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Post by Covad on Jan 15, 2007 0:35:27 GMT -5
I realize you are not, but you seem to be speaking directly to me. Thanks for challenging me.
Covad
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Post by addogud on May 17, 2007 14:15:42 GMT -5
Hello Blackspiral
I am deeply grateful for all the information that you have posted here and it reaks with truth. I hope you are doing good. You are an inspiration:)
Love and respect addogud
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Post by addogud on May 21, 2007 14:09:38 GMT -5
One more thing...
I´ve been reading your journal some more and in one place you mention thought control methods or practices. Could you expand on that? What methods are you talking about?
Best wishes addogud
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Post by BlackSpiral on May 21, 2007 21:23:05 GMT -5
Well...that's difficult to answer, which means you've just invited an essay, I'm afraid. Really, I can't recall where I got hold of every one of the techniques from, and I know I've used some techniques in the past that I no longer use now. However, in the end they boil down to two things - firstly, accepting the fact that we are an active participant in our thoughts, not simply a bystander or spectator, and that we can play a role in influencing their direction and pattern. And secondly, understanding that our behaviour is preceded by thought.
Dreams, imagination, fantasy; they all shadow the behaviour that will follow them as we take action to pursue what we see and feel in our mind. Almost none of us act, positively or negatively, without some concept or thought of what those actions will lead to. The thoughts are our motive; they are why we act.
Ultimately, and somewhat unfortunately, it boils down to one thing more than anything else - practice. It's not always an easy thing to do at first, because we're not used to it - and for most of us, trying to stick with something that's difficult when we know it's good for us is as much of a mental challenge as anything. We let our thoughts run, and often follow them in one direction or another; we don't take direct charge. It's never a question of "can't" - nor is it really a question of strength. It's a question of method, and a question of practice.
It's also a question of being willing to take an active role in your thinking. You're no longer simply letting the train run; you're taking control of the points and telling it which tracks it can and can't follow.
The first simple method I tried was called the "stop thought process". In this one, when your mind is following a path you don't want it to, you simply try to tell yourself "Stop!". I've seen a few different approaches - yelling it out loud if you have to, snapping your wrist with an elastic band, or (the one I used) picturing a large, neon "STOP!" sign in your mind. At first, it worked erratically; but the more I practiced it, the better it became, and the more easy it became to simply stop my mind going in a direction I didn't want. From there, I would pursue another line of thinking - often, if I didn't take the decision to pursue another, though, I'd quickly slip back into the thought I had stopped instead.
The next method was a more complex one, and one I largely found myself; I used it when I found that the stop thought process was being ineffective for me. I tried to create a peaceful scene in my head. An outdoor scene, set amongst hills and grass; trying to place the animals and birds, place a house amongst it, a fence around the house, and so forth. I kept building the place in my mind, adding details and trying to hear the sounds there. The depth of it as a thought process seemed to be quite effective at forcing out other thoughts from my mind.
Another one I tried was simple meditation. Unlike trying to force the mind to pursue another line of thinking, meditation is more about trying to clear the mind of thought altogether; and although I've never really achieved that level of tranquility, I've found that my own weak version of meditating has been very effective. There are many different approaches, but my own was to try and ignore all my thoughts and focus on the blood in my fingertips, the breath in my lungs - to try and feel only the workings of my heart, my pulse, my breathing. This took practice as well, but after a while, I found it to be tremendously effective at re-centreing my emotions; and also, sometimes, at unlocking emotions that had been buried behind a wall. On one occasion I remember acutely, I started meditating only to be collapsed in tears within about a minute.
Afterwards, I felt much more at peace than I had all day.
There are two more elements of controlling thought that I'd like to bring in here, too, which I picked up - though only in part, in the first case - from Tony Robbins. These aren't methods of controlling thought, but rather, directions you should be using when you take control. They are related to each other, and first of these is simple; focus. As simple as it seems, focusing in the direction you want to go is critical; if you focus on where you don't want to be, you'll tend to find yourself meandering back in that direction. Racecar drivers know to focus on the road, not the wall; pilots trying to make a landing focus on the runway, not the areas around it that they want to miss. And so it is with us. To become successful, we can't focus on and worry about failure; and as such, to become sober, we can't focus on and worry about our addiction. We must focus on sobriety.
