gratitude Archives - The Recovery Show

Your Gratitude 2017 – Episode 226

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I asked you to share your gratitude with me. Many of you did so, and this episode highlights your voices and your gratitudes.

I also put together a playlist on Spotify, included below, that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the songs about gratitude and thankfulness. I’m sure I missed your favorite, so please email your suggestion (or comment below).

Next week’s episode will mark 5 years of The Recovery Show. I will be looking back over the last 5 years. Please call us at 734-707-8795 or email feedback@therecoveryshow.com with your questions or experience, strength and hope. Or just leave a comment right here.
Continue reading “Your Gratitude 2017 – Episode 226”

Gratitude – Episode 224

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As we approach the US holiday of Thanksgiving, I naturally think about the things I am grateful for. What are you grateful for?

Here are some things I am grateful for

That I have a program of recovery.
Our dog is a sweetheart, so loving.
That my adult children choose to spend time with me and share their life with me.
Although it snowed Thursday evening, on Friday morning it was sunny and pretty.
That, as a sponsee reminded me, I have a roof over my head, a furnace that works, and a warm blanket.
That you share your experience, strength, and hope with me and with the other listeners of this podcast. You make the podcast better and stronger by your presence.

What are you grateful for? Call or email with one thing you are grateful for this year, this month, or just today. Or, if you wish, share a gratitude list with us. I will compile your responses into an episode to be published on the US Thanksgiving weekend (last weekend in November). Please send your contribution by November 25, 2017.

Please call us at 734-707-8795 or email feedback@therecoveryshow.com with your questions or experience, strength and hope. Or just leave a comment right here.

I read a bit from this Vox article about the Netflix show Jessica Jones, and its depiction of drug use and addiction.

3 P’s: Perfection, Procrastination, Paralysis – Episode 219

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Do you find yourself seeking perfection? Do you procrastinate because you can’t achieve it? Or, maybe, you are paralyzed because of it.

We explore the 3 P’s, guided by the questions below and with shares from listeners.

How do Perfection, Procrastination, and Paralysis connect to each other?
How have I experienced perfection(ism) in my life?
How (and why) do I procrastinate?
- What is the payoff from procrastinating?
When do I experience paralysis?
- What behaviors do I exhibit then?
How can I use the “6 P’s”(from our book Paths to Recovery) of Step six? Thanks to Cleaning Out the Old Toolbox blog for these reflections:
- Perspective: think of defects of character as “survival skills that no longer serve me”. Since my Higher Power wants more for me than mere survival, I can let them go and trust that I will develop healthy behaviors and thinking.
- Pain: Whenever the pain of staying the same hurts more than the pain of change, that’s the time when I will be ready.
- Prayer: My part is to pray for openness & willingness; God’s part is to do the removing.
- Patience: God gets to choose when and how fast He will remove my defects of character.
- Process: Quite possibly, this is a grief process of denial, anger, bargaining and depression.
- Payoff: The bottom line–what am I getting out of holding on to some of these defects of character? What is still good about it?
How can I let go of 3 P’s?
- Slogans
  - Progress, not perfection
  - First things first
  - How Important is it?
  - Do the next right thing.
  - Keep it simple.
  - Easy does it.
  - Let go and let God.
- Steps
  - Step 4 — identify my character traits
  - Step 5 — be honest about them!
  - Step 6 — become ready to let go of what is not helping me
  - Step 7 — Ask for the help (and practise new behavior)
- Acceptance that nothing is/will be perfect. Ever.
- Gratitude

Our upcoming topic is courage. The word courage appears in the serenity prayer, from which the title of one of our daily meditation books was taken: Courage to Change. How have you experienced courage in your recovery? Which steps required courage of you? How has recovery given you courage to change the things you can? Please call us at 734-707-8795 or email feedback@therecoveryshow.com with your questions or experience, strength and hope. Or just leave a comment right here.

Episodes mentioned in this show are: Episode 203, Adult Children of Alcoholics; Episode 200, Daddy’s Medicine; and Episode 22, Parents’ Roundtable.
Continue reading “3 P’s: Perfection, Procrastination, Paralysis – Episode 219”

Being Thankful – Episode 180

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How are you thankful? Can you be thankful even when life isn’t going well? How can being thankful improve your situation?

As I approach the US Thanksgiving holiday, my thoughts naturally turn to thankfulness.
In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, we find this bit of conversation between Hamlet and Rosencrantz. Hamlet has just remarked that Denmark is a prison, and Rosencrantz says that he doesn’t find it so:

HAMLET: Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is
nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it
so. To me, it is a prison.
ROSENCRANTZ: Why, then, your ambition makes it one.
’Tis too narrow for your mind.
HAMLET: O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and
count myself a king of infinite space, were it not
that I have bad dreams.
And don’t we all (have bad dreams)? How can we be thankful in spite of them? How can being thankful actually help us drive away our bad dreams?

