Let go of the resentments

August 7 - What can we do about our resentments?  Experience has shown that the best thing to do is to write them down, listing people, institutions, or principles that are objects of our anger or resentment.  When I write down my resentments and then ask myself why I'm resentful, I've discovered that in most cases my self-esteem, my finances, my ambitions, or my personal relationships have been hurt or threatened.

Will I ever learn that the worst thing about my resentments is my endless rehearsal of my acts of retribution?

Today I Pray - May God help me find a way to get rid of my resentments.  May I give up the hours spent making up little play-lets, in which I star as the angry man or woman cleverly shouting down the person who has threatened me.  Since these dramas are never produced, may I instead list my resentful feelings and look at the whys behind each one.  May this be a way of shelving them.

Today I Will Remember - Resentments cause violence: resentments cause illness in nonviolent people.

Resentments are rubbish

August 6 - Sometimes through bitter experience and painful lessons, we learn in our fellowship with others in Gamblers Anonymous that resentment is our number one enemy.  It destroys more of us than anyone else.  From resentment stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we've been not only mentally and physically ill, but spiritually ill as well.  As we recover and as our spiritual illness is remedied, we become well physically and mentally.

Am I aware that few things are more bitter than to feel bitter?  Do I see that my venom is more poisonous to me than to my victim?

Today I Pray - I ask for help in removing the pile of resentments I have collected.  May I learn that resentments are play-actors, too; they may be fears - losing a job, a love, an opportunity; they may be hurts or guilty feelings.  May I know that God is my healer.  May I admit my need.

Today I Will Remember - Resentments are rubbish; haul them away.

Be good to yourself

August 5 - Among the important things we learn in Gamblers Anonymous is to be good to ourselves.  For so many of us though, this is a surprisingly difficult thing to do.  Some of us relish our suffering so much that we balloon each happening to enormous proportions in the reliving and telling.  Self-pitiers are drawn to martyrdom as if by a powerful magnet - until the joys of serenity and contentment come to them though the GA Program and Twelve Steps.

Am I gradually learning to be myself?

Today I Pray - May I learn to forgive myself.  I have asked - and received - forgiveness from God and from others, so why is it so hard to forgive myself?  Why do I still magnify my suffering?  Why do I go on licking my emotional wounds?  May I follow God's forgiving example, get on with the Program, and learn to be good to myself.

Today I Will Remember - Martyrdom; martyr dumb.

Count your Blessings

August 4 - One of the best ways to get out of the self-pity trap is to do some "instant bookkeeping."  For every entry of misery on the debit side of our ledger, we can surely find a blessing to mark on the credit side:  the health we enjoy, the illnesses we don't have, the friends who love us and who allow us to love them, a clean twenty-four hours, a good day's work.  If we only try, we can easily list a whole string of credits that will far outweigh the debit entries that bring about self-pity.

Is my emotional balance on the credit side today?

Today I Pray - May I learn to sort out my debits and credits, and add it all up.  May I list my several blessings on the credit side.  May my ledger show me, when all is totaled, a fat fund of good things to draw on.

Today I Will Remember - I have blessings in my savings.

Work the 12 Steps

August 3 - The Twelve Steps were designed specifically for people like us - as a short cut to God.  The Steps are very much like strong medicine that can heal us of the sickness of despair, frustration, and self-pity.  Yet we're sometimes unwilling to use the Steps.  Why?  Perhaps because we have a deep-down desire for martyrdom.  Consciously and intellectually, we think we want help on a gut level, though, some hidden sense of guilt makes us crave punishment more than relief from our ills.

Can I try to be cheerful when everything seems to be leading me to despair?  Do I realize that despair is very often a mask for self-pity?

Today I Pray - May I pull out the secret guild inside that makes me want to punish myself.  May I probe my despair and discover whether it is really an impostor - self-pity with a mask on.  Now that I know that the Twelve Steps can bring relief, may I please use them instead of wallowing in my discomforts.

Today I Will Remember - The Twelve Steps are God's Stairway.

Haha on the picture today!  It made me chuckle!

Compare yourself to the person from yesterday

August 2 - When I begin to compare my life with the lives of others, I've begun to move toward the edge of the murky swamp of self-pity.  On the other hand, if I feel that what I'm doing is right and good, I won't be so dependent on the admiration or approval of others.  Applause is well and good, but it's not essential to my inner contentment.  I'm in the Gamblers Anonymous Program to get rid of self-pity, not to increase its power to destroy me.

Am I learning how others have dealt with their problems, so I can apply these lessons to my own life?

Today I Pray - God, make me ever mindful of where I came from and the new goals I have been encouraged to set.  May I stop playing to an audience for their approval, since I am fully capable of admiring or applauding myself if I feel I have earned it.  Help me make myself attractive from the inside, so it will show through, rather than adorning the outside for effect.  I am tired of stage make-up and costumes, God; help me be myself.

Today I Will Remember - Has anyone seen ME?

Self pity is our worst enemy

August 1 - Self-pity is one of the most miserable and consuming defects I know.  Because of its interminable demands for attention and sympathy, my self-pity cuts off my communication with others, especially communication with my Higher Power.  When I look at it that way, I realize that self-pity limits my spiritual progress.  It's also a very real form of martyrdom, which is a luxury I simply can't afford.  The remedy, I've been taught, is to have a hard look at myself and a still harder one at the Gamblers Anonymous Program's Twelve Steps to Recovery.

Do I ask my Higher Power to relieve me of the bondage to self?

Today I Pray - May I know from observation that self-pitiers get almost no pity from anyone else.  Nobody - not even God - can fill their outsized demands for sympathy.  May I recognize my own unsavory feeling of self-pity when it creeps in to rob me of my serenity.  May God keep me wary of its sneakiness.

Today I Will Remember - My captor is my self.