Someone once said that if you want to have a short 12-Step meeting just pick the topic of gratitude. And the meeting will be over shortly.
But I have found that is not true when a meeting is populated by people who have many years of recovery. And that's because those with 10, 20 and 30 years in recovery have experienced the ups and downs of life in sobriety and know what they have to do to stay sober.There is so much in the world to be grateful for. That is, if we just take the time to look around us at the larger world we will be filled with gratitude. For example, we are fortunate that we are not living in someplace like the Sudan or in Ukraine. Those two countries are devastated by war and those who live there are in constant fear of being the target of a missile or bomb attack. In the world we live in today, here in the United States, we have so much more security than people in other parts of the world do. That's something to be grateful for.
And we have much more to be grateful for in other areas of our life. When's the last time you have gone hungry? Or been without a home? Or been unable to get medical care?
How many people do you know in your world who have much less than you do? Do you know people who have physical limitations? How about people with incurable diseases? Or terminal illnesses? There are so many people in our lives who suffer from physical and psychological illnesses of which we are unaware.
Another good thing about learning to look at the world through glasses of gratitude is that it's harder to relapse when we have that state of mind. When we are angry or resentful it's easy to get high or get drunk. I've never heard anyone say "I just felt so full of gratitude that I had to take a drink."
We can even learn to be grateful for the challenges in our lives. And that's because when we overcome the challenges facing us we become stronger human beings. When we face obstacles and go around or over them we add layers of strength to our lives.
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