making mistakes

[Endearing lil Influenza]

I don't want to make anymore mistakes... I'm such a burden to so many people... I want it to stop... why can't I just be perfect?

 

[VVV]

I don't want to make anymore mistakes... I'm such a burden to so many people... I want it to stop... why can't I just be perfect?

Perfection is of the nature of God. We are humans and most imperfect as well as impermanent. so, even if we do attain perfection in the minutia we will lose it through impermanence. Putting our complaints down on pen and paper first crystallizes in our heads what needs to be changed or accepted in our lives. Getting it all out and putting it all down is the first start of this recognition process that leads us to recovery. Without this recognition, that we are sick or something is wrong in our lives, we cannot develop the desire for change. We don't even know what is wrong to change!

Writing your complaints down is the first start to making the roadmap for restructuring your life. Restructuring our lives is very important if we want to get peace from our addictions. Those things that cannot be restructured need to be accepted. Either way we can find peace -- by change or acceptance. When you write, it uses a different part of the brain that mere speaking uses and I seem to get amazing results from writing as compared to just talking. Writing helps crystallize your thoughts, it shares recovery with other addicts and they can know they are not alone.

Just remember what the Buddhists say in the eightfold path about right actions. We have to use the right thoughts, the right actions and take the right direction with recovery. Just spinning our wheels in the wrong direction does little for recovery, so write about things that matter to you and your recovery. Some people use the list for jokes and other off topic subjects. While it is important to laugh once in while it still boils down to what my father used to tell me about living life "you only get out what you put in."

What I would do with posts that detail our problems is print them out and distill what needs to me changed in our lives. There is no better roadmap for change than this. Whatever we write or talk about that is eating at us needs to be changed or accepted. You have put in your inventory and thinking time to write our what is eating at you and have given it away to boot to your "list sponsors" all at once. Great simple living work! Now, all we have to do is finish the work we started.

Pages 88 to 89 of the 12 and 12 of AA underscores how important inventory work is to recovery work:

"When a drunk has a terrific hangover because he drank heavily yesterday, he cannot live well today. But there is another kind of hangover which we all experience whether we are drinking or not. That is the emotional hangover, the direct result of yesterday's and sometimes today's excesses of negative emotion-anger, fear, jealousy, and the like, If we would live serenely today and tomorrow, we certainly need to eliminate these hangovers. This doesn't mean we need to wander morbidly around in the past. It requires an admission and correction of errors now. Our inventory enables us to settle with the past. When this is done, we are really able to leave it behind us. When our inventory is carefully taken, and we have made peace with ourselves, the conviction follows that tomorrow's challenges can be met as they come."

When I first came to online recovery I saw how most people wrote about what needed to be changed, but then seemed to stop and not do much to change things. Years later some of these people are still in the same boat complaining about the same things. If they cannot change the problem then they must learn to accept it, these are the two roads to peace with a problem. They can gratefully accept it for maximum serenity or begrudgingly accept it as a start, but accept it they must one way or another if they ever want any peace. All we have to do is to look close at our writing and we will see what needs to be done in our recovery lives.

Now, some things will never be changed and the best we can do is lighten our load or work on accepting them. If we can see some light at the end of a tunnel, sometimes acceptance becomes easier if we know that a certain problems is for a short time only and can see future improvement in our lives. Be pointed in the direction of removing stress and problems in your life at every turn. If you make this your foremost purpose in life you will be successful at reducing your stress load. Remember, you are not recovering until you start refusing. Refuse your old ways that have been tearing you down all these years. When the individual has such conscious thoughts towards the cultivation of recovery, so that whatever action they are engaged in - it is always evaluated from that orientation - then they can find great success with improving one's life from applying this single pointed dedication to change and their practice and life becomes one.

Once you have put in the footwork, your job is done and you can release the issue to your Higher Power. It is much easier releasing things once we have done all we can comfortably do, then our job is done and it now becomes God's or Higher Power's job. I always end any request I make of God with what step 11 says; "Praying only for Gods' will and the power to carry it out." Then get your complaint or problem list, date it and put it in a God / HP box and fully release it to your HP.

Good Luck

V (Male)

A Christian-Buddhist practitioner living a life of Voluntary Simplicity and grateful recovering Debtor, Drug and Substance Abuser, Compulsive Overeater, Clutterer, Rageaholic, Speculative Gambler, Compulsive Spender, Sex and Sensation Addict.

 

[goldenviolet]

I don't want to make anymore mistakes... I'm such a burden to so many people... I want it to stop... why can't I just be perfect?

sweetheart perfection is yours. struggles mean nothing. we are going to inherit no pain, no sarrow, no struggle, and no more darkness! this life is sometimes very difficult. instead of picking on yourself; know Jesus will help you change and His blood keeps you pure. and instead of dwelling on the darkness... search out light and joy! free you are daughter of the most high God!
love dee

 

[goldenviolet]

[glow=purple]Endearing lil Influenza
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a is special....
daughter of GOD![/glow]​