One of the things I learned in this program, which went a long way in saving my sanity and keeping me on track, was the concept of starting my day over.
I’ve certainly gone through days, when things were frantic, as was I. It would seem chaos was just around the corner, and my nerves were stretched to the breaking point. Or I was faced with gloom and doom. But nothing was going right. That’s where my sponsor would say, calm down, say a prayer, and start your day over.
In the past, when I got this way, I would step up to the nearest bar and down a drink and then another and another…well, you know the rest. I had never conceived of the idea that I didn’t have to continue down the path my day seemed to going. Never in my wildest dreams had I ever heard of such a thing. Start your day over.
Early on it wasn’t easy to grasp an idea like this. But every time I needed it, it worked. All that was necessary was to first calm down, take a step back, ask my Higher Power for help, and then turn it over and change my mind about things. In other words to get a new outlook on things. Another way of saying it was to change my attitude.
For years, when faced with “calamity”, at least in my mind, I could get stuck there for days on end, sometimes weeks, and maybe for months on end. Maybe even longer. It would be hard getting up in the morning and having to face another day like the one before. It would drive me to quitting jobs or maybe even getting laid off, because of my attitude, which I couldn’t see. But now I found that I didn’t have to live that way any more. Just start my day over.
Over time I was to learn that attitudes, my attitude, are more important than facts. In fact, a change in attitude could change the facts.
Anyway, I was thinking about this and how simple this kind of procedure was and how it has helped me to change my way of thinking and how that has helped me to stay sober.