[bluidkiti]

February 7

Quote of the Week

"I have to change what I want, to get what I want."

When I was new in the program, my sponsor suggested that I make a list of all the things I wanted and hoped I’d get from being sober. That was easy because there were a lot of things I wanted. I went ahead and made my list, and things that would feed my pride, or give me property and prestige, were at the top. I then attempted to share it with him, but he said, “Just put it somewhere safe, and we’ll look at it after we work the Steps.”

As I worked my way through the program, my outside world started to improve. After a while, I began accumulating some of the things on my list, certain that I would begin feeling better. But a curious thing happened; they didn’t fix me. In fact, the more I got what I wanted, the more I realized that I didn’t really want those things anymore. What I found is that I had changed.

My sponsor told me that because the program worked from the inside out, to get what I wanted, I had to change what I wanted to match the new me I was becoming. When we pulled out my old list and we went over it together, I understood what he meant. Happiness, serenity, friends, and security don’t come from having certain things. They come from acting in alignment with the true self I discovered as a result of the Twelve Steps.