When you are in recovery from addiction, it is recommended that you spend a little time each day meditating – or having some thinking time – to look forward to the challenges of the day ahead. There are numerous books published with ‘thoughts for the day’ for this purpose, and I regularly look at a selection of them. Here are what I hope are some thoughts worth sharing from readings over recent days.
Judgement of Others
The first is about judgement of others. We all judge other people even though we probably know that it is wrong to do so. Sometimes we do this through prejudice – for example, we may judge people wearing muslim clothing in a certain way. Sometimes we may do it as a form of snobbery. However, quite often it will be because we recognise people’s faults in ourselves. There is a saying in recovery that ‘if you spot it, you’ve got it’. We also acknowledge that in our active addiction, we lied and covered up – so when we see someone still in addiction or even in recovery doing this, we recognise it – ‘you can’t kid a kidder’ is another saying common amongst recovering alcoholics and addicts.
Judgement/Prejudice
So how can we turn our judgements of others to our benefit? The first way is to recognise when it is prejudice that is leading us to a judgement – and quite often our prejudice is because we do not understand the other person’s beliefs or actions. The second way is to recognise when we are seeing in others something that we don’t like in ourselves – and use our new found knowledge to our advantage in that we can work on our defects and change them – so becoming happier and healthier individuals.
Positive Thinking
The second theme coming from recent readings is about positive thinking and what this can achieve. We can all look at our lives and think that things are not right. We will all of us have bad days when we hit a bumpy road or think we have seen a dead end. However, when we fall down or get to a block, we have friends around us who can help us up again or round the blockage. We can learn from what we go through and take the lessons forward in our lives to help us and others in similar situations in future.
Live in the Day
If things get really difficult, we only have to live in the day and deal with what needs to be dealt with in the here and now, confident that tomorrow things will be different and we will have renewed strength and faith to deal with that day. We need not worry about the future. One step and one day at a time is sufficient. We should have faith that there is nothing we will need to face that we cannot handle. As a Christian friend of mine once said, God does not ask us to bear anything unless he is confident that we have broad enough shoulders.
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