Soulshine

Finally! Over the past 40 days, I have chosen to accept SO many things about myself that I had previously (i.e. all of my life) refused to accept. I let go of my learned need to compare myself to others and to always come up short. I released my need for self-persecution, mental chaos and emotional drama. The doorway into self-love is total self-acceptance. This requires examining all of the things about ourselves that we have chosen to be embarrassed about, or even hate, including past behaviors, and bringing them into our conscience presence. We can do this by taking time to examine ourselves, the things we’ve never liked about us, and writing them down (Think Step 4). Then it requires handing them over to our Higher Power and asking for help to accept all the things we have forever refused to accept about ourselves. The more we work at it, the easier it becomes. We slowly stop making harsh judgments against ourselves. We feel lighter. We start looking in the mirror and seein...

“Better get ready to see the Light Love, love is the answer And that's alright So don’t you give up now, It’s (Love) so easy to find Just look to your soul And open your mind.” Tommy James, Crystal Blue Persuasion (1969) Although the self-help movement didn’t really materialize before the late 1980s, it seems that some people, notably Tommy James here, had the right idea all the way back to the late 1960s. Love is the answer, but not in the way it has so often been defined. Self-love is the REAL answer. And self-love is a matter of looking “to your soul” and opening “your mind.” I’ve heard this truth since I entered recovery for codependency in 1995, but it never was able to sink in through my very hard head (and social/domestic conditioning as a child), and so I kept rejecting the idea that I had to look inside to my soul, with my Higher Power, and learn to give myself the love that I had perpetually wanted others to give me. 2018 has been...

"We keep on missing each other. Our world's out of order. All I see is missed opportunity. Will we ever learn?" Daryl Hall & John Oates (1988) This morning I was driving toward Oracle to pick up my new pair of eye glasses. At an intersection, a man was sitting with a sign, like many homeless people do. The light was red and I was the fifth car down. I rolled down my window and waved some money, but the man didn't respond. The light turned green and we started moving toward the intersection. I still had my hand out the window for the man to grab the cash, but again he didn't respond. As I looked closely at him, he was writing something on the backside of the sign he held, and apparently never even saw me. It was a missed opportunity for him to receive help. How many times in the course of our recovery have we experienced missed opportunities? Probably more than we realize, just like this man at the intersection. He never saw me and sometim...

Today is my birthday. As a little kid back in the mid 1960s, “In My Life” was one of my favorite Beatles songs. Even at a young age, the sentimental lyric and especially the line “In my life, I love you more” appealed to me. It gave me hope of finding someone someday who would love me, and of the day when I’d be able to look back and say of all the people I’ve ever loved “I love you more” to that person. It appealed to my inner-need for the parental love I’d never received and hope of finally receiving it from some special person in the future: It appealed to my steadily developing addictive personality/codependency. But it never occurred to me that I was the person who needed to love me more; that no one else could give me what I wasn’t then able to give to myself. For most of my life I searched and waited for that special person, who never came. Now I know why. Because I needed to be the one who “loved me more.” I needed to love myself enough into healing the gaping wound of ...

Sometimes the words that come out of our mouths are self-deprecating. God knows I’ve called myself a “dummy,” an “idiot” and “worthless” verbally out loud. But most of the damage I’ve done to my own self-acceptance, self-worth and self-love over the years has been the result of negative self-thinking has has continually whispered through my subconscious mind. I’ve grown to believe that most of the damage we do to our self-love is done almost silently in our subconscious minds. It explains why we sometimes emotionally feel bad even though we aren’t consciously thinking negative thoughts or having negative experiences. When this happens to me, I know now that my subconscious mind is whispering to my heart in self-destructive ways. I know of no way to control the subconscious mind, but I understand the damage it can do to me. This is why when I’m feeling sad or depressed and I have no conscious reason to feel that way, I believe my subconscious mind is rekindling horrors from the...

This is very wise advice. We ought to never hate anyone, and we should pray for the best for everyone— including those “enemies” who have bullied and hurt us throughout our lives. And, of course, for those of us with addictive personalities, the first person we should stop hating is the person who has hurt us and bullied us the most: OURSELVES. We are the only person who is with us 24 hours a day. We are the only person who has ever mercilessly persecuted ourselves 24 hours a day. And we are the one person who must CHOOSE to stop hating and being cruel to ourselves. We are the first person that we need to forgive the most. And by the grace of our Higher Power, we can begin the process of forgiving and loving ourselves. This is how true recovery from addictive behaviors begins. Let’s start the healing process right now in this very moment.

