The following ideas have helped me.

Thanks to my program, my reality is:

• I am loved and valued.
• Well cared for financially.
• Quite healthy and evolved emotionally.
• Well able to get the rest I need.
• Loved and respected by women.
• Noticed by my family and friends, when I walk into a room.

My great fears are I will:

• Be rejected.
• Be very poor.
• Go insane.
• End up totally exhausted and burnt out.
• Not be desirable to women.
• Be invisible.

-The tools of my disease are buried anger, suppressed desire and anxiety.

-Nature is such a source of wonder and the divine, that I feel sure that, along with man, nature was created in the image of God.

-Sometimes my Higher Power seems hidden to me and must be energetically sought. Sometimes God’s nearness to me is so obvious that God seems to be blatantly revealing Herself.

-That God would be distant when I am trying to enjoy conscious contact with Her seems ludicrous to me. Therefore when I am meditating and feel nothing emotionally I assume God has chosen to work with me at the subconscious level.

-I do not go to church anymore, but when I think of the many of the things said by me and others in sermons, I am embarrassed.

-The idea that I can be happy even if my alcoholic is still drinking is important to me. It reminds me that I have no promise that I will be spared the hardships of human life. What I do have is God’s reassurance that She will be with me to help me deal with the hardships in a way that allows me to grow steadily toward serenity no matter how difficult things are for me in the current moment.

-When I was young, I felt totally alone. That sounds terrifying and in fact it was terrible. However, my loneliness was well compensated for by the face to face contact I had with God that was a necessity for me if I was going to survive.

-Sometimes, when I feel anxious, I turn to my God Cheeseburger and my Higher Power Chocolate Malt.

The following ideas have helped me.

-When I am overwhelmed by my shortcomings, I have two choices. I can turn to despair. However, despair is strictly counter-productive. The other choice is to see in my shortcomings the very things I can and will overcome, if I keep working my program.

-I don’t need a watch. [Am I growing as fast as I can?] I need a compass. [Am I going the right direction?]

-Recovery is a journey not a destination.

-”She doesn’t like it therefore I have to change”, is a very destructive idea for me.

-My pain is sometimes an indication that I am capable of deeply loving other people.

-It is a relief to me that I don’t have to constantly be driving myself relentlessly in an effort to be accepted.

-”I soak up guilt like a dry sponge.”

-When I am a martyr, there is no room in my heart for my legitimate pain.

-I don’t try to balance my black and white thinking into gray. Instead, I turn on the light and enjoy the nuances.

-My knuckles are pink with scar tissue from putting my fists through walls, showing that at one time I was full of rage. At the time, I did not know I was angry. I thought that all I needed was to get rid of the jerks with whom I was surrounded, then my anger problem would be solved.

The following ideas have helped me.

-I used to be afraid of silence because I thought that that quiet would allow my submerged terrors to emerge.

-I am an artistic, creative person that grew up felling obligated to think linearly.

-I Did the Don’ts to the utmost of my ability.

-I have learned to be OK even if my loved ones are not OK.

-Did I wish her to call, or did I wish her well?

-I use to feel that life in my family was like having the job of cleaning up after circus elephants.

-I am so glad to feel like I own my own gut.

-I have given myself back to myself.

-”Do your Best” was one of the cruelest things said to me as a boy. I am not sure I have ever done my best in my entire life. “Do your best” ends up making me feel like I am never good enough.

-If I ever did my best, that would mean that there was no way for me to improve in that area. I can do a good job though.

The following ideas have helped me.

-My program is about me and nobody else.

-I need to be open to doing new things that are scary, like learning to dance.

-I have very strong desires to do both good and bad things. The good news is, that today I know the difference.

-It seems to me, that I use to think that the more things I did, the faster I would get to Heaven.

-Because of my disease, non-specific requests for my help are dangerous to me.

-I use to never want to see my account balance when I withdrew money at an ATM. In program I learned that ignorance is not bliss.

- I use to slobber compliments all over people so they would like me. In program I learned of the deep pleasure there is in giving a sincere compliment.

-I can now freely learn from other people. I use to be afraid for you to know that I didn’t know.

-Serenity is a product of the dailiness of my program. It is not a lesson to be learned once, forever.

-One way for me to deal with my sense of helplessness is to help less.

The following ideas have helped me.

-When God wants me to know something, I will know it.

-In AA, the only thing you must not do is drink. If you don’t drink, you have a chance. In Al-Anon The only thing you must not do is to quit coming back. If you keep coming back, you have a chance.

-I make the choice of staying in recovery every morning.

-When I am caught the trap of my obsessive thinking, I need to do three things.

* 1. Admit I have been here before.

* 2.Tell God I no longer want to live here.

* 3. Ask God to help me move out.

- When I walked into program, I did not trust men or women, which did not leave me many alternatives.

-Growing up, I was taught to trust everyone, that is unless they were male or female.

-I do not ever need to criticize myself or anyone else.

-”I was a workaholic. I made myself responsible for the welfare of my husband. When I retired, I said, ‘I will now have more time to get my husband sober’. It sure didn’t work.”

-When I am angry, I say it at my meeting. That way I can say it at home without the anger.

-”I need to not call my 41 year old son “My Baby”.

The following ideas have helped me.

-Said by a wonderful program friend after she had lost an expensive necklace: “My life is no better or worse because I lost my necklace”.

-The most important things in my life are not things.

-I put on sanity in the mornings just like I put on my clothes.

-What kind of person do I want to be? I just want to be myself.

-Yesterday, God calmed the tossing sea. Today, she calmed her frightened child. Therefore, I know that tomorrow, I will be just fine. That means, that in this minute, I can be serene.

-FEAR

Forgetting Everything is All Right

-”I made it through my cross country bike ride by only watching the butt in front of me. After I completed the ride, I realized that I worked my program in exactly the same way. I just follow the folks who are ahead of me.”

-”It was a great moment, the first time I noticed I did not have the familiar knot of fear in my stomach.”

-I get durability from the slogans.

-I never learned that I can not fix another person.