Self Improvement • Creating Peace Through Forgiveness

Dealing with Fear

May 15, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning to each of you! May you have a calm and peaceful day, filled with joy! Pardon my silence for the past few days… I have been recuperating. The search term I liked today is “dealing with fear,” and so, will discuss fear today.

We all experience fear It is a normal human emotion. It warns us of danger so we can go into the fight or flight mode. That is its purpose and it does its job well, or you wouldn’t be here today. Yet, does it get out of hand, preventing you from moving forward in your life? Do you find yourself not getting things done because you are in fear?

Ah, if you said yes, then you are among the company of many, for many of us allow fear to stop us from doing many things, such as following our dreams, for example. Is that you? Can’t seem to get your dream off the ground because of your fear? There is way through it and here it is.

There are three steps you can take to get through fear. The thing is, when you’re in fear, you don’t breathe. It is a typical physiological occurrence, as oxygen goes to the parts of the brain necessary for fight or flight. But that keeps you stuck, so there are the three things I have referred to that will allow you to get unstuck, able to move forward through the fear.

The first thing is to breathe, ask for help, and take action. Breathe, ask for help, take action… That’s the first step. The second step is to acknowledge you are in the fear state. Feel it, recognize it, acknowledge it. Then, the third step is to choose whether to stay in that state or to move forward to something new.

It doesn’t work to say “Move on!” “Get past your fear!” It doesn’t work that way. Instead, you must recognize your fear-state and take action to get unstuck from it by doing what I outlined above.

By doing this, getting unstuck, you will find that you move forward to fulfill your dreams, your desires. The next time you are in fear, try this exercise and let us know how it worked for you.

If you find it doesn’t, then ask for help by calling to schedule a free 30-minute discovery call with me. In this call, we will explore the factors behind your fear. You may decide to work with me in my coaching program to uncover more about your fear. I can be reached at 415-883-8325 or carolyncjjones@yahoo.com. There is help out there; all you need to do is ask and it shall be given.

Have a great day!

How Sobriety Benefits Relationships

May 12, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hello, all! Happy morning to each of you and I hope this is an excellent day for you! The search term I liked has to do with the effect that sobriety has on relationships, and I will address that today.

In sobriety, one of the biggest benefits is the ability to get honest with yourself and with others. In this case, honesty refers to letting others know who you really are by sharing your true feelings in a kind way. Yet, even more importantly, honesty refers to looking at your behavior and owning it when it is less than stellar, i.e., when it is negative.

The ability to own your negative behavior will take you far in relationships. Instead of blaming another for things that got uncomfortable or went bad, you will learn to see what role you played in the event, and will be able to apologize for anything you did that was unkind or mean-spirited.

This is where conducting a self-appraisal is crucial. When you are in a relationship, whether it is romanic or not, I invite you to learn to keep an eye on your behavior and when you start the ball rolling in an argument, for example, or you do something that hurts the other, then take the higher road. Accept responsibility for your behavior and apologize.

Sobriety allows you to apologize without groveling or getting defensive, but merely, to humbly admit to your less-than-positive deed and to apologize for it. I can’t tell you how freeing it is to admit to your negative behavior. It sounds like it would be horrible to do, yet, it is liberating. And it makes for many fewer arguments.

If you like what I say in this blog or others, I invite you to check out my coaching services under the “Services” tab here on my website. I offer free 30-minute discovery sessions for us to discuss what issues you are struggling with, and to relay how we could continue to work together. Simply call me at 415-883-8325.

Being honest as I have described it is the biggest benefit I see to how sobriety benefits relationships. What do you see as the biggest benefit that sobriety has on them? I invite you to leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: being honest, getting sober, honesty, living sober, relationships, Sober Living, sobriety

Are Inner Strength and Spirituality the Same Thing?

May 10, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning to each of you and welcome to another day! May it be a great one for you! I had an interesting search term this morning. It was “are inner strength and spirituality the same thing?” I want to speak to this today.

Spirituality is defined by Webster as being of spiritual nature and spiritual is defined as of the soul or spirit, sacred, devotional. It does not need to be connected to religion or the church to be considered spiritual. For example, I consider myself very spiritual, believing in a higher power that guides all that is, but I do not adhere to or practice any religion.

Inner strength I would describe as the strength of character, the strength that comes from within me to sustain a peaceful existence. I see, or consider, that my spirituality enhances and adds to my inner strength. When I am not feeling strong within, I pray to my higher power and I receive inner strength.

Given the way I am defining these two terms, spirituality and inner strength, I see them as two separate and distinct things, yet intertwined. I think that people who practice some form of spirituality have more inner strength, as they have more faith upon which to draw.

There are my thoughts on spirituality and inner strength. What are your thoughts on these? Are they the same or distinct? I invite you to leave a comment and let us know.

I want to let you know that I have a new video on my home page about my new free 3-module video course on finding inner peace through forgiveness. The video course consists of three tips on how to forgive. If you are struggling with lack of inner peace, head on over and get the videos. I believe they will benefit you for the rest of your life.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: Carolyn CJ Jones, finding inner peace, forgiveness, how to find forgiveness, how to find inner peace, how to forgive, inner peace, inner strength, spiritual, spiritual journey, spirituality

The Challenges of Forgiveness

May 9, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, all! I hope this is a beautiful day for each of you. Today, I liked the search term, “the challenges of forgiveness,” and will address this in today’s post. Let’s jump right in.

Many people are challenged with forgiveness because they think it means they are condoning what happened, that they are saying it was okay. Yet, this is not the case. When you show forgiveness, you are not saying it was okay; you are not condoning what happened. You are merely clearing your heart so you can free yourself from the chains of anger and resentment. You are releasing your anger.

The thing about forgiveness is, once you reach it, you discover the most incredible peace and freedom you have ever experienced. That is your “reward,” the goal toward which you are working.

To get to forgiveness, look at the person who harmed you as an emotionally wounded human being, with wounds far greater than you can comprehend. Once you see them as wounded, it is possible to see them with compassion. From compassion flows forgiveness.

Another challenge people have when it comes to forgiveness is recognizing that they have a part in it all. Sometimes, you have gotten the ball rolling by hurting someone, and they reacted, leaving you angry at their response and unable to forgive.

In situations like this, it is necessary to take an honest look at yourself and realize you started the whole thing, and you need to release your anger, forgive, and possibly apologize for the original offense. It takes humility and honesty to deal with these situations, but again, the rewards are great peace and freedom.

If you are having difficulty forgiving someone and are tied in knots over it, I invite you to call me to discuss my coaching program, which is designed to guide you through the process of forgiveness. You can reach me at 415-883-8325 or carolyncjjones@yahoo.com. My specialty is forgiveness, assisting with anger release.

How are you challenged by forgiveness? If I haven’t touched on your challenge, I invite you to leave a comment and share your it with us.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: compassion, forgive, forgiveness, how to forgive

What Is Behind Our Harsh Judgment of Others?

May 8, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning to each of you! I hope for you the day is wonderful! This morning, there was a query asking “why do people judge others so harshly?” I am going to talk about this and word it a bit differently, so it is What is Behind Harsh Judgment of Others?

I think when we display harsh judgment, we are feeling insecure and small ourselves. In an effort to build ourselves up, perhaps, we tear down another, we show harsh judgment. We are intolerant of another’s differences, and strive to put them down to make our own views more justified, and in order to justify ourselves, we judge harshly.

The result of our harsh judgment of another is it kills their spirit. It beats them down and discourages them from shining their light.

The other problem with harsh judgment is how we turn upon ourselves with it. We are so harsh in our self-judgment that we go around with negative self-talk. This squashes our spirit, our ability to let our light shine, and it’s just not necessary. So, what is the solution?

The elixir for harsh judgment is developing tolerance and kindness. If we are tolerant of another, as long as s/he is not being harmful to themselves or another, what does it matter if their behavior or beliefs are different than ours? Think of another’s differences as adding richness to the fabric of life.

In a similar fashion, we need to be tolerant and kind to ourselves, allowing ourselves to have our quirks, our differences. If we are not being harmful to ourselves or another, our differences also add to the fabric of life. Our quirks are who we are. Let that shine and bring more joy, more diversity to our lives and the lives of others.

Look at your harsh judgment of another or yourself and then look and see if you are feeling insignificant or insecure. If you are, do something to get past that so you can stop with the harsh judgment. It serves no one.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: harsh judgment, having judgment of others, judge, judgment

What Is Honesty?

May 2, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning and welcome to another wonderful day! Today’s three-time search term is “what is honesty?” and I will address that today.

In sobriety, I learned about honesty and it expanded my belief and understanding of it. Yes, it’s about not stealing, and it’s more than that for all of us. It includes how you show up in the world to others and to yourself.

For example, showing honesty also means being honest about your actions and behaviors. Many of us do not look honestly at our actions and behaviors, and we blame others for what is rightfully our issue. Especially when there is a controversy, we blame another for things that went wrong, when we refuse to look at what part we played in the altercation. It always takes two…

So, in this case, what is honesty? Well, it is owning your bad behavior. Honesty is admitting that you did a bad deed, or gossiped about someone, thereby smashing their spirit, for example. But again, the biggest offender of being honest is when you blame another before you look at what you brought to the disagreement. Let’s look at blaming others in more detail.

