Our ability to handle confidently all encounters is a gift of the program, and one that accompanies us throughout every day, providing we humbly express gratitude for it. We are forever moving from one experience to another, one challenge to another, and one relationship to another. Success can only be measured in terms of distance traveled. Make me ready to help other heals from the harm I’ve caused.Īction for the Day: Today, I’ll pray that those I’ve harmed will heal. Help me face the trouble caused by my disease. Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, give me courage. Remember, the best amend we make to all is to stay sober. Step Nine help us regain faith in ourselves. Many people we’ve harmed ask only that we don’t repeat our mistakes. But making amends is more than saying, “I’m sorry.” If you ran a store and someone had stolen five dollars, you wouldn’t want them to just say, ”I’m sorry.” You’d want the person to pay back the money. Making amends is about asking people we have harmed what we need to do to set things right. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible … I will not go out of my way to attract people or conditions that create problems in my life. I’ll remember today that in the new life I’m seeking, there’s no need for punishment. We can start building new relationships and attracting better conditions that will be immensely successful in terms of happiness and well-being. Without resentment or condemnation, we can part company with any problems these have been bringing us. We can change our bad patterns by looking carefully at the people and situations we seem to attract. If we’ve emerged from the terrors of alcoholism, we’ve had all the punishment anybody needs. If this is true, then we should now call a halt to the process immediately. Why did we do this? Supposedly to punish ourselves, the theory has it. Time and time again during our drinking, we set ourselves up for abuse and rejection, though our motives seemed right. This may not be entirely true, but we can find that some element of it was at work with us. Some believe that people create their own trouble by attracting the wrong conditions and people in their lives. We usually conclude our meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, asking especially for freedom from damaging self-will. Then we relax and take it easy, and we are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. If we have determined which of two courses to take, we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision. Our thought-life will be on a higher plane when our thinking begins to be cleared of wrong motives. Free of these, we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for God gave us brains to use. We ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity and from dishonest or self-seeking motives. On awakening, let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. I pray that I may have confidence in His unfailing power. I pray that I may feel that God’s love will never fail. Unless you want Him to go, God will never leave you. Then always you will understand and be understood. Then always there is One who can never tire. Then forever you are sure, in every difficulty and temptation, of His strength. “I will never leave or forsake thee.” Down through the centuries, thousands have believed in God’s constancy, untiringness, and unfailing love. The main thing is that they be willing to believe in a power greater than themselves and that they live by spiritual principles.” Do I hold back too much in speaking of the spiritual principles of the program? They can choose any concept they like, provided it makes sense to them. If they are agnostics or atheists, make it emphatic that they do not have to agree with your concept of God. Tell them exactly what happened to you and how you recovered. But talk to them about the hopelessness of alcoholism. Today I am ready to grow.īe careful not to brand new prospects as alcoholics. I need only to bring into my recovery the willingness to grow. My Higher Power presents many opportunities for deeper spiritual awakening. Joy comes from ongoing and active study, as well as application of the principles of recovery in my everyday life, and from sharing that experience with others. However, joy is not just the absence of pain it is the gift of continued spiritual awakening. Often I feel so physically well that I believe my work is done. Sobriety fills the painful “hole in the soul” that my alcoholism created. If more gifts are to be received, our awakening has to go on.
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