Codependent No More Workbook (23 page)
Read Codependent No More Workbook Online
Authors: Melody Beattie
I began my writing career one day when I was pregnant with Shane, my son who died. I was painting a room to get ready before his birth. Suddenly I remembered a dream I’d had since the age of five or six. I’d always wanted to be a writer. I loved writing stories and wanted to write all my life. How could I forget something I’d felt so strongly about? I looked up at the ceiling and said a prayer, “God, I don’t have the first idea about how to go about becoming a writer. I don’t have a college degree. I don’t have a clue if it’s your will for me. So if you want me to be a writer, you’re going to have to show me what to do, when to do it, and how.”
Within twenty-four hours, I had a job writing stories for a community newspaper. I received five dollars for each story. I prayed throughout my career. I meditated. I specifically turned my career over to God’s care.
Show me what you want me to write, and when you want me to write it
has been my writer’s prayer from the beginning. I also set specific goals. But after each list of goals, I’d write
Thy will be done.
My goal was to be a professional writer, to have a publishing contract before I wrote a manuscript, and to get paid for my work. From that day on, I had an assignment and was paid for everything I wrote.
While I believe in setting goals and encourage people to follow the dreams of their heart, it’s also important to ask ourselves why we want what we do. Is it to grab on to the big brass ring, or is it part of our path of service? I didn’t want to be a writer to be famous. I wanted to write so I could be the eyes and ears for the people in the community where I lived. I wanted to be of service by communicating to them in a way they could grasp and understand, because that’s how I liked ideas communicated to me.
I also worked more of the Twelve Steps on my career. More about that in the next and final lesson.
Activity
- Have you begun discovering and using your true powers as well as admitting your powerlessness? Have you turned the use of these powers, abilities, and gifts over to the care of your Higher Power?
- List your powers, abilities, gifts, skills, and talents. Also list how you use and express them. If you have trouble getting started, begin with any gifts or strengths people have told you that you have. Ask people who know you well what they see as your gifts, strengths, and skills. Then ask your Higher Power to reveal your strengths, powers, skills, assets, talents, and gifts to you in a way you can believe and understand.
- Sometimes our weaknesses and character defects can be turned over, and the flip side of them is a strength. We may be caretakers, but the strength is we’re good at helping others feel good about themselves.
- Go back to your childhood. Is there something you wanted to be when you were young? Were you good at something in school? What, and why did you stop doing it? Keep at this list all of your life. In the past years, I learned how to do three things that I never dreamt I’d be able to do. One was learning accounting skills
when the court appointed me conservator for my mother. I had to have a woman with a mathematics degree teach me how to do a financial balance sheet. It twisted my head in circles, but eventually I learned how. I ended up doing an excellent job, and the final account balanced to the penny. Now I’m learning how to build Web sites. I also got my license to skydive. I learned how to jump out of planes. Stay open and be willing to learn to do something new. Old dogs can learn new tricks, and this dog still hunts! Some of our life lessons are about spiritual growth. Sometimes our lesson is to learn to do something new and different, to stretch our mind beyond limits we’ve placed on ourselves. No matter what we’re learning, it takes time. We need to start where we’re at, and move forward from there. Don’t expect to start at the top. - Constantly set new written goals. Keep a fresh, updated goal list as long as you’re alive. This will help you create and maintain a life. Call it a wish list, goal list, whatever you want. There’s so much power in the written word. Write your goals, then let go of them. Keep your list in a private, sacred place. You’ll be surprised when you look back and see how many goals became realities and how many dreams came true.
Reaching the Mountaintop
“…acts of kindness are not kind
unless we feel good about ourselves, what we are doing,
and the person we are doing it for.”
—Codependent No More
Suggested reading: “What’s a Rescue?” in chapter 8, “Remove the Victim”
STEP TWELVE: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other co-dependents, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
—from the TWELVE STEPS OF CO-DEPENDENTS ANONYMOUS
I
shouldn’t need to hold your hand anymore to help you reach the top of the mountain. You’re almost there. You’ve done so much work. You’ve learned so much. Read through the Step at the beginning of this lesson. Can you identify and describe the three actions that this Step suggests we do? As you read the Step, you can substitute another word for the word codependents. We can use others, other parents of addicts, other spouses of alcoholics—whatever fits and works for us. We don’t have to make an issue of substituting this word if we’re attending a meeting, one that’s following the traditions. They’ll want to stick to their wording of this Step. But that doesn’t have to stop you from using the word or words you want to use quietly, in the privacy of your mind.
To disrupt the group by making an issue of how you’re going to do this Step likely won’t bring good results. By now, you should be able to trust yourself.
Let’s look at the actions requested by this Step. The first action is something that should relieve you. It’s passive. Well, not completely passive. It’s a gift you’ve received from all the hard work you’ve done on yourself and these Steps.
I had a two-part spiritual awakening while writing this book. One was that working these Steps is an enormous amount of work. But the second part of that awakening was that when we’re actually doing the work, we receive all the power and guidance we need to do it. Simple but not easy is another program saying that’s true.
The first action in this Step states that we will have had a spiritual awakening as a result of working these Steps. What that means will be unique to each of us, and it will happen to us. The second action is carrying the message to others. We don’t carry others by taking responsibility for them and their actions. We carry the message and let people carry themselves.
The third action is practicing the principles in these Steps in all areas of our life. That means we can apply these Steps in any area of our life that gets or feels out of control, from relationships to finances, to our job, to parenting, to remodeling our house. Anything is fair game and will respond to the application of these principles.
These principles will become our living skills for the rest of our lives if we choose to let them. That choice is up to us.
Activity
- Keep track of your spiritual awakening or awakenings, those times when you feel God in your life so strongly you can’t deny it. Write about it as much as you can so when you’re feeling alone or depressed, you can read it and reassure yourself that you’re not alone. You may define a spiritual experience as seeing progress or changes in yourself. The first time you respond to a fearful situation by evaluating what you can control and what you can’t, doing what you can, then letting go of the rest, is definitely a spiritual experience for any of us who identify as codependents. But many other events may qualify too. That’s your choice, and the result of evaluating your daily experiences.
- Keep track of how you carry the message to others, including the message you carry, to whom, how you do it, what the results are, and how you feel about what you’ve done. We’ll discuss that in greater detail later.
- Keep track of other areas of your life where you work these Steps and the results you experience from doing that. That means work the Steps by changing the wording in your head, on specific areas of your life as problems and challenges spin out of control or begin to cause you pain. By now you should be assured that these principles or Steps really work.
“I don’t know why—maybe God knew I needed it to happen this way—but I’m a Double Winner. I didn’t have my spiritual awakenings as a result of working these Steps. I had them first. Each was so profound I couldn’t deny the importance of moving forward and working these Steps,” said one Double Winner.
The Big Book, or Alcoholics Anonymous, states that for some the experience of spiritual awakening may happen gradually over a period of time. For others, it may manifest in one loud, delightful spiritual explosion.
I can’t predict the nature of your spiritual experience. However, you will awaken spiritually by hurling yourself into working these Steps with all the passion and enthusiasm you have used to control another person or to take care of
others. Whether it’s at the beginning or somewhere between working Steps One through Twelve, you will awaken spiritually.