Today's Thought - September

[bluidkiti]

September 1

If a child lives with approval, he learns to live with himself.

~Dorothy Law Nolte

It has been said and proven over and over that a person’s self-image is largely formed by the image reflected back from other people. Those around us are mirrors. The more important they are to us, the more power they have to reflect our identity back to us. Thus, the world is largely in the process of being created daily before our own eyes.

We are the most important people in the world to our children. Their identity, as we reflect it back to them, is the first and the most important information they receive.

Despite the powerlessness we adult children may feel, let us also be aware of the enormous power we have in creating the self-image of our children. If we doubt this, all we need to do is recall the influence our parents had on us in forming our self-image. We have the same power over our children. As we were influenced then, so we influence now. A miracle is happening before our eyes if we but see it.

I will lose no opportunity to show my children how beautiful they are.

Today's reading is from the book Days of Healing, Days of Joy, Daily Meditations for Adult Children

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September 2

Appreciation is a wonderful thing; it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

~Voltaire

Appreciation is a big word for a big idea. To appreciate a thing means to really look at its value, its goodness, its beauty and to be glad about it. When we can do this, it changes our life. We become grateful.

It used to be that we felt jealous when someone else was attractive or smart. We felt envy when we saw people who were having fun or who seemed to be in love with each other.

Now that we are sober, we know that we can enjoy the beauty other people create. We can be happy that some people are smart and good at problem-solving. We can be glad that people are in love and raise good kids who will make the world a little better.

When we see these things around us, we know that life holds good things for us, too. There is enough for everyone.
Prayer for the Day

Higher Power, help me turn my envy and jealousy into appreciation. I want to find joy and hope in the good things that others do.
Today's Action

Today I will list three qualities I appreciate in others. Do I want to find these things in myself? How can I do that? I will talk about it with my sponsor.

Today's reading is from the book God Grant Me, More Daily Meditations from the Authors of Keep It Simple

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September 3

Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health.

~Michel de Montaigne

Our program isn’t working. We are misunderstood. Nothing’s going well at work. We just can’t see it through. Why doesn’t someone help us?

Impatience! We become fretful and blame others for our shortcomings.

Impatience! We lose touch with the tempo of life and our own particular rhythm.

Impatience! We are convinced our addiction will never stop tormenting us.

Let’s slow down and get back in touch with life’s movement. We know that all things have their season and their motion and their end. It may feel like winter, but spring will come and then summer. Nothing remains static; everything changes and grows. There is a pattern to all life—including ours—if we are patient enough to discern it.

I need to slow down to get in touch with the rhythms of my life and of life outside me.

Today's reading is from the book Answers in the Heart, Daily Meditations for Men and Women Recovering from Sex Addiction

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September 4

Seize the Day!

Possibilities and miracles are one and the same.

~Anonymous

Many of us have seen happiness as a goal we couldn’t find. When we were children, we were taught that “life is a hard row to hoe.” We carried that over into our adult lives.

Seize the day! We let too many of our days just slide by. None of those hours can be replaced. Why worry over past failures if there is a victory to win? Why keep thinking about our faults when we could be practicing virtues instead?

Seize the day! Hold each moment tight and look at each one with wide-open eyes and mind. They are our lives, special to each of us. The moments pass swiftly into memory. Let those memories be good ones filled with joys large and small.

Yesterday’s unhappiness can’t be changed, but today’s happiness is my own responsibility.

Today's reading is from the book Easy Does It, A Book of Daily Twelve Step Meditations

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September 5

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

~Friedrich Engels

Overplanning, overthinking, and too much talking often hinder the actions that can bring real growth. We know this, and yet we still get trapped, usually by our fears that we’ll not proceed perfectly.

Life is the process of making progress. We learn by doing, not just by thinking. We can make our forward steps more easily when we ask God to share the journey, but we have to put one foot in front of the other. And that usually leads us to someone else in need.

How many times have we felt stuck or depressed or obsessively fearful, only to discover our head clearing and our heart calming when we got out of the house, out of ourselves, and focused on someone else?

Helpful actions energize us and give us hope. They connect us to our Higher Power and make all the difference in our daily spiritual progress.

I will not sit and obsess today. I’ll go out and find someone in need.

Today's reading is from the book In God's Care, Daily Meditations on Spirituality in Recovery

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September 6

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.

