Soulshine

      “You don’t know all the beauty you possess inside, You just can’t see what I see in you… If you could see you through my eyes You’d see someone beautiful On the inside and outside, So beautiful you’d know how I feel You’d know how much you mean to me If you could see you through my eyes.” Kenny Lattimore, If You Could See You (Through My Eyes) Most everyone I know suffers from “blindness” when it comes to seeing their own personal beauty. So many of us suffer from self-persecution. We’ve made so many negative judgments against ourselves that we have long been blinded to the fact that we are wonderfully made. And, unfortunately, no one can tell us how beautiful we are inside or outside, and make us believe it. We have to choose to believe in our own beauty and value before we can accept anyone else’s positive evaluation of us. We have to look past our negative self-judgments and choose to love the REAL person that we are underneath all of ...

I spent the last two weeks of October on vacation in Los Angeles. Every year I go and spend time with my roller-coaster buddy, and I was expecting to do the same this time; but it didn’t work out that way. When I arrived, I learned that he would only be available to me for a day. Before recovery, I would have gone into a terrible tailspin at this point. The fatalist in me would have been devastated and the victim in me would have taken over immediately: “Oh, woe is me! My whole vacation is ruined before it’s even started! Nobody loves me! I might as well go back home! Boo hoo, boo hoo, boo hoooooooooooooooooooo!” But it didn’t happen that way this time. Sure I was initially disappointed and I allowed that disappointment to be present. But I was also aware of my expectations and I wasn’t about to give my personal power away to them or the disappointment. Sure, I expected that my friend should be available to me. But I no longer allow such expectations to spoil my happiness. Af...

Seems most of us enter recovery with a very dire need to control life. The concept of flowing with life is totally foreign to us. We are so used to scripting every moment of every day in our heads. We decide what we think others should or should not do in order to please us. Thoughts like “No one should bother me today,” “He should have called me,” “She should want to see the movie I want to see” run through our heads second by second. These are all controlling thoughts. They are designed to ensure our personal happiness—and yet they do just the opposite: They make us miserable because we can rarely enforce them and make them reality. Every day we have a choice. We can script out our day and set ourselves up on a course of manipulation (control) and disappointment, or we can let go and ease into the flow of the day as determined by our Higher Power. I have learned to stop scripting not only my work days but also my free days and vacation days. Sure, I take time to plan what I...

“If you really, really want to do something, no one can stop you. But if you really don’t want to do something, then no one can help you.” James A. Owen, Drawing Out the Dragons When it comes to recovery, there is certainly great truth in what James A. Owen says above. The day we decide we really, really want a better life for ourselves is the day that we can make the choice to start building that better life—and no one can stop us aside from ourselves. Of course this means we have to “really” want a better life bad enough, and for most addictive personalities, wanting a better life “bad enough” usually means we have hit bottom. The day we hit bottom is the day that life becomes so painful and so unmanageable we are finally willing to say “I surrender.” It’s the day that we finally acknowledge that we can’t make it on our own any longer. It’s the day we finally reach out to a Higher Power and to others who can help us piece our lives back together. Back in Octob...

Valentine's Day. Make a proposal to yourself. Look in a mirror and say "Be My Valentine."  Feel love for yourself. Accept the proposal. Be your own Valentine.  Buy yourself a rose today. Smell it. Feel the softness of its petals, see the beauty of it's colors. Take yourself out for a nice lunch or dinner. Cherish yourself today. YOU'RE WORTH IT.  Be yourself.  Love who you are.  Make that CHOICE.  Be the person who fills and fits your heart!

“I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt. I’m, I’m, I’m too sexy!” Right Said Fred I often encourage people to alter their morning ritual. I suggest that they make one little adjustment when they approach their bathroom mirror. Before shaving or applying makeup I tell them to sing a chorus of   “I’m Too Sexy for My Shirt.” And as soon as I make this suggestion, everyone does what you just did: They laugh out loud—or at the very least they allow a little smile to steal across their faces. In recovery, it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself. We codependents tend to take life way too seriously. We ruminate over our feelings of emptiness and worthlessness. Some mornings it almost seems unbearable to look at ourselves in the mirror. We’re sick of our self-loathing and our self-imposed loneliness. And a good way to rise above all of our gloom is to be able to laugh at ourselves. More importantly, if we stand in front of our mirrors and sing “I’m Too Se...