A mission in life

Last night during my face to face meeting, a guy who has been coming to the meetings about the same amount of time I have shared that during a recent visit to his therapist he talked about all his addictions -- sex/love, food, work, money. He told the therapist when he is finished dealing with the SLA, he'll start on the next thing. The therapist told him it would be more wise to look at the underlying solution to all the problems. That solution was .. "Take care of yourself."

When I was managing editor of a community newspaper a few years ago, our newsroom made a committment that no matter what the competition was doing, our mission was to be that community's "hometown newspaper." Every decision we made surrounded that mission. We often had to pause and think, does this promote the mission? That pause helped us to evaluate the decision better and keep our committment to our community.

I have decided that my mission in recovery and in growth will be "Take Care of Yourself." As I am faced with decisions, however big or small they are, this will be my focus, my central point. Sometimes I will have to pause to evaluate the right choice, other times I may act before I think or pray enough and end up falling on my face, but over time the instinct will develop. The instinct to do something I have never done before -- take care of myself.