April 2, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

 

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

Becoming Our Own Best Friend

In a certain sense, recovery from any of the things that we recover from is about learning how to become our own best friend. Making friends with ourselves is not an easy concept for us to grasp initially, but we figure it out eventually. We befriend ourselves by stopping the behaviors that are causing us harm, then doing the work that we need to do to heal our traumas and, over time, release our past.

We befriend ourselves by treating ourselves kindly and with appreciation — the same ways that we treat other friends in our life. After years of being our own worst enemy, becoming our own best friend is a relief and an opportunity. It opens the door to self-care, self-compassion, and, over time, self-love. Becoming our own best friend is an important milestone in our healing. After all, we can never have too many friends, right?

Are you your own best friend? If not, can you practice treating yourself as you would treat a dear friend?

Hazelden Foundation

April 2, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: Step by Step

 

Step by Step
Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Today, I will not carry the pattern of compulsive and habitual behavior I perfected in my drinking days to other areas of my life. As a drinking alcoholic, I established the pattern of feeling and taking everything to an unhealthy and inappropriate extreme — all or nothing. That pattern is not necessarily in remission simply because my active alcoholism is. To shift the habitual and compulsive nature of my drinking to work, play, service or any other activity can be almost as self-defeating. And it is through the Steps of character rehabilitation that I need to tame unhealthy behavior. Today, I will seek a balance between giving everything, taking all and retain what I need for myself by seeking the guidance of my Higher Power and reciting the Program‘s mottoes: “A Day at a Time,” “First Things First,” “Keep It Simple” and “Easy Does It.” And our common journey continues. Step by step. — Chris M., 2024

April 2, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: Twenty-Four Hours a Day

 

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

AA Thought for the Day

Since I’ve been in AA, have I made a start towards becoming more loving to my family and friends? Do I visit my parents? Am I more appreciative of my spouse than I was before? Am I grateful to my family for having put up with me? Have I found real understanding with my children? Do I feel that the friends I’ve found in AA are real friends? Do I believe that they are always ready to help me and do I want to help them if I can?

Do I really care now about other people?

Meditation for the Day

Not what you do so much as what you are, that is the miracle-working power. You can be a force for good, with the help of God. God is here to help you and to bless you, here to company with you. You can be a worker with God. Changed by God’s grace, you shed one garment of the spirit for a better one. In time, you throw that one aside for yet a finer one. And so from character to character, you are gradually transformed.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may accept every challenge. I pray that each acceptance of a challenge may make me grow into a better person.

Hazelden Foundation

April 2, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: A Day at a Time

 

A Day at a Time

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Reflection for the Day

What causes slips? What happens to a person who apparently seems to understand and live the way of The Program, yet decides to go out again? What can I do to keep this from happening to me? Is there any consistency among those who slip, any common denominators that seem to apply? We can each draw our own conclusions, but we learn in The Program that certain inactions will all but guarantee an eventual slip.

When a person who has slipped is fortunate enough to return to The Program, do I listen carefully to what he or she says about the slip?

Today I Pray

May my Higher Power — if I listen to Him — show me if I am setting myself up to get high again. May I glean from the experiences of others that the reasons for such a lapse of resolve or such an accident will most often stem from what I have not done rather than from what I have done. May I “keep coming back” to meetings.

Today I Will Remember

Keep coming back.

Hazelden Foundation

April 2, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: The Eye Opener

 

The Eye Opener

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Reduced to its simplest form, the only true worship is to love God, and the only way to demonstrate this love is to serve your fellow man.

We in AA show the extent of our moral growth in the extent of our service to others. It is the only true spiritual experience. The flash of light that some of us experience could be only the first ray of intelligence that finally penetrated the alcoholic fog and dazzled our minds.

The true spiritual experience is evidenced by a passion to do those things which delight the spirit. By their works shall ye know them.

Hazelden Foundation

April 2, 2024 – Good morning and we can count on a great Tuesday after doing Monday

 

Good morning and here’s a pretty flower to help get your Tuesday 

off to a great start …make the day count for something good, and that means ignoring people and things that don’t deserve our time

April 1, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

 

Monday, April 1, 2024

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

Developing a sense of humor

We may not believe this, but it helps to think that life isn’t strictly serious. There’s much humor in it, and a sense of humor often eases pain. If we can laugh, chances are we can forgive both ourselves and others.

It may not feel like it, but recovery isn’t strictly serious either. Staying sober (and helping others do the same) is often a process full of joy.

Can I find something to laugh at today?

Higher Power, help me see the humor in all my seriousness. Help me laugh.

