A Prayer & Some Thoughts - November

[bluidkiti]

November 22


Accepting Change Prayer

Lord,
I need Your strength to help me with acceptance of all things.
I struggle accepting change, new people, bad news, and so much more.
Ease my fears and remove my apprehensive thoughts as I work to implement new ways and accept different ideas in my life.
Give me the courage to welcome newness and changes in my life.
Amen

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Just a Thought

How do I talk with new prospects? Am I always trying to dominate the conversation?
.
Do I lay down the law and tell prospects what they will have to do? Do I judge them privately and feel that they have a small chance of making the program? Do I belittle them to myself? Or am I willing to bare my soul so as to get them talking about themselves? And, then, am I willing to be a good listener, not interrupting, but hearing them out to the end? Do I feel deeply that they are my brothers or my sisters?

So ............

Will I do all I can to help them along the path to sobriety?

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Just a Contemplation

Self-esteem

Long after a bitter failure, some of us still cling to the hope that we can erase the defeat in some spectacular way. One dream is to “prove ourselves” to those who scorned us or put us down. This never really works, even when we do become winners at some later time. For one thing, we may be proving ourselves to people who will never like us. If we are striving to show others that we can succeed, we are still dancing to their tune. We are accepting their idea of what success should be.

Many of us failed simply because we were alcoholics and could do no better. We might have destroyed opportunities that will never rise again. But by finding sobriety, we may already have proved ourselves to those who really count in our lives...... Including ourselves. I can prove today that the Twelve Step program works and that a loving Higher Power is present in my life.

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Circus Act

I realized I'd been living outside myself for so long I'd almost become a walking vacancy.
In my prized AA sobriety, I was still running a kind of circus which had numerous, highly believable posters plastered all over its outside -- See the Spectacular Non-Drinking Person! Watch How Movingly He can Recite the Twelve Steps! -- but which had nothing much going on inside the tent.
I've been working hard to shut that circus down ever since with varying degrees of success.

The Best of the Grapevine [Vol. 3], Pages 237-238

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Just a Quote

"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson