If we can't do anything about the circumstance, we can change our attitude. We can do the work within: courageously face our issues so we are not victimized. We have been given a miraculous key to life.
We are victims no more unless we want to be.
Freedom and joy are ours for the taking, for the feeling, for the hard work we have done.
Today, I will remind myself as often as necessary that I am not a victim, and I do not need to be victimized by whatever comes my way. I will work hard to remove myself as a victim, whether that means setting and enforcing a boundary, walking away, dealing with my feelings, or giving myself what I need.
God, help me let go of my need to feel victimized.
July 27
Letting Go
Stop trying so hard to control things. It is not our job to control people, outcomes, circumstances, life. Maybe in the past we couldn't trust and let things happen. But we can now. The way life is unfolding is good. Let it unfold.
Stop trying so hard to do better, be better, be more. Who we are and the way we do things is good enough for today.
Who we were and the way we did things yesterday was good enough for that day.
Ease up on ourselves. Let go. Stop trying so hard.
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Today, I will let go. I will stop trying to control everything. I will stop trying to make myself be and do better, and I will let myself be.
July 28
Fear
One day, I decided to try something new. I took my tenyearold son out on the St. Croix River on a Waverunner. A Waverunner is a small boating vehicle resembling a motorcycle.
We donned life jackets and embarked on an experience that turned out to be both exhilarating and frightening: exhilarating when I let myself enjoy it; frightening when I thought too much about what I was doing and all the terrible things that could happen.
Midway through our ride, my worst fear came true. We took a spill. We were floundering in thirty feet of water. The Waverunner was bobbing on the waves in front of me, like a motorized turtle on its back.
''Don't panic,'' my son said calmly.
"What if we drown?" I objected.
"We can't," he said. "We have life jackets on. See! We're floating."
"The machine is upside down," I said. "How are we going to turn it over?"
"Just like the man said," my son answered. "The arrow points this way."
With an easy gesture, we turned the machine rightside up.
"What if we can't climb back on?" I asked.
"We can," my son replied. "That's what Waverunners were made for: climbing on in the water."
I relaxed and as we drove off, I wondered why I had become so frightened. I thought maybe it's because I don't trust my ability to solve problems. Maybe it's because once I almost drowned when I wasn't wearing a life jacket.
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But you didn't drown then either, a small voice inside reassured me. You survived.
Don't panic.
Problems were made to be solved. Life was made to be lived. Although sometimes we may be in over our heads yes, we may even go under for a few moments and gulp a few mouthfuls of water, we won't drown. We're wearing and always have been wearing—a life jacket. That support jacket is called "God."
Today, I will remember to take care of myself. When I get in over my head, God is there supporting me—even when my fears try to make me forget.
July 29
Have Some Fun
Have some fun. Loosen up a bit. Enjoy life!
We do not have to be so somber and serious. We do not have to be so reflective, so critical, so bound up within ourselves and the rigid parameters others, and often ourselves, have placed around us.
This is life, not a funeral service. Have some fun with it. Enter into it. Participate. Experiment. Take a risk. Be spontaneous. Do not always be so concerned about doing it right, doing the appropriate thing.
Do not always be so concerned about what others will think or say. What they think and say are their issues not ours. Do not be so afraid of making a mistake. Do not be so fearful and proper. Do not inhibit yourself so much.
God did not intend us to be so inhibited, so restricted, so controlled. These repressive parameters are what other people have imposed on us, what we have allowed to be done to us.
We were created fully human. We were given emotions, desires, hopes, dreams, feelings. There is an alive, excited, Page 213
funloving child in us somewhere! Let it come out! Let it come alive! Let it have some fun—not just for two hours on Saturday evening. Bring it with us, let it help us enjoy this gift of being alive, being fully human, and being who we are!
So many rules. So much shame we've lived with. It simply isn't necessary. We have been brainwashed. It is time now to free ourselves, let ourselves go, and enter fully human into a full life.
Don't worry. We will learn our lessons when necessary. We have learned discipline. We will not go awry. What will happen is that we will begin enjoying life. We will begin enjoying and experiencing our whole self. We can trust ourselves. We have boundaries now. We have our program for a foundation. We can afford to experiment and experience. We are in touch with ourselves and our Higher Power. We are being guided, but a frozen, inanimate object cannot be guided. It cannot even be moved.
Have some fun. Loosen up a bit. Break a few rules. We won't be punished by God. We do not have to allow people to punish us. And we can stop punishing ourselves. As long as we're here and alive, let's begin to live.
