Codependent No More Workbook Codependents’ Guide to the Twelve Steps 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact Finding Your Way Home Gratitude - Melody Beattie

Few situations — no matter how greatly they appear to demand it — can be bettered by us going berserk. Why do we do it, then? We react because we’re anxious and afraid of what has happened, what might happen, and what is happening. Many of us react as though everything is a crisis because we have lived with so many crises for so long that crisis reaction has become a habit. We react because we think things shouldn’t be happening the way they are. We react because we don’t feel good about ourselves. We react because most people react. We react because we think we have to react. We don’t have to. We don’t have to be so afraid of people. They are just people like us. We don’t have to forfeit our peace. It doesn’t help. We have the same facts and resources available to us when we’re peaceful that are available to us when we’re frantic and chaotic. Actually we have more resources available because our minds and emotions are free to perform at peak level.

Control: May 5 Many of us have been trying to keep the whole world in orbit with sheer and forceful application of mental energy. What happens if we let go, if we stop trying to keep the world orbiting and just let it whirl? It’ll keep right on whirling. It’ll stay right on track with no help from us. And we’ll be free and relaxed enough to enjoy our place on it. Control is an illusion, especially the kind of control we’ve been trying to exert. In fact, controlling gives other people, events, and diseases, such as alcoholism, control over us. Whatever we try to control does have control over us and our life. I have given this control to many things and people in my life. I have never gotten the results I wanted from controlling or trying to control people. What I received for my efforts is an unmanageable life, whether that unmanageability was inside me or in external events. In recovery, we make a trade-off. We trade a life that we have tried to control, and we receive in return something better — a life that is manageable. Today, I will exchange a controlled life for one that is manageable.

the surest way to make ourselves crazy is to get involved in other people’s business, and the quickest way to become sane and happy is to tend to our own affairs.