Change Our Agreements

The most important agreements are the ones you made with yourself. In these agreements are the ones you made with yourself. In these agreements you tell yourself who you are, what you feel, what you believe, and how to behave. The result is, what you call your personality. In these agreements you say, "This is what I am. This is what I believe. I can do certain things, and some things I cannot do. This is reality, that is fantasy; that is possible, that is impossible."...

If you want to live a life of joy and fulfillment, you have to find the courage to break those agreements that are fear-based and claim your personal power. The agreements that come from fear require us to expend a lot of energy, but the agreements that come from love help us to conserve energy and even gain extra energy...

Each of us is born with a certain amount of personal power that we rebuild every day after we rest. Unfortunately, we spend all our personal power first to create all these agreements and then to keep these agreements. Our personal power is dissipated by all the agreements we have created, and the result is that we feel powerless. We have just enough power to survive each day...

If we can see it is our agreements which rule our life, and we don't like the dream of our life, we need to change the agreements...

There are four very powerful agreements that will help us break those agreements that come from fear and deplete our energy...

Each time you break an agreement, all the power you used to create it returns to you. If you adopt these four new agreements, they will create enough personal power for you to change the entire system of your old agreements...

If you can begin to live your life with these agreements, the transformation in your life will be amazing...

Instead of living a dream of hell, you will be creating a new dream --- your personal dream of heaven.

Taken from The Four Agreements : A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz

This really hit home today. I am in a situation where I am allowing myself to be treated with less than respect by someone close to me. This is all being driven by fear.......fear of financial insecurity, abandonment and acceptance. All the very things that the 9th step promises assure me I will no longer have if I place my trust in my Higher Power and do the right things. So now that I have actually said that out loud I guess it is time to take some action. All my words are empty if I don't take the action to change things in my life. That said, it is not so easy. All I can do is pray for guidance and take one step and the rest will fall into place.....that's the plan anyway. No matter what the outcome is I have to have faith that everything will be alright, it will be just as my Higher Power intends it to be and I will be given the strength to get through it one day at a time. God Willing.....

Choosing Happiness

Taken from the book: A Moment to Reflect:Letting Go by Veronica Ray

Ironically, the more we try to control others, the more we are controlled. Our emotions become reactions to others rather than reflecting true choice. Happiness, to us, becomes no more than fleeting moments of relief tied to the moods and behaviors of other.

Happiness is a choice. We can chose to let go of attempts to control people, relationships, and situations, and thereby free ourselvesfrom their control. We can choose to live our own lives and work on own growth.

Happiness isn't having everyone and everything go our way. It grows out of a quiet choice to accept the things we can't control and to concentrate on changing what we can - ourselves.

This was an important lesson to learn and has saved ne from many heartaches, even though I still do it more than I like. When I go through my day seeing every obstacle as a challenge, a lesson to be learned I have a great day. When I take care of the things that I am responsible for taken care of, essentially the next right thing I have a great day. When I let go of the things that are beyond my control and remember that I can make plans, but I cannot plan outcomes I have a great day. I am grateful that I have more great days these days than I do those ones when I'm fighting myself because I am not doing the above mentioned things. Today I have something I did not have prior to getting sober. That is a choice. Life is all about the choices I make and if I do make the wrong choice, which I still do all too often, than I can choose to start over and make better, different choices. That is a tremendous gift from my Higher Power. I am blessed.

Steps To Happiness

Everybody Knows:
You can't be all things to all people.
You can't do all things at once.
You can't do all things equally well.
You can't do all things better than everyone else.

Your humanity is showing just like everyone else's.So:

You have to find out who you are, and be that.
You have to decide what comes first, and do that.
You have to discover your strengths, and use them.
You have to learn not to compete with others,

Because no one else is in the contest of *being you*.

Then:

You will have learned to accept your own uniqueness.
You will have learned to set priorities and make decisions.
You will have learned to live with your limitations.
You will have learned to give yourself the respect that is due.
And you'll be a most vital mortal.

Dare To Believe:

That you are a wonderful, unique person.
That you are a once-in-all-history event.
That it's more than a right, it's your duty, to be who you are.
That life is not a problem to solve, but a gift to cherish.
And you'll be able to stay one up on
what used to get you down

Author Unknown

This sounds so nice but in reality is a tough one. I am ina position right now where I have to decide who I am and be that person and decide what comes first and do it. I am filled with uncertainty and doubt, fear really, because is I do this very thing I may lose something very precious to me. I must remind myself that without sobriety I would lose it anyway and it was never mine in the first place. I f I set it free and it comes back than I suppose it was meant to be.

The Mind

Leave the mind in its natural, undisturbed state.

Don't follow thoughts of "This is a problem, that is a problem!" Without labeling difficulties as problems, leave your mind in its natural state. In this way, you will stop seeing miserable conditions as problems."-

Lama Zopa Rinpoche, "Transforming Problems Into Happiness"