2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

[merry]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

slay
I'm printing out you post
so I can keep going over it
thanks

[paula]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

Great post Slay. The last time I responded to a post by you, you were thinking of leaving mwo, I'm glad you stayed. Thank you.

[Slaythefear]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

Your responses make it all worthwhile. Tess, you are growing in those tears even when they seem so sad. :l I do not like tears or pain, but somehow when I've survived them I have grown tremendously and I have something to pass on.

Thank you, Paula and all. I feel honored to offer inspiration an/or hope to any and all.:h I have been through so much in life, and continue to grow through every experience I endure.

Love,

Slay

[Hippyman]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

Slaythefear;1437266 wrote: Your responses make it all worthwhile. Tess, you are growing in those tears even when they seem so sad. :l I do not like tears or pain, but somehow when I've survived them I have grown tremendously and I have something to pass on.

Thank you, Paula and all. I feel honored to offer inspiration an/or hope to any and all.:h I have been through so much in life, and continue to grow through every experience I endure.

Love,

Slay

Keep up the good work! The Hipster is reading every word!

[paula]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

This is a great thread, we can all help each other by sharing our own experience, lets face it experience it a great teacher.

[Hippyman]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

paula;1437351 wrote: This is a great thread, we can all help each other by sharing our own experience, lets face it experience it a great teacher.

That's for sure. In my experience only an alcoholic can help an alcoholic. No matter how good others intentions may be they just can not understand unless they have walked in our shoes!

[paula]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

I have wonderful caring people in my life, but only one of them is alcoholic, she and the folks on mwo are the only ones who really understand. My husband is kind, understanding and cares a great deal, but he has no problem with al, he thinks all I have to do is make a decision not to drink and that's all it takes, if only!. I am gradually changing my thinking, as I have done on other occasions and know this is the way to go, I also know that if I let myself think, I can just have one little drink, that is the downward spiral. You have really done well Hippy.

[Slaythefear]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

January 3, 2013

The Challenge of Embracing Yourself

Lily ruminates about her failed marriage, beating herself up for mistakes she?s made and opportunities she?s missed.

Tom, a recovering alcoholic, obsesses about the years he lost to booze and castigates himself for the people he hurt and the relationships he damaged.

For Lily and Tom, both approaching middle age, self-acceptance is a challenge, but isn?t it a challenge for all of us?
On the road with yourself

Throughout the course of our lives, we are subject to screw up, probably many times. That?s the human condition, despite our best effort there will be times when we fail to handle ourselves and plow ahead, ignoring the signs warning us of dangerous curves ahead. We crash. It can be of the bumper thumper type or it can be a near total wreck. Usually, the crash was emotionally driven, not balanced enough by reason.

Some of us walk away unscathed, some with scrapes and bruises, while others of us wind up in an emotional intensive care unit trying to heal the carnage left in our wake. We screwed up and no one knows that more than we do. We hope to not repeat the same mistakes again but sometimes we do and the inner torment takes on new energy.

Life happens. The key question is: How can you come to peace with yourself? Can you look past the harsh judgments you impose on yourself and move on? Can you drop the self-castigation and attempt to see more clearly just what drove you to screw up? That is, why not stop beating yourself up and focus on something more productive, like seeing what you can do to avoid screwing up?

If you don?t do that and continue to tell yourself that it is not merely a screw up, but that you are the screw up; that is, you leap from having made a mistake to feeling as if you are a mistake. You define yourself by your mistake(s).

If you can?t accept yourself as an imperfect human being, then somewhere in the back of your mind you have buried your ?sins? in a shallow grave, waiting for the chance to resurrect them so the self-torture can resume. Being at peace takes a back seat to the inner war, it is a war you will lose and the main casualty is you.

We?re human beings and thus subject to make mistakes, especially when raw emotions come into play. Think back on all the dumb stuff that you may have done throughout the course of your life. Didn?t overwhelming, emotional responses play some role in your linage of occasional dumb stuff? It has in all our lives, including mine. The truth is that we are all more than our mistakes. Self-acceptance is not optional for a healthy relationship with yourself, it is essential.
Self-Acceptance

In fact, self-acceptance is one of the most important journeys we?re challenged with in this life. It is about being willing to embrace who we are, blemishes and all.