I spent 32 years blaming my parents for my emotional woes from my childhood wounds, but never once did I think of accepting responsibility for my feelings, being responsible for healing my own wounds. Once I learned that it was my job to heal myself, my life took off in a glorious direction.

Well, it wasn’t glorious at first; it was extremely painful. Yet, after looking squarely at my hurts, my wounds, it began to get glorious as I healed from one wound after another. It took learning to talk to myself in a positive light, learning that most of what I had been told was a lie, my parents’ own wounds talking to me. I began to realize I was not the person that they told me I was. This realization brought me much joy and happiness… as well as peace.

I invite you to stop blaming others for deeds done, and to look at yourself to determine how you can heal from what was told or done to you. That does not mean you ignore what was said or done… you are merely going through and past that to a place of higher “being” about it all. You are setting the stage for forgiveness.

I invite you to own your bad behavior and apologize when it’s appropriate. Be humble, not ashamed. Realize you are a human being who makes mistakes and admit to them. When you “come clean” with another person, their feelings for you will most likely soften. They will most always accept your apology and they also often then talk about what they brought to the incident, where they displayed bad behavior. Usually in these instances, showing up with honesty will lead to healing between you and the other person.

If you have difficulty going through this process, that’s where I can come in with my coaching services. These are the very type of situations I do well with… identifying how to get past blaming, how to own behavior, how to display honesty. If you are stuck at this point, feel free to contact me at 415-883-8325 and we can discuss how I might be of assistance to you, how we can work together to bring you relief.

I want you to have peace, you see, and this is one way to find it… by learning what is honesty…

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: being honest, forgiveness, honest, honesty, how to find peace, how to forgive, inner peace, peace, what is honesty

Gratitude For Yet Another Day

May 1, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning to everyone! Welcome to my blog! The search term I have chosen today has to do with gratitude… gratitude for yet another day.

I just spoke with my friend in Denver, where they are getting snow in blizzard-like conditions. And I am here, north of San Francisco, where it has dawned yet another beautiful and sunny day. I am so grateful for my life and where I live today. How about you?

For what in your life are you grateful? What is lighting you up today? Is it your physical surroundings, the presence of family and friends in your life, the things you are able to do with your life? What is it that brings you gratitude? Leave a comment and share your gratitude with us. Maybe that one thing you share will spark someone who is having difficulty being grateful into recognizing and appreciating the thing in their life for which they can be grateful.

Finding it difficult to be grateful for anything? Consider gratitude for the fact that you can see, can smell, can hear. Take a basic physical ability that you have and express gratitude for it. Consider one of your positive traits (we all have them) and express gratitude for that. Find one thing to be grateful for and the tone of your entire day will change.

If you like the attitude I display and want more of it, be aware that I offer the coaching program Opening the Gates of Your Heart: Finding Peace and Happiness Through Forgiveness. In the sessions of the program, I offer a safe, nurturing and non-judgmental atmosphere in which you can discover the gates of your heart. We work together to clear those gates, so you can open them and feel peace, happiness, and freedom.

You are eligible to receive a free, 30-minute discovery session, in which we will discover together the gates of your heart and what keeps you from peace and happiness. Then I will share with you how we can continue to work together, if what I say resonates with you. Simply call 415-883-8325 to schedule your free discovery session today. Let’s get started so you can learn to live with gates flung wide!

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: being grateful, grateful, gratitude

The Art of Gentleness

April 26, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning and hello to each of you after a few days of silence. I have been flying to workshops during that time, so I apologize for the lack of posts. Today’s search term I resonated with was “the art of gentleness.” I think in our haste to get things done, we forget to show gentleness.

In fact, it is more that we forget, or get too busy, to “be” gentleness. It’s a state of being, gentleness is. It occurs when we are working from, operating from, our heart. It flows naturally when we are “in” our heart.

How do you get into that state of gentleness? Well, it starts with having a good feeling about yourself, holding yourself in your heart with good feelings. When you are feeling good about yourself, you can generally feel good about others, as well. When in this space, you feel softness for others, and you can express your gentleness through such acts as acknowledging another, complimenting someone, or offering comfort.

It all starts with a good feeling about yourself. To get to a good place when thinking about yourself, list out all your positive attributes, your positive qualities. Then, consider the past month and write down, list out, all the positive and kind things you did during that time period. Include the kindness you showed yourself. Let yourself “be” with those things you listed until you realize your goodness.

The thing about gentleness is that, often you can show it to another, but you don’t to yourself. Maybe you don’t think to offer yourself gentleness, or perhaps you feel you are not worthy of it. The anecdote to these two things is to first take the time to think about it, and resolve to think about it for yourself more often.

If you don’t offer yourself gentleness because you feel unworthy, stop. Offer yourself compassion for that wounded person you are, for in my belief, you must be wounded if you do not feel yourself worthy. We are each worthy. You are worthy simply because you are a human being on this earth. Look at your lists again of your positive traits and of all the good things you’ve done in the past month and allow yourself to consider your worthiness.

Once that settles within you, then feel some gentleness for yourself. Feel a soft spot in your heart for yourself. Remember to stop and do this several times a day until it becomes a habit. Calendar it if you must, just remember to do it. Soon, it will flow naturally.

How do you get to a space of gentleness? How do you express gentleness to yourself? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: gentle, Gentleness, how to show gentleness, the art of gentleness

Using Gratitude in Dealing with Despair

April 22, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, everyone! It is the wee, wee hours of the morning and I popped awake, so here I am. I wish for you each an insightful day, filled with many moments of gratitude.

Face of Despair

I wanted to address the person who searched for “dealing with despair.” Let me begin by saying that I know what it is like to live in despair, to be filled with it. When I was about five years into sobriety, I was so filled with despair that I was praying to die. I knew of no other way to deal with my despair than to exit this world. I was like the image to the left – wailing, covering up my eyes and just wailing.

I remember those days, and want to say I know how debilitating they are. My heart goes out to those of you who are feeling despair. I also want to say that there is a way out of it; there is something you can do to minimize your despair.

I am not one for saying “fake it till you make it,” or “act as if.” I believe that not being with what you are feeling is detrimental. However, there comes a time when you can make the choice to move through your despair to something else.

To get out of despair, using gratitude is a powerful thing. You may not be grateful for anything in your life, nor see how you can be. Yet, gratitude is a great anecdote for despair.

Try this… be grateful for at least one thing today. Is it your sight, your hearing for which you are grateful? Are you grateful that you can see the beautiful flower in that garden, or hear the birds sing? Whatever that one thing is that you are grateful for, focus on it until you are really, truly appreciative that it is in your life.

Can’t find anything for which to be grateful? Use my example; be grateful for your sight, your hearing. Take your attention off of your despair and focus on the gratitude you have for that one thing. Allow that feeling to consume you throughout the day. Revisit it again and again.

Helping others to see their world with new eyes is what I do in my coaching practice. If you are having difficulty being grateful and would like some assistance to get there, please call for a free 30 minute discovery session. We will discover together what you want from your life and the blocks you are experiencing that keep you from getting what you want. Simply call me at 415-883-8325.

As you go through the day, make an effort to find gratitude for one thing, just one, and focus on it throughout the day. Use gratitude to deal with your despair and let us know how that went for you by leaving a comment.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: being grateful, dealing with despair, despair, grateful, gratitude

A Life of Serenity

April 20, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hello and good morning to all! Today, I liked the search term “life of serenity,” and will talk about serenity.

Serenity is defined by Webster as a state of being serene, and serene is defined as being untroubled, calm , tranquil, peaceful, and quiet. As someone who lives her life in serenity, I can honestly say it is a marvelous place to be.

How can you live a life of serenity? For me, it was a matter of cleaning up the past, visiting the past as a means of moving forward in the present. Once I did this, I was able to heal from the wounds I received during my lifetime, and became able to focus on what was happening in my life in the moment.

You, too, can do this. Re-visit the past, not to dwell, blame, or pity yourself, but as a way to understand your wounds more fully so you can begin to heal from them, as a means of understanding your inner self in current day.

Examine your actions and behaviors to ferret out those times when you were unkind to others, intolerant of them, times when your behavior was less than giving. Look not only at how you treat others; look at how you treat yourself, as well. Resolve to treat others and yourself with more kindness, gentleness, and tolerance.

Apologize to others, and to yourself, for any harm caused, and this includes spiritual harm. For example, gossip is a form of character assignation that you will wish to curb in order to live a life of kindness and serenity. You will find more serenity when you cease gossiping and focus on yourself instead. By this I mean, focusing on your behaviors and actions to keep them “clean.”

Learn to be grateful for everything around and within you, and you will begin to feel more serenity. Find a force greater than yourself to believe in, to turn to in times of trouble and in times of appreciation and thankfulness.