Today, I will let myself have some fun with life. I will loosen up a bit, knowing I won't crack and break. God, help me let go of my need to be so inhibited, proper, and repressed. Help me inject a big dose of life into myself by letting myself be fully alive and human.
July 30
Accepting Powerlessness
Since I've been a child, I've been in an antagonistic relationship with an important emotional part of myself: my feelings. I have consistently tried to either ignore, repress, or force my feelings away. I have tried to create unnatural feelings or force away feelings that were present.
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I've denied I was angry, when in fact I was furious. I have told myself there must be something wrong with me for feeling angry, when anger was a reasonable and logical response to the situation.
I have told myself things didn't hurt, when they hurt very much. I have told myself stories such as "That person didn't mean to hurt me". . . . "He or she doesn't know any better". . . . ''I need to be more understanding." The problem was that I had already been too understanding of the other person and not understanding and compassionate enough with myself.
It has not just been the large feelings I have been at war with; I have been battling the whole emotional aspect of myself. I have tried to use spiritual energy, mental energy, and even physical exertion to not feel what I need to feel to be healthy and alive.
I didn't succeed at my attempts to control emotions. Emotional control has been a survival behavior for me. I can thank that behavior for helping me get through many years and situations where I didn't have any better options. But I have learned a healthier behavior—accepting my feelings.
We are meant to feel. Part of our dysfunction is trying to deny or change that. Part of our recovery means learning to go with the flow of what we're feeling and what our feelings are trying to tell us.
We are responsible for our behaviors, but we do not have to control our feelings. We can let them happen. We can learn to embrace, enjoy, and experience—feel—
the emotional part of ourselves.
Today, I will stop trying to force and control my emotions. Instead, I will give power and freedom to the emotional part of myself.
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July 31
Letting Go of What We Want
For those of us who have survived by controlling and surrendering, letting go may not come easily.
—Beyond Codependency
In r
ecovery, we learn that it is important to identify what we want and need. Where does this concept leave us? With a large but clearly identified package of currently unmet wants and needs. We've taken the risk to stop denying and to start accepting what we want and need. The problem is, the want or need hangs there, unmet.
This can be a frustrating, painful, annoying, and sometimes obsessionproducing place to be.
After identifying our needs, there is a next step in getting our wants and needs met. This step is one of the spiritual ironies of recovery. The next step is letting go of our wants and needs after we have taken painstaking steps to identify them.
We let them go, we give them up—on a mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical level. Sometimes, this means we need to give up. It is not always easy to get to this place, but this is usually where we need to go.
How often I have denied a want or need, then gone through the steps to identify my needs, only to become annoyed, frustrated, and challenged because I don't have what I want and don't know how to get it. If I then embark on a plan to control or influence getting that want or need met, I usually make things worse. Searching, trying to control the process, does not work. I must, I have learned to my dismay, let go.
Sometimes, I even have to go to the point of saying, "I don't want it. I realize it's important to me, but I cannot control obtaining that in my life. Now, I don't care anymore if I have it or not. In fact, I'm going to be absolutely happy without
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it and without any hope of getting it, because hoping to get it is making me nuts—the more I hope and try to get it, the more frustrated I feel because I'm not getting it."
I don't know why the process works this way.
I know only that this is how the process works for me. I have found no way around the concept of letting go.
We often can have what we really want and need, or something better. Letting go is part of what we do to get it.
Today, I will strive to let go of those wants and needs that are causing me frustration. I will enter them on my goal list, then struggle to let go. I will trust God to bring me the desires of my heart, in God's time and in God's way.
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August
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August 1
Gratitude
We learn the magical lesson that making the most of what we have turns it into more.
—Codependent No More
Say thank you, until you mean it.
Thank God, life, and the universe for everyone and everything sent your way.
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. It can turn an existence into a real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Gratitude makes things right.
Gratitude turns negative energy into positive energy. There is no situation or circumstance so small or large that it is not susceptible to gratitude's power. We can start with who we are and what we have today, apply gratitude, then let it work its magic.
Say thank you, until you mean it. If you say it long enough, you will believe it.
Today, I will shine the transforming light of gratitude on all the circumstances of my life.
August 2
InBetween
Sometimes, to get from where we are to where we are going, we have to be willing to be inbetween.
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One of the hardest parts of recovery is the concept of letting go of what is old and familiar, but what we don't want, and being willing to stand with our hands empty while we wait for God to fill them.
This may apply to feelings. We may have been full of hurt and anger. In some ways, these feelings may have become comfortably familiar. When we finally face and relinquish our grief, we may feel empty for a time. We are in between pain and the joy of serenity and acceptance.
