Friday, November 19, 2021

Nov. 19, 2021 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

Friday, Nov. 19, 2021

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. — Mark Twain

Imagination is wonderful if we don’t use it against ourselves. Like fire, it is a great power capable of either warming and giving life or of burning and destroying everything it touches. Consider how often we create problems that never come to be! Family gatherings we know will drive us crazy turn out to be uneventful or even pleasant. Phone calls we put off for months or years because of the excruciating pain they will cause are not the big deal we thought they would be. Once made, decisions we dreaded and avoided improve our lives so much that we wonder what we were waiting for!

We adult children often grow up wearing “doom glasses.” Everything we see is filtered through those darkened lenses. How much of what we dread, fear, and run from is really more a figment of imagination than fact? How much of our lives and energy do we spend on avoiding what does not yet exist and perhaps never will?

I am learning not to borrow trouble from the future.

Hazelden Foundation

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