A Day at a Time Reflections

We learn from others in Gamblers Anonymous that the best way to deal with painful situations is to meet them head on, to deal with them honestly and realistically, and to try to learn from them and use them as springboards for growth. Through the GA Program and our contact with a Higher Power, we can find the courage to use pain for triumphant growth. Will I believe that whatever pain I experience...

No one welcomes pain with open arms, but it does have its uses. Just as physical pain serves as a warning that we may be suffering a bodily illness, so can emotional pain be a useful sign that something is wrong - as well as a warning that we need to make a change. When we can meet pain without panic, we can learn to deal with the cause of the hurt, rather than running away. Can I bear some emotio...

Until we came to the Gamblers Anonymous Program, our lives had been spent running from pain and problems. Escape by way of compulsive gambling was always our temporary solution. Then we started going to meetings. We looked and listened, often with amazement. Everywhere around us, we saw failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless assets. To those who've made progress in the GA Progra...

We hear often in our Gamblers Anonymous meetings that pain is the touchstone of spiritual progress. We eventually realize that, just as the pains of compulsive gambling had to come before our abstinence, emotional turmoil comes before serenity. We no longer commiserate with all people who suffer, but only with those who suffer in ignorance - those who don't understand the purpose and ultimate util...

"At certain moments," wrote Coleridge, "a single almost insignificant sorrow may, by association, bring together all the little relics of pain and discomfort, bodily and mental, that we have endured even from infancy." The Gamblers Anonymous Program doesn't teach us to pretend that hardships and sorrow are meaningless. Grief really hurts and so do other kinds of pain. But now that we're free of ou...

One thing, more than anything else, that can relieve my occasional feeling of depression is love. I have to keep myself "lovable" in the sense of being able to love others, rather than being concerned with whether others love me. In somehow losing myself in others, emotionally or spiritually, I usually find myself. Today I understand what they meant at my first blurry meetings of Gamblers Anonymou...

Years ago, Dr. Alfred Adler prescribed this remedy for depression to a patient: "You can be healed if every day you begin the first thing in the morning to consider how you can bring a real joy to someone else. If you can stick to this for two weeks, you will no longer need therapy." Adler's "prescription," of course, is not much different from the suggestion that we work more intensively the Twel...

The longer I'm in the Gamblers Anonymous Program and the longer I try to practice its principles in all my affairs, the less frequently I become morose and depressed. Perhaps, too, there's something to that cynical old saying, "Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed, but instead will be delighted daily by new and fresh evidence of the love of God and the friendlines...

We are told that no situation is hopeless. At first, of course, we find this hard to believe. The opposites - hope and despair are human emotional attitudes. It is we who are hopeless, not the condition of our lives. When we give up hope and become depressed, it's because we're unable, for now, to believe in the possibility of a change for the better. Can I accept this: "Not everything that is fac...

"If you're not all right the way you are," it's been said, "it takes a lot of effort to get better. Realize you're all right the way you are, and you'll get better naturally." Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation so difficult that it seems insoluble. The more we think about it, the more we get on our own backs for our imagined inadequacy to overcome the situation and we sink into depression....

As practicing compulsive gamblers, we were all too familiar with depression, that pile-up of dark feelings that seemed to close over our heads at regular intervals. Even now, when I am not making progress at the rate I expect I should be, when I expect a total turnaround in my spiritual self overnight, those familiar feelings of gloom can come calling on me again, if I hold the door open for them....

We're often told that compulsive gamblers are perfectionists, impatient about any shortcomings - especially our own. We tend to set impossible goals for ourselves, struggling fiercely to reach our unattainable ideals. Then of course - since no person could possibly meet the extremely high standards we demand of ourselves we find ourselves falling short. Discouragement and depression set in; we ang...

Though I have prayed at various times in my life, I realized after several months in Gamblers Anonymous that I'd never really prayed properly. I'd always tried to make deals with God, much like a foxhole atheist; I'd always pleaded, "Grant me my wishes," instead of "Thy will - not mine - be done." The result was that I remained self-deceived and was thus incapable of receiving enough grace to rest...

