Recovery Meditations: February 21st

~ PROGRESS ~
" ... I was taught that the way of progress is neither swift nor easy."

Marie Curie

I have always been the queen of quick fix, so if I wanted something to happen, it had to happen today if not yesterday. So coming into the program was very hard for me, in that for the first time I have had to realise that recovery is not an overnight thing. For a perfectionist like me, that has been a very hard lesson to learn, in that I don't have to have perfect recovery. My journey in this program has been an up and down one, with many slips along the way, and everytime I have slipped, I have had to remember that I may think I'm a failure, but I'm only a failure if I fail to pick myself up. In the past if I made a mistake, I was a total and utter failure, but I know now that all I have to do each time is to pick myself up, dust myself off and start over.

The other thing I've learned in the program is that I also always need to remember where I came from, and when I look back, I can see the progress I have made. My self esteem is growing, and even though I still seem to slip back into the old character defects from time to time, they are nowhere near as bad as in the past. I am able to forgive people whom I thought I would never be able to forgive, and I make amends whenever the need arises, and as a result my relationships with people have improved dramatically.

One Day at a Time . . .
May I remember that in this program, it is always progress and not perfection that counts. ~ Sharon ~

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The 'all or nothing' mentality is my trademark.  If I'm 'good' on a diet, then I'm very, very good.  If I'm 'bad', I am having a binge or eating myself into a coma for the entire day.  With OA, the slogan "Progress not perfection" holds great meaning for me.  If I slip, I don't have to consider myself a complete and utter failure.  If I'm not perfect, that doesn't signal the end of my commitment to abstinence.

Impatience is another hallmark of my disease.  I want what I want and I want it NOW please!  When I was finally ready to lose weight and get healthy, I had to force myself to stay off the scale & weigh in weekly.  In my haste and impatience, when I started a new diet, I'd want to see results immediately & then feel like a failure when I didn't.

With abstinence, what's the rush? There really is no goal except for peace of mind and self-improvement.  That takes time........recovery is an ongoing process and I never 'finish' working the steps or gaining self-awareness.

All I have to focus on is one 24 chunk of time: today.  I don't have to worry about what went wrong yesterday, or what I might want to eat tomorrow: I just have to focus on NOW.

For today, God help me to realize that I AM a work in progress & I'm a darn good one at that!