I cannot say enough how glorious it is to live in serenity; you will find great peace, happiness, and freedom when you discover it. Simply try the things I have suggested and see if you are able to have a life of serenity. Leave a comment to let us know how you discovered serenity in your life.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: happiness, how to be happy, how to find peace, inner freedom, inner peace, peace, personal freedom, serene, serenity

Move Forward From the Past

April 19, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hello rather late in the morning. In fact, good afternoon, as it is 12:30 pm where I am in Novato, California. I hope you are each having a great day. The search term “moving forward from the past” intrigued me, and I wish to say a few things about this.

There is no doubt that our past forms who we are in the moment, and that we cannot change our past. However, we can change how we view the past. For example, I had a rough childhood; it was abusive both physically and verbally. I spent my adult life until the age of 48 drinking heavily over it. The alcohol fueled my rage, self-pity, and blame of my parents. I learned quickly how to play the victim and I played that role very well.

Then, I met my match with alcohol and ended up seeking sobriety. During the course of that life-style, the sober one, I learned to look at myself and my behaviors. I learned how to forgive, and I have since forgiven my parents.

My point is, I learned to look at my past as something from which I can gain strength and healing, and which I can offer my recovery from to others so that they, too, can gain strength and healing.

I have found that it is important to visit the past as a way to move forward in the present. Once we revisit the past for our current growth, it is best thought of differently, as something which happened to us so we can grow and then, share that growth with others, in order to be of service to them.

When you move forward from the past, you will feel a peace and freedom like you have never felt. You will feel relief from the chains that bind you. If you are drinking to numb your pain, sobriety can help you in your growth. I know I could not hear those words when I was at the height of my drinking; perhaps you will be able to. I wish that for you, at any rate, so you can avoid years, possibly, of misery.

What do you do in your life to move forward from the past? I am hopeful for you that you use the past so you can move forward in the present. May it bring you peace when you move forward from the past.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: forviveness, getting sober, how can I quit drinking, how to find peace, how to get sober, inner peace, mmoving forward from the past, move forward from the past, peace, sobriety

7 – Day Forgiveness Challenge – Day 7

April 12, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hello, and welcome to our final day of the forgiveness challenge! I am so glad you have come back to see how to complete the process of creating forgiveness in your life! Today I will talk about the one practice that will take you there… to forgiveness.

Yesterday, you wrote about looking at the whole situation from a 180 degree shift in attitude, looking with new eyes. This is necessary for you to create the forgiveness you desire. Remember, forgiving has nothing to do with the other person – it is all about you and making peace inside of yourself.

Having said that, let me relay a story… Soon after I became sober, about two years into it, I was doing a self-apraisal, focusing on the men in my life and how I had contributed to each relationship’s demise. I realized I used to get drunk and yell at them that they were worthless, would never amount to anything.

I was horrified to remember this! I had denigrated their soul and the thing is, I didn’t mean it about them, I meant it about me! Soon after that realization came a question. If I had said that these men were worthless and I didm;t mean it about them, I meant it about myself, was it possible that my father didn’t mean I was worthless and would never amount to anything when he said it all those years, he meant it about himself?

The answer was yes. It is possible, quite possible. Suddenly I saw him as a fellow human being, struggling with his own demons, his own wounds. I began to feel compassion for him, a wounded soul.

After about a year’s time, with continual returning to that compassion, I forgave him his transgressions. I didm’t condone what he did, still don’t, yet, I forgave him, recognizing he was dealing with what he, himself, had been told while he was growing up.

So, the final part of creating forgiveness in your life is to see the other person as a wounded human being who made a mistake. See them with compassion; hold them with compassion. Soon, that feeling of compassion will evolve into forgiveness. It will just happen one day, very quietly and with no effort on your part.

This concludes our 7- day forgiveness challenge. I hope you have found it useful. If you are struggling with any piece of it, then I recommend you call to speak with me to get clarity, and comfort from that clarity. Call 415-883-8325 for a free, 30 minute discovery session.

My hat is off to you for the forgiveness you have created May you have peace.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: compassion, forgiveness, how to find peace, how to forgive, peace

7 – Day Forgiveness Challenge – Day 6

April 11, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hello to all who are joining in on the forgiveness challenge! You are awesome for hanging in there! How did yesterday go, writing your not-so-hot behaviors and actions down?

Today, we’re going to look at a key factor in your ability to get to a place of forgiveness. Let’s jump right in…

Now that you have identified that your gripe is legit, i.e., that you don’t do the same things for which you are angry, and you didn’t get the ball rolling, it is time to look with new eyes, from 180 degrees.

Consider the ways in which your resentment has taken its toll on your life emotionally and physically. You may be trying to cope with damaged relationships, a divorce, etc., because of your resentments. So, the emotional toll for you may well be poor relations with others. I would suspect you are stressed over the issue and revisit it frequently, which leads you to great angst.

Physically, you are most likely affected by constriction of every part of your body, by a sour stomach, by clenching your gut, your jaw. There are many ways our emotional stress manifests physically. What is true for you?

You know, medical research has shown that being in a state of forgiveness leads to decreased risk of heart disease, heart attack, and cancer. Obviously, the opposite is true, and that’s something to consider as you look from a 180 degree perspective.

So, now look 180 degrees from where you are currently looking. Consider that you want peace in your life… peace for yourself… peace for your heart. Remember, you forgive for yourself, not the other person. Is it worth the emotional and physical toll your resentment is taking? It never is, in my experience.

Here are the next steps to take. It involves some writing…

List out the ways in which you are consumed by your resentment; how does it affect you in your daily life – your work life, your home life, your life out in the world?
Consider that you want something different for yourself. Consider that you want to have emotional peace, no matter what it takes.
List out the things you want to be different in your life, or, if you have a need to hang on to the resentment, write about it and why that might be.
Consider the possibility that you can leave this misery and create a new story.
Visualize yourself in that story. How does it feel? What do you like about it? Write about it. If you cannot see yourself in a positive story, know it will come in time.
Spend some time and energy becoming willing to hear about how to devise a new story. Write about any resistance.

Sit with this desire to make changes in your life. It will resonate with you and feel good. Tomorrow, I shall talk about the one way to create forgiveness, as we wrap up the challenge. If you are struggling with this, I offer my coaching services to you so we can work together to get you unstuck. Simply call me at 415-883-8325 to schedule a session.

I’ll see you tomorrow. I wish you well in the writing exercise.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: anger, forgiveness, how to forgive, how to manage resentment, resentment

7 – Day Forgiveness Challenge – Day 5

April 10, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning to each of you and welcome back to our forgiveness challenge! Today, you will look at your not-so-good actions, behaviors, and qualities. This is necessary in order to determine if you did something to get the ball rolling in the resentment.

Got ready to make two more lists. First, list out your not-so-hot qualities, the things upon which you want to improve. Be honest with yourself. Know that we each have a side of undesirable traits.

Then, consider the past week. List out all the not-so-desireable things you said and did. See all of this objectively, without getting upset over your areas that need improvement. In fact, look at what you identify as just that – areas needed for improvement.

Now, think about the person with whom you have a resentment, an anger, and consider the following two points:

Do you do the same thing that the other person did for which you are angry? In other words, are you angry about something that you, yourself, do? If you can honestly say yes, then you need to drop your resentment and realize that you and the other person are fallible human beings. It helps to laugh at yourself…
Explore the beginning of the hurt which you resent. Then consider, did you get the ball ruling? Did you say or do something that was not-so-nice, to which the other person reacted like any normal human being would, in a predictable fashion? If you said or did something mean to John and John reacted by doing something which then hurt you, recognize that you got the ball rolling; you started the whole disagreement. In this case, it is time to become humble. See yourself as a fallible human being. Drop your anger and resentment and apologize, if needed. Don’t forget to give forgiveness to yourself.

This part of the process can be difficult and you may be tempted to brush off your negative behavior. I would caution you not to do that, and urge you to look with honesty and humility at your behavior. If you are having difficulty conducting this part of the self-appraisal, or in looking at the role you played in the whole resentment, I am available for coaching you through it. That’s what I do. Simply call me at 415-883-9325 to schedule a time to talk. Or, email me at carolyncjjones@yahoo.com.

I wish you well with this part of the forgiveness process, and hope that you can put what you illuminate to good use.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: forgive, forgiveness, how to forgive, self-appraisal

7 – Day Forgiveness Challenge – Day 4

April 9, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning and welcome to Day 4 of the forgiveness challenge! Today, with your new-found willingness, we are going to look at your attributes.

You have written about who you resent and why. You have learned about what forgiveness is not, and you have looked at your level of willingness. Today’s part of the process is starting a self-appraisal.

A self-appraisal is important to determine if you had a part to play in the resentment that is in effect. It involves looking at your negative behaviors and actions. Before we go there, however, it is important and, in my opinion necessary, to look at your positivity.

Here is the exercise I want you to do today…

List in your journal all the good things about yourself, your positive traits and qualities. Include all the things that others say about you in addition to what you believe about yourself. “Be” with that positive list for a few hours.

Then, I want you to think back on the past week and write down every positive action you took, every positive thought you had during the past week, each of your positive behaviors. The more you can recall and jot down, the better the result of the exercise.

Once you have completed your two lists, I want you to spend the rest of the day contemplating with yourself the good side of yourself, your positive points and attributes. Just “be” with them and allow a smile to come to your face as you recognize your inherent goodness.

