ODAT: April

Here are what I find to be the most useful quotations from the April pages of One Day at at Time in Al-Anon:

The contented, well-adjusted person has no need to look for flaws in others.

I cannot change another person, and I have no right to try.

What I can do is to change my own outlook on life, so I can see other people’s good and pleasant qualities.

With Al-Anon’s help, I can make my battered old world into a shining new one.

The Al-Anon program really works because it helps us to get away from ourselves.

When we think constantly about our grievances and the “faults” of the alcoholic, our minds are too confused to accept new ideas.

I will drop this fruitless worrying and concentrate on strengthening myself to accept each day along with whatever it brings. 

They gain confidence and poise; they come out of their shells and concern themselves with others in similar trouble.

The Twelve Steps were designed for desperate people like us—as a shortcut to God.

When we accept [the Twelve Steps] and use them, we find they open the way to using our God-given abilities which we have allowed to lie dormant.

The Steps are like a medicine which many of us won’t bother to take, although we know they can heal us of the sickness of despair, frustration, resentment and self-pity.

It may be we have a deeprooted desire for martyrdom.

Consciously we think we want help, but some dark and hidden sense of guilt makes us crave punishment more than we want relief from our ills.

I pray that I may always bring a healing helpful message to my fellow members in Al-Anon, and I pray for the willingness to search out the good in what they say to me.

If I take no part in protecting the alcoholic from the consequences of his drinking, and allow disaster to overtake him, then the responsibility for what happens is not mine.

I should not create a crisis to “bring the alcoholic to his senses”—but I must have the courage to keep hands off and let the crisis happen.

I will leave to Him whatever action is to be taken, and guard against interfering with the working out of His plan for us.

This is the moment to recall a simple phrase, a slogan or a bit of philosophy, and to say it over and over until our minds are filled with it, replacing thoughts of the tormenting problem.

I can acquire the knack of searching out the good, and concentrating on it. 

Much depends on meeting my problems head on, calmly estimating their real character, refusing to exaggerate them, and then drowning them out with an inspiring thought.

All of us are hampered to some degree by our need to justify our actions and words.

In Al-Anon we learn how to conquer our own self-defeating attitudes.

We cannot despair as long as we are willing to turn to God for help in our extremity.

When we are troubled, and can’t see a way out, it is only because we imagine that all solutions depend upon us.

How much precious thinking time we waste fretting over past mistakes and missed opportunities!

How often our depressed imaginings betray us into speculating about “what’s going to happen.”

Yesterdays have no value except as experience to be used in making today and the future more fruitful.

“Keep in mind that we can live only in the present and that all the rest of life is either past or uncertain.”

I will begin correcting my problems by changing myself.

I will never try to compel someone else to change, for that would help neither of us.

I will pause and think before I say anything, lest my anger turns back upon me and makes my difficulties even greater. 

When I can finally persuade myself to let go of a problem that has been tormenting me, solutions begin to unfold that I never dreamed were possible. 

This should convince me that my human understanding does have limits—that there are things I can’t figure out by myself. 

If I really want to be free to build a satisfying life for myself, I must first release the alcoholic from my efforts to direct and control.

Others, trapped in a baffling dilemma or tempted to a rash decision, often say: “Not my will, but Thine be done.”

What answers would I give if I stop in the middle of such rationalizing and ask myself: “Why am I doing this? Is this justification really honest? Are these rational reasons for my action?”

“By love I do not mean natural tenderness, which is in people according to their constitution, but I see it as a larger principle of the soul, founded in reason and spiritual understanding, which makes us kind and gentle to all our fellow creatures as creations of God.”

I can never know what creates the need to behave as they do ...

If I am bitter, it is because I have allowed myself to blame others for my fate—blaming Fate, or the alcoholic, or God, for everything that has happened to me.

Only the alcoholic can set himself free from the compulsion to drink.

The non-alcoholic cannot force him to want sobriety, although many of us feel we should be able to correct a situation that is causing us so much suffering.

My first task is to manage my own life, whether or not the alcoholic is still drinking.

I will not let myself concentrate on the distressing features of my present existence, but will look for the good things in it.

Unless we have first judged and condemned them for what they did, there would be no reason for us to forgive them.