Here?s how I think about it: Imagine a container holding a variety of fruit, a perfect apple, a great piece of pineapple, blueberries that are just okay and a banana that is rotten, among a host of other fruits, some excellent, others less so.

Is the container good or bad?

Good? What about that rotten banana?

Bad? What about that perfect apple?

Get it? You are the container and those fruits represent your behaviors. The container can?t be rated, that would be simplistic, but the fruits (your behavior) certainly can and should be rated. The problem with Lily and Tom, and most of the rest of us, is that we stubbornly rate the container?our total Self. In essence, you are not good and you are not bad. You just are. I know, hard to grasp, but when you do, peace settles in.
You are so weird!

In contrast to those that judge themselves, their whole selves, take my friend Bob. When he told me about a very strange medical procedure he invented to treat a rash and avoid going to a dermatologist, I told him, affectionately, ?You are so friggin? weird!? He replied spontaneously, without defense, ?Yes, I know I can be weird at times.?

A couple of weeks later he complained about glare when he drove at night. When I suggested it might have to do with aging, he confessed it was the result of corrective eye surgery.

?Wait,? I said, ?you wouldn?t go to a dermatologist for a rash, but you let someone put a knife in your eye?? ?I have contradictions,? he stated with a soft smile, once again, quite non-defensively.

Now there?s a guy who is comfortable with himself, who has embraced his ?weirdness? his contradictions, his limitations and fallibility. He embraces who he is, blemishes and all.

He is not into the fake issue of self-esteem; he doesn?t need to play out the typical self-esteem tactic of softening or excusing mistakes or shortcomings. Self Esteem is based on feeling as if you are okay when you behave okay, and not okay when things don?t turn out as planned. It?s conditional.

The real deal is accepting your dark side as well, your imperfect humanity. Some of your behavior may not be successful, but you do not judge your total being based on that behavior. Rather than working yourself over and then thinking you?ve worked something out, stop castigating yourself and get going on a solution!

Again, thinking along the lines of self-esteem involves feeling good about yourself when you do good and feeling bad about yourself when you do bad. Your well-being is at the mercy of your behavior. With that inner philosophy you will only embrace yourself when you are behaving perfectly and your accomplishments as well as your life in general goes your way. That is an approach that is going to keep you on a emotional roller coaster.

Looking Inner Peace?

Would you like to make that full embrace while you can? Here are a few things to consider:

1. Agree in principle with all criticisms of yourself. If someone says you are being selfish in a particular situation, don?t argue. Reply with something like, ?You are right, sometimes I am selfish.? And that?s true! Everyone is selfish (and a lot more) at times. You are practicing the uncommon ?art? of accepting yourself with imperfections, rather than the all too common ?un-smart? defensive behavior.

2. Cut the small talk short and discuss the issue of self-acceptance with your friends. Ask how they forgive themselves for mistakes and shortcomings. Ask about their personal ?compassion philosophy.? Yes, we all have a personal philosophy that guides the inner conversations we have with ourselves about ourselves. Unfortunately it is often not compassionate.

3. Debate with yourself whenever you lose perspective about the fallibility of all human beings, including yourself. Remind yourself that perfection is not for human beings. It is about doing your best, not being the best. If you hold a perfection standard you are setting yourself up for torment.

4. About those rotten bananas in your container, don?t rate the whole container?that?s poor thinking that will only create more rottenness. Remember, obsessing doesn?t change anything, and, as Jung said a century ago, what you resist persists. The irony is, accepting yourself, rotten banana and all, is more likely to lead to change.

__________________________________________________ __________________

Not everyone will like you!


My life has changed in so many ways in the last 10 years I would hardly recognize myself back then. The major changes came because I put work and love into healing my life and my body. I?ve had addictions to many things, including a gambling addiction, friends literally prying me away from machines while I screamed and cried, an eating disorder and few other ones. I was a raver and I loved to go to parties and dance and meet people. I don?t think I?m friends with anyone from that time in my life. Okay maybe one but she?s awesome (Shan).

When you change and your friends don?t there?s going to be friction. This friction can strain the relationship and at some point you have to decide if it?s really worth holding onto anymore. People will hurt you and you will hurt people, it?s part of life. Accepting that not everyone is going to like you or want to be your friend is healthy and an important part of letting go and moving onward and upward in your life. Friendships kept just because you have known each other since childhood or highschool or 10 years can?t survive simply on the idea of hours logged. All relationships take work, but how much?

