Snips

Part of owning our power is learning to communicate clearly, directly, and assertively. We don't have to beat around the bush in our conversations to control the reactions of others. Guilt-producing comments only produce guilt. We don't have to fix or take care of people with our words; we can't expect others to take care of us with words either. We can settle for being heard and accepted. And we can respectfully listen to what others have to say.Hinting at what we need doesn't work. Others can't read our mind, and they're likely to resent our indirectness. The best way to take responsibility for what we want is to ask for it directly. And, we can insist on directness from others. If we need to say no to a particular request, we can. If someone is trying to control us through a conversation, we can refuse to participate.Acknowledging feelings such as disappointment or anger directly, instead of making others guess at our feelings or having our feelings come out in other ways, is part of responsible communication. If we don't know what we want to say, we can say that too.We can ask for information and use words to forge a closer connection, but we don't have to take people around the block with our conversations. We don't have to listen to, or participate in, nonsense. We can say what we want and stop when we're done.Today, I will communicate clearly and directly in my conversations with others. I will strive to avoid manipulative, indirect, or guilt producing statements. I can be tactful and gentle whenever possible. And I can be assertive if necessary. Melody Beattie ©

Some of us treat life like a spectator sport, never budging from the sidelines. As children of God, we are destined for something greater. You are the one through whom God can love and create magnificence. Step onto the field of your own life. Mary Manin Morrissey

AA Thought of the Day / Resentment is the "number one" offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. / AA, p. 64

For all its power, love cannot flow through an individual riddled with and crippled by chronic suppression. Every act of emotional suppression contracts our inflowing emotional energy and thus diminishes our experience of energy-expanding love. The more we condition our children to emotional suppression, the less love-able they become. The more we, as adults, sustain our personal patterns of suppression, the less we can feel love, the less we can teach love to our children, and the less likely they will be to teach love to their children. And so it happens that most people come to experience love as rare and difficult, rather than omnipresent and easy. Michael Sky

What we've learned is that if a relationship isn't working out, it is not a bad thing or a failure as our society likes to label it. Â It just may be that you have learned what it is that you were supposed to learn by being in a relationship with that other person and it's time to move on to other "lessons." Susie and Otto Collins

Life is like a butterfly... The harder we chase it the more it eludes us... The more we cling and hold on, the more we stifle her beauty and splendor... True freedom is onlyseen through the release of what we hold so tightly. Mark Nepo

We see ourselves as broken, and then set out on a long and frustrating journey to fill our emptiness. But it is not fixing that we require; it is awakening. Alan Cohen

"It is only when we are ready to embrace the possibility that we might be tomorrow who we were not today that true intimacy becomes attractive." Marianne Williamson

"Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future." Deepak Chopra