Today I will get in touch with my sense of humor by…

Hazelden Foundation

April 1, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: Step by Step

 

Step by Step

Monday, April 1, 2024

Today: Faith in the Program and my Higher Power and offering to someone else what I have found in recovery. Today, I will relinquish all that is selfish and impedes or blocks my progress, my growth, and extend a hand of service to someone in need. Borrowing from Mother Teresa: If I grieve, I will find someone who needs consoling; if I am hungry, I will find someone to feed; if I am thirsty, I will quench another’s thirst; and, if I am cold, I will give warmth to someone else. If someone seeking recovery from active alcoholism calls on me, I will not turn away and instead offer what I have — hope, promise and rebirth in a Program that has been passed on to me through grace. Today, I will accept that I can keep what I have only by sharing it with someone else. And our common journey continues. Step by step. — Chris M., 2024

April 1, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: Twenty-Four Hours a Day

 

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Monday, April 1, 2024

AA Thought for the Day

Since I’ve been in AA, have I made a start towards becoming more honest? Do I no longer have to lie to my husband or wife? Do I try to have meals on time, and do I try to earn what I make at work? Am I trying to be honest? Have I faced myself as I really am and have I admitted to myself that I’m no good by myself, but have to rely on God to help me do the right thing?

Am I beginning to find out what it means to be alive and to face the world honestly and without fear?

Meditation for the Day

God is all around us. His spirit pervades the universe. And yet we often do not let His spirit in. We try to get along without His help and we make a mess of our lives. We can do nothing of any value without God’s help. All our human relationships depend on this. When we let God’s spirit rule our lives, we learn how to get along with others and how to help them.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may let God run my life. I pray that I will never again make a mess of my life through trying to run it myself.

Hazelden Foundation

April 1, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: A Day at a Time

 

A Day at a Time

Monday, April 1, 2024

Reflection for the Day

If we don’t want to slip, we’ll avoid slippery places. For the alcoholic, that means avoiding old drinking haunts; for the over-eater, that means by-passing a once-favorite pastry shop; for the gambler, that means shunning poker parties and race tracks. For me, certain emotional situations can also be slippery places; so can indulgence of old ideas such as a well-nourished resentment that is allowed to build to explosive proportions.

Do I carry the principles of The Program with me wherever I go?

Today I Pray

May I learn not to test myself too harshly by “asking for it,” by stopping in at the bar or the bakery or the track. Such “testing” can be dangerous, especially if I am egged on, not only by a thirst or an appetite or a craving for the old addiction, but by others still caught in it whose moral responsibility has been reduced to zero.

Today I Will Remember

Avoid slippery places.

Hazelden Foundation

April 1, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: The Eye Opener

 

The Eye Opener

Monday, April 1, 2024

What exists in the life to come, we can leave to the theologians. But the actual existence of Heaven and Hell here on earth is indisputable to us who have lived in both.

If most of the Bible thumpers that continually rave about the threats of Hell could know the Hell the poor practicing alcoholic is going through, it would scare them to death.

Hazelden Foundation

April 1, 2024 – Good morning to another Monday, and a new week and month

 

Time to rise ‘n shine and get going on another magnificent Monday, and a new week and new month …give each your best effort and don’t get discouraged by people and things not worth our attention

March 31, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

 

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

The loneliness each man feels is his hunger for life itself. It is the yearning that makes fulfillment possible.

— Ross Mooney

Many different journeys have been taken by the men who finally entered this program in search of hope. Most of us have known our own brand of desperation, but we have one thing in common — the loneliness we felt. Some of us felt left out of our families and other groups. We were appalled by what was happening in our lives, alone with our secrets, as if no one truly knew us. Some of us even romanticized our loneliness as a form of heroism.

As we gave up our controlling behaviors, false pride, over competitiveness, and striving for power, we made our weak spots and secrets more obvious. We became more accessible to friends. As we count the blessings of recovery, high on our list is that we are no longer lonely.

In part, what kept me going and led me to this program was my hunger for life. I’m grateful for the friends who truly know me now and still accept me.

Hazelden Foundation

March 31, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: Step by Step

 

Step by Step

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Today, no self-pity to shake my recovery regardless if my recovery began 24 months or 24 hours ago. Self-pity may be the deadliest of poisons that can undo, in the blink of an eye, any progress I’ve made. Self-pity is giving up my belief and total surrender to my Higher Power and is the epitome of selfishness. If there is adversity this day, I will face it with the courage, strength, hope and dignity with which my recovery program endows me, and I’ve already been endowed with courage, strength, hope and dignity merely by committing myself to recovery. Nor will I whine, “Why me?” And if I say no to self-pity today, I have no reason or excuse to drink, to use — and this day, then, will be good. And our common journey continues. Step by step. — Chris M., 2024

March 31, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: Twenty-Four Hours a Day

 

Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Sunday, March 31, 2024

AA Thought for the Day

Since I’ve been in AA, have I made a start towards being more unselfish? Do I no longer want my own way in everything? When things go wrong and I can’t have what I want, do I no longer sulk? Am I trying not to waste money on myself? And does it make me happy to see my family and my home have enough attention from me?

Am I trying not to be all get and no give?

Meditation for the Day

Each day is a day of progress, steady progress forward, if you make it so. You may not see it, but God does. God does not judge by outward appearance. He judges by the heart. Let Him see in your heart a simple desire always to do His will. Though you may feel that your work has been spoiled or tarnished, God sees it as an offering for Him. When climbing a steep hill, a person is often more conscious of the weakness of his stumbling feet than of the view, the grandeur or even of the upward progress.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may persevere in all good things. I pray that I may advance each day in spite of my stumbling feet.

Hazelden Foundation