Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul Daily Inspirations
Page 11
Joyce McDonald Hoskins
Life is just a blank slate, what matters most is what you write on it.
Christine Frankland
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 5
Love is the most healing and therapeutic gift I can give myself. I don’t have to reach outside of myself to find love–it already exists within me. My parents, my friends, my lovers may not have given me the love I need, but love has never left me. It is when I don’t nurture myself that I frantically search for someone to love me. This desperation leaves me as I go inside myself, when I open the door of my heart and embrace myself in unconditional love.
Rokelle Lerner
The main source of good discipline is growing up in a loving family, being loved and learning to love in return.
Dr. Benjamin Spock
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 6
God, let me see the ways you are working in my life today. Help me be ever mindful of your presence, and grateful for all the things you send me. Let me be open to the lessons that come my way, and let me treat every person the way you would treat me.
Use my voice to speak, use my hands to do your work. Help me to see every situation through your eyes.
Kelly L. Stone
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
St. Francis of Assisi
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 7
Once you accept that you have “no control” over others, you begin to relax and take one moment at a time. This week whenever you start to feel tension in the pit of your stomach, say to your mind, “I have no control over what they choose. They have a right to choose whatever they think they need.”
Experience the freedom from accepting what you already knew–you have no control over anyone but yourself. Have a busy week of getting on with your life rather than trying to get on with someone else’s!
Lana Fletcher
How simple it is to see that all the worry in the world cannot control the future. How simple it is to see that we can only be happy now. And that there will never be a time when it is not now.
Gerald Jampolsky
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 8
Irealize that taking care of myself means different things in different situations–there is no one way to do it and that is why, as a concept, it is so hard to get a hold of. To think that if I do recovery perfectly, do it all just right, I will produce stress-free relationships is magical thinking. It is a repetition of my childhood fantasy that if I just tried a little harder or understood a little better, I could make my family well. When we talk about recovery, we are talking about life and life offers no guarantees. We do what we can do and let go of the results. My real challenge in life is in expanding the interior of my own soul.
Tian Dayton
The nurse of full grown souls is solitude.
James Russell Lowell
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 9
Ihave come to recognize that the person my resentments and grievances hurt most is me. So, if I wish to preserve my health and to enable my continuing recovery and growth, I must regularly practice forgiveness. When I do, I release those emotion-filled perceptions that otherwise will inhibit my ability to experience and express love and also will continue to color and poison my relationships and interactions with others. The benefits are enormous– immediately, a “lightness” of spirit, and over time, greater serenity and joy.
Jeff McFarland
Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 10
Discouraged and disheartened, I stood on the dusty roadside, my journey nearly half over, my reserves of strength and will ebbing away in the searing summer heat. Should I turn back now, or continue to an uncertain fate? As I deliberated, a tiny ant labored in the dry powdery dust. Just like me, he was scuffling and stumbling along, yet he pressed forward with dogged determination toward an unknown goal. I watched with silent fascination until he finally reached the edge of the road. What great fortitude! Inspired, I mustered the courage and determination to move ahead and complete my own journey. That tiny ant’s example set me on a sure course out of poverty, homelessness and despair.
David Claerr
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
Anaïs Nin
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 11
Violence, sexual abuse, alcohol and drugs were the hallmarks of my life by the time I was fourteen. My path of self-destruction was my destiny. I married young and soon had two beautiful children, and that was the turning point in my life. I discovered that being a good mother was something I could accomplish. I faced my problems and learned healthy parenting and life skills. I faced the loathing and shame, and grieved for the loss of my childhood so that the cycle stopped with me. In its place a life centered on love and nurturing has taken root. I am careful to plant more seeds and water them daily.
Marilyn Joan
The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one’s self.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 12
Much of the incredible confusion of growing up with dysfunctional parents came from never knowing what they wanted. Our sense of self was nonexistent. We were important enough to be there when they felt good, but weren’t important enough to be there when they didn’t. We never learned to think of ourselves as successful, because we never knew when we would be praised and when we would be pushed away. As adults, we can give ourselves consistent acceptance and affirmation. We can learn to pay attention to what we want.
Yvonne Kaye
Come here. I love you. Go away. I can’t stand you. We have visitors, so stay in your room.
James C.
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 13
In the far recesses of my soul there is a place of quietness, of meeting of heart and mind; a place of deep serenity, of where my true love dwells; a place where I can breathe easy and be my own true self. It is there that I find freedom to speak the truth in love; there, where honesty abounds in all simplicity and humility and God is more than enough. No guile, no deceit, no pretense. Masks unveiled, and true self revealed. I have lost my way to this blessed place, O Lord. HowI long for this sanctuarywithin. Will you take me there again?
Lilian Chee Sau Leng
God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.
Henry Ward Beecher
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 14
Ihave the strength to lift up the rugs of my life and see what emotions have been swept underneath. I acquire this strength by exploring the notion that my old ways of seeing things aren’t the only ways to see and in doing so I discover and practice healthier ways of observing myself and others.
Donna LeBlanc
Watch what you are doing instead of thinking about what you are doing. Seeing, not thinking, is believing.
Donna LeBlanc
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 15
Thoughts have a creative power of their own. I can see my thoughts come to life and I create the possibility of what I would like by first experiencing it in my mind. I visualize what I would like to have in my life in my mind’s eye and accept what I see in my inner eye as being there for me. I am specific about what I see, smell, taste and feel, and accept it as fully as possible. I enjoy my vision, then let it go and move on in my day, releasing it with no thought of controlling it further. I let it happen if it is right for me in God’s time and knowing all good things are possible for me.