The second one, in relation, is questions. Like before, it's a matter of focusing on the positive not the negative; questions are a means to an end. We ask, and we answer our questions - and if we phrase our questions negatively, our answers will be negative. If we ask "Why can't I succeed?" then you'll get the answer - because you're this, you're that, and you're useless, neener-neener-ner.
Turn the question around, and ask "How can I succeed?" - the answer will be more effective. Better yet, try asking yourself "Why can't I fail?", and see what kinds of answers you end up with.
Don't allow yourself to ever wallow in patterns of thinking like "I can't do this because", or "this isn't possible for me because", or anything like that. "I'm a wretch because," "I'm pathetic because", and so forth. They're nothing but self-pity and excuses; and they're dangerous, because allowed to run without check, they will build up a strong belief inside yourself that this is TRUE. But truth, especially this kind of truth, is nothing more than perception - it begins and ends in the mind. Change the thinking, change the mind, change the perception, and you change what is true.
What was true yesterday is not necessarily true today, if you are willing to take a stand and change it.
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Post by BlackSpiral on May 29, 2007 18:02:38 GMT -5
My Little Toolbox Through my recovery and sobriety, I built up a fairly wide toolbox of methods and techniques that I was using regularly. They were the support structure for my path to sobriety. I realised very early on that one of the weakest choices I could make was to use a single method, technique or concept, and have nothing else to lean back on or rely on. Instead, I set about trying to build up a way to make my sobriety stick; a set of tools and methods that I felt I could safely lean on.
The principle behind it was simple enough; I wanted to give myself the very best chance I could of getting and staying sober. As I've said before, it seems that early on, your sobriety is simply too weak to stand on its own - it needs every bit of help you can give it. It's better to give it more help than it needs and let it grow strong than to give it too little, and have it collapse under the pressure. I doubt I remembered all of them, but I figured I'd give it a shot and see what I could pull out of my magic bag.
That said, on with the list...
Cleaning my environment - thoroughly! One of the first things I wanted to do in my recovery was to get rid of everything I could that I knew could be a problem for me. That first meant, of course, delete/destroy/throw out all of the porn. However, it went far beyond that. I threw out every magazine that had anything in it I might have used as porn. Every DVD, too, in the same pattern - dozens of legitimate films went into the trash, and they were mostly good ones, too. Then every floppy disc or CD that may ever have held anything dubious went into the bin too. I detuned some channels from the TV, and eventually ended up getting rid of that altogether too. The end result was, whenever I came home at the end of the day, I was able to relax and feel secure, knowing there was nothing there. Of course, there was nothing to stop me bringing something into that environment if I decided to do so - as we all know, if the addict side of us wins the mental battle, there's little you can do to make it impossible to act out.
The idea was to create an environment that was free of triggers, but it worked on another level too. The process of completely purging my environment felt very much like a massive mental step forward, and the day after I did it, I was extremely fired up for my recovery. I took this step on the second day of my sobriety, and ever since then, it felt like coming home to a kind of sanctuary. At the end of a day, no matter how stressful it had been or how hard I had been fighting with my addictive urges, I always knew that once I stepped through that door, I could relax again.
Talking to my wife For wife, you could substitute therapist, sponsor, partner, or any number of other things. My wife was my sponsor, and talking to her provided me with a great many things that I couldn't have gotten in any other way. She firstly had a lot of experience and knowledge that I was able to draw on, and secondly, was able to give me clarity and hope that I wouldn't have had myself. Many times, the ideas that became the foundation of my recovery were a combination of both of our thinking; she would help me to see what needed to be done, and between us, we would work out how we could do it. And there's far more; just having someone to talk to, who could give me support and comfort when things were hard, was worth a lot.
Considering the problems It's easy to face down a problem, survive it, wipe your brow and say "phew", then leave it at that. I never approached any problems like that. Whenever I'd encounter a new problem that I hadn't anticipated, I'd do everything I could to survive it - falling back on whatever tools I had that could help me - then that night, I'd talk to my wife about what had happened, and come up with a new strategy for dealing with that problem. The process was always active, always growing, always adapting to take in and deal with anything new that hadn't been anticipated.