Some friends are in your life for a day, a week, a month, a year, 5, 10, 50 years or more, either way releasing the ones that are harmful to your health are necessary for your spiritual growth. Cutting ties can be more painful for you than for them but if you listen to your heart and make decisions from there you can?t be wrong. Being right isn?t the point, neither is being better than someone else, that makes you a jerk, but doing what you need to do takes courage and strength.

It?s hard to really truly acknowledge your part in the dissolution of friendships but if you grow and heal and the other person doesn?t how much effort and time can you spare to helping them? Every one of us is responsible for our own shit and for most of us that?s more than enough to deal with. When your heart is broken over and over from people in your past or in present you have to learn to let them go, wish them well and most importantly move on.

Attached files [img]/converted_files/2019156=7300-attachment.jpg[/img]

[Hippyman]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

paula;1437361 wrote: I have wonderful caring people in my life, but only one of them is alcoholic, she and the folks on mwo are the only ones who really understand. My husband is kind, understanding and cares a great deal, but he has no problem with al, he thinks all I have to do is make a decision not to drink and that's all it takes, if only!. I am gradually changing my thinking, as I have done on other occasions and know this is the way to go, I also know that if I let myself think, I can just have one little drink, that is the downward spiral. You have really done well Hippy.

If Hippy takes just one drink, the drink takes Hippy. It always has and always will be that way. I have heard others say that AL doesn't scare them now that they found Baclofen. Alcohol will always scare me. I think it's too slippery a slope. Even though Al tastes bad and all the cravings for it are gone, I still don't want to tempt fate. AL in...idiot out... is how it's always been with me!

[Hippyman]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

Slaythefear;1437403 wrote: The Challenge of Embracing Yourself

Lily ruminates about her failed marriage, beating herself up for mistakes she?s made and opportunities she?s missed.

Tom, a recovering alcoholic, obsesses about the years he lost to booze and castigates himself for the people he hurt and the relationships he damaged.

For Lily and Tom, both approaching middle age, self-acceptance is a challenge, but isn?t it a challenge for all of us?
On the road with yourself

Throughout the course of our lives, we are subject to screw up, probably many times. That?s the human condition, despite our best effort there will be times when we fail to handle ourselves and plow ahead, ignoring the signs warning us of dangerous curves ahead. We crash. It can be of the bumper thumper type or it can be a near total wreck. Usually, the crash was emotionally driven, not balanced enough by reason.

Some of us walk away unscathed, some with scrapes and bruises, while others of us wind up in an emotional intensive care unit trying to heal the carnage left in our wake. We screwed up and no one knows that more than we do. We hope to not repeat the same mistakes again but sometimes we do and the inner torment takes on new energy.

Life happens. The key question is: How can you come to peace with yourself? Can you look past the harsh judgments you impose on yourself and move on? Can you drop the self-castigation and attempt to see more clearly just what drove you to screw up? That is, why not stop beating yourself up and focus on something more productive, like seeing what you can do to avoid screwing up?

If you don?t do that and continue to tell yourself that it is not merely a screw up, but that you are the screw up; that is, you leap from having made a mistake to feeling as if you are a mistake. You define yourself by your mistake(s).

If you can?t accept yourself as an imperfect human being, then somewhere in the back of your mind you have buried your ?sins? in a shallow grave, waiting for the chance to resurrect them so the self-torture can resume. Being at peace takes a back seat to the inner war, it is a war you will lose and the main casualty is you.

We?re human beings and thus subject to make mistakes, especially when raw emotions come into play. Think back on all the dumb stuff that you may have done throughout the course of your life. Didn?t overwhelming, emotional responses play some role in your linage of occasional dumb stuff? It has in all our lives, including mine. The truth is that we are all more than our mistakes. Self-acceptance is not optional for a healthy relationship with yourself, it is essential.
Self-Acceptance

In fact, self-acceptance is one of the most important journeys we?re challenged with in this life. It is about being willing to embrace who we are, blemishes and all.

Here?s how I think about it: Imagine a container holding a variety of fruit, a perfect apple, a great piece of pineapple, blueberries that are just okay and a banana that is rotten, among a host of other fruits, some excellent, others less so.

