Thought for today:
Every minute we spend worrying unnecessarily about our lives cheats us of this current moment. How can we stop that?
When a new awareness comes to us, it is a “trigger event” that something needs to be looked at. Problems occur when we inadequately address the event – denying it, misinterpreting it, or overreacting to it.
The worry that comes to us usually relates to recurring themes: A problem child behaves poorly once again; a pain in our chest keeps coming back, not bad enough to be debilitating, but it causes a low-grade anxiety; a predictable bill is overlooked once again; our checking account is overdrawn, again.
“Insanity’s” definition is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”, right? We can usually recognize a debtor by the worry they experience around money.
DA Sign 3 of a compulsive debtor:
“Poor saving habits. Not planning for taxes, retirement or other not-recurring but predictable items, and then feeling surprised when they come due; a “live for today, don’t worry about tomorrow” attitude.
A member shares:
“When I came into DA, I answered every one of the Fifteen Questions about Compulsive Debting affirmatively.
“I worried all the time. My sponsor kept me focused on my recovery a lot. We would talk every day, and meet sometimes during the week. Every time we met was like a mini-inventory of where I was at with the program.
“I had health issues that had gone unaddressed, and too many unpaid medical bills to even think of going back to my doctor.
“Little by little, my tracking of spending helped my attitude get better, and my worry diminished. I started to know what to expect, and doing the things that addressed my worry – not just with money, but with all of my life!”
A debtor “in the wild”:
The natural state of a compulsive debtor is that of binge-charging on credit cards and store credit. Left “in the wild,” (before coming to DA), a debtor often lacks focus, and as a result, under earns and over spends to compensate.
The way back to sanity is to heed the triggers of our worry, and focus our will power on the constructive force that is the Twelve Steps of DA…
- By including our Higher Power, whatever that is, in the conversation. How can we get back on track? What is our Higher Power’s will for us?
- By taking a personal moral inventory. What are our positive and negative qualities? Where are we upset? Where are we grateful?
- By asking our Higher Power and another human being to listen to what we found, and help us clean our side of the street. Were we neglectful? Did we do anything to cause the thing that is upsetting us?
- By taking the courage of knowing the program works if we work it, we go out and seek to make amends. This means to change our behavior, and correcting past behaviors wherever possible.
The Twelve Steps help us find a Spiritual Awakening. This reduces our worry, heals our wounds, and sets us on an up spiral of solvency and prosperity.
Ask:
Am I using the program of recovery in all areas of my life?
Meditation for today:
When worry comes to us, we can calmly listen to its message. If the thing it tells us makes us feel anxious, we can write what it is in detail, and start to lift our sights beyond it.
The problem is we worry about the mosaic of a problem instead of breaking it down into ts constituent parts to make solutions more clear and manageable. When it’s small enough, a task is simple to do, and we feel confident we can do it.
A small habitual change can piggy back something else we already do during the day, like flossing automatically after we brush our teeth or making the bed as soon as we finish breakfast.
Small solutions can tackle goliath problems.
Affirmation for today:
“I have relaxed attentiveness, taking in each moment, savoring its blessings and insights.”
“I am having a peaceful moment where nothing is bothering me. I am free of fear in this moment.”
Recommended reading:
DA’s Eighth Tool is D.A. and A.A. Literature: “We study the literature of Debtors Anonymous and of Alcoholics Anonymous to strengthen our understanding of compulsive disease and of recovery from compulsive debting.”
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
Copyright 2015, PlentyOfTimeMoneyAndLove.com.
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