Everyone is flawed. It’s a simple fact of life. In some Eastern cultures flaws are seen as opportunities to make yourself more valuable, more beautiful. But that’s seldom the case in the Western world. We see flaws as things about ourselves to be ashamed of, to hide, and we use them against ourselves. We give so much personal power to our flaws that we live in constant fear that someone is going to discover them and expose us to the rest of the world. Being fearful over flaws is a form of insanity. What is there to be fearful about when everyone on the face of this planet is faced with being flawed? Nothing. Fear is a misuse of our imagination. Instead of worrying about flaws, I now choose to look at them as opportunities for personal growth, and in owning my flaws, I feel REAL. I don’t feel like a fraud anymore. In fact, I stand before large groups of people and publicly admit to my flaws in order to teach them to do the same. Once we accept our flaws, we take away their ne...

Intro: This is a reworking of a previous post that I believe is often overlooked and needs to be read.  “What’s there really to be sad about? The secret is that you love each other. You have a gift of sight not granted to other people. Cherish it. Keep the fire of your love burning and you’ll never be anything but fair and handsome to each other. That’s the charm, the only enchantment the cottage holds, and it’s of your own making.” Mrs. Minnett,  The Enchanted Cottage The Enchanted Cottage  (RKO, 1945) is one of my favorite movies. This film is filled with tremendous emotional power—on behalf of the actors and the audience. The primary characters are Oliver Bradford (Robert Young) and Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire). Both face tremendous personal struggles with self-acceptance as the movie unfolds. Laura’s began as a child when it seems she was dubbed an ugly duckling. Believing herself to be ugly, Laura grew up to be the homely old maid of the sm...

Many people with addictive personalities, especially codependents, spend a huge portion of their lives people-pleasing. People-pleasing is actually nothing more than lying and manipulation. We lie to ourselves and others about what we like or don’t like, what we’re “happy” to be doing for them and what we believe— all for the express purpose of gaining their approval, of manipulating them into liking us. I used to be a real pro at people-pleasing. I didn’t believe I had any worth or value in and of myself, so I people-pleased anyone who would throw me crumbs of their attention. I tried my hardest to seduce them into liking me, even when it meant doing things I hated doing. Recovery has rescued me from this behavior. I don’t need anyone’s approval to have value in this life. I don’t have to say “yes” when I want to say “NO.” I don’t have to bend my beliefs or ideals or values to gain anyone else’s approval. And when I stand up for myself, own my personal power, and say “NO” t...

There can be no self-love without self-acceptance. The two are directly linked and self-acceptance— complete and unconditional— must come first. It’s our ability to accept ourselves 100%, just the way we are, that produces a healthy self-love. So what are you refusing to accept about yourself? Is it your face, your hair, your body size? Is it your personality, especially if you are an introvert and are often uncomfortable around others? Is it your level of intelligence? Is it your perceived lack of creativity or talent? Is it the color of your skin, or your gender or your sexual orientation? Is it your past or current behavior? Whatever you choose to dislike or even hate about yourself blocks your self-acceptance. And prevents you from loving yourself just the way God created you. My self-acceptance was never based in my “self” from childhood forward. It was always based in what other people told me about myself: “Your too fat,” “your too thin,” “you’re lacking in intelligence,...

I no longer allow myself to get caught up in other people’s drama. The need to be the great rescuer, to feel responsible for everyone else’s issues and problems, has left me. And it feels great. I don’t need to get involved in other people’s chaos to avoid myself. I’m facing my own issues, I’m learning to stop creating my own chaos as well, and I’m liking me and my life better than I ever have before. Recently I walked in on a drama-in-process at work. Two people were caught up in a disagreement and one of them immediately seized hold of my arm and wanted me to take her side. I shook it off and said “Not my circus, not my monkeys”— and kept walking. Whatever the problem was, I had no intention of getting caught up in it, or owning any part of it. If people at work, home or anywhere want to create drama and chaos I have no intentions of participating in it anymore. I don’t think the woman at work appreciated my comment or the fact that I walked away, refusing to engage in the...

I am tired of choosing to be miserable by choosing to feed negative thoughts. I’m tired of looking at complete strangers, who have scowls on their faces, and thinking their expressions are about me. I’m tired of wasting my time wanting things I can’t have, like being younger, being better looking, being perfect or not being alone. In other words, I’m tired of fighting reality and losing. I’m exhausted by years of negative, self-deprecating thoughts that make me emotionally miserable. So no more negativity. I’m going rogue. I’m becoming an optimist! I didn’t choose to be raised in an alcoholic household. I didn’t choose to become an addict. But I did choose— at a very young age— to adopt the negative, fearful thinking that consumed my mother and hastened her premature death. I will always be a recovering codependent. I can’t change that. Once we develop addictive personalities, we can’t eliminate them, but we can learn to have power over them. A big part of changing them invol...