Day 20…Off my chest

April 2, 2008
Weight: 238
Walk: About 1 mile, 20’00”
Location: Home: Neighborhood

I again built my walk today into dropping the kids off at school, but cut it short because the wind made it quite cold even though the sun was out. It was nice to feel the wind in a way because it smells so clean when it has a bit of a chill in it.

I am feeling better today because I had an appointment with my therapist yesterday and explained that I wasn’t feeling like I had really completed my 5th step and that my sponsor had kind of skimmed it. He suggested I speak to my sponsor about it and I did. I ended up calling my sponsor and actually going to see him last night and talking to him about how I was feeling and we went over my inventory more thoroughly. I think he was concerned that I would try to take on all of my defects at once and that was the reason for focusing on just a few items in our earlier meeting. I can see the reasoning in that because I do have a tendency to take on everything at once and overwhelm myself (and then getting nothing done), but I really felt that even though I can’t tackle all of these things at once I did need to get it all out.

So during my walk I thought about acceptance of my defects. In order to move on and start to better myself I first must accept that I have an inflated ego and have been a selfish, resentful, jealous, procrastinating, obsessive person and it has effected how I see myself and also how I relate to others. I feel that doing steps 4 & 5 have helped me to clearly define some of my defects and also patterns that I have had in my life. Some of these patterns and behaviors are learned and are based on survival skills (as my therapist has pointed out), but that doesn’t mean I have to settle for them. I have the ability to reach the potential that I know is within me and the ability to stop settling for getting by. I have felt this way for a long time, but I think that I really needed to go through this process to truly accept where I am and am hopeful that it will now allow me to create a path to growth, improvement and starting to tap into the potential that is within me to allow me to heel myself so that I will be able to make myself available to help others.

This is not an easy task, but it is time for me to stop looking for easy solutions and to work for what I want.