Being inbetween can apply to relationships. To prepare ourselves for the new, we need to first let go of the old. This can be frightening. We may feel empty and lost for a time. We may feel all alone, wondering what is wrong with us for letting go of the proverbial birdinhand, when there is nothing in the bush.
Being inbetween can apply to many areas of life and recovery. We can be in between jobs, careers, homes, or goals. We can be in between behaviors as we let go of the old and are not certain what we will replace it with. This can apply to behaviors that have protected and served us well all of our life, such as caretaking and controlling.
We may have many feelings going on when we're inbetween: spurts of grief about what we have let go of or lost, and feelings of anxiety, fear, and apprehension about what's ahead. These are normal feelings for the inbetween place. Accept them. Feel them. Release them.
Being inbetween isn't fun, but it's necessary. It will not last forever. It may feel like we're standing still, but we're not. We're standing at the inbetween place. It's how we get from here to there. It is not the destination.
We are moving forward, even when we're inbetween.
Today, I will accept where I am as the ideal place for me to be. If I am inbetween, I will strive for the faith that this place is not without purpose, that it is moving me toward something good.
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August 3
Owning Our Power in Relationships
So much of what I call my codependency is fear and panic because I spent so much of my life feeling abused, trapped, and not knowing how to take care of myself in relationships.
—Anonymous
No matter how long we have been recovering, we may still tend to give up our power to others, whether they be authority figures, a new love, or a child.
When we do this, we experience the set of emotions and thoughts we call "the codependent crazies" We may feel angry, guilty, afraid, confused, and obsessed. We may feel dependent and needy or become overly controlling and rigid. We may return to familiar behaviors during stress. And for those of us who have codependency and adult children issues, relationships can mean stress.
We don't have to stay stuck in our codependency. We don't have to shame or blame ourselves, or the other person, for our condition. We simply need to remember to own our power.
Practice. Practice. Practice using your power to take care of yourself, no matter who you are dealing with, where you are, or what you are doing. This is what recovery means. This does not mean we try to control others; it does not mean we become abrasive or abusive. It means we own our power to take care of ourselves.
The thought of doing this may generate fears. That's normal! Take care of yourself anyway. The answers, and the power to do that, are within you now.
Start today. Start where you are. Start by taking care of who you are, at the present moment, to the best of your ability.
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Today, I will focus on owning my power to take care of myself. I will not let fears, or a false sense of shame and guilt, stop me from taking care of myself.
August 4
Vulnerability
I've learned that the more vulnerable I allow myself to be, the more in control of myself I really am.
—Anonymous
Many of us feel that we can only show our strong, confident side. We believe the face we have to show to the world should always be one of politeness, perfection, calm, strength, and control.
While it is certainly good and often appropriate to be in control, calm, and strong, there is another side to all of us—that part of us that feels needy, becomes frightened, has doubts, and gets angry. That part of us that needs care, love, and reassurance that things will be okay. Expressing these needs makes us vulnerable and less than perfect, but this side ne
eds our acceptance too.
Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable will help us build lasting relationships. Sharing our vulnerabilities helps us feel close to people and helps others feel close to us. It helps us grow in selflove and selfacceptance. It helps us become healing agents. It allows us to become whole and accessible to others.
Today, I will allow myself to be vulnerable with others when it's safe and appropriate to do so.
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August 5
Attitudes Toward Money
Sometimes, our life and history may be so full of pain that we think it totally unfair that we have to grow up now and be financially responsible for ourselves.
The feeling is understandable; the attitude is not healthy. Many people in recovery may believe that certain people in particular, and life in general, owe them a living after what they've been through.
To feel good about ourselves, to find the emotional peace and freedom we're seeking in recovery, we need healthy boundaries about money—what we give to others, and what we allow ourselves to receive from others.
Do we feel that others owe us money because we cannot take care of ourselves? Do we believe others owe us because we do not have as much money as they do?
Do we consciously or subconsciously believe that they ''owe" us money because of emotional pain we suffered as a result of our relationship with them or another person?
Punitive damages are awarded in court, but not in recovery.
Unhealthy boundaries about what we allow ourselves to receive from others will not lead to healthy relationships with others or ourselves.
Test by looking within. The key is our attitude. The issue is boundaries about receiving money. Become willing to meet the challenge of taking responsibility for yourself.
Today, I will strive for clear, healthy boundaries about receiving money from others. As part of my recovery, I will take a hard look at my financial history and examine whether I have taken money that may not reflect good boundaries. If I uncover some incidents that reflect less than an attitude of healthy selfresponsibility, I will become willing to make amends and develop a reasonable plan to do that.
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More Language of Letting Go: 366 New Daily Meditations Page 18