Before this, though, there was a stage early in my sobriety where I looked at not just the things that had been problems for me, but also, the things I could see easily that could be problems for me in the future. Each of those, I addressed in this same fashion, and the plans I built then became the early foundation of my recovery.
The Book of Affirmations and Reminders The Book was essentially my solution to a problem I'd recognised one day; that although I knew what my motives for recovery were, and what my tactics for making it through the day were, when I found myself in a poor mental place I was struggling to direct my thoughts in a way I want. The book was, quite simply, a visual prompt; with it, I didn't need to think any further than "get out the book", and then I had help to making the mental leaps I needed. The front of the book was filled with my motives; a list of both why I wanted to be sober, and why I didn't want to return to the addiction again. The back pages contained lists of simple strategies for things I could do to cope in situations when I was struggling.
Reading uplifting books This idea was one of several that had to do with generating and maintaining a strong, positive mood. I recognised early on that when my mood would drop, I was in a worse place for my sobriety and recovery. To deal with that, I started choosing things that would make my mood better, and passing over things that would bring my mood down. I picked out a selection of energetic, funny books, mixed in with some other mellower, more contemplative works (The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and an introduction to Buddhism being the most memorable of those). I would read these books early every morning, and also at times in my day when I felt my mood could do with a pick-me-up, or when I simply needed something to fill an empty gap in my day. Bright music In the same model as the books, I found bright, energetic, cheerful music was an excellent way to build my mood. I had picked up from a study that there was a great deal of importance on how you start your day, so I had a selection of CDs that boosted my mood, set up to work as my morning alarm clock. My day would always begin this way. To complement this, I put away many CDs that had a less uplifting feel to them, and got rid of some that had extremely negative impacts altogether. Like my DVD collection, my CD collection shrank significantly, but my mood reaped the benefits of it.
Stop-thought process The stop-thought process was a simple technique I picked up early on to try and stop the mind from simply chaining and pursuing thoughts as they would come up. The idea itself was simple enough; when thoughts were coming up that you didn't want, you would try to call out "STOP!" in your mind, or visualise the word "STOP". From there, I would take the step to deliberately pursue another line of thinking.
Meditation Meditation was, in essence, a way to bring myself back to an emotional center. I'm far from being any good at meditation, and know that what I do doesn't really reflect the reality of what meditation is supposed to be, but that never really mattered for me. I found it immensely calming, and able to bring me back to a place where I could think more clearly, regardless of the state of mind I had been in when I began meditating.
Crosswords Crosswords were one of several space-takers that I used; perhaps, in fairness, space takers would have been a better title for this, but crosswords were one of my major ones, and I bought a couple of crossword books which I carried with me everywhere (in case, anyone's wondering, I carried a small bag everywhere which had everything I needed in it). Simply, these space-takers were things that I could focus on when I had nothing else to do, to give my mind an easy, obvious direction other than turning to the idea of using my addiction to fill in the gap. I'd also use these things sometimes when I was struggling, and needed a strong, immediate focus.
Taking short walks This one was something like an Emergency Exit for my sobriety. If I was in a place where nothing was working and my mind just wasn't working, I would get up and leave. Simple as that. It didn't matter if it was a walk out, or a quick stroll to a nearby shop to pick up a soda, so long as it got me away from wherever I was for a few minutes while I cleared my head again.
Changing my routes I knew that certain travel routes to and from my office each day were packed with more triggers than others, and so to safeguard myself from those, I changed the routes I would walk and travel. Sometimes, that meant something as little as sitting on a different side of the train; other times, perhaps taking a different exit from a station. With certain stores that packed a large number of pornographic magazines, I would ideally avoid them altogether, and if I couldn't do that for any reason, I'd work out a route to avoid that section of the store before going in.
Walking tall This one was a simple one that I began to apply when walking around. My old manner of walking had been more slumped; this had the dual problems of making my eye-line fall on people's bodies more than on their faces (not deliberate, but it felt problematic all the same) and would also leave me feeling a little subdued. Walking more upright, with my chin held a little higher and my eyes forward kept my view more above people's shoulders, and left me feeling more energised.