Sometimes, even when friends in and outside of the Gamblers Anonymous Program tell us how well we're doing, we know deep down that we're really not doing well enough. We still have trouble handling life and facing reality on reality's terms. We suspect, at those times, that there must be a serious flaw in our spiritual practice and development. Chances are strong that our trouble lies in either th...

When I wake up. I'll think quietly about the twenty-four hours ahead, I'll ask God to direct my thinking especially asking that it be free from self-pity and from dishonest or self seeking motives. If I have to determine which of several courses to take, I'll ask God for inspiration, for an intuitive thought, or a decision. Then I'll relax and take it easy, confident that all will be well. Can I b...

The Gamblers Anonymous Red Book, in explaining Step Eleven, says "A conscious contact seems to start with daily prayer. What is prayer? To some it is a personal chat with their Higher Power. So each of us can pray as we see fit." If at first prayer seems difficult, you can "fake it until you make it." "In time you will grow to eagerly accept prayer and know the rewards it will give you... Prayer e...

From time to time, I begin to think I know what God's will is for other people. I say to myself, "This person ought to be cured of his illness," or "That one ought to be freed from the abuse she's going through," and I begin to pray for those specific things. My heart is in the right place when I pray in such fashion, but those prayers are based on the supposition that I know God's will for the pe...

I'll begin today with prayer - prayer in my heart, prayer in my mind, and words of prayer on my lips. Through prayer, I'll stay tuned to God today, reaching forward to become that to which I aspire. Prayer will redirect my mind, helping me rise in consciousness to the point where I realize that there's no separation between God and me. As I let the power of God flow through me, all limitations wil...

Prayer can have many rewards. One of the greatest rewards is the sense of belonging it brings to me. No longer do I live as a stranger in a strange land, alien in a completely hostile world. No longer am I lost, frightened, and purposeless. I belong. We find, in Gamblers Anonymous, that the moment we catch a glimpse of God's will-the moment we begin to see truth, justice, and love as the real and...

"Prayer does not change God," wrote Soren Kierkegaard, "but it changes him who prays." Those of us in the Gamblers Anonymous Program who've learned to make regular use of prayer would no more do without it than we'd turn down sunshine, fresh air, or food-and for the same reason. Just as the body can wither and fail for lack of nourishment, so can the soul. We all need the light of God's reality, t...

Taking a long hard look at those defects I'm unwilling or reluctant to give up, I ought to rub out the rigid lines I've drawn. Perhaps, in some cases, I'll then be able to say, "Well, this one I can't give up yet…" The one thing I shouldn't say: "This one I'll never give up." The minute we say, "No, never,'' our minds close against the grace of God. Such rebelliousness, as we have seen in the expe...

What causes compulsive gambling? Did we gamble because of some inner flaw or shortcoming or life situation? Gamblers Anonymous: A New Beginning says: "We don't know and... we cannot afford to care. Those who come to us need help immediately... The benefits of introspection and speculation are paltry when compared to the rewards of helping others regain their lives." Although we all want to be rid...

Without freedom from compulsive gambling, we have nothing. Yet we can't be free of our obsession to gamble until we become willing to deal with the character defects that brought us to our knees. If we refuse to work on our glaring defects, we'll almost certainly return to our addiction. If we stay clean with a minimum of self-improvement, perhaps we'll settle into a comfortable but dangerous sort...

Some of us, after we've taken the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and then the Seventh Step, sit back and simply wait for our Higher Power to remove our shortcomings. The Gamblers Anonymous Program reminds us of the story of St. Francis working in a beautiful garden. A passerby said, "You must have prayed very hard to get such beautiful plants to grow." The good saint answered, "Yes, I did. But every time I...

I heard someone in the Gamblers Anonymous Program once read, "Burn the idea into the consciousness of every man that he can get well, regardless of anyone. The only condition is that he trust in God and clean house." That is what Step Seven means to me that I'm going to clean house and will have all the help I need. Do I realize by taking the Seventh Step that I'm not really giving a thing, but in...