Tian Dayton
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 16
Th
e reality may dawn on us only after exhausting years wasted in attempts to orchestrate the behavior of others. The truth is, it doesn’t work. We may have the best motives and the most sensible suggestions but in the end, people will do as they please regardless of our good advice. What a tremendous relief it is to finally grasp this and drop the crushing load of minding others’ business. We are then free to tend our own affairs and make this one life as pleasant as it can be.
Rhonda Brunea
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Thomas à. Kempis
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 17
Ican do a great deal to impact my world for the better without making major lifestyle changes. I recognize that this world will change only when the people in it change. It is people who have the power to destroy or save this planet. Today I resolve to channel my personal power toward good, to open myself to be worked through and with. The world in which I live is my world; it is all that I have. If I see myself as powerless, it will only depotentiate me and make me feel impotent. That is a position I choose not to take today.
Tian Dayton
There is only one thing that is fully our own and that is our will or purpose.
Epictetus, 1st century A.D.
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 18
You hear the familiar voice and footsteps coming down the hall. The door opens and his voice breaks off, questions in his eyes as he scans the room. Confusion and fear, the very look you dreaded, erode his half smile and you struggle to look loving, yet firm. The intervention has begun. You wonder if he’ll ever again say, “I love you.” Several days later when you drop by the treatment center to pick up his dirty laundry, there is a note attached. Tentatively you open it, “Thank you. I love you. I’m Ted–and I’m an alcoholic.”
Jann Mitchell
I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.
William Faulkner
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 19
Take time to discover the eccentricities of your personality. As you come to an understanding of yourself, rejoice in the knowledge that God created you on purpose, for a purpose. Be willing to share yourself with others so that they might open up and begin their own healing process. Spend time with them, speaking encouraging words while listening to their hurt and pain. Share dreams, emotions, disappointments and victories. There’s nothing more powerful in your own healing than comforting others and giving them the precious gift of your time.
Linda Mehus-Barber
The art of being yourself at your best is the art of unfolding your personality into the person you want to be.
Wilfred Peterson
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 20
The jangling of keys and slamming of gates brought me back to the reality of the cold, crowded cell. A prison guard bellowed, “Get out here, crack head!” I rose, along with forty other women, none of us certain to whom the guard was talking. It was not me. It would be two years before I saw my children again and once I was released from prison I entered a residential treatment program. I was no longer afraid to die, I was afraid of living my life the way I was. God works in mysterious ways. Recovering addicts know that better than just about anyone else.
Mary Barr
A friend is one who walks in when others walk out.
Walter Winchell
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 21
When I look out my window, I see the beauty of the world that God has created and the opportunities it holds.
His beauty includes me. I need to feel good about myself; I need to have hope. I must love myself and accept who I am.
I must succeed in order to be an inspiration to others, as others were for me.
Stacey Chillemi
Man is, and forever has been, God’s reflection.
Mary Baker Eddy
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 22
When we come into this world, the first thing we do is breathe in. Divine inspiration. When we leave this world, the last thing we do is breathe out. Everything in between is just gravy. It’s all been taken care of. We leave home and we go home. Children of God. And if we really believe he holds us in the palm of his hand for the journey, then anything can be endured.
Nancy Burke
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.
Zenrin
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 23
When life caves in on me and I feel like giving up, I force myself to list twenty things I am thankful for. Sometimes it can be as lame as “fingers,” or “a chair to sit on,” but I keep going until I reach my magic number. Somehow by then I find myself in a different frame of mind. When I am thankful, I move from being pitiful to being powerful.
Barbara A. Croce
An attitude of gratitude creates blessings.
Sir John Templeton
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 24
Drinking helped me deal with my depression. I drank myself into a stupor to numb my internal pain. Repeated efforts at treatment failed until my last admission when they rolled me into the trauma unit on a gurney and began by addressing my depression. Thirty-two days later, I came away with a clear understanding that the only way I was going to be successful in my recovery was to be more involved in my recovering community. I had occasion to visit that facility again, not as a patient, but as a guest. I was there to discuss a collaboration between their program and the new treatment center I had just opened. I remember once wondering if life was worth living. Now I know.
Perry D. Litchfield
I welcome happiness as it enlarges my heart; I endure sadness for it opens my soul.
Og Mandino
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 25
“There are great, exciting adventures waiting for you out there!” This is what one of my good friends in recovery said to me after I told her I just got divorced. I wasn’t feeling very enthusiastic about my life at that point. As time passed though, I was grateful for her perspective and her positive approach to something about which I didn’t feel very optimistic. How grateful I am for the people, a philosophy and a way of life that helps me see the positive in any given situation.
Anne Conner
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
Dolly Parton
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 26
Our life is today. When we lay our head on the pillow tonight, this day will never come back–this is a one-time deal.
We will miss it if we wait for the illusive perfection of tomorrow, next week or next year.
In the eternal scheme of things, today is just a shallow breath. But without each breath linked to another, we cannot fulfill our destiny.
Barbara A. Croce
All of us tend to put off living, dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
Dale Carnegie
Footnotes for Life
AUGUST 27
Standing at the bottom of the stairs, unable to put my foot on the first step, I had never been more tired or more depressed in my entire life. I had to use the bathroom and I couldn’t get off the floor. Suddenly I saw myself, a young woman, hand on the rail, tears in my eyes, looking up. As I closed my eyes to banish the image, one foot made it to the first step. Two hands grabbed the rail and pulled me to the next step. With my eyes still closed I made it to the top of the stairs. Success. Incredible. The road to recovery really did begin with that first step.
Anne Tiller Slates
Do not wait for ideal circumstances, nor the best opportunities; they will never come.