The following are ideas that have helped me.

-Sometimes I need to abandon my caution, doubt my fearful instincts and believe the improbable.

-I am not a pacifist, but I think this nation grossly under estimates the staggering cost of war.

-Take what you like and leave the rest.

-What people think of me is none of my business.

-For me, recovery is a process not an event, most of the time.

-I was surprised to discover that it is the dailiness of recovery that makes it work.

-When I was hurting my telephone weighed 500 pounds. To feel better,I had to put it on an exercise program.

-When someone phones me because they are hurting, they give me far more than I have any hope of giving them.

-90 meetings in 90 days was the advice given me when I started. Following that advice was one of the greatest acts of kindness I ever bestowed upon myself.

-There is the program waltz that if I would have danced it, would have limited my growth in the program. The waltz is repeating the first three steps of the 12 Steps over and over again: ONE two three, ONE two three, One two three.

-I am not powerless at all. I can make my situation worse anytime I want.

-If I have a pound of resentment, it takes two pounds of energy to keep it under control.Therefore, if I unload a pound of resentment, I get three pounds back that I can then use for the enjoyment of life and for service.

-I can not cure my sick mind with my sick mind.

-If I don’t know what to do, I should:

……1. Ask God for his will.

……2. Believe He will answer.

……3. Wait for the answer.

-If I go to a good program meeting and say, “I just murdered someone.”

they would respond, “Well, we have to phone the police, but we love you very much.

” Said by a grateful woman at an meeting.

-One of the roads to madness: “I could be happy if………”

-I need your encouragement sometimes and you need my encouragement sometimes, if we are both to live in courage.

-My thing is, “Ready. Fire. Aim”.

-I am not fun to be around when I am resentful.

-Being overworked by good deeds and ignoring my need to rest, is neither mature or spiritual. Happy is better than sad. It took me decades t0 learn this one.

-I have a life time to learn from both the good and seemingly bad experiences of my life.

Seven months ago, I nicked my ankle on my bike pedal. I more or less ignored it. The result was that it got infected. I put some antibiotic ointment on it and covered it with a Band Aid. It got worse and worse. With encouragement [or insistance] of my daughter, I finally went to the doctor.

The doctor put me on antibiotics to clear up the infection. The infection healed, but the ulcer just got worse. Various doctors put antibiotic ointment on my ankle and taught me new ways to apply the bandage. It got a little better, but still did not get well.

I had an appointment with a dermatologist on a another matter. She asked if I had any sores that would not heal. I showed her my ankle. She asked about how I had been treating the ulcer.

After a brief examination of all the redness that surrounded the ulcer she said, “You are allergic to the antibiotic ointment. Lots of people are.”A few days after I stopped using the ointment, my ankle was dramatically better.

I had been religious about keeping the ointment applied and the wound bandaged up for six months. I kept the wound bandaged so that the ointment would not get rubbed off. All my efforts, no matter how well intended and diligent, only worsened my situation.

I laughed on my way home from the clinic. My efforts to treat the ulcer, was a parable of my fear disease. It is like I am allergic to fear. If I look for solutions from the point of view of my fear, my solutions become the primary cause of the problem being perpetuated. The harder I try, the more diligent I am, the more carefully I think the problem through, the worse it gets.

If I am in France, and I am trying to see the sights of France using a map of Germany, no amount of effort or study of the map of Germany will improve my situation. I just get more and more lost. Once I get the right map, effort and diligence begin to pay off.

Fear is the wrong map. Trust is the right map. I have to fight not to fear every day of my life. It is hard work for me to try to keep myself from making my decisions based on fear.

However, if God gives me a measure of the gift of serenity through a good 12 step program applied to my life over a period of time, I am capable of finding realistic solutions for the problems of my life. I can learn to have a high quality of life.

The following are saying that have helped me.

• Today, the only parent I have is me. Am I the kind of parent to myself that I wish I had been to my daughters?
• I used to think of myself as over sensitive. Now I understand that I am not over sensitive, I am exquisitely sensitive.
• Misery has enough company. I am going to do whatever I need to do to be happy.
• I can’t avoid making mistakes, but I can make my mistakes pay off by learning from them.
• When something good floats by me in my stream, I should get a stick, fish it out, and see if I want to build it into my life.
• If someone is hitting me in the nose because they have a muscle disorder, or someone is hitting me in the nose because they hate me, my conclusion is identical. I have to get my nose out of range and get myself out of the situation.
• The Universe is kind and is altogether willing to make it completely possible for me to lose weight.
• If I ask someone to prove they love me it is close to impossible for them to do so. If I believe I am lovable, and if we deal with our differences in a healthy way, everything that is done by a loved one, can contribute to our relationship.
• I need to consistently do Big Boy things.
• The need to feel “Better than,” which in truth is a fear that we are “Less than”, keeps us from enjoying the amazingly wonderful diversity that exists among the people of the world.

I have four wonderful daughters. They are all within six years of each other in age. At the time I am talking about here, they were maybe seven to twelve years old.

We had a basketball court set up on our driveway. The girls are all well coordinated and love athletics. On this particular day, the youngest, JoAnna, and I were on one team, and the other three girls, Gina, Jill and Janelle were on the other team. We were playing to twenty-one baskets and had been playing about an hour. I wanted to end the game so I could go in the house and relax.

The three older girls had the ball out of bounds. They called time out and huddled up. When Jill inbounded the ball, I easily intercepted the pass and scored a basket. I had been keeping the game close, so Jo and I only needed three more baskets to win. I quickly made those three baskets so I could go inside and rest. I felt like a very good Daddy.

