- We will discover our real identities by loving and accepting ourselves.
- Our self-esteem will increase as we give ourselves approval on a daily basis.
- Fear of authority figures and the need to "people-please" will leave us.
- Our ability to share intimacy will grow inside us.
- As we face our abandonment issues, we will be attracted by strengths and become more tolerant of weaknesses.
- We will enjoy feeling stable, peaceful, and financially secure.
- We will learn how to play and have fun in our lives.
- We will chose to love people who can love and be responsible
for themselves.
- Healthy boundaries and limits will become easier for us to set.
- Fears of failures and success will leave us, as we intuitively make healthier choices.
- With help from our ACA support group, we will slowly release our dysfunctional behaviors.
- Gradually, with our Higher Power's help, we learn to expect the best and get it.
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If we willingly surrender ourselves to the spiritual discipline
of the Twelve Steps, our lives will be transformed. We will become mature,
responsible individuals with a great capacity for joy, wonder and fulfillment.
Though we may never be perfect, continued spiritual progress will reveal
to us our enormous potential. We will discover that we are both worthy of
love and loving. We will love others without losing ourselves, and will
learn to accept love in return.
Our sight, once clouded and confused, will clear and we will be able to
perceive reality and recognize truth. Courage and fellowship will replace
fear. We will be able to risk failure to develop new, hidden talents.
Our lives, no matter how battered and degraded, will yield hope to
share with others. We will begin to feel and will come to know the
vastness of our emotions, but we will not be slaves to them.
Our secrets will no longer bind us in shame. As we gain the ability
to forgive ourselves, our families and our world, our choices will expand.
With dignity we will stand for ourselves, but not against our fellows.
Serenity and peace will have meaning for us, as we allow our lives
and the lives of those we love to flow day by day with God's ease, balance
and grace. No longer terrified, we will discover we are free to delight in life's
paradox, mystery and awe.
We will laugh more. Fear will be replaced by faith and gratitude will come
naturally as we realize that our Higher Power is doing for us what we
cannot do for ourselves.
From "Survival to Recovery", page 269-70, copyright 1994 by Al-Anon Family Groups
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"We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not forget the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and out-look upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves".
from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pp 83-84