Replace Your Moaning with Gratitude

“We accept good things from God; and should we not accept evil?”
Book of Job

As a codependent with a victim mentality, I have always focused on the bad, or evil, in my life. Everything happened to me. If something could go wrong it did. Or did it? A lesson recovery has taught me is that when we’re always expecting troubles, we will find them, or they will find their way to us.

Part of my problem with bad things happening to me is that I never wanted to accept them, so I moaned and groaned or I fought them. It never occurred to me that maybe I should just accept the bad things, acknowledge that I was powerless over many of them, surrender them to my Higher Power and look for ways to move forward. It was just easier to sulk and feel sorry for myself. Of course, I also thought that playing poor pitiful me would elicit attention from others who would then comfort poor me and take care of me. Was that hope every truly realized? No. Seeking sympathy never really worked to any great satisfaction. In fact, people started avoiding me.

Today I realize that it’s important to remember that I do accept good things from God every day, and yet I am rarely truly grateful for them. So I need to practice gratitude with greater resolve. Gratitude allows us to better accept the bad things that come our way. Gratitude gives us the fortitude to face the bad things, to stop thinking that we are the world’s only victims of evil, and to surrender the bad to our Higher Power. Once the bad is accepted and surrendered, we gradually gain our personal power back.


As a result, we also get our balance back. Our thinking shifts from a victim mentality to a healthy “everything is going to be OK” mentality. So I’ve learned to be grateful for the good and for the fact that I can learn from the bad and rise above it through acceptance, surrender and trust in a Power greater than myself.

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