It is important to establish the groundwork here. When I work with my clients, they sometimes have difficulty with this step, but with gentle input from me, they end up with a long list of their positive points, and they end up feeling good about themselves. I assist my clients to feel good about themselves, even in the mist of their doubts. I work with them to dispel their doubts.

If you are having difficulty with this step, please feel free to contact me and we can discuss how we can work together on this. You can email me at carolyncjjones@yahoo.com, or call me at 415-883-8325. Either way, if you’re stuck, I encourage you to ask for assistance.

This completes Day 4 of the forgiveness challenge. I hope you enjoy the realization of your goodness.

How is it going for you? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Self Improvement

7 – Day Forgiveness Challenge – Day 3

April 8, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning to each of you! May this be a glorious day, a fabulous week for you all! Today I continue with the forgiveness challenge.

I’d like you to turn your attention to looking at your willingness to offer forgiveness to that person you identified yesterday. Now, we’re going to look at the way your anger has affected your life. I suggest you follow the next sequence of steps:

Consider how your anger has consumed your life and darkly colored it. It may even be affecting your physical health. Numerous studies have shown that when you forgive, you have less chance of developing heart disease, heart attack, and cancer.

List out the ways in which you are consumed; how does it affect you in your daily life – your work life, your home life, your life out in the world?

Consider that you want something different for yourself. Consider that you want to have emotional peace, no matter what it takes.

List out the things you want to be different in your life, or, if you have a need to hang on to the resentment, write about it and why that might be.

Now, consider the possibility that you can leave this misery and create a new story. Visualize yourself in that story. How does it feel? What do you like about it? Write about it. If you cannot see yourself in a positive story, know it will come in time.

Spend some time and energy becoming willing to hear about how to devise a new story. Write about any resistance. Remember to write with your “other” hand, as this will bring forth your deepest feelings.

When things get tense emotionally and you need a break, take a brisk walk. Talk to someone about what is going on for you. Meditate or do yoga, if you do these things. Practice stretching and deep breathing as a way to reconnect with your body.

The above are all the things I suggest to my clients when we are working together on how to find forgiveness. Many times, they are resistive, are not willing to go to the place of forgiveness, are not able to get to willingness, but after we work together, they become willing and are able to work toward forgiveness.

This concludes day three of the forgiveness challenge. How is it going for you? Would you leave a comment about that? Thank you.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: anger, forgiveness, how to forgive, resentment

7 – Day Forgiveness Challenge – Day 2

April 7, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hi to each of you! I hope your exercise for yesterday went well and that you are willing to read on and participate in the challenge, to consider forgiveness as an option in your life. Remember, you’re starting with just one person.

Today the task is to identify one person with whom you are angry and resentful, with whom you are holding a grudge. Just one. That way, you can focus your attention clearly and razor-sharp.

So… you have the one person identified. What I want you to do now is to write down what it is they did that you resent. Be specific in your writing… describe the event, the happening. Remember to write with your “other” hand, as that will bring up more feelings and thoughts from the subconscious part of yourself.

Allow yourself to feel the feelings of anger, hurt, etc., that arise, and write about these feelings. Feel how wrong what they did was, but don’t go to the place of pity, or playing the victim. Just acknowledge it. Then, write about what comes up for you.

Try not to numb these feelings with substances. Instead, merely notice what you are feeling as objectively as possible. I know that’s hard to do… just try. Otherwise you’ll be fuming all day and you don’t want to go there for the entire day.

See a lot of your anger as hurt and try to write about this, again, as objectively as possible. Certainly, you are going to get some “charge” out as you write. Allow it to flow through you and onto the page.

When you have written this down, set it aside for the day. We will return tomorrow and continue with the next step in the forgiveness process. Rather than be rattled all day over this, be calm in the knowledge that you will come to resolve this issue within yourself.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: anger management, anger resolution, forgiveness, how to forgive, resentment

7 – Day Forgiveness Challenge

April 6, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, all, and welcome to another day on my blog. : ) I have given it some thought, and have decided to hold a forgiveness challenge for the next 7 days. The goal of the challenge is to get to the point of being able to forgive one person in your life.

Together, you and I will walk through the steps that will allow you to forgive that one person with whom you have a gripe, a grudge, and with whom you are just plain angry. The end result is that you will experience freedom and peace-of-mind.

Let’s start. The first thing I ask is that you get a dedicated journal to write in every day, one that you can print in with your “other” hand, your non-dominant hand. This is important to try as a technique because it has been shown that writing with the non-dominat hand brings forth your subconscious thoughts. That will become important as you go through this process.

Today, I ask that you get prepared to be willing to look at forgiveness as an option in your life. In order to do that, it is necessary to understand what forgiveness is not.

Forgiveness does not mean you condone what was done to you. It does not mean you are letting another’s behavior off the hook. You are not saying what occurred is okay.

“Be” with those thoughts. Allow them to permeate your being. Breathe deeply and slowly as you contemplate these thoughts. Then, explore your willingness to let go and get to a place of forgiveness. Write about your reaction to these statements, your gut feelings about them.

Write about your level of willingness. If you find you are resistant, not willing to consider forgiveness, write about that in your journal. Don’t hold back; be honest. If you think I’m full of crap, write that. If you feel you cannot go to that place, jot that down. Simply write down whatever comes up for you as it relates to your willingness to consider forgiveness as an option in your life, a way to obtain peace in your heart.

That is your task for Day 1 of this forgiveness challenge. Stay tuned for 6 more days to unfold.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: being willing, forgiveness, how to forgive, Willingness

Forgiveness – the Key to Happiness

April 5, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hello and good morning to you each! I have been silent for a few days… been busy and the days got away from me. Now I’m back and wanting to share about forgiveness and how by practicing it, you will find happiness.

First, I’d like to clarify something. People are often resistant to forgiveness because they are unwilling to admit that was was done was okay. So let me say that by forgiving someone, you are not saying that what happened was okay, you are not condoning the wrong. You are merely freeing a space in your heart so you can move forward with your life.

Forgiveness is for you, not the other person. Look at how you have been angry at another. Has it affected you and your life? Has it kept you stuck, unable to find happiness in your life? Is this what you want for the rest of your life, or would you like to find happiness?

How would you like to know the key that will benefit you for the rest of your life. bring you happiness? It is possible, you know. After 38 years, I released great anger and bitterness toward my parents for my childhood wounds, and if I could do it, you can do it, too!

To find forgiveness, I found that these steps worked:

Identify one person with whom you are angry and resentful.
Look at why you are angry; feel that emotion. Remember, what you resist, persists.
Now look at the things that they endured during their life; consider these things.
See the person as a wounded person, suffering from wounds they endured during the course of their life.
Consider that they are merely another human being… hurting.
Have compassion for that wounded person.
Revisit compassion until one day, forgiveness just settles on you like a warm cloak.
Recognize that you have found forgiveness.
Do this on a daily basis every time your anger resurfaces.

Try these steps and let us know what you discover by leaving a comment in the comment section. If you would like more assistance to go through this process, I invite you to receive my ebook, In Search of Forgiveness. Simply type in your name and email in the boxes to the right and you will receive it. Also, you will begin receiving uplifting and supportive newsletters from me.

I wish you well on your journey to wholeness, peace, and happiness. May you create forgiveness in your life.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: forgiveness, forgiving, forgiving myself, forgiving yourself, how to forgive

Living in the Past with Resentment or Longing

April 2, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning! I hope you each are well this morning. Today, we will continue with living in the past, and will address living with resentment and longing for better days.

Let’s look at resentment first. Resentment is the reliving of an anger again and again, not letting go of it. In these cases where you are doing this, there is a key you can learn that will benefit you for the rest of your life; you can learn to forgive.

Forgiveness is a process; it doesn’t happen overnight, yet, when you get to a point of being ready to forgive, it quietly happens in the moment. There are some things to consider about how to forgive. First, see the other person as a wounded being, and feel compassion for their woundedness. From that place of compassion, forgive.

Second, learn to do a self-appraisal, look honestly at your negative behavior. Determine if you got the ball rolling or if you do the very thing for which you are resentful. In these cases, let go of your resentment; forgive and let it go. Apologize if it is indicated.

Third, accept that the other person is incapable of giving you what you want. For whatever reason, they cannot meet your expectations. Accept that about them and let it go; forgive. This brings up the issue of expectations. When you expect things from others, it is a set up to be disappointed and resentful when they do not meet those expectations. Watch for that, and try not to expect anything. Then, when good things happen, you can be surprised.

Let’s turn our attention to longing for the “good old days.” Many people spend a lot of time in the unproductive and sadness-producing activity of wishing things were like they used to be. They lament that those days are gone. The danger is that, when you do this, you are not living in the present moment where the gifts of life reside. You make yourself miserable.

It is nice to have fond memories of the past and to long for them to return is a danger signal to your happiness if you spend your time wishing things were different than they are in current day. Accept that those days are gone and instead of lamenting, choose to make today the best possible. Get involved in new activities to create more “good old days.”

