Soulshine

      Recovery marked the first time I was ever able to see life through more than one lens. Actually, before Recovery, I didn't have any idea that there was more than ONE lens to see life through. It took me 37 years to realize I had been living my entire life through my mother's view of life. And her view was through the lens of Codependency.   I was very much like the man in the image above. Every time I came across a toxic person, my addictive personality saw one thing: "I love you." In fact, however, what this person was really saying to me-- each and every time-- was "I wanna waste a couple of months of your life." And, likewise, my "I love you" meant that I wanted to waste a few months of their life, too, until we both hit bottom with each other.   Hitting bottom in these relationships never meant to me what it means in Recovery. I'd hit bottom with a person, break up the relationship and then bounce back in my quest to find my next fals...

 Practice is the word of the day. I've read plenty about staying in the NOW but I don't practice what I've learned very well. Instead, like the above meme says, my mind always seems to be stuck in memory or imagination. And when I say "imagination," I really mean "nightmare." I constantly misuse my imagination by creating nightmare "could happen" scenarios in my head. I also take actual, REAL problems that I face on a weekly basis (as all of us do), and make them into bigger than life, monster-sized problems. I reek chaos through my whole body with obsessive-compulsive thoughts that are truly blown out of proportion to the REAL problem. And I'm sick of it. In recent weeks, my thoughts have clearly been in control of me, instead of me being in control of my thoughts. Granted, we don't always choose the thoughts that come into our heads. But we can choose to either reject them or to create total chaos out of them.  Staying in the NOW requ...

 How well are you owning your personal power today? I woke up this morning and realized that I wasn't owning mine very well. And it was obvious to me why: I was caring about what other people think and trying to please them. I could feel the anxiety in the pit of my stomach and my heart was racing. Why? Just because someone placed a disagreeable comment on a digital media page that I am responsible for operating. First, I had to admit to myself that the comment really wasn't that negative and that I was taking it personally. Instead of immediately saying to myself "Everyone has a right to their opinion, we don't have to agree and that's fine," I was taking it as an attack. And not just an attack on the post itself, but a personal attack on me-- when in fact, it wasn't. Even after 25 years of Recovery, this is one of those areas I still struggle with from time to time. Owning my personal power is still so new to me, that I easily fall back into the habit of...