Is the container good or bad?

Good? What about that rotten banana?

Bad? What about that perfect apple?

Get it? You are the container and those fruits represent your behaviors. The container can?t be rated, that would be simplistic, but the fruits (your behavior) certainly can and should be rated. The problem with Lily and Tom, and most of the rest of us, is that we stubbornly rate the container?our total Self. In essence, you are not good and you are not bad. You just are. I know, hard to grasp, but when you do, peace settles in.
You are so weird!

In contrast to those that judge themselves, their whole selves, take my friend Bob. When he told me about a very strange medical procedure he invented to treat a rash and avoid going to a dermatologist, I told him, affectionately, ?You are so friggin? weird!? He replied spontaneously, without defense, ?Yes, I know I can be weird at times.?

A couple of weeks later he complained about glare when he drove at night. When I suggested it might have to do with aging, he confessed it was the result of corrective eye surgery.

?Wait,? I said, ?you wouldn?t go to a dermatologist for a rash, but you let someone put a knife in your eye?? ?I have contradictions,? he stated with a soft smile, once again, quite non-defensively.

Now there?s a guy who is comfortable with himself, who has embraced his ?weirdness? his contradictions, his limitations and fallibility. He embraces who he is, blemishes and all.

He is not into the fake issue of self-esteem; he doesn?t need to play out the typical self-esteem tactic of softening or excusing mistakes or shortcomings. Self Esteem is based on feeling as if you are okay when you behave okay, and not okay when things don?t turn out as planned. It?s conditional.

The real deal is accepting your dark side as well, your imperfect humanity. Some of your behavior may not be successful, but you do not judge your total being based on that behavior. Rather than working yourself over and then thinking you?ve worked something out, stop castigating yourself and get going on a solution!

Again, thinking along the lines of self-esteem involves feeling good about yourself when you do good and feeling bad about yourself when you do bad. Your well-being is at the mercy of your behavior. With that inner philosophy you will only embrace yourself when you are behaving perfectly and your accomplishments as well as your life in general goes your way. That is an approach that is going to keep you on a emotional roller coaster.

Looking Inner Peace?

Would you like to make that full embrace while you can? Here are a few things to consider:

1. Agree in principle with all criticisms of yourself. If someone says you are being selfish in a particular situation, don?t argue. Reply with something like, ?You are right, sometimes I am selfish.? And that?s true! Everyone is selfish (and a lot more) at times. You are practicing the uncommon ?art? of accepting yourself with imperfections, rather than the all too common ?un-smart? defensive behavior.

2. Cut the small talk short and discuss the issue of self-acceptance with your friends. Ask how they forgive themselves for mistakes and shortcomings. Ask about their personal ?compassion philosophy.? Yes, we all have a personal philosophy that guides the inner conversations we have with ourselves about ourselves. Unfortunately it is often not compassionate.

3. Debate with yourself whenever you lose perspective about the fallibility of all human beings, including yourself. Remind yourself that perfection is not for human beings. It is about doing your best, not being the best. If you hold a perfection standard you are setting yourself up for torment.

4. About those rotten bananas in your container, don?t rate the whole container?that?s poor thinking that will only create more rottenness. Remember, obsessing doesn?t change anything, and, as Jung said a century ago, what you resist persists. The irony is, accepting yourself, rotten banana and all, is more likely to lead to change.

__________________________________________________ __________________

Not everyone will like you!


My life has changed in so many ways in the last 10 years I would hardly recognize myself back then. The major changes came because I put work and love into healing my life and my body. I?ve had addictions to many things, including a gambling addiction, friends literally prying me away from machines while I screamed and cried, an eating disorder and few other ones. I was a raver and I loved to go to parties and dance and meet people. I don?t think I?m friends with anyone from that time in my life. Okay maybe one but she?s awesome (Shan).

When you change and your friends don?t there?s going to be friction. This friction can strain the relationship and at some point you have to decide if it?s really worth holding onto anymore. People will hurt you and you will hurt people, it?s part of life. Accepting that not everyone is going to like you or want to be your friend is healthy and an important part of letting go and moving onward and upward in your life. Friendships kept just because you have known each other since childhood or highschool or 10 years can?t survive simply on the idea of hours logged. All relationships take work, but how much?

