March 24: Favorite tools or ESH to find poise and serenity

Topic for the week:

This reading is from a Hazelden app, I use them for guidance every day: 

Start your day with poise and serenity. If your alarm doesn’t go off, you can remain calm. If a traffic jam slows your commute, you can be at peace. If a friend cancels on you, you can be forgiving. You can do all these things when you decide “I will not allow anything to disturb my mental balance or throw my mind out of its serenity.” Facing life with inner strength means not allowing people, places, or things to destroy your harmony with the world. Facing life with peace of mind means you are in charge of your destiny and your recovery. Facing life with understanding and forgiveness means you have built a strong relationship with a Higher Power. Then you can view disruptions to your well-being and purpose as trifling, small incidents that are short-lived.

Today you can choose to be defeated by life’s little insensibilities, conflicts, and disappointments, or successfully handle whatever comes your way without disruption to your inner peace.   My achievements today will reflect my attitude. I will choose to face life with a serene spirit and calm poise.

Making the choice to be poised and serene sounds easy, and it is when life is going ‘my way’.  But when challenges come up in situations or relationships, emotions so easily swell while my 12 step tools (including God) are far from my consciousness.  It can take me hours or even a few days to reel in my thoughts, step back and determine how to get back to that inner peace.

These are some of the questions I’ve learned to ask myself in the past year, they are part of my toolbox now:

  • what amends do I need to make?
  • what does this emotion tell me really matters?
  • what does it suggest I need to attend to?
  • what fear do I need to face?
  • what behavior do I need to change?
  • what loss do I need to come to terms with?

If I can answer any of these questions and take appropriate action, the chances of picking up a drink to solve my problems is greatly reduced.  And that’s my goal today first and foremost, to cope with life free of alcohol (or any addictive self-sabotaging behavior).  I remind myself to talk to God about it too.  I don’t expect perfection, but I’ll take progress any day of the week! 

I would love to learn your favorite tools or ESH to find poise and serenity when life throws you a curve ball!

Grateful to lead this week,

Susan P.