I’ve been talking to a number of people in the program, who have been sharing a lot of stuff with me that they’ve been going through. The truth is that it always wakes me up to what I have had to go through myself in the past, and what my sponsor and a lot of those old timers helped me to do and change my thinking and my life.
And, of course, a lot of these things I learned to do to, dealt with overcoming negative emotions and thinking with our heads and not our hearts. In other words staying sane. Negative emotions, as Bill W. once wrote, are what tear us up, and just as often can drive us back to drinking alcohol.
And just as often they have nothing to do with reality. We may find ourselves being angry or resentful toward someone, who very well may not even be involved with us. But our anger can take over and cause us to grow and magnify whatever it is running through our heads. The same with fear, anxiety, hatred, self pity, and on and on. And we continue to justify our thinking.
Of course this is where my sponsor and others helped me to begin to try to grow in the spiritual way of life. To not only learn to pray, but to be able to focus on what it is that is driving us into all of these feelings within. To be able to learn to step back, away from these emotions, and to ask my Higher Power to relieve me of these. Then to change my thoughts from negative to positive. From dark into light. In other words, to step aside and change our day from darkness into light.
I learned a long time ago to talk to my sponsor, or someone with time in and who can help us to face the truth about what we may believe is real, but is not. Learning to share what is going on with us, and then listening to them and their own experiences with the same things. Finally starting to face the truth about ourselves and not the false thinking within us. Beginning to place our intellects over our emotions. Or the “I” over the “E”.
That never got me to perfection. The truth is that we are human alcoholics and not saints. I was told, and able to witness from those who shared with us, that we will be tripping over our selves for the rest of the time in here. Right up to the end. But being able to work over and over again, striving to change, we do get better.
Anyway I have to continue to focus on why I am here. To stay sober from alcohol. To practice each and everyday to stay sober a day at a time. To put our spiritual lives into action each day. To be able to commit changing and growing through this program. To continue to grow in faith, hope, and love. To be open and share with other people, and to listen and learn from those who can help us. To be open and willing to freely give to those who need to get sober. And to grow in gratitude and love to our Higher Power, and those who help us.