Some friends are in your life for a day, a week, a month, a year, 5, 10, 50 years or more, either way releasing the ones that are harmful to your health are necessary for your spiritual growth. Cutting ties can be more painful for you than for them but if you listen to your heart and make decisions from there you can?t be wrong. Being right isn?t the point, neither is being better than someone else, that makes you a jerk, but doing what you need to do takes courage and strength.

It?s hard to really truly acknowledge your part in the dissolution of friendships but if you grow and heal and the other person doesn?t how much effort and time can you spare to helping them? Every one of us is responsible for our own shit and for most of us that?s more than enough to deal with. When your heart is broken over and over from people in your past or in present you have to learn to let them go, wish them well and most importantly move on.
Another great post Slay! Screw ups are part of the healing process for me! In sobriety I'm learning self responsibility!

[Slaythefear]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

January 4, 2013 ...No lubrication or escape required

Scars don't heal when you keep cutting. (guilt)
- Me

?I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.?

Maya Angelou

You can't start the next chapter of your new life if you keep re-reading the last one!

If you don?t rid your life of the things that impact you negatively,
how will you make room for the good things to come?

Forgive yourself: 6 Things You Should Forgive Yourself For | Purpose Fairy

1. Forgive yourself for not accepting yourself completely

You and I both know that there are many people out there who aren?t really happy with who they are and what they are, who always criticize themselves and always compare themselves with others. We will never be happy if we continue living our lives this way, and before we can even consider changing the way we think and the way we perceive ourselves, we need to learn how to forgive ourselves for all the time we spent ignoring our own beauty and our own greatness.
2. Forgive yourself for constantly seeking approval in all the wrong places

It?s never too late to start seeking for approval in the right place, it?s never too late to start getting approval from the right person, which is YOU! All the approval you will ever need is your own approval and not the approval of those around you. For so many years you have lived your life believing that if THEY like you and if they praise you, you are worthy and if they don?t, well, if they don?t there must be something wrong with you, and maybe you should try even harder to get their attention and validation.

You spent so much time and energy trying to be something you were not, trying to fit in and trying to be like everybody else, you thought that it was the right thing to do but now that you know better, it?s time to forgive yourself.

?Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.? Marcus Aurelius
3. Forgive yourself for thinking you are not good enough

Thoughts have creative power. Your beliefs were created based on your thoughts; acting on your beliefs you eventually created you own reality. The life you are now living is the result of all of those thoughts and all the choices you made so far based on your beliefs. Realize this truth, accept it and forgive yourself for those many times when you didn?t consider yourself good enough.

?Compassion, forgiveness, these are the real, ultimate sources of power for peace and success in life.? Tenzin Gyatso, The 14th Dalai Lama
4. Forgive yourself for your past mistakes
r />The past is long gone, you can?t change it, you can?t change what once happened to you. Only by understanding this truth you will be able to release yourself from the prison you?ve locked yourself in. There are no mistakes, there are lessons that life taught you and it?s better to see them as lessons than mistakes in order to be happy with your present life. Forgive yourself for your so called past mistakes, let go in order to be happy, let go and move on.

?Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means of correcting our misperceptions.? Gerald Jampolsky
5. Forgive yourself for all the judgments you?ve placed on yourself and others

I really love how Mother Teresa of Calcutta spoke about this: ?If you judge people, you have no time to love them.? Forgive yourself for all the judgments you?ve placed on yourself and others and shift your focus and attention from blame, criticism and direct it towards love and forgiveness, for others and yourself.
6. Forgive yourself for giving up on your hopes, dreams and goals

Decide that it is time to forgive yourself for giving up on your big, bold and beautiful dreams because you see, the irony is that by doing so you will actually allow yourself to start all new and to no longer look for faults in yourself and your past. This will allow you to be fired up with how your future will look like and to actually reclaim your dreams and work on making them become reality.

?You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.? ? C.S. Lewis

Love,

Slay

[merry]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

wow

[RingingCedars]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

You can't start the next chapter of your new life if you keep re-reading the last one!
That was so me!!!!!

[Slaythefear]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

January 5, 2013...Change is uncomfortable

Six steps to help us transform our thoughts to real life change.


Step #1: When you change your thinking, you change your beliefs.