Writing exercises Writing exercises were a way to explore how I felt, and were a complement to talking to my wife. Through them, I could dig a little deeper into my own thoughts and feelings and get them onto paper in front of me; I could look at them more closely, and draw connections more easily then than I could with it simply in my mind. I also used them to explore my beliefs, and to begin to understand exactly which of my thoughts, feelings and beliefs were the ones which had empowered my addictive behaviour, and - often - get a grasp of where they had come from.
Breaking and Building Beliefs Belief-breaking was essentially a specific kind of writing exercise, but a critical one. Drawn from books by Tony Robbins, the idea was to take a belief that was harmful to you (which he referred to as Limiting Beliefs) then challenge their foundations by examining them, and picking out the fundamental weaknesses there. Once the belief's weak foundations were undermined, you could then consider the reverse; an empowering belief that allowed you to move forward instead; and find strong foundations for it in your own experiences. This process allowed me to re-shape my own beliefs so that, rather than giving me cause or justification to act out, they gave me motive and confidence for my recovery.
Positive questions Another Robbins nugget, this one revolves around the simple premise that the kind of questions you ask determines, to a great extent, the kind of answers you get. As such, you need to turn certain questions around to get better results. The question "why can't I" should be replaced with "how can I," for example, or "why can't I fail to". The mind will supply answers to the questions it is asked; so if you ask it questions biased for a positive answer, then that's what you'll get; by contrast, questions geared for negative answers will yield those. The positive answers lead to positive actions; the negative answers to negative actions, or to no action at all. It's one area where you can quickly and easily take charge of your thinking, and rebalance it to positive effect.
Message boards Message boards, including (but not limited to) this one, were one of the first places I began to look for support and guidance. I never relied on message boards as a primary support place; my major supports were always elsewhere, out in the rest of my life and away from the internet. But all the same, I would occasionally find something that was useful to me tucked away in a corner; and I also found that by writing out about my beliefs and experiences, I could reaffirm them and help my own position to grow stronger.
The hosts file and the Internet Rather than use an installed filter, I simply blocked some sites and banner-serving URLs through the hosts file. It was something I could remove at any time if I wanted to, but that was okay; the hosts file wasn't being used like a wall to lean on, or something to force my recovery, but rather as a way to clean up the internet environment a little while I used it. I also made a point of avoiding going to any unknown URLs for a while; I wouldn't search for any sites, and wouldn't visit anything except for the sites I had bookmarked and knew to be clean.
Checking film content Again, just to be safe, I would always verify the content of films before renting or watching them. That way, I could deliberately adhere to the rules I'd set down for my sobriety, and would never be either in the position of being unable to watch any films for concerns over the content, nor of rolling a dice against my sobriety every time I watched a movie.
Never testing my sobriety The idea of "testing your sobriety" is beyond sketchy and right down there in the pit of Bloody Awful Ideas. In reality, it's essentially a desire to act out, justified and cloaked by the concept of "testing to see if I'm strong enough". And if you have to justify to yourself why something isn't really acting out - they're not fully naked, or it was only cartoon, or I was testing my sobriety - then chances are pretty damn good you were acting out, plain and simple. You can play with half-measures if you want, but half-measures will earn half-measure results.
And lastly... Some people think that, by taking a path like this, you're making yourself weak; that you won't be able to cope with the addiction when it comes up. In truth, as irrational as it may seem, the opposite is really true. You don't throw boxing hall rookies into the ring with a seasoned pro heavyweight; instead, you train them, safely. That's what this allows you to do. Today, I don't use many of these tools; most days, I need and use none of them. But I needed them once, to allow myself to grow strong.
Growing strong first requires that we acknowledge we are weak, and take the necessary steps to deal with it. Denial just doesn't cut it.
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Post by Valjean on May 30, 2007 5:29:53 GMT -5
Thank you for sharing this, Blackspiral, I take so much from your journal.
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Post by johannes3 on Jun 1, 2007 8:54:51 GMT -5
Yo BlackSpiral!
I've recently found I'm getting a lot from your posts--for instance, what Paddy and CL reposted from you today is fabulous.
