Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul Daily Inspirations (Chicken Soup for the Soul) (49 page)

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OVEMBER
23

S
ome things eat away at us, nibbling like mice on Swiss cheese. And, if we allow it to continue, we risk winding up as nothing more than holes. Revenge is one of those things. A canker. A corrosive. A corrupter of our souls. Entertaining thoughts of vengeance can satisfy our taste for spite, at least for the moment. But, in the end, it is, quite simply, exhausting. It prevents us from healing and moving on. How much wiser of us to recognize that the only people we need to get even with–to pay back–are those who seek only to help us.

Carol McAdoo Rehme

Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach.

Ayn Rand

Footnotes for Life

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OVEMBER
24

R
eal recovery has little to do with what the path that we walk looks like–where we live, what we drive, how much money we have–but everything to do with how we choose to walk our life path.

It is our perspective, our attitude and our choices that transform us into who we are, that make our life experience what it is. We get to choose. Real recovery means learning to look at life in ways we never have before.

Jeffrey R.Anderson

Life is like an echo. We get from it what we put into it and, just like an echo, it often gives us much more.

Boris Lauer-Leonardi

Footnotes for Life

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OVEMBER
25

I
t is easy to confuse greatness of character with strength and brawn. Greatness of character, however, is usually best defined in the grace of inability or dependency. It is in the humbleness in asking for help without being forced through defeat to do it. Greatness of character is when you know that weakness is momentary and it ends when it seeks the strength of another.

Michelle Gipson

Discover something about yourself that will make you great: your weaknesses.

Michelle Gipson

Footnotes for Life

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OVEMBER
26

T
he bird doesn’t know he flys. He has no “faith” in his wings. What he has is a lifetime of little experiences in which, when he feels the edge of the earth disappear and sees nothing but emptiness beneath his feet, still he flys. A well-intentioned person will sometimes say to you, “Have faith.” If faith were such an accessible commodity why are we such a spiritually-hungry people? Perhaps faith emerges because we humans can look back and reflect. We see, in a lifetime of strung-together experiences–many of which would have felled a lesser soul–that we have endured. We did not endure because we had faith. We find faith because we endure.

Nancy Burke

Be like the bird, who halting in his flight on limb too slight, yet sings–knowing he has wings.

Victor Hugo

Footnotes for Life

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OVEMBER
27

I
experienced blackouts in my drinking. Often I would wake up and not know where I had been, what I had said or done. I would peer through windows searching for my car. I would telephone to find out what time I had left the party and if anything had happened. Often as I bathed I would discover bruises or bleeding from an unremembered incident. There were other times I knew what I had done, knew what I had said, remembered how I behaved–and yet still I went back for more. I drank alcoholically for years because my pride would not allow me to be alcoholic. I created the wisest excuses for staying sick! Today my sobriety requires a wisdom that is based on reality.

Father Leo Booth

It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.

Anatole France

Footnotes for Life

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OVEMBER
28

I
t took me a long time to understand what people meant when they said, “God speaks to me through other people.” I wondered why I wasn’t hearing any earth-shattering advice or wisdom from on high. Then I opened my mind, and my ears, to the experience, strength and hope all around me. My Higher Power was trying to speak to me, at meetings, through my sponsor, even through friends not in recovery, but I was refusing to listen. My willingness to see the divine in everyone is rewarded with precisely the wisdom and strength I seek. Today, may I be willing to open my heart to divine wisdom all around me.

Amy Ellis

Love truth, but pardon error.

Voltaire

Footnotes for Life

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OVEMBER
29

T
here is a new order in my life that allows me to fully experience love and excitement, peacefulness and harmony. I have important and worthwhile things to do. My life has meaning, even in the minutest details. My sense of purpose allows my energy and power to flow, and my purpose in life is to reveal the nature of my higher self in whatever I do. Within myself there exists all I need for this day, and every one that follows, to be one of fulfillment and success. As the sun sets, I can be content, knowing that I am deserving of rest and peaceful solitude to renew my spirit for the day to come.

Rokelle Lerner

There are many things we are capable of, that we could be or do. The possibilities are so great that we never are more than one-fourth fulfilled.

Katherine Anne Porter

Footnotes for Life