I am going to work you through a six-step process of how to change, and it begins with thinking. It begins with the mind. Beliefs are nothing more than a by-product of what you have thought long enough about that you have bought into--always remember that. What you believe is a collection of continual thoughts that have formed themselves into a conviction.

"Although not all change is the same, there is one common element to change, and that is thinking." That is a great truth. That is not mine, it's out of a book called, The Seven Levels of Change. When you break down the process of thinking into manageable number of steps, you reduce the perceived risk associated with change. Being creative is when you think about your thinking, being innovative is when you act on your ideas.

Step #2: When you change your beliefs, you change your expectations.

Belief is the knowledge that we can do something. It is the inner feeling that what we undertake, we can accomplish. For the most part, all of us have the ability to look at something and know whether we can do it.

So, in belief there is power: our eyes are opened; our opportunities become plain; our visions become realities. Our beliefs control everything we do. If we believe we can or we believe we cannot, we are correct. Accomplishment is more than a matter of working harder; it is a matter of believing positively. It's called the "sure enough" factor. If you expect to succeed, "sure enough," you will; if you expect to fail, "sure enough," you will. We become outside what we believe inside.

Step #3: When you change your expectations, you change your attitude.

I love Ben Franklin's quote: "Blessed is the one who expects nothing, for he shall receive it." I heard a story the other day about a man who went to the fortuneteller who looked in the crystal ball and said, "Oh, my. This is not good. I look in this ball and see that you will be poor and unhappy until you're 45 years old." The guy said, "Oh, that's terrible. Well, then what's going to happen?" The fortuneteller said, "You'll get used to it."

Your expectations are going to determine your attitude. Most people get used to average; they get used to second best. Nelson Boswell said, "The first and most important step toward success is the expectation that we can succeed."

Step #4: When you change your attitude, you change your behavior.

William James was right when he said, "That which holds our attention determines our action." When our attitude begins to change, when we become involved with something, our behavior begins to change. The reason that we have to make personal changes is that we cannot take our people on a trip that we have not made. Too many leaders try to be travel agents instead of tour guides--they try to send people where they have never been.

We give them a brochure and a "Bon Voyage!" And off they go and we wave to them, and we ask them to tell us how it was when they come back. A tour guide says, "Let me take you where I've been. Let me tell you what I have gone through. Let me tell you what I know. Let me show you what I've experienced in my life."

Step #5: When you change your behavior, you change your performance.

Leroy Eims said, "How can you know what is in your heart? Look at your behavior. There is no better sign of the heart than the life." The truest test of where a person is going is their behavior. Unfortunately, most people would rather live with old problems than new solutions.

We would rather be comfortable than correct; we would rather stay in a routine than make changes. Even when we know that the changes are going to be better for us, we often don't make them because we feel uncomfortable or awkward about making that kind of a change.


IMPORTANT!!!
***Until we can get used to living with something that is not comfortable, we cannot get any better.****



Step #6: When you change your performance, you change your life.

Change makes a person feel alone, even if others are going through it. You say, "Oh, man! Goodness! I know the others are changing, but I don't think they're having the difficulty I'm having." There is something about the awkwardness and the time that it takes to make proper changes that just seems to isolate you from everyone else, even when a group is going through it together.

You just kind of feel, "But my situation's a little bit different, and I think I'm just not quite as fast as the other ones," and there's a tendency to feel isolated, lonely, and withdrawn when you're going through this change.

It is easier to turn failure into success than an excuse into a possibility. A person can fail and turn around and understand their failure, make it a success; but I want to tell you--a person who makes excuses for everything will never truly succeed. I promise you, when you excuse what you are doing and excuse where you are, and you allow the exceptions, you fail to reach your potential.

Don't you know some people who just have an excuse for everything? Why they could not, should not, did not, would not, have not, will not. If "ifs" and "buts" were candies and nuts, we would all have a Merry Christmas. It is impossible to turn excuses into possibilities.

Hope is the foundational principle for all change. People change because they have hope. If people do not have hope, they will not change. You are responsible for the changes that you make in your life, but the good news is, you can make the changes you need to make in your life.

[Hippyman]

2013 Daily Encouragement Thread

RingingCedars;1438164 wrote: You can't start the next chapter of your new life if you keep re-reading the last one!
That was so me!!!!!

That was then. THIS IS NOW!