That's very interesting. Because, truth be told, I used to despise your posts. Wow--surprising, right? I didn't care about your words, because I felt they were written from an "I know it all" perspective, and I didn't really see the struggle and pain underneath. I always felt you had it all condescendingly figured out, and that upset me. (A bit similar to the anger I sometimes feel reading Guy's posts.) I couldn't see the humanness in your writing; I just thought you were this perfectly tuned recovery robot.
My attitude has changed, and I totally want to thank you for your wisdom and help here. Thank you.
Let's all recover,
Johannes
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Post by witness on Jun 4, 2007 13:16:59 GMT -5
Lots of great ideas. When is your book coming out?
I especially like the things on changing our thinking. That is where it all begins. It is actually who we are. For change to take place we have to strike at the root of the problem.
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Post by amberdivine on Jun 15, 2007 5:25:51 GMT -5
Hello BlackSpiral I am a SO member. My Husband is a PA. He joined this site last year. He printed out your journal and it inspired him to come clean about his addiction. His counsellor wasn't so keen on him being on a self help site like this because it kept him infront of his computer, or so he said, but he does twist a lot of the things she tells him as he sabotages a lot. Anyway it has done him some good because since he read the journal he has started to take it all seriosly and do something to help himself. I am trying to help by supporting him. I have become his accountability partner which meant a lot to me when he asked if I would. I talk as much as possible to him about his thoughts and feelings. He is opening up more and more each day. He has been clean now for about 3 weeks (I am sure he will tell you the exact time). He says he thinks he has reached rock bottom and is starting on the way up. We know there may be steps backwards but he is determined to beat this. His addiction has been there for about 40 years now - starting as a young teenager - so he knows it won't be a quick recovery. Thank you again for writing your journal because if he hadn't seen it we probably wouldn't be where we are today. We think one day at a time. Thanks Grateful wife
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Post by nowforever on Jun 17, 2007 15:05:43 GMT -5
Inspiring as always BlackSpiral, thank you for sharing! I feel like you are talking straight into me.
-NF
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Post by lamaboy on Jun 17, 2007 19:28:38 GMT -5
Hey Black Spiral,
thanks for your post of May 29th. Very inspiring! I decided to borrow it and post it on my thread, just so I can find it and re-read it later. I hope you don't mind.
Best wishes,
Bogey
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Post by lizardbrain on Jun 17, 2007 20:04:44 GMT -5
Thanks BlackSpiral, very helpful tips. Keep up the good fight.
LB
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Post by BlackSpiral on Aug 18, 2007 1:18:05 GMT -5
The Great Balancing Act One of the things I've wrestled with more than once in my addiction is the simple idea of acceptance, and the sense that at some point, it has to be an element of life. At the same time, though, I've been faced with a simple fact that seems to overrule it - that if you simply lie down and accept what you are, where you are and who you are in this moment as being the be all and end all of it, then you effectively wipe out your chances of progress. Zip, nada, zero, down it goes, and here is where you stay.
So where does that fine line in the sand get drawn?
I think in the end it has to be a personal thing, but even then, it's challenging to decide what it should be. There are two great extremes, which I think dominate a lot of minds; the first is the simple idea of total acceptance. I've seen books written about it, preaching the simple idea that in order to be happy, what you need to do instead of change is to simply accept who we are, all our urges, desires, passions or impulses as simply a part of us, to be embraced rather than pushed out. But then, that defies reason - can we be happy as addicts? I know I could not, not as an addict here nor as an addict to anything else.
Nor could I have accepted addiction as being just a part of who I am - something to be tolerated and accepted without question. It's an external thing, something I could have been without, and something I could be without again. I took essentially that same stance with my own addiction - the idea of it being a life-long disease was never one I could embrace. It wasn't something I contracted that could not be eliminated; it was, at its heart, an internal change created by a mixture of internal and external influences, and if it could be changed one way, then it could surely be changed the other too. Perhaps not completely - I don't believe I can undo memory, for example - but enough.
The other huge extreme is the absolute of endless self-questioning. It's the person who cannot tolerate a flaw in themselves, regardless of what it may be. They look at themselves, they find flaws, they feel an impulse to change it, to grow, to become better, bigger, brighter, wiser, smarter, stronger or more honourable in their own eyes. The self-examination turns into self-criticism, and because we are all ultimately flawed, the quest to find flaws and then correct them becomes an endless one.
