Victories

"...Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help..." ~ Alcoholics Anonymous - from the Third Step Prayer

On the list of tools for helping to turn self attack around, keep on the road to recovery and wellness, I am adding toward the top: List Victories.

We hear often enough about gratitudes and successes and keeping track of things we do well. Always good to have perspective, and to take the time to note our perseverance, persistence and progress. To keep perspective and to remember the good in our lives. But I think victories are a category all their own.

Listing victories means that we are aware of our own internal challenges, and at least to some degree, our character defects, shortcomings, fears and faulty beliefs. Sometimes folks use these awarenesses as excuses to keep swimming in addiction or disorder. And sometimes people use them to assure hopelessness, despair and failure.

But then there are the folks who use them as stepping stones to progress. And here's where I think the victory part comes in. When we know what it is inside our own psyches that trips us up, and we make a different choice, take a new tact, or follow an alternative path. For this, we can declare victory.

And keeping track of our victories can help mend broken hearts, bruised egos and battered souls. If we can be both humble and honest about our defects and our victories over them, we can go a long way toward feeling better, being better and having better.