Living in the past is non-productive, a waste of time and energy no matter what the reason. Visit the past for the purpose of healing from it and otherwise, don’t live in it. Learn to live in the moment.

How are you living in the past? Are you feeling guilty, resentful, or longing for days gone by? Take a look at those things and realize you are making yourself miserable. You have a choice to stop living in the past. Make it. : )

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: feeling guilty, forgive, forgiveness, guilt, how to forgive, living in the past, resentment, resentments

Living in the Past Prevents You From Moving Forward

April 1, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hi and good morning, all! I hope you had a very nice Easter. Today’s search that caught my eye was “living in the past and my expectations keep me from moving forward.” So let’s take a look at these two things.

Often, when you are living in the past, you are looking back with guilt or resentment over an incident, or you are longing for those “better days.” In all three cases, you are not served, you are unable to move forward with your life. You are prevented from living in the present moment, which is where the gift of life resides. Let’s look at each one of these points separately.

When you are in guilt, you regret your actions or behaviors in the past and beat yourself up over them again and again. I say with all gentleness, this is a waste of your time and energy, an activity that affects your heart and your ability to love yourself. Loving yourself is necessary so you can truly love others in your life.

You did the very best you knew how to do with the tools you had at the time. If you had known better, you would have done better. I am not suggesting that you are not responsible for your actions, because you are. In the case where you harmed someone, you can take responsibility and apologize to them if to do so will not hurt them further.

Then, you can react with humility, recognizing that you are a human being and humans are prone to make mistakes. It is part of our nature. The real opportunity to living in the past by feeling guilty lies in the lesson you can learn from the whole affair. It lies in how you can grow as a person because of your actions.

Also, you do not know what the Universe has in store for the recipient of your wrong. Maybe they were the brunt of your error so they can heal from it and grow in ways you cannot understand. Maybe they are intended to be of service to someone else who suffers as they did. You do not know.

And maybe the Universe is trying to teach you humility. You do not know. The best to be done when you feel guilty and are living in the past is to forgive yourself, apologize when indicated, then learn and grow from the whole thing.

In the interest of keeping this post relatively short, I will continue tomorrow with the other two things that cause you to stay living in the past. Return tomorrow when I’ll discuss how to manage resentments and longing for the good old days.

Where in your life are you living in the past because you feel guilty? I invite you to apply some of the points I mentioned and forgive yourself.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: feeling guilty, forgive, forgiveness, forgiving myself, forgiving yourself, guilt, how to forgive, living in the past

Easter – A Day of Rising Up by Finding Sobriety

March 31, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning and Happy Easter to each of you! I wish for you a day of rising up, of being reborn in your life. For me, that rebirth happened after I found sobriety. By becoming sober, I became able to heal form past wounds, and to learn to forgive, to create forgiveness in my life.

Today, I want to address sobriety and then mention forgiveness…

Have you been beaten down so low in your life that you are in great despair, with little or no hope that things will get better? Are you drinking mass quantities to numb the pain and confusion you feel? There is a way out. It is one of sobriety.

Right now, today – a day of rising up – you can choose sobriety. You can choose another course for your life. It doesn’t have to be in shame that you do this – instead, you can be in great relief that you no longer have to drown your sorrows and feel miserable the next day. Ah yes, the hangovers. How I remember them well… getting up and not being able to function until the afternoon, going to get my hangover food – a burrito from Taco Bell or a thigh from Kentucky Fried Chicken – all so it would settle my queasy stomach and quell the sharp pain in my head.

Are you there yet? Wanting to give it all up? Then it is time for you to consider sobriety, to ask for help. There are many support groups around from which you can get assistance. All you have to do is look in your yellow pages, or google alcohol support groups. They are there to help you – right now. Follow that small voice in your heart that wants to be done, that small voice that urges you to ask for help. It will be the best thing you do for yourself in your life!

Once you find sobriety, after a while, you will learn how to create forgiveness in your life, of both others and yourself, and that is the most freeing and peaceful thing you can experience. It will make you glow, make you radiant. You do not want to miss this experience!

The thing about sobriety is, it allows you to heal from all the demons you chase away when you are drinking. Through sobriety, you create a life that is filled with freedom, with peace. But you have to start somewhere, so why not at the beginning and what better day than Easter?

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: despair, emotional freedom, forgive, forgiveness, freedom, getting sober, how to forgive, how to get sober, peace, sobriety

Honesty, Openness, and Willingness

March 28, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Well, good morning to each of you! I wish you all a wonderful day filled with light and joy. May you have peace. This morning I was able to get into my stats and I see three searches for honesty, openness, and willingness, so will speak about these today.

Honesty, openness, and willingness are the basis of all spiritual walks and the cornerstones of all recovery programs… the hallmarks, if you will. When you practice these three things, all sorts of other things fall into place for you. But what do they mean? Let’s take a look…

Welds of Honesty

Honesty, openness, and willingness are all in my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing. Let’s start by looking at honesty. Certainly, you want to practice being honest by not lying, stealing, cheating, etc., but this refers to much more.

Being honest also refers to your ability to see yourself as you truly are, with both your positive and your negative points, your strengths and your weaknesses, the things you do well and the things you messed up, the ways you were unkind, for example.

Many of you have not even heard of the concept of doing a self-appraisal and keeping a watch on yourself and your behavior. When performed on a regular basis, it is very powerful.

Being honest about who you are, even with all of your faults, is what is meant by being honest. Allowing others to see your soft and vulnerable side is being honest.

When you are honest, your being is as solid as the welds in the picture to the left, and it forms a strong base upon which to build your true Self.

Let’s continue on in our talk about honesty, openness, and willingness by moving on to openness. This refers to how you open your mind to new things, open your heart to feel, open your heart to allow grace in.

When you go around with a closed mind, thinking you know everything, not hearing what others are telling you about things and about yourself, then you are cutting off so much that is valuable. When you close your mind to what others say about you, you shut out an outside viewpoint, something you may wish to consider in your journey to wholeness and peace.

Beware of those, however, that would put your down, verbally abuse you, and try to not let their words affect you negatively. Realize that they are striking out, perhaps, in their own fear, their own woundedness, but don’t buy into what they are saying.

Key of Willingness

Having a closed heart blocks the way to peace and joy. You may stay behind the safety of a closed gate for fear of getting your heart hurt… again, yet when you open the gates of your heart, wondrous things start to happen. You are touched in ways you perhaps never have been before. It is very freeing, and it’s the way to peace.

Now we come to willingness and I cannot say enough about this except that it is the key to everything. When you are willing, it unlocks the gates of your heart, it allows the Universe to provide for you.

All it takes is willingness the size of a keyhole, and that is enough to unlock gates. The desire to grow takes willingness, the ability to listen to what another is saying takes willingness, the on-going practice of doing a self-apraisal takes willingness.

If you struggle with being willing for change to visit you in your life, ask the Universe for the willingness to be willing to have willingness.

And there we have the cornerstones… honesty, openness, and willingness. I wish you well in your search for and practice of these three things.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: being honest, being wiling, honesty, how to become willing, how to find peace, inner peace, openness of mind, peace, Willingness

How Are You Being of Service to Others?

March 27, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hello, and good morning to you each! I am so glad you’re here today and am hopeful you will get a lot out of today’s blog. I cannot access the stats today and cannot see what you have been searching for, so have picked the topic of being of service to others… how are you being of service in the world?

Each of you has a message to share with the world, a unique contribution. Perhaps yours is being a good mom, or sharing with others your gifts for cooking. Maybe you have an important message for the masses and are destined to be a speaker. The thing is, you are here for a reason. What is your reason for being on this earth?

When you determine your purpose, then you can practice being of service with that purpose. For example, if you have a message to share, you can align yourself so that you create opportunities to share that message. This is being of service with your purpose.

Then there is being of service in a voluntary way, choosing an organization, for example, at which to volunteer. When you go above and beyond your calling in order to give to others, you feel a calming satisfaction; the feeling you gain is one of deep joy, great peace.

You may even reap other benefits that you didn’t think possible. For example, I visit a man in prison. I got started because I was being of service to him. We have developed a very strong friendship; he has helped me through tremendous fears in my life, and, being great at expressing things, has provided me with wonderful scripting to use while doing presentations.

All of this has occurred because I was being of service, and my life has become greatly enriched. Certainly, there is the deep knowingness that I have helped him quite a bit by offering a diversion every three weeks from normal prison life. I have made a difference in his life, and, in turn, he in mine. All simply because I was being of service.

Where in your life are you being of service? Do you offer your services to others? Are you being of service by making yourself and your gift to the world accessible to others? If you’re not being of service, you are missing quite a lot, so find that one special way you can be of service to another, or others.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: being of service, how to find peace, inner peace, peace

Willingness Is the Key to Your Happiness

March 25, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hello to you this clear and bright morning! I hope you have a good day, filled with love and joy. Today, I am going to address the search term “willingness is the key.” The term did not say “key to what,” and I added happiness, because it is true… when you have the willingness to be happy, you can find happiness.

A coach with whom I am working stresses that you come what you believe. So, if you believe you can be happy, you begin to engage in activities and thought patterns that bring you happiness.

