Soulshine

“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 gre...

“A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.” E.W. Howe I had a very big scare over the past week that was like hitting bottom harder than hard. My father had heart disease, so I had a calcium scan to make sure I don’t have heart issues. The calcium numbers themselves came back great, but the scan indicated a potential mass in my chest. When those words were spoken to me over the phone, my heart sank through the floor. I never expected to hear anything like this. Then my OCD went on a tear: “Oh, my God! What does “a mass” mean? Is it huge? Is it cancer? Am I going to have to have surgery? Radiation? Lose my hair? Die before I ever even truly live my life to the fullest? I never in my life have seriously thought about dying. I’ve always been amazingly healthy for an often wacked-out OCD codependent crazy (!), but now I was faced with the true reality of life and death. I turned to my Higher Power and said “Enough is enough. I’ve wasted too many years hating myself....

There’s much emphasis on gratitude in recovery circles, but I don’t think it’s as simple as it sounds. We hear a lot about “act as if” you are grateful or “fake it till you make it.” This can work to a degree in helping us to develop a more positive vision. But it doesn’t work all that well when something that’s truly key to our lives is missing. “Acting as if” becomes pretty hollow after you discover that you yourself are missing from your life. “Fake it till you make it” only goes so far when the great love you’ve always longed for never materializes. And no amount of gratitude for wealth, good health or anything else can balance the desperation that comes with never having lived the life that deep-down you really wanted. So on this Thanksgiving Day, be as grateful as you can be. No one is required to be 100 percent grateful when they have a hole in their heart, and that’s OK. We all do the best that we can in any given moment. If we aren’t feeling as grateful as we thi...

I was talking with someone last night who had developed an energy-draining disease. He was bitter with God, himself and life. And he was playing the victim. Life had done him wrong. It had placed him in the path of an insect that could infect him with an incurable disease. Likewise God had done him wrong by allowing this to happen. No one escaped blame for his ailment, including himself. So I asked him “Can you accept the fact that you now have this disease? Instead of fighting reality through bitterness and blame, can you ask God to help you to take your power back from this disease by accepting that you have it and that you can’t change things back to the way they were before?” He looked pensive, but I could tell that he was beginning to understand. I went on to say that life may be different now, it may be less pleasant in certain ways, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t work with the illness. We can befriend it and see what it has to teach us about the true value of ...

“I want what I want and I want it now!” is a favorite mantra for most addictive personalities. Actually across the United States , it’s a favorite mantra for most everyone. I know a young couple. They are both college professors and they are lucky enough to be working at the same university. But they hate the city they are living in. They’ve sent out dozens of resumes, but nobody is knocking the door down to hire them. And they’ve made the conscious (or maybe unconscious) choice to be miserable about it all. Why? Because they want what they want and they want it now—and, unfortunately for them, the world isn’t responding to their demands. Common sense has something to say about this. First it shows how spoiled and impatient we are. Instead of making unreasonable demands, instead of choosing to be miserable, this couple could be focusing what they do have. For example, they have each other in a good marriage. They also have good jobs in their chosen professional fields at ...

It’s the last day of 2012 and the world is moving forward. We must move forward with it. As 2012 evolves into 2013, take some time to realize, appreciate and be grateful for all of the many wonderful ways in which you have evolved for the better over the past 365 days. If you’ve been reading this blog, at the very least you have gained new-found awareness. That is a great gift. You are better aware of yourself, of your old self-destructive patterns of behavior and—most importantly—of your new-found power to choose healthy life-giving patterns of behavior. If you have been a notorious people-pleaser or caretaker, you know now that you don’t have to please anyone, aside from yourself; and the only person you can really nourish and care for successfully is yourself. You’ve hopefully learned to be more compassionate with yourself; kinder and gentler with yourself; and more open to totally accepting yourself just as you are. You’ve been learning, hopefully, to accept all o...

I first posted this two years ago at Christmas. I think it’s worth re-posting this year and maybe every year as a reminder that we need to work at owning our own power at Holiday gatherings. It’s the only way we can truly enjoy them. Merry Christmas! “Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer”… OK well maybe not. I mean, yeah, it’s Christmas, but the happiness and cheer is debatable. This time of the year most everyone wants to be happy, but let’s face it, family gatherings sometimes play out like real Nightmares before Christmas. Across America most every family has an Uncle Eeyore, who makes the Winnie the Pooh character seem like the Sugar Plum Fairy; an Aunt Grinchella, who’s conniving and controlling; and a brother Ebenezer, who is bitter and angry at the world. So much for happiness and cheer-- unless we adopt a new attitude toward family and the holiday. First, we have to choose to accept Eeyore, Grinchella and Ebenezer just the way they are by empathizing with ...