Soulshine

“Live always gets better when you treat yourself better.” Robert Holden, Be Happy    Focus is important to recovery. We must learn to turn our focus from outside ourselves to inside ourselves. Our focus must be on us: on caring for ourselves, on meeting our own needs and on being responsible for our own happiness.    This is a rough adjustment for most addictive persons because we have used our addictions— to other people, places and things— as a means of escaping ourselves. Every time we “act-out” we are refusing to face ourselves and to care for our own needs.    We are very comfortable with the idea that someone or something else should meet our needs, even though we now know that this very idea is insanity. No one can fix or rescue us. We must become willing to do that. And we can do it. First, We can learn to focus on our feelings. Emotions are the internal barometer of a human being. They tells us what we need to know about our...

“Sorry is born in the hasty heart.” Richard Todd, The Hasty Heart The hasty heart is the obsessive-compulsive heart. It’s the heart that’s always a jump away from reacting to life. And it’s the heart that plunges head-long into something without ever involving the thought process. Truly, “sorry is born in the hasty heart.” And yet, so many of us who suffer from hasty hearts find it difficult to say “I’m sorry.” We say ugly things that we quickly regret. We react and do things that are hurtful toward people we love. We act manipulatively to get what we want. And even after we have experienced our guilt trips, even after we have accepted that we have been hurtful toward others, we still find it nearly impossible to fess up and take ownership of our behavior. Why is this? If we want to change this bad behavior of ours, we have to get to the bottom of it through some soul-searching. If you’ve said or done something recently that you need to take ownership of through an a...

“Wait 30 seconds. You’ll gain clarity. And then you’ll know what to do.” Bradley Cooper, Limitless We are used to reacting to life. Life happens and we each have our own little reactions that require no thought and no effort—and that more often than not result in negative consequences. Then recovery supplies the new-found treasure of awareness. We realize that we don’t have to react to life anymore. We actually have a choice. We can default into reacting, or we can choose a different path. We can stop, breathe, relax for a moment and allow healthier alternatives to flash through our minds. Suddenly life has new possibilities. Life gets a little better. I was staying with some friends recently and forgot to bring their house key with me. One morning I left their apartment to go to Panera Bread. Once the door closed and locked behind me, I realized I needed the house key to get through the gate to the lot where my car was parked. My natural reaction was to panic and ring ...