I spent my life until about the age of 52 believing that happiness was found in other people, in my circumstances. I held others responsible for my happiness and when they didn’t produce it, I was angry at them, carried a resentment against them. And I searched all over for the right set of circumstances, the right place to live, believing that when I found the right place, the right set of circumstances, I would be happy.

About 4 years into sobriety, I realized the fallacy of these beliefs. I learned that happiness came from inside of me, that I formed my own happiness. Wow, that was revolutionary, a true aha! moment. And then I discovered that if I showed willingness to assume responsibility for my happiness, it began to be a reality.

Key of Willingness

Willingness is the key to everything, I have discovered. I had to have willingness to be responsible for my own happiness, willingness to get and stay sober so I could heal, willingness to feel my feelings, willingness to approach life with a positive attitude. Without willingness, these things could not occur.

The image to the right is from my book Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing.” In the book, the verse that accompanies the picture is, “All it takes is willingness to unlock whatever lies inside, to turn the knob and open the gate… All it takes is a tiny opening the size of a keyhole.”

This is so true… a tiny opening in your heart, in your mind, will lead to more and more willingness. If you are willing to have just a little willingness, the Universe expands it for you.

If you are having difficulty being willing to heal, willing to get sober if that is your need, willing to hold yourself responsible for your feelings and your happiness, then ask the Universe for the willingness to be willing to have willingness. Just show a little willingness and you’ll be amazed at how you are supported in that endeavor! Here’s to your willingness!

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: beinig happy, happiness, how to be willing, how to fiind happiness, how to have willingness, key of willingness, Willingness, willingness is the key

Celebrate Gratitude for Who You Are

March 23, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones 1 Comment

Hello and good morning to each of you! I am filled with gratitude for the day and wish to share that with you. And I am going to take it one step further and ask you to celebrate yourself for who you are!

If you have finished the positive list for your self-appraisal, then you will want to celebrate with gratitude what you have discovered. Be loud and proud to yourself about who you are in all your greatness, all your glory, all your light. Cultivate deep knowingness about who you are, what you have to offer the world, for you have much to give.

Offer gratitude for all your experiences, both positive and negative, that have shaped who you are today, for without ALL your experiences, you wouldn’t be “you” today. Be grateful for your life and all it has taught you, for all you have learned.

Write with your non-dominant hand – printing is easier – all the feelings that arise as you read this post and contemplate your beingness, and especially those of gratitude. Be humble and ecstatic about what and who you are, what and who you find.

Have you started your week’s long listing of all the positive things you thought, said, and did during the past week? Don’t forget to do that. Be in deep gratitude for all of those positive things. Celebrate them, celebrate you!

I hope your feelings of gratitude for who and what you are carry you forth through this day and all the days to come! It all starts from your list of positive traits and characteristics. So have at it… celebrate gratitude! Celebrate you! Have a splendid day!

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: expressing gratitude, grateful, gratitude, how to do a self-appraisal, self-appraisal

How Are You Doing on Your Self-Appraisal?

March 22, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning everyone! : ) I wish for you each a fabulous Friday, filled with much light and joy!

Since yesterday’s post was so long, I want to keep today’s much shorter. If you made it all the way through yesterday’s, bravo and thank you for sticking through it to the end.

I am curious how it all sat with you, how you took it. Many people are scared to death to do a self-appraisal and procrastinate doing it out of fear. They believe that what they will find is a hollow and empty self, or an inherently bad person. These could not be farther from the truth, though.

When I first did a self-appraisal, I was newly sober and was anxious, to say the least. I was sure I would find this bad person. After all, that’s what I’d been told all my life, right? That I was worthless, would never amount to anything, that I was fat, stupid, and ugly. These were horrible messages to hear and they scarred me badly.

So it was with much trepidation that I looked at myself. At first, and for many months, all I could see was my negative. I had no idea what-so-ever how to be loud and proud about who I was. After all, there was nothing to be proud about. Nonetheless, I set about doing my self-appraisal.

And I mean to tell you, the effect was astounding. At first, I felt deeply ashamed, but later, after talking to someone about what I had discovered, I felt like a weight was lifted off my chest. Over the years, I have repeated the process, repeated my self-appraisal, and today I can list out my positive qualities without shame or hesitation. I have become a whole person, I think, and the self-appraisal was a huge part of why that occurred.

My whole point in saying all of this is to offer you hope if you are hesitating in doing this exercise. Know that you will be heartened and filled up, not disheartened and beaten down. I recommend doing the positives first for a very specific reason – to counteract all the negatives you may have been told while growing up. If you have no such negatives, I am so happy for you, for you are truly blessed. Then listing your positives will flow easily onto the page.

One thing you could try, which I forgot to mention, is printing the list with your non-domiinant hand. That will cause you to tap into the “other” side of your brain, and all sorts of deep things will flow out without restriction.

So, my heart is with you each as you embark upon your self-appraisal. May it be an enlightening and happy experience for you.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: how to do a self-appraisal, self-appraisal, the merits of a self-appraisal

How to Complete a Self-Appraisal

March 21, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning on this fine and clear day! May you have clarity and goodness in your day today!

Yesterday, I received an email from a dear friend who reads my blog, questioning things which I plan to address in today’s blog. For example, they asked about what to list out. I hope I have addressed that fully in this post. Then, the question was raised, what is honesty? I will further discuss that also.

So, how do you do a self-appraisal?

First, you gather willingness… willingness to look at yourself honestly. When I say honestly, I mean looking at your positive points first and giving yourself full credit for all your positive traits, all the positive ways in which you treat others and yourself. We often shy away from being honest about who we are, having been told that is conceited to do so. But we need to objectively assess who we are in our totality. We do this not to brag about ourselves, rather, to humbly look at who we are in our totality.

On the negative side, being honest means being willing to admit you screwed up when you did, that you treated others or yourself poorly. It is embarrassing to admit these things about ourselves, and that is part of being willing to be honest…

For example, I find myself sometimes acting in a very selfish manner, thinking of myself when I could be considering the other. In those situations, I seem to do things for others because there is something in it for me, before I give with no thought of what I’ll get out of it – giving without expecting or wanting in return. That’s somewhat embarrassing to say, yet, it is honest.

What I do with that information, that realization, is to be aware in the future of when I start to do something for another. I can assess my motives and change them, as indicated, come at it from a different angle.

It is important to add gentleness and compassion when you look at your negative side, the side that needs improvement, or else you would beat yourself up unmercifully. Having said these things, let’s start with how to do the appraisal…

After becoming willing to get honest, list out your positive qualities and traits on a piece of paper. List them all out. Get generous with yourself. No one else is going to see this, so brag about yourself to yourself only. Be loud and proud on paper. Then sit with, “be” with, this list of traits. Let it sink in that this is you that you have listed out in all your goodness and glory. Get comfortable with feeling the light from seeing your good qualities and traits. You are trying to counteract any negative things you have been told throughout your life.

Now, take the past week and list out every good deed, kindness, and generous thing you did during the week. List it all out. If you had a kind thought about someone, list that out, too. Then allow this to sink in for a few days. Bask in your goodness. Know that at your core, you are light.

Next, turn your attention to your negative side, the side that needs improvement. We all have one, you know. List all the negative things about yourself that you do not like. Include the negative things you tell yourself. Consider the past week and list out all the mean, nasty, and unkind things you did or thought during that time. Don’t hold back, yet do not beat yourself up. Do it honestly, from an objective viewpoint.

Consider each point and look at each with compassion for yourself, a wounded person so much so that it led you to act in a negative manner. Now, right all wrongs. This may mean apologizing to some people. If this is the case, get humble yet not subservient. Drop the hostility, the defiance. Apologize with your heart and soul. Sometimes, apology is not advised; this is when it would hurt the other person more, cause them damage in some way.

When you have completed your self-appraisal, you will feel a cleanness about yourself. You will be right with the world and yourself. Resolve to keep an active and current eye on your behaviors, celebrating yourself for your wins and correcting the negative as you move through each day.

I hope this clarifies your questions, dear friend. Thank you again for raising them. : ) And I hope for all of you that by doing a self-appraisal, you find more freedom and peace. Leave a comment if you found this to be useful for you.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: compassion, compassion for myself, compassion for others, emotional freedom, freedom, how to do a self-appraisal, how to find peace, inner peace, peace, self-appraisal

The Merits of a Self-Appraisal

March 20, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning to each of you and happy day. It is the wee hours of the morning and I just popped awake, so here I am. : ) Today, I am going to respond to the search term “the merits of self-appraisal.”

In my experience, doing a self-appraisal is the key that has allowed me to move to inner peace. Although difficult at first to look at myself, doing it has become a routine occurrence. By doing a self-appraisal on a regular basis, it keeps me on top of the things that I need to correct in my life, in other words, my behavior and my thoughts. And it allows me to see and acknowledge my goodness.

I have found that doing a self-appraisal leads to inner peace and emotional freedom because I am “clean,” my motives are pure and less selfish in nature. Also, if I have done something to offend someone, I can right that in the moment that I do the appraisal. And, by seeing my goodness, I am not so hard on myself, do not beat myself up so much.

