The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
Great share.... one little bit to add - my wise old sponsor used to remind me to expand my scope, when examining my own recovery..... As in, it's pretty much impossible to recognize changes within ourselves in a daily/weekly/monthly basis, per se, and so when we try to do that, we tend to not give ourselves enough credit to what we ARE accomplishing, in our respective recoveries.... He had me expand to a longer timeframe - i.e. a year.....
When we examine our recoveries, on the basis of where were we a year ago, two years ago, etc - it is FAR easier to see the progress we have made, and thus - far easier to give ourselves some much deserved credit.
Take care
Tom
-- Edited by canadianguy on Tuesday 13th of March 2012 04:19:48 PM
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"He is either gonna drink, or he won't.... what are YOU gonna do?"
"What you think of me is none of my business"
"If you knew the answer to what you are worrying about, would it REALLY change anything?"
So I have always intellectually understood the Al Anon concepts of Progress, Not Perfection and Be Kind and Gentle to Yourself. But I have always had a hard time actually implementing these in my daily life.
Today at my Weight Watchers meeting, our leader said something that was a real "a-ha" moment for me. She said instead of measuring our actions/progress about what we think we SHOULD be doing, and then beating ourselves up for being less than perfect, we should look at our actions/progress and think about where we would be if we weren't working a program.
Duh, I thought to myself...THIS is what progress, not perfection means to me. It means that ESPECIALLY when I am preparing to be really hard on myself for failing at something I need to take a look at what happened and think how much worse it would have been before I began my search for recovery.
Obviously it is still important and useful to learn from mistakes and try to do better next time. But I think it is much easier for me to take that kind of positive attitude toward improving myself when I can take the time to appreciate how far I've come.
Thank you for sharing!!! We come to Al-Anon (most of us) because we don't know how to be kind and gentle to ourselves. Yes it's important to learn from past mistakes, but not to be ourselves up over them!
Thanks for sharing, I needed to get that in perspective myself. I also liked what Tom said above: setting a longer time frame to look back and reflect to see just how far we've come. I already feel I've made progress and I've only been attending meetings for 2 months!
I love this share. Someone said in a meeting last week that they look at progress not perfection in terms of.. they still do some of the things that they think are "character defects" they just don't do them as much!!! I like that. It cuts me some slack and I need slack because I'm far from perfect.
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Michelle!
No one can take away your peace of mind unless you let them.
