While many people don't believe it, and do not embrace it...alanon is a program of change. We learn to change our -- thinking, mindset, actions, reactions, behavior, and so much more. However, I constantly here...change is not easy. I've learned from a great deal of advanced adult education, learning, ontological type work, and so forth...part of the reason why change, why anything is hard...is because we say it's hard. Topic for another time, LOL.

I heard this at my Saturday meeting...

You change for two reasons...

Either you have learned enough, have made a decision to, and want to...

Or...you've been hurt enough and experienced so much pain...that you you have to.

I know that I have changed and continue to change when I see that my actions are causing me or another pain   This means i needed to become honest with myself and embrace   Alanon tools  that are extremely beneficial for me in the process.  Letting go and Letting God helps

Change for me came slowly at first because of many reasons.  One reason was because I felt threatened for the need of it and another was I lacked trust for listening and learning from the others I felt threatened by.  I had a "me" culture and lived with "me" habits and saw no reason to change anything unless it was my alcoholic/addict wife and family.  My own drinking style was okay; an accepted culture.  Changing didn't hold more benefit for me to consider and I was too busy trying to change others.  

We can certainly generate self-fulfilling prophecies. I've also heard the phrase "If you argue for your limitations you get to keep them."

For me this is an example of how my obsession can turn small things into giant catastrophes. The more focus I give something, the bigger it gets in my life. If I don't want change, I can keep telling myself that change is hard or impossible. If I desire change then focusing on that desired change is the way to go instead of worrying about how hard that change might be.

However, many of us first come into this program not even realizing we actually HAVE choices. We feel like we're forever victims of circumstance and that our behaviors are just a simple natural reaction to what others are doing around us because that's what we learned growing up - that other people are responsible for our happiness. "It's YOUR fault I feel this way." It sounds silly to me when I look back at it after so many years in the program, but pre-Al-Anon, I used to think there really weren't options to how I reacted to things. I didn't know I could make other choices, and the alcoholics in my life sure as hell weren't going to let me know there were choices, either.

Al-Anon brought the gift of choice to me. Once I realized I actually had choices, that was where the real change could start to occur. And while I took an inventory to weed out my limitations, it was with the help of my literature, meetings, sponsor, and working the steps that i ceased arguing to keep those limitations that I came to realize didn't serve me.

But it remains - first we must learn and understand we actually have a choice. We CAN do things differently.