One of the great benefits of doing a self-appraisal is that it paves the way to forgiveness, which leads to the creation of more inner peace and emotional freedom. It keeps a check on me getting angry at others for doing the very same thing I am doing, and if I get the ball rolling in a disagreement, it allows me to see that.

A self-appraisal allows me to keep abreast of what I am telling myself about myself… in other words, my negative self-talk. When I engage in this, I can correct it right then and there.

There is such a feeling of freedom when you incorporate a self-appraisal into your everyday life, your everyday happenings. At first, listing out my behaviors was difficult and I did so with great shame. Over the years, however, I have learned to see my negative behavior with compassion, as I was a wounded person at the time I committed whatever I committed.

That is not to say compassion is an excuse to not be responsible and accountable for my behavior. Oh, no. I need to own my negative behavior. The beauty in owning it is that I feel pure when I have done so. It is a practice in humility rather than shame. It allows me to remember that I am a fallible human being.

These are just some of the merits of a self-appraisal. Try it yourself and you’ll feel lighter, brighter, more at home with yourself. If you want to learn how to do a self-appraisal, join me tomorrow as I describe, step-by-step, how to do one.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: emotional freedom, freedom, how to find peace, inner peace, peace, performance evaluation, self-appraisal, the merits of a self-appraisal

Will You Play Small or Step Into Your Greatness?

March 8, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning! I wish for each of you a day filled with great joy, as you step into your greatness. It is that which I would like to address… how to step into your greatness, for you may be holding back who you are.

Yesterday, I was on a sales call, and the leader, Eric, said that when we step into our greatness, we are helping and impacting those people around us that need our help. Conversely, when we do not step into our greatness, we are being harmful to those that we could be helping.

Then he had us email him what our biggest take-away was from the call. I emailed and said that I didn’t realize that by playing small, I was harming others, and that I don’t want to harm others. He read that email aloud, and made comments about it, pointing out that when we play small, we are keeping those who need to hear our message from that message, and, thus, are harming them.

Wow. I never thought of it like that. You see, I was introduced to the concept of playing small a few months ago at a workshop. At that time, I recognized that I was allowing my fear of standing out in the world to hold me back. I thought I got past that… until Eric said yesterday what he said.

I seem to come up with all sorts of busy-work to keep me from contacting the big players in my field of forgiveness, from reaching out to connect. So, this morning, I decided to put my money where my mouth is, and I emailed Fred Luskin, who is the PhD at Stanford University who has been working on the Stanford Forgiveness Project. He is considered an expert on forgiveness.

And I emailed him, telling him that I am “just up the street from him,” (no, I didn’t put it like that…) and that I, too, am dealing with forgiveness in my practice of speaking and coaching. I asked that he call me because I wanted to talk to him about his path of forgiveness, my path of forgiveness, and how our paths meet.

Talk about a wow! Now THAT was stepping into my greatness! I have taken the action and I will wait patiently to see the result of that action.

Where in your life do you play small, keep hidden for fear of being knocked down? Think about it, and write about it. I invite you to journal, print, with your non-domindant hand, as all sorts of thoughts will flow to you when you do that.

Write about your dream and how you are not fulfilling it because of your fears. That’s playing small. Not speaking up for yourself is playing small. Not approaching someone because you feel you are “less than” is playing small. Write about all the ways in which you play small in your life.

Think about how you can step into your greatness by reaching out, by speaking up, by fulfilling your dream. Then write about it, and finally, take action! Step into your greatness!

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: fear, playing small, step into your greatness

Treating Others Badly Is a Reflection of How We Feel About Ourselves

February 22, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, everyone. I hope the day dawns clearly and brightly for you, in every way. Today, I liked the search term, “hateful treatment of others is a reflection of how we feel about ourselves.” Ah, this is so true. I had to change the wording a little to be within the allotted number of characters in the title…

Practice of Tolerance

In my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing, I have a stanza in the verse, Practice of Tolerance, that speaks to the issue of how we treat others when we are not feeling good about ourselves.

I have the most difficulty being tolerant of others when I am feeling inadequate, insecure, and uncomfortable with myself.

When I used to be in in this space, I found fault with everything that others did, was very critical. Later, after several years in sobriety, I began to feel better about myself and my treatment of others began to change.

The closing stanza of the verse for Practice of Tolerance is, I discover that another’s value does not diminish my own. It was only after I felt better about myself that I could realize I didn’t need to be compared with others, to others, and I stopped criticizing them.

When we feel badly about ourselves, we tend to take that self-hate and project it on to others, being very mean and hateful. Perhaps, when we witness this or are a recipient of the mean and nasty behavior, we could have an understanding of what is really goiing on, rather than strike back.

We can end the cycle of abuse right then and there by not responding, knowing that someone’s mean behavior is most likely due to their low self-esteem or self-hatred. We can, instead, see this person with compassion for the wounded person that they are, for they ARE wounded.

The other thing we can do when another’s behavior is abusive to us, is to say to them, “I will not tolerate your verbal abusiveness.” Then, we can walk away. Yes, yes, easier said than done and some people will become infuriated when we do this. Yet, to state we will not tolerate verbal abuse is to stick up for our soul, our very spirit.

Today, take a look at how you treat others. Is it mean and hateful? If you identify this, can you then do some self-examination and determine if you are feeling badly about yourself? If this is the case, if you recognize this, have compassion for yourself, a wounded person, or perhaps pushed past your tolerance level, and make changes to how you are treating another.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: self-appraisal, self-assessment, self-examination

Ways To Be Compassion to an Angry Person

February 15, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning all! I was interested in addressing the search for “ways to be compassion to angry person.”

Let’s face it. We all experience angry people in our lives. And, we may even be that angry person. Look closely at yourself and be honest. Look at whether your anger is covering up hurt or disappointment. If this is you, you may want to change that anger and be honest about what the real issue is.

But we’re going to focus in this post on ways to be compassion with an angry persons, on ways to look differently at an angry person.

The first thing to consider is that anger is the emotion we usually revert to when we are hurt, frustrated, or disappointed. We can have an understanding of this and that allows us to be compassion, to have compassion.

A further thing to consider when dealing with an angry person is to understand the hurt from which they are operating. What did they experience in their earlier life, for example, that is leading them to react with anger today? What is the pressure they are under in their lives that is leading them to be angry? We can have compassion for what they dealt with or are dealing with.

Interestingly, I am in the middle of such an experience… dealing with an angry person in a situation at home. I have to look at the situation and realize that, in some way, I invited the anger in the process of speaking up for my rights. Yet, I handled it poorly. So, I can have an understanding for their anger because I can see my behavior through doing a self-appraisal.

The point is, one thing we can do is to check our behavior first in dealing with angry people. Did we start it? Do we owe an apology? If so, we need to give it. In the situation I am dealing with, I can understand the pressure the other person is under, so I can cut some slack and I can apply compassion. I also apologized for behaving poorly.

Above and beyond that, we need to understand the effect that someone’s upbringing brings to the situation and we can have compassion. Through compassion, we can come to forgiveness.

What are the ways in which you can offer compassion to the angry person in your life? For me, I am needing to practice what I am suggesting. Leave a comment if you have a situation you are dealing with and how you are handling it.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: anger, angry people, angry person, compassion, compassionate, ways to be compassion to an angry person

Growing Beyond Despair

February 13, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones 5 Comments

Good morning. It is not quite dawn here at my home as I sit to write to you. Honestly, I do not know exactly what I want to write, other than to say I’d like to continue with positive words about despair and suggestions on how to grow past it.

Yesterday, I wrote about my experience with despair and how I got past it permanently. I invite you to read that article in addition to this. Today, let’s focus on the things you can do to work toward letting go of your despair, growing beyond it.

I believe that a solution lies in the doing of something for others, but I also believe that we can’t skip over the step of looking deeply at our pain. Most people do not do this, simply because it IS painful, but the rewards we reap by exploring are many-fold. Inner peace, freedom, serenity, are a few of the rewards and these are huge!

The two single-most things I found that we can do to grow beyond despair are to journal about our feelings, our past, and to read self-help books. For me, the self-help books gave me hope, gave explanation for my feelings. I read Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s The Invitation and gained immense hope and deep understanding of my inner-most desires.

Then, Claudia Black’s books about the effects of abuse in our lives gave words to my feelings and helped me climb out of the hole of despair. After Claudia’s books came Alice Miller and John Bradshaw.

All of the books I read that helped me get through despair are sitting in two boxes here in my study and if you are interested in finding out what I have and reading them, I am happy to relay to you what I have and can send to you. Call me at 415-883-8325 if you’re interested in knowing more.

So, one way to get beyond despair is to read books that speak of hope. The other way is to write, and I suggest journaling with the non-dominant hand. If you are right-handed, teach yourself to print with your left hand, for example. The rewards are tremendous, as deep feelings will flow onto the page.

At first you may discover that the feelings that arise are too painful. If so, talk to someone you trust, or to a minister, or to a counselor. The point is to get help with them, but try to continue on. Research has shown that writing with the non-dominant hand uncovers deep creativity. I found it also uncovers deep feelings.