~Margaret Fairless Barber

When we contemplate last month, last year, the period of time just before we came into this Twelve Step program, we can see many changes, good changes, have come our way. But we take the changes for granted sometimes. Or maybe we fail to reflect on them at all. We get caught up in the turmoil of the present, believing it will last forever, forgetting that yesterday's turmoil taught us much that we needed to know.

The past, for most of us, was rife with pain. But now we have hope. We have gained on life. We may be back in the good graces of our family. Perhaps we have patched up some failed relationships. A career has beckoned to us. Good experiences have come to pass. But we aren't free of difficulties. They need not get us down again. Hindsight assures us that this, too, will pass. It also guarantees that we will move forward, just as we have again and again, if only we have faith.

I will take this moment to look back at last year or the last binge. l can rest assured that l am moving forward. I will continue to do so.

Today's reading is from the book Each Day a New Beginning, Daily meditations for Women

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September 7

To “be” means to be related.

~Alfred Korzybski

In our using and codependent days, loneliness was ever-present. We could be with a crowd, but we felt alienated and alone. Many of us grew up in families where no one really knew how to feel close. We often longed for a closer connection with our fathers. As adult men, we learned to be self-sufficient, and we thought it was always superior to be able to do something without help. If we got help to accomplish something, it was somehow not quite as good as if we did it alone.

Now we are part of a fellowship with other men and women who know what it’s like to be where we have been; they are on the same journey. We may have very different lives in some ways, but we have our common goal: to become better people. The true basis for our humanity, the real fulfillment of our potential, is in relationship with others. We no longer have to be locked in our isolated world. Through our friendships and our spiritual path, we are free to be ourselves.

Today, I am grateful for my friends.

Today's reading is from the book Stepping Stones, More Daily Meditations for Men

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September 8

AA Thought for the Day

People believe in AA when they see it work. An actual demonstration is what convinces them. What they read in books, what they hear people say, doesn’t always convince them. But when they see a real honest-to-goodness change take place in a person, a change from a truly sick person to a sober, useful citizen, that’s something they can believe because they can see it. There’s really only one thing that proves to me that AA works. Have I seen the change in people who come into AA?
Meditation for the Day

Surrender and trust in God are the only conditions necessary for a spiritual life. Divine control means absolute faith and trust in God, a belief that God is the divine principle in the universe and that He is the intelligence and the love that controls the universe. Unquestioning obedience to God means living each day the way you believe God wants you to live, constantly seeking the guidance of God in every situation and being willing to do the right thing at all times.
Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may always be under Divine Control and always practice unquestioning obedience to God. I pray that I may be always ready to serve Him.

Today's reading is from the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day, A Spiritual Resource with Practical Applications for Daily Life

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September 9

Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow…
‘Till the rain comes tumblin' down.

~David Mallett

We plant a garden with faith, never knowing exactly what the harvest will bring. We attend to those aspects of gardening which we have some control over, planting good seeds in rich soil, in straight rows, the right distance apart. We weed and fertilize, and we tie up our tomato plants.

We may pray for rain, but we never know if we'll get too much or too little. We can't control the wind or rabbits or bugs or the strongest strains of weeds. Yet most of us do not let these things keep us from planting.

With this same sort of faith, we can tend to ourselves. Though we don't know what each day will bring, we can plant the seeds in ourselves to meet most anything. We can rise each morning determined to give what we have. We can't plant the seeds for others, and we can't keep the storms from coming. The beauty is, we don't have to.

What seeds of joy can I plant today?

Today's reading is from the book Today's Gift, Daily Meditations for Families

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September 10

Pray without resentment in your heart.

~The Little Red Book

Resentment is anger that we don’t want to turn over to our Higher Power. Sometimes, we want to keep our anger. Maybe we want to “get even.” It’s hard to be spiritual and full of anger at the same time. When we hold on to anger, it turns into self-will.

We all get angry from time to time. This is normal. But we now have a program to help us let go of anger. We also know that stored-up anger can drive us back to alcohol and other drugs. Instead of trying to “get even,” let’s work at keeping anger out of our hearts.
Prayer for the Day

I pray without anger in my heart. Higher Power, I give You my anger. Have me work for justice, instead of acting like a judge.
Action for the Day

I’ll list any resentments I now have. I’ll talk about them at my next meeting. This is the best way to turn resentments over to my Higher Power.

Today's reading is from the book Keep it Simple, Daily Meditations for Twelve Step Beginnings and Renewal

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September 11

A person who is looking for something doesn’t travel very fast.