Let’s look at the reading from How Al-Anon Works on gratitude.

“Actively practicing gratitude is one way we can promote attitude adjustment. Instead of taking for granted the many blessings in our lives, we make a point to mentally acknowledge them until doing so becomes a habit.”
- I don’t “notice” when things are going well, but
- I dwell on the times when things went poorly.
“Writing them down in a “gratitude list” and then reading the list to our Sponsor or sharing it with other Al-Anon members helps us realize that there are many things in our lives for which we are truly grateful. “
- A to Z gratitude list
- How I felt afterwards
“Gratitude enables us to savor the unrecognized good that surrounds us, no matter what the circumstances. As we become accustomed to noticing the positive aspects of our lives, we begin to recognize small, subtle gifts and cloaked opportunities when they appear in our day-to-day experience.”
- My winter day story — a friend helped me to see the good that had happened that day instead of “moaning” about the bad
- I remember this story and it helps me to see the positive as well as the negative.
“ Eventually, as we continue to practice, we actually do find something to be grateful for, even in painful or difficult situations. We replace our victim mentality with an attitude of gratitude.”
- Psych ward story.
“Instead of feeling drained, overwhelmed, and stressed by the circumstances we encounter, we begin to feel empowered and capable of coping, even flourishing, because we have learned that our Higher Power can use every situation, every relationship, every experience, to enhance our lives and foster strength, faith, and personal growth. Thus, everyone and everything has a special gift to offer us.”
- Visiting with my aging and ailing mother.
- How I felt, how I grew.
“We need only open our eyes to see it.”

Previous episodes and blog posts on gratitude are

Episode 129: Gratitude
Episode 97: Gratitude 2014
Episode 19: Gratitude
Gratitude list 2015

Upcoming topics include anger. Please call us at 734-707-8795 or email feedback@therecoveryshow.com with your questions or experience, strength and hope. Or just leave a comment right here.

Start where you are – Episode 173

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Start where you are. Bring your angry self. Bring your despairing self. Bring your resentful and frustrated self. Bring your confused self. And we will meet you there.

Sometimes I think I need to be “ready” before I can do something, before I can make a change. But that’s not true of our program. I was able to start where I was, and I can still start where I am. How does this work? How was I able to “start where I am” at each point along the path of recovery? Because recovery is a process, not an event.

Walking into my first meeting.
- You met me where I was. You didn’t require that I know anything, that I agree to anything, you just welcomed me.
Step 1: We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
- My first challenge – what does “powerless” mean? Can I admit that I am “powerless”? How do I recognize the unmanageability of my life? Is this where I am right now?
Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- I start into this step where I am: questioning the very existence of a Higher Power. Some start into this step with a vengeful, angry God. No matter where we start, we can find an understanding of this step.
Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- If my starting point is “the meeting is my HP”, I can look for guidance and wisdom in the meeting, and try to follow that.
Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- This step has always met me where I was. As my starting point has changed, the inventory has also changed. My new point of view has revealed other aspects of myself, which were not visible earlier.
Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- My first starting point for this step was “no way!” My second starting point was “there’s some stuff I’m just not going to talk about.” I *think* that, at this time, I’ve admitted all my wrongs, but I might be wrong about that.
- Each time, there was power in the step, no matter where I started, and how “well” I did it. The point is to take the step, not to take it perfectly.
Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Again, my starting point has “moved” with time. I’ve gone from “well, of course” to “um, not that one!” to “please help me to become willing”.
- I didn’t understand this step the first time I “took” it, but I did it anyway.
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- What does this step mean if I don’t have a concrete idea of G-o-d?
- But, I found that, when I ask for help, I find it, and I change.
Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
- The literature suggested that I can group my list into: people I am willing to make amends to, people I might be willing to make amends to, and those people who I was not willing to make amends to.
- I started there, and found that my lists changed as I moved into Step 9.
Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Do the easy ones first, and don’t worry about doing it perfectly!
Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
- I started doing this step before I actually got to it. Because I didn’t want to add new things to my “Step 4 inventory.”
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Wow. What is prayer? How do I do it? You suggested I start with the Serenity prayer. And I was able to do that.
- Meditation? How? When? “Just try. Sit with me. Breathe.” It’s a start.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
- My awakening came gradually, as I moved in recovery, I became more awake, where I was.
Sponsorship!
- I was not “ready” (in my mind) to be a sponsor the first time I was asked. But I said “yes” and did the best I could.
Gratitude
- Finding gratitude in small things helped to to develop an “attitude of gratitude”.

So, start where you are, and we will meet you there and welcome you into the beginning of your path to recovery.

Please call us at 734-707-8795 or email feedback@therecoveryshow.com with your questions or experience, strength and hope. Or just leave a comment right here.