When the game was over, I started to go inside. Jo and I were walking together enjoying our triumph. All of a sudden I felt like something uncomfortable was happening behind me. I turned around to see what was going on.

The older three girls were standing by the garage door with their arms around each others shoulders looking at me. They had a self-satisfied smirk on their faces.

I knew from their expressions that something was up. I just couldn’t figure out what was it was. Finally, one of them explained:

“We figured out you were letting us stay close. You weren’t playing your best. We called time out and decided on what we were going to do. We let you intercept those passes and score those last three baskets. We let you win. How does it feel?”

Truthfully, it did not feel good at all. At the same time, I was very proud of how insightful they were and how creatively they solved their problem. I felt like they were maturing very well, and were going to grow up quite able to handle the pressure and problems that their lives would bring.

The following are sayings that have helped me:

• When you get a compliment, don’t let it go to your head. Instead, take it to heart.
• Discounting and denial leads to disaster.
• Seven words spoken to me that gave me new life: “Let me take you to a meeting.”
• Burying my  secrets is a one day at a time suicide. Secrets killed my life for to many years.
• Generally speaking, in California, you don’t have to go to jail if you don’t break the law. What if all the jails were torn down so that there were no jails into which you could be thrown? That is the way it is with condemnation. God has taken condemnation out of the universe.Condemnation is completely destroyed. All I need is to realize that and accept it. If I do that, any desirable attitude change becomes imminent.
• All the condemnation I experience comes from my fears, not from God.
• I have no right to expect a pain free life. I have to learn to trust God with my pain so that I can learn from it.
• My depresion is a bio-chemical defect not a character defect.
• I believe in prayer and medication.

The following are sayings that have helped me:

• The ability to just hang out is an ability worth cultivating.
• When I put my bad feelings in a bottle, I cannot help but put my good feelings in the bottle too. That is why when I stuff my feelings, the result is a deep feeling of emptiness inside of me.
• The price of all this privacy, is all this loneliness.
• Many times, when I can’t decide what to do, I need to wait until more is revealed.
• My humanity is in my contract with my Higher Power.
• One of my Higher Power’s best gifts to me is my growing ability to ask for help.
• When I was asked how I learned wisdom I said, “Every foolish, lustful, dishonest, gluttonous, arrogant, self centered, cruel mistake anyone has ever made, I have made 1000 times. This saying was said to me by my Mom, when I asked her the very same question.
• In the dozens of times, I have heard someone’s Fifth Step, I have never heard anything that was completely out of my experience.
• “You can accomplish more for God in an hour and a half of praying than you can in forty hours of working.” On my 40th birthday, I asked my Mom who was 70, “What do you know at 70 you wish you had known at 40. The above was her response.
• No one ever came to their first program meeting because they felt so good.

The following sayings have been helpful to me.

• When I always have to be right, I make the other person feel they are always wrong.
• When I die, no one will say,”What a nice man George was, he was always right.”
• In 1988, I wrote up a detailed plan for the rest of my life. Every single detail of the plan failed to materialize. For that, I am eternally grateful.
• I don’t need another parent, but I love to make a new friend.
• My worst character defects are my character assets spiraling out of control.
• I don’t have to believe everything I think. I don’t have to believe everything you think.
• Harsh criticism of myself is always a character defect.
• Harsh self criticism is a character defect that only my Higher Power can remove.
• There are days that my midnight is brighter than yerterdays noon.
• The same Higher Power that so brilliantly takes care of me, also takes care of my kids.

The following are sayings that have helped me.

• Shame is the brake of recovery. It is designed to stop me when I am turned away from my Higher Power. When I am turned toward my Higher Power, I need to take my foot off the brake and use the accelerator of love.
• When I defend myself, the other person feels my defensiveness as an attack. That person then responds by defending himself with a little more vigor. As a result, I feel more attacked, and defend myself and thereby up the tension level even more. And so on , and so on. On and on the cycle goes, until finally, the volcano erupts.
• The more I defend myself, the more I need to defend myself.
• Never doubt in the dark, what you saw in the light.
• Where the finger of God points, the hand of God provides.
• When I miss one of my kids, I remember that sometimes my Higher Power misses me.
• A good description of my Higher Power: fun loving, easily pleased, undiscouragingly cheerful, and fiercely protective.
• If I can adjust my thinking away from hurt feelings in three months, I can do it in three minutes. That is, providing I want to.
• As I age, I realize, that in times past, I have often been completely wrong. If that is true, I must admit that I may be completely wrong now.
• Some of the most grateful people I have ever known, seemingly have very little for which they should be grateful.

The following are ideas that have helped me.

• “The phone number for the Al-anon police is 1-800-C-O-N-T-R-O-L.”
• My problem is not that I fall into a mud puddle. Everyone does that. My problem is that I stay for a swim.
• Since God is actively teaching me to be free, I can not read control into the word care in the third step, “Turn my will and my life over to the care of God.
• When in doubt hire it out. Especially useful when planning a party.
• Squelching my anger is like putting a giant plug in a volcano. It makes an explosion inevitable and far more powerful.
• Some people are like an enema. They make the crap just pour out of me.
• “If you spot it you got it.” Here, this saying refers to the good you characteristically see in other people.
• If I am overly self-conscious about my gifts, it may mean I have forgotten they are gifts not wages earned.
• Gratitude is a way I can think about the quality of my life without risking ego involvement.
• My negative self talk centers around my belief that I am fundamentally unacceptable.