DISCIPLINE MONTH: DAY 1: “You can’t expect to achieve a dream if you don’t push yourself harder. Whether it’s strength training, or a sales goal at work, or anything. You’ve got to push through past what you think you can do. And when you do it, it builds confidence in you, and your next task will have a momentum to it. The confidence gained makes your output exponential. You have already done something you thought was impossible. Now you are waiting for the next impossible task.”― Josh Hatcher
Addicts with any time clean, days or minutes, years, or hours, are not doing the impossible; we are miracles. We CANNOT do this…it is ALL grace…every bit of it. Someone I met a long time ago used to say that chip meetings were like the Academy Awards…I disagree. We cannot take credit for this.
BUT, there is a great way to add on to the grace we receive. That is to do the work of recovery AS IF it were the best gift EVER. And it is.
I don’t know about gaining confidence. I truly believe it is enough just to remain in the state of grace that we don’t ever deserve. Nothing I have done in this life is worthy of what I get in return for just being alive and working my ass off to remain in recovery. This mentality of pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps kills more addicts than almost anything I can think of. We are not the Source here. It is a Power in the Universe that is so loving and generous that we are given this gift at the apex of our worst behavior.
Taking a bow for recovery at any time is another form of dreaded Ego. And that M….f…r is out to kick our asses every time! The discipline we require is to pray like hell and do the simple things we need to do to stay on this side of Ego. For me, Step 10 is the simplest process in the world.
I was taught to read pages 86, 87, and 88 every day and answer the questions OUT LOUD…even when I am alone…especially then, since I hear the answers more clearly. The rest of it is pretty simple…clean up the messes BEFORE they get out of control. Immediately! No real questions here, but there sure are a lot of addicts who never get this step. Easiest one if you ask me. And we cannot go out into the world and tell others what to do if we aren’t doing it ourselves. Clean it up and THEN pass it on. We have to be sure our message isn’t a mess.
Dolphin Hug 