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January 7 2013 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 1 "Powerless" | Alcoholics Anonymous One, I am powerless over alcohol and two, if I were to drink life will get unmanageable. I know this without doubt, and I know that my sobriety is contingent on my spiritual condition. My spiritual condition as described by some religious orders, is the ability to cope with reality. I feel I am a spiritual person, whatever is happening in my life, be it good, bad or ugly. Spiritual for me is the ability to know my feelings in the moment of now, how my thinking is impacted by my feelings and that I am coping with reality…

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As Good As It Gets Today

Step one helps me stop myself from imagining the worst of situations or imagining and expecting life to be a certain way. Not only do I feel good about being powerless over alcohol, I feel good about being powerless over the spiritual condition of other people and what they are about. What this means in reality for me, it means I need to check out not only my own spiritual condition, I need to check out the spiritual condition of those people around me who impact on my life. If I try work out life for myself and other people at the same time, I will cause conflict and disruption. Step one, I like to be powerless over people places and things, it stops me deciding the future for other people, or thinking I can decide the future for other people. One day at a time…

Freedom to choose my path, freedom in the moment of now means I have not decided how life is going to be today, and I have not decided how I am going to interact with other people. Today, I relate to people first, hopefully in a good way. And then work out what is going to happen. If I stop playing God, or rather thinking I'm in charge of anything, and relate to people to find the best way forward, life normally works as best it can. I don't have the pink cloud mentality, I have a cloud mentality, the cloud may have a silver lining, or it may just pour down with rain all day, it doesn't matter because I can cope, and if I cannot cope, I can ask for help at any time...

The problem in reality is we are still going to meet nasty people along the way. Manipulative controlling bastards, who might upset our inner tranquillity. Usually people who want their own way, maybe, just like I used to. I can remember being turned into a bully for a very short period of time in a work situation, and it gave me a nervous breakdown because I was behaving contrary to my nature, which is to be fair and open and honest. I don't let bastards grind me down any more, and I am not the bastard that I could be in the past without even realising it. And somebody asked me last week, how to get back to serenity? And my reply was, "I need forgive myself for finding myself in a difficult situation. And I need to forgive the person who is helping to make it a bad situation, forgiveness all round brings me back to sanity and serenity." It doesn't happen in the blink of an eye, what does happen in the blink of an eye is saying yes to something which is bad for me and then trying to get out of the situation by trying to be diplomatic, rather than saying I've made a mistake and need to say no, most emphatically, rather than a half-hearted yes...

How am I feeling this morning? I feel good, I've managed to get some really good white light bulbs, which give me white light in the apartment, and I need light in the winter months, or my mood suffers badly. Over the years in recovery, we learn new ways to live. And every day is a new purpose, and a new beginning. Yesterday was particularly difficult, diabetes control difficult, fed up of injections and blood testing and then this morning I feel right about doing them again. The longer we live, the more ailments we get, and without the fellowship and the twelve steps, I don't know where I would have been, or other I do, I would not be here to share, experience, strength and hope on a daily basis…

January 7 2012| Daily Reflection|

Today's daily reflection from AA "we stood at the turning point" I don't know how many times I stood at the turning point, it was an all or nothing thing for me. Always “all in:” career, relationships around people in the right places and having the right things. I was lucky, or nothing, sober or dead. Dead, the horror would have been over. Alive, turns out to be the best road travelled one day at a time…

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2012

After two fellowship meetings yesterday, I felt uplifted and really included and part of something bigger than me. Newcomers and people returning: facing that monstrous decision, to slip away or survive and find well-being again. I will never forget just how difficult it is to make that decision to stick around and try to make good one day at a time…

We are very honest about where we come from in our fellowship: “rock bottom” is the most desolate place to be. And by ending it all the pain, the abject misery can be over. Yet somehow you just give it one more go, and then we can ask for help. And asking for help is really the turning point in my experience…

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Maya Angelou "Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at it destination full of hope." Our experience, strength and hope helps even when we have no idea how...

Friday night meeting, at the Bolton's: New secretary, fantastic chair and wonderful sharing by everyone. Sometimes the wreckage of the past looms large again and we can be thrown off course. With the help of Fellowship, we can deal with day-to-day as long as we can keep it in the day. Most important for me was the reminder of the "chief critic" inside me, who judges the world as the world judges me. I am not chief critic, I am one of the player’s hopefully same size and right sized with everyone, even when the bastards play "chief critic" and judge me. If I can forgive me for being "chief critic" then I can forgive them for being cuntibollokbastard's just for today…

Just for today meeting this morning, I shared how brilliant my Christmas and New Year was. No expectations meant no resentments under construction. Gratitude list at night: alive and sober. Learning that normal is whatever I am today. If I feel right I think right, and act right. If I feel wrong, I think wrong and can behave wrongly. All in all it pissed off all the people who had a crap Christmas. Not really, there's was normal as well, simply crap normal… Love yourself enough so you can love other people…

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AA Official Online Site: Daily Reflections

http://www.aa.org/lang/en/aareflections.cfm

AA Official Online Site: Big Book And Twelve And Twelve

http://www.aa.org/lang/en/subpage.cfm?page=359

January 2013 | Step One Reading Video Link: