelden Foundation
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Reflection for the Day
Adversity introduces man to himself, a poet once said. For me, the same is true of even imagined adversity. If I expect another person to react in a certain way in a given situation—and he or she fails to meet my expectation—well, then I hardly have the right to be disappointed or angry. Yet I occasionally still experience feelings of frustration when people don’t act or react as I think they should. Through such imagined—or, better yet, self-inflicted—adversity, I come face to face again with my old self, the one who wanted to run the whole show. Is it finally time for me to stop expecting and to start accepting?
Today I Pray
May I stop putting words in people’s mouths, programming them—in my own mind—to react as I expect them to. Expectations have fooled me before: I expected unbounded love and protection from those close to me, perfection from myself, undivided attention from casual acquaintances. On the adverse side, I expected failure from myself, and rejection from others. May I stop borrowing trouble—or triumph either—from the future.
Today I Will Remember
Accept. Don’t expect.
© 1989 by Hazelden Foundation
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What should We accept?
Acceptance
Alcoholics usually have trouble accepting ordinary setbacks and limitations that other people live with all the time. Sometimes it seems much easier to just get drunk than to accept boredom and frustration.
The irony of such behavior is that we then have to accept much more failure as a result of problems created by drinking. Our drinking brings far more pain than it removes.
Learning acceptance in sobriety is part of the growing-up process. Along with learning to accept things we cannot change, however, we learn there are some things we don’t have to accept. Living sober gives us the power and confidence to make such changes.
I’ll repeat the Serenity Prayer today if I begin to feel disturbed or threatened. I will face life realistically while knowing I have many opportunities for growth and change.
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3
December
Raising the frustration threshold
AchievementWhat happens when we hit snags in our lives? In drinking, it was a common practice to chuck everything and just get drunk. This always made things worse, sometimes so much so that we forgot about the problem that triggered our frustrations.
Dealing with frustration is another part of growing up emotionally. Self-understanding in sobriety will help us detect surges of anger and irritation when things aren’t going as planned. We’ll recognize these feelings as being the same emotions that plagued us in our drinking days.
In sobriety, however, we are given choices. We actually do have the choice of pausing, letting the anger drain away, and then taking charge of the situation by knowing that God is working along with us. By doing this, we can eventually raise our threshold of frustration.
If some task or issue makes me angry today, I’ll back off and place the outcome in God’s hands. I’ll know this is working when I have a change in feeling about it.
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14
June Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.
—unknownTime always seems to pass too slowly or too quickly for us. .We want the fun times to last longer. We want the boring or painful times to go faster. But times goes at just the right pace. Any faster, and we wouldn’t have enough time to learn as we go. Any slower, and we’d lose interest. In our program, we learn to respect the pace of time. We let go, and we let time go at it’s own pace. We call this patience.Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, thank-you for patience. Help me look forward to the future without rushing. Help me live fully in the here and now. Help me make today a good one by doing Your will.Action for the Day: I’ll list five ways I can use time to be more healthy—in body, mind and spirit. Which of these five things can I do today?
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19
March Today, if some destructive emotion like self-pity or frustration pops up and tells me I can’t do anything right, I can say with honesty that alcoholism is one thing I did very right and did to a tee – and take the energy I applied to get drunk and thrust it on my recovery. The energy I used to get drunk will be spent instead on the Program’s first four words – “Admitted (I am) powerless …” – and on the willingness to surrender my will to a Higher Power, on the diligence and honesty needed for the subsequent Steps, and especially on being in service to others instead of myself. Today, I can have hope that I can do something good, something right because, if I can do drinking to perfection, I need only take a 180-degree turn and do recovery – certainly not to perfection, but at least getting started. And our common journey continues.
Step by step. – Chris M.
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