I've been guilty of both at times. I've looked at myself, seen my flaws, accepted them all as part of me and embraced them. Then later, when I began to see my flaws in another light and realise that I was hurting other people through them, I turned the other way - I began to examine all my behaviour, everything I did, everything I thought and dreamed, everything I remembered when I wasn't paying attention, and search them for everything that lay underneath. I did this sometimes to the extreme that I could take a minor incident, such as a dream or a memory, and question, ask, demand and deduce from there to a place where I could hardly even bear to keep my own company.
Neither one was healthy. One denied me growth; the other denied me the chance to enjoy the happiness that my growth should have brought me. So where is this line drawn? Where is the tightrope strung?
It's a hard thing to call. I imagine that line is slightly different for everyone. There is a necessity to accept that we are flawed, I think, but also a necessity to never accept something in our lives that we consider anathema. I needed to find this balance in my life, and sometimes I still do; I can find myself rocking back and forth, on the one hand craving the ease and comfort of acceptance, and on the other simply unable to tolerate the man I might be if my acceptance of myself stretches too far. But for the most part, I've found that tightrope now; I swing back and forth between the two extremes, but I never lose my footing.
Perhaps it's a part of recovery. As an addict, I knew I needed to try and establish a balance - but to do that, as an active addict, I needed to push back against my behaviour just as hard as I had been pulled by it. So I cleansed my environment, cleansed my behaviour, structured my day down to the path I walked, and took great care to force myself away. I had to push, deliberately, methodically and determinedly, even harder than the addiction was trying to pull - I needed to pull myself back to the center, and at the beginning, I was sitting in the addiction's court. It was more a tug of war than an elegant display of balancing skill, but it was enough to get me back to somewhere fairly centered.
Once there, though, I found myself almost afraid to stop trying to pull that hard. I wasn't facing the same battle, but if I didn't keep fighting, would the addiction surface again and drag me back down? The fear, I think, is enough to make some people keep on trying to fight; to spend the rest of their lives fighting it, like some kind of emotional Cold War, fortifying and arming to defend against an enemy that doesn't really attack. But it's a fear well founded; because too often, when we decide to turn from this path to one of acceptance, we go too far - we drop all our weapons, dismantle all our walls, and leave ourselves wide open.
There's a balance to be struck, somewhere between foolishness and fanaticism, that I think is the essence of wisdom in this regard. It's a place where life is simply enjoyed, and where we don't feel the need to keep constantly rearming and equipping, but where we also have solid border patrols just in case somebody tries to sneak in a suitcase nuke while we're not looking.
It's somewhere like that. A place where I can accept who I am, but at the same time, realise that I have some power to change it; where I'm not chasing myself down for every small flaw of character or action, but where I am open to noticing the flaws and learning from them, that I might grow without feeling guilt, frustration or some kind of personal damnation over my own imperfection. After all, I'm not perfect - none of us is. So to damn ourselves for not being perfect would be foolish.
But equally, why should our imperfect nature stop us from striving for perfection?
Children understand it better than we do at times, I think. They look at something, understand that they don't know it or can't do it properly, learn, then move on. They are imperfect, flawed, and know how to accept it, learn from it, develop and grow. In that regard, they have mastered a balance that I have often found myself forgetting - the simple balance between self-acceptance AND self-determination, of the need to grow from where I am AND to accept where I am today, despite that need.
They're opposites, definitely; but they work far better as dancing partners than they do as opposing generals.
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Post by arctic on Aug 18, 2007 4:32:47 GMT -5
Hi Blackspiral,
Thank you for the great post. I don't know if your writing it now had anything to do with the flaw finding exercise I did in my journal yesterday, but I nevertheless found that your post spoke to me in an important way. I must know what my problems are, but continue to focus on the solutions rather than the problems themselves.
Cheers, Arctic
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Post by witness on Aug 20, 2007 6:41:28 GMT -5
We will never seek change until we reach the point of dissatisfaction with where we are and until we believe that change is not only necessary but possible.
I'm flawed, but I long to be better!
Thanks again for your thoughtful insights!
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