Today's thought from Hazelden is:

What I said never changed anybody; what they understood did.
--Paul. P.

How often have we given our all to change somebody else? How frantically have we tried to force a loved one to see the light? How hopelessly have we watched a destructive pattern - perhaps a pattern we know well from personal experience - bring terrible pain to someone who is dear to us?

All of us have.

We would do anything to save the people we love. In our desperation, we imagine that if we say just the right words in just the right way, our loved ones will understand.

If change happens, we think our efforts have succeeded.

If change doesn't happen, we think our efforts have failed. But neither is true. Even our best efforts don't have the power to change someone else. Nor do we have that responsibility. People are only persuaded by what they understand. And they, as we, can understand a deeper truth only when it is their time to grow toward deeper understanding. Not before.

Today, I will focus on changing myself and entrust those I love to the Higher Power who loves them even more than I do.

My life was saved by a pronoun
When I first arrived in this wonderful little corner of the web I had just lost my wife to addiction, my business to the economy, my health to a genetic condition, and my hope to despair. I had been within seconds of taking my own life and was desperately searching for a reason to live.

Many people in these forums took the time to tell me their personal experience. They shared how _they_ had felt, what actions _they_ took and how _their_ lives had improved. It was those who told me how they had done it who made the difference in my life.

Now I have a happy little condo, lots of new friends, stumbling along in a new career, and am even making a fool of myself flirting with a charming young lady I'd like to date.

I learned a lesson, a long time ago, from an old man by the name of Chuck C. He told me that the way to find people in the program who were less sick than I, the people I should listen to and stay close to, was to count their pronouns. He told me that I should listen to them speak (this was in the days before the web) and count how many times they used the pronoun _I_ instead of any other pronoun. If those people said "I felt / learned / did / changed " then those people had a lesson for me to learn. He told me that those people who said "you should...", "he did...", "they need..." were not speaking from their personal experience, but were trying to force me to learn lessons that were not mine to learn.