No one can make you feel inferior without your consent - Eleanor Roosevelt

If only they would see what I mean and understand what is going on; my life would be perfect and I would not feel this way. The Big Book tells us that all of life is but a stage and we are but actors upon it. Where we get frustrated is when we attempt to direct the other actors instead of simply focusing on our own recovery and health. Our lives had become so unmanageable that we had to cry out to our Higher Power for help. How is it possible for us to think we could manage someone else’s life? The root of this perceived power lies in our own feelings of inferiority. The people we try to manage are the very people we so desperately need approval from. Those who can make us feel the worst about ourselves can only do so if we give them the power to. Others around us are going to do and say what they feel they must do and say no matter how hard we wish they would not. To overcome this character flaw and take responsibility for ourselves, we must stop trying to please people who simply do not care. There are people in our lives who will do, say and think whatever they want to without regard to our own wishes. Let these poisonous people go. Nothing we say and nothing we do will change them. So stop it.

 

I am going to take a deep breath and choose to not feel inferior and not seek approval from those who wouldn’t give it to me anyway.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again more intelligently - Henry Ford

 Slipping is so demoralizing to us if we have embraced the program. Nothing ruins a binge like the knowledge we have gained by even the slightest exposure to SAA. It was easy for us to put the most disgusting, demoralizing and degrading behavior into our inner circle. It was much harder to move those other behaviors, those behaviors that to some are not addicting, into our inner circle. Perhaps it took us months of deluding ourselves that this action, the one we turn to when we are sad, anxious, angry or lonely into our inner circle. Perhaps we knew all along that this was inner circle behavior but we held onto our “public” sobriety too tightly to admit it to ourselves and to another person. It is how we feel after we act out that tells us the truth whether an activity belongs in our inner circle or not. And then far too quickly we slip. “It is such a simple act!” and it may very well be simpler or less demoralizing than other acts in our inner circle, but we feel no less a failure for the slip.

 

Today let me understand and know the meaning and feeling of these powerful words, Progress – not Perfection, and then let me begin my sobriety again.