Al-Anon Slogans, long-form

[MajestyJo]

The Slogans are considered to be mini-steps to recovery. When you are sick, feeling very overwhelmed, sometimes it is all that you can cling onto.

The following is material received from an Al-Anon meeting I attend locally here in Canada. I don't know there origin, but I hope they can help all who read them to a better understanding and give new hope and encouragement on your road to recovery.

These were the original ones and gotten from my home group in Al-Anon. I no longer have a copy, and so glad I found this post I made on another site.

[MajestyJo]

LET GO AND LET GOD

In Al-Anon, letting go and letting God means exchanging the finite, narrow limitations of our own self-will for the infinite wisdom of our Higher Power. We turn our lives over to the Higher Power's care, confident that in God's time, solutions to our problems and relief from our pain will come to us.

The lily symbolized this slogan in the picture here and was inspired by the biblical passage that tells us:


Quote:
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these


By making the Twelve Steps a part of our lives, learning to trust God's will, and practicing program principles in all our affairs, we continually renew our faith and achieve our own special beauty as our serenity grows.

Ironically, it is precisely when we are in the midst of a difficult, seemingly hopeless struggle, that we may feel our faith flagging. We may forget that our Higher Power is always there to nurture and guide us, and we may bend under the weight of our solitary burden, trying desperately to impose control over people, places and things. We may find that we speack or act impulsively, worsening the situation, sinking even more deeply into our misery.

As long as we persist in holding on to our pain and wallowing in resentment, hopelessness and negativity, we get in the way of our Higher Power. The program shows us that it is never too late to rededicate our lives and our will to God's care. We have at our disposal the tools to find peace and joy if we choose to use them. All we have to do to end futile struggling is detach fromt he problem, turn it over to our Higher Power, and quietly, patiently, focus on positive attitudes.

As we let go of our projections and stop trying to manipulate outcomes, we feel our panic and pain subside, and we understand we are not alone. Letting go does not mean giving up, and it doesn't mean escaping into inert passivity. It means giving our struggle over to God and getting on with our lives.

No matter who we are or how far we have come along on our individual paths, we may suddenly be confronted with a distressing situation. We may be tempted to force solutions, to make things happen, and we sacrifice our serenity. At such times, let us consider the lily and its effortless, graceful beauty, and let us remember to Let Go and Let God.

[MajestyJo]

Live and Let Live

The crocus is a modest little flower whose special beauty is heightened by its timing and its setting. As the first floral harbinger of spring, the crocus miraculously pushes up from the frozen ground. Its cup-shaped blossoms, yellow, white, lilac, and deep purple, rejuvenate the barren winter landscape with dazzling color and fresh life.

Live and Let Live, like the crocus, achieves its true significance when considered in terms of context. At first glance, it seems simple enough: learn to op with the ups and downs of daily life and give others that same opportunity. However, for those of us who have suffered from the effects of someone else's drinking, putting those two simple suggestions into practice can be a difficult challenge.

Before coming to Al-Anon, many of us had established a pattern of postponing, trivializing, even sacrificing our own lives, our own serenity and joy in response to the disease of alcoholism. We became controllers, fixers, and martyrs, wearing our personal tragedies like an overcoat against a raging wintry blast. Not only did we deny ourselves the right to attend to our own lives, we also denied those we loved that same right.

Our lives before Al-Anon were often frozen wastelands, colorless and sterile. The warmth we found within the fellowship nurtured our spirits and helped us sense the infinite nature of our own potential. As we began to work the program, we accepted our powerlessness over others and learned to trust in a Power greater than our own. By turning our lives and our will over to the care of a Higher Power, and by taking advantage of the tools Al-Anon provides us, we learned that no situation is hopeless, that we are not alone, and that life is a rich process, full of challenge, growth, and satisfaction. Like the crocus, we pushed through the lifeless ground of our denial, our enabling, and our need to control.

Letting others live can be a more demanding responsibility. It means acknowledging that they too have a Higher Power and that it is not our will but the will of the Higher Power that prevails. The more we focus on ourselves, our own recovery, our own ability to enjoy each day of our lives, the less intensely we feel the compulsion to interfere in someone else's life. Humility, faith, and self-awareness provide us with a foundation for tolerance, and pave the way for a life full of personal satisfaction, unclouded by obsessive concern for the choices, opinions, and actions of others. As we learn to live more fully, so too can we let others live according to their own needs.

[MajestyJo]

ONE DAY AT A TIME

The Al-Anon program gives us numerous tools for recovery: the Steps, Traditions, slogans, literature, meetings and service. Our slogan One Day At a Time, perhaps the bedrock of all our program tools, combines the philosophical with the practical; not only does it encapsulate much of the Al-Anon way of life in five small words, but it also is a simple answer to the question: "How?" How, for example, do I work my program; how do I put the Steps into practice; how do I find serenity? The answer is, in Al-Anon we do it one day at a time.

the rose is an apt symbol for this concept: at first the bud is fragile, tiny and tightly furled. Then, slowly, it opens up, day by day, petal by petal, to reveal a lush velvety blossom, exquisitely fragrant and magnificent to behold.

By living one day at a time, we keep oursleves anchored in the here and now; our thoughts, our senses, our whole being focused on our immediate experiences. This attention to the present moment enables us to be fully engaged in what is happening around us; the sights, smells, sounds, the people, things and the ideas that occur to us.

When we learn to value each today, using it wisely and fully, we need not regret it when it recedes into yesterday, nor waste it by projecting our thoughts into tomorrow. The past is no longer ours; it is gone. We do not have to suffer endlessly reliving past errors or poor choices. Working the Steps helps us to deal with our character defects to make amends, and to improve our relationship with our Higher Power. The program also shows us that the future is equally elusive. Projecting our fears, what-ifs, and anxiety not only destroy our present, it also tends to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Living one dat at a time allows us to brush away our ugly yesterdays, to let go of our dread of tomorrow, and get on with our lives. Starting now.

One day at a time reminds us to take on only what we canhandle now. In our zeal for healthy, active lives, we sometimes get ahead of ourselves, rushing headlong beyond the limits of this 24 hours, expecting too much of ourselves and of the day. This frenzied pace can lead us to frustration and disappointment and again we lose sight of the beauty of the moment.

The present moment is also lost when we let our problems so obsess and preoccupy us that we turn inward and feed on our own self-pity. In so doing, we deprive ourselves of potential solutions to our unhappiness that may be right in front of us. But if our eyes are shut and our fingers are in our ears, we cannot be helped and we cannot help ourselves. Today is ours to seize, to make order of, and to fully make our own. Let us each take time to stop and smell the roses and take our lives One Day At A Time.