Practice These Principles In All Our Affairs

One of the recovery blogs I read regularly (http://al-anonfilter.blogspot.com/) made a good post recently about patience and how we learn to use it. I started to think about using the slogans in this context. How do these simple saying help us in all our affairs—starting with any hypothetical situation where we may need to find patience?

For me, patience comes down to Progress Not Perfection. Yes, I may want a million things to be different but if I can start with fixing just one of those things I feel a little better. Step by step.

Also, the slogan Easy Does It works in many cases. I try to take on so much and want everything done NOW. But again, it's a step by step progression that I can't push myself too quickly through. Relax. Easy Does It.

I also try to remember that when I am being impatient, it's usually then that I'm ignoring what needs to happen in the now and thinking too much about the future. Steven Sadleir said in The Awakening, “Impatience is ignorance of what is supposed to be happening in the present moment.” I remember when I first came to the rooms I wanted to jump into the shares right away. I didn't want to waste time with the secretarial stuff, treasury stuff, old business, new business and all the boring duties of the group. Eventually though, I came to understand that without getting these things done and without going through what I thought of as "the boring stuff" we wouldn't have a meeting in the first place. First Things First.

One Day at a Time is also a great one to use to find patience. So many times when we are impatient in life we are living through the future and not grounded in the present moment. Spiritual awakening is often just brought about by remembering to stay in the NOW. One Day At A Time reminds me to stay where my feet are and even if things are not happening for me right now, right away to be comfortable in the present moment anyway. Each second that we are given is a gift from our Higher Power. We need to let go of the control of the moment and remember to enjoy that gift.

Let Go And Let God helps to remember that we need to let go of what we WANT to be happening and accept was IS happening. Patience comes about through a lot of acceptance. Our Higher Power is so much smarter than we are and it doesn't much care about what we want—it usually focuses more on what we need and what needs to be happening.

It says in the Just For Today poem “Just for today: I will have a program. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. I will save myself from two pests: Hurry and Indecision’s.” This goes to show how important our program is in dealing with the need for things to hurry up. If we take the program day by day and live through problems just for today eventually we’ll find that what we waited for and wanted to happen so badly is already in our past. Life passes just that quickly. Blink and you just might miss it.