~E. B. White

What do men really want? What are we seeking? Many of us have felt driven and still feel restless or compulsive at times. We frantically followed our impulses to self-destructive extremes. Even those painful actions of our past were motivated, at the bottom line, by a spiritual search. What did we really seek in the bottle, or in the passionate bed, or in our work? Slowing down enough every day to let ourselves know what we are looking for gives us a much better chance of finding it.

Today, we can slow down by taking twenty minutes for solitude and quiet, for meditation or prayer. We can call a friend simply for a moment of contact. We might read something to give ourselves some ideas to ponder, or we can listen to music that will transport us to another world. Perhaps we can simply walk more slowly from our car or the bus stop to our home. Often it is not the events in our lives that bring change but the space between events.

Today, I will try to remember that slowing down may help me find what I am seeking.

Today's reading is from the book Touchstones, A Book of Daily Meditations for Men

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September 12

Loving ourselves

Our fellowship tells us to take care of ourselves first. It tells us that life and our Twelve Step program come before anyone or anything else. But what if we get too self-centered about this? Taking care of ourselves does not mean being selfish or maliciously hurting others to meet our own needs. What it means is that we learn to love and nurture ourselves, because we are important. We are truly closest to ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves, who will?

The famous psychologist Erich Fromm said that if people can love productively, then they can also love themselves; if they can love only others, then they cannot love at all. This means that, to be able to love others, we need the capacity to love and care for ourselves.

Am I learning to love myself?

Higher Power, help me to love myself so that I may better love you and others.

Today I will work on how I feel about myself by…

Today's reading is from the book Day by Day, Daily Meditations for Recovering Addicts

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September 13

Reflection for the Day

My illness is unlike most other illnesses in that denial that I am sick is a primary symptom that I am sick. Like such other incurable illnesses as diabetes and arthritis, however, my illness is characterized by relapses. In recovery, we call such relapses “slips.” The one thing I know for certain is that I alone can cause myself to slip. Will I remember at all times that the thought precedes the action? Will I try to avoid “stinking thinking”?
Today I Pray

I ask my Higher Power to give me the power to resist temptations. May the responsibility for giving in, for having a “slip,” be on my shoulders and mine only. May I see beforehand if I am setting myself up for a slip by blame shifting, shirking my responsibility to myself, becoming the world’s poor puppet once again. My return to those old attitudes can be as much of a slip as the act of losing my sobriety.
Today I Will Remember

Nobody’s slip-proof.

Today's reading is from the book A Day at a Time, Daily Reflections for Recovering People

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September 14

Turning the other cheek doesn’t mean giving up our right to respond.

Revenge is not an option once we get accustomed to the Twelve Step principles. It never did give us more than a short-term rush, and it usually left us with guilt—lots of it. Now we are learning to acknowledge the boundaries between us and other people. This helps us detach from their mean-spiritedness, which often has prompted our own vengeful behavior.

It’s important to distinguish between letting others stomp on us and letting them have their behavior. The program doesn’t say we should take abuse; it suggests instead that we rationally tailor our response, relying on God as our speechwriter. If we respond calmly and firmly, without attacking, we give all concerned an opportunity to calm down.

Far fewer will be the times we’re haunted by guilt if we follow this action plan. Acting responsibly, with God’s help, will feel right and honorable to ourselves and the “opposition.”

I need to stand up for myself always and, just as important, rely on God for support.

Today's reading is from the book A Life of My Own, Meditations on Hope and Acceptance

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September 15

We are biological beings who manifest intentions. Imagine that we wake up in the morning with a desire to eat a specific food. This is just a thought formed in our mind. Then, with some focused attention and actions, available supplies, and some minimal skills, we are eating our creation fifteen minutes later. This is how the whole game of life operates, though not quite so fast and efficiently.

Through combining the motivation of desire with informational knowledge and practical skills, we have the capacity to generate in the physical world what began simply as thought energy. This is true magic, and it is always available to every one of us. However, there are some techniques and rules of the game that make us more effective players, just as in the video gaming universe. Once we understand the basic structure of how using intentions to manifest reality works, we still need to practice, except we learn to do this in the real world rather than losing ourselves inside a gaming console. We each have a fairly predictable future, based on our past. Unless we shift something, we will continue to get what we have always gotten rather than what we intend or desire.

I am realizing the magnificent and magical power of creating clear intentions.

Today's reading is from the book Cornerstones, Daily Meditations for the Journey into Manhood and Recovery