Just For Today Aug 3

[Chance]

August 3 Trusting People

"Many of us would have had nowhere else to go if we could not have trusted NA groups and members."

Basic Text, p.81

Trusting people is a risk. Human beings are notoriously forgetful, unreliable, and imperfect. Most of us come from backgrounds where betrayal and insensitivity among friends were common occurrences. Even our most reliable friends weren't very reliable. By the time we arrive at the doors of NA, most of us have hundreds of experiences bearing out our conviction that people are untrustworthy. Yet our recovery demands that we trust people. We are faced with this dilemma: People are not always trustworthy, yet we must trust them. How do we do that, given the evidence of our pasts?

First, we remind ourselves that the rules of active addiction don't apply in recovery. Most of our fellow members are doing their level best to live by the spiritual principles we learn in the program. Second, we remind ourselves that we aren't 100% reliable, either. We will surely disappoint someone in our lives, no matter how hard we try not to. Third, and most importantly, we realize that we need to trust our fellow members of NA. Our lives are at stake, and the only way we can stay clean is to trust these well-intentioned folks who, admittedly, aren't perfect.

Just for today: I will trust my fellow members. Though certainly not perfect, they are my best hope.

pg. 225

Just For Today Daily Meditation is the property of Narcotics Anonymous©

[SaTiT]

Thanks Vic.

it reminds me tho. It's a line from one of my favorite songs
Give me your love.

" trust in myself is something i just can't do...so how in the hell girl...
am I going to trust you?"lol

I had to work on trust a lot, a lot.
Learning how to trust myself that i won't pick up or use oneday at a time
was a begining of building trust for myself.

i don't know...something click inside of me after hearing it so much and attending
a lot of meetings.
"you can't give what you don't have"
So, i kinda put those two together and it expanded from there.
I learned how to love myself too in that process. But after doing that
i learned that I'm not as needie and I became more depending on my
HP to fill my voids and taking some responsibilites to love myself.

and the by product of that is..I'm not out to screw people.

[Gmoney]

Oh man!! This one REALLY hits home. I've struggled for so long with trusting people it's crazy. I guess that's why my "inner circle" is so small. I still take the risk of trusting others on occasion, but for the most part, I tend to not put too much faith in what people say - I focus more on what they do. Those who borrowed money and didn't pay me back can't ever get another dime from me. Those who stood me up and didn't offer an apology or explanation revealed a lack of consideration that cannot be ignored. I could go on and on...

The key for me is to learn from my experiences and develop the ability to gauge better who is trustworthy and who isn't. Sure, we as humans are flawed...that's a given. I think it's silly to expect otherwise, but to continually offer myself up to people who don't have good intentions is to play a part in my own injury. In treating others as I'd like to be treated, I have to always remember that some of us are sicker than others and the "benefit of doubt" is a benefit that needs to be earned (for me as well as others).