For Today: July 12th

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another as is necessary to make instruction useful.

Samuel Johnson

What is simple for another may be difficult for me.  What is fearful for that person may not be so for me.

What is in each person’s head is a sum total of experience from our very beginnings. I can share experience, strength and hope, but I cannot “teach” a newcomer the path of long abstinence.  To get from here to there takes time.  It is experience—the process of recovering---more than the result that contributes to sensitivity, understanding and wisdom.

Advice to another can be an insult. Listening can be a godsend.  For each compulsive overeater, working through is the path to joyous freedom.

For Today: The highest service I can give my fellow OAs---and they to me----is to share experience. There are no instructors in this program.

Many newcomers at face to face meetings ask me HOW I’ve managed to achieve abstinence? It’s a process, for sure, and the process itself is where the learning takes place. Every day I can say No Thank You to junk food is another day of EMPOWERMENT for me.  

Until I had a LOT of abstinent days under my belt, I wasn’t sure it was possible to recover, frankly.  You can’t believe something is possible until you actually DO it. Once you have success, you can FEEL the possibility of MORE success.

Feeling a sense of failure by eating off plan is the same thing: once you FEEL that failure, you feel like you are meant to BE a failure. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I can’t think myself into a new way of acting; I have to ACT myself into a new way of THINKING.  To embrace abstinence requires a leap of faith. Faith in the unknown; faith in the fact that I will lose weight AND feel calmer…..not knowing for certain that I WILL, but believing it nonetheless.

I’ve traveled my own personal path to get where I am today. I can’t relate MY experience to anyone else’s experience, nor can I say that what’s worked for ME will work for anyone else.  My experience, strength & hope may be useful to others and if so, that is a wonderful thing. But I am in no position to tell another person exactly how to work their plan of abstinence. It varies greatly, according to the individual.

For today, I pray for the ability to share my experience, strength & hope with other recovering compulsive overeaters, withOUT passing judgment or handing out advice.