Be gentle with yourself as feelings surface. Do this exercise for a limited time each day at a pre-designated time of the day. Even five minutes is a great start. Eat well; exercise to release the tension that may arise. Don’t act upon what you discover, as what you are feeling now will change. It will morph into more of a peace eventually.

And I cannot stress enough to get help with what you discover.

I wish you well in your healing process and seriously, call me if you’re interested in getting access to my library of healing books. 415-883-8325. May you find peace in your journey as you learn to grow beyond despair. .

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement Tagged With: despair, despairing, feelings of despair, how to find peace, how to grow beyond despair, inner peace, peace

Despair and Trauma

February 12, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hi, all! The day dawns bright and clear here in my home town of Novato, just 30 minutes north of San Francisco. It holds promise of peace for me and I hope for you also.

Yesterday’s search term really spoke to me. It was “despair and trauma” and it spoke to me because I experienced trauma that caused me great despair throughout my life as an adult. My upbringing was physically and verbally violent, traumatic for me, and throughout my adult life, I drank heavily to quell the feelings of despair I felt over the incidents I experienced.

Sometimes, I got drunk enough that I lost all self-control and found myself wailing over my despair. I would keen for hours until I was cried dry. Even in sobriety, I experienced despair over the issue that I saw no purpose in having had experienced the abuse I did; there was no purpose in it other than to make my life miserable.

Then one day, I had the opportunity to be useful to another person who was struggling, simply by relaying what had happened to me and what I had been doing to heal from it all. He was so grateful for the information, he almost started crying.

As I walked to my car, I started crying because I suddenly realized my upbringing had been of use. I was crying tears of realization, of joy. My background had been something that allowed me to connect to someone who was suffering, and I was able to have compassion for their plight.

If I never would have suffered as I did, I never would have been on the healing journey I was, and what I learned never would have been helpful to that man. See how my upbringing suddenly became useful to another? I did, and my despair disappeared and has not returned since that day about 6 years ago.

You, too, perhaps, can quiet your despair simply by letting your experience with trauma be known to someone else who is struggling. Then, share what you have done to heal from that despair, things that have been useful for you, things that have given you even a little bit of hope.

It is my hope that you discover, as I did, that your heart soars because you used your trauma and despair to be useful to another. It is my hope that you find peace.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement Tagged With: despair, despair and traauma, inner peace, peace, peace of mind, trauma

The Effects of Sobriety

February 9, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning to you all. Today I am going to address the effects of sobriety. I actually started this yesterday and the day got away from me…

What I will write here is an accounting of the effects I have gained from my sobriety. There is no guarantee you will experience all of these things, but chances are high that you will, if you maintain your sobriety and continue to make improvements in your life and with yourself.

The first and foremost effect of sobriety was the lack of hangovers. For seven years, I had experienced such horrific hangovers that the next day, I could not function till 3 or 4 pm. I did that every day for seven years… So, to awaken without a hangover was glorious and only improved over time as more and more alcohol was cleared from my system.

Then, the next effect of my sobriety was the disappearance of the sharp, stabbing pain I had been feeling in the area of my liver for 1-2 years. Later blood work revealed I did not have liver damage, so I am fortunate.

With sobriety came the feeling of feelings I had numbed for 26 years, and that was painful. Even though they were extremely difficult at times, the benefits of that were numerous. I was in so much pain that I had to journal every day which got my feelings out more quickly than anything I could have done. Also, by journaling with my non-dominant hand, even deeper feelings surfaced. Try it; it works!

Another benefit from the emotional pain was I was hurting so badly, I accepted help from a psychiatrist and a therapist. They diagnosed me with major clinical depression, PTSD, and panic disorder, and recommended I take medication, which I agreed to do. That has made my world manageable and put me at the same level emotionally that someone without those diagnoses enjoys.

Also, accepting help from the therapist helped me get through the pain more quickly, as she knew where to guide me. I looked for someone well-versed in the issues faced by an alcoholic, as well as with issues faced by children of alcoholic and abusive parents (ACA). We have a specific set of obstacles to overcome, you see, accessible by getting involved in a group that deals with ACA issues.

Over time in sobriety, my relationships improved immensely. I learned not to look to others to make me happy, which took the burden off of them. I learned to look at my own behavior instead of blaming others when things did not go the way I wanted or needed.

This is the biggest, single-most reason for my peace and freedom, in addition to learning how to forgive my parents for my upbringing. It’s huge, in fact, learning to look at our behavior, our actions, the ways in which we treat others and what’s behind that treatment or behavior, goes a long, long way to improve relations with others. Finally, I learned in sobriety to apologize for my bad behavior, to be humble instead of ashamed.

All of these things are the effects, the rewards, of my sobriety. I hope, if you elect the course of living sober, that you, too, experience them. May you discover in sobriety the great peace and freedom that I have discovered.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: emotional freedom, freedom, freedom of forgiveness, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

What Is Honesty?

February 7, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, all, and may this be a day of great peace for you. The search term that I am going to write about today is honesty, what is honesty. When practiced, honesty brings peace and freedom to us.

Webster defines honesty as that which will not lie, cheat, or steal. That’s how I used to define honesty. Then, when I got sober, I learned an expanded version of it, which is included in Webster’s definition as free from deceit, being genuine and pure.

It is the latter that I wish to expound upon today. You see, we can be dishonest about who we are as a person, how we present ourselves to others. That’s what I did all my life… be deceitful in the sense that I pretended to be what I was not. I pretended that all was okay, for example, that I liked something, for example, when I didn’t.

Honesty pertains to portraying to people what we really are inside, letting people see our tender and vulnerable side. It also means looking with honesty at our actions, our behaviors. Let me talk a little more about this.

Most of us don’t like to admit our foibles, our faults, our poor behavior and actions. Yet, we all have these, all do these at one time or another because we are human and that’s just what we do. Honesty means admitting to ourselves and to others when we have poor or bad behavior, when we have done something to hurt another.

But when we admit to our wrong-doings, the freedom we feel is incredible, and then the peace comes. First we must admit to ourselves our poor behavior. I, for example, have a love of Haagen-Dazs chocolate and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.

One day, as I was slowly savoring some chocolate, I remembered how my ex-husband used to also love it, the chocolate, and I refused for it to be in the house because it was too expensive, even though we could have afforded it. Wow, what a realization. I felt somewhat ashamed to have placed that restraint on him and his likes, how I curtained a simple joy of his. As I do not have contact with him anymore, I could not bring that up to him, acknowledge it, and apologize.

Instead, I began to see how my selfishness at the time kicked into play, how it curtailed him some joy in life. I shook my head in sadness for him, for me, for all the times my selfishness hurt another, and was glad I can realize my self-centeredness today, so I can keep it in check.

That is an example of practicing honesty with myself. I had to admit to myself something I was ashamed I had done, realized why, and now can resolve to watch for that in my further dealings with others. I am willing to admit it to him also, if I had contact with him. So, not only do we look with honesty at our actions and behavior, we want to admit it to the one upon whom we have displayed our not-so-hot behavior. That is where the freedom and peace lie.

How do you practice honesty in your life? Do you admit to yourself your poor and bad behavior, taking responsibility for it by first admitting it to yourself and then to the other involved person? This is a good question to answer in a writing exercise.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: being honest, honesty, inner peace, peace, sober, sobriety, what is honesty

What Does Willingness Look Like?

February 6, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, everyone! I has dawned a bright and sunny day here in the north San Francisco Bay Area, and I hope your day is bright and sunny from the inside out. I think someone stuffed the ballot box with the search term “what does willingness look like,” (lol) and I will address that today.

Key of Willingness

I believe willingness is the key to all change, all improvement, and all feeling better about ourselves and others.

Webster defines willingness as the act of being willing, which is acting or giving readily and cheerfully, gladly or voluntarily. In my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing, I say that all it takes to unlock the gates of our heart is a little opening the size of a key hole. Then the door opens wider…

When we practice willingness, we are open to whatever the Universe has to bring our way. We are open to differences in others, open to seeing new things for ourselves. It is a feeling of expansiveness, of expanding light.

Yes, willingness is a lightness of being. There is a mysterious quality about it, as we await new experiences, new feelings, “new” in all areas of our life. There is a deep knowingness when we are practicing willingness, a deep feeling that all is well. We look eagerly to what the Universe has to offer us.

When we are demonstrating willingness, others see an openness about us, experience less judgment from us. They see our lightness, our eagerness for newness. They see a person who is more at peace with themselves, with others. Yes, willingness is the key to happiness and peace.

How do you feel when you are experiencing willingness? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Joyous emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: how to be willing, willing, Willingness

Is PTSD More Anxiety or Depression?

February 4, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

Hello. Today I am going to talk about PTSD, post traumatic distress disorder. It was searched for by a Vietnam vet who is still suffering from it. Ah, my heart goes out to you and to all of you Nam vets who still suffer from this, and I want to thank you for your service and say, welcome home!

PTSD is becoming more well diagnosed for men and women who have been in combat. PTSD can strike people who were not in combat, also. It can develop for anyone who has been a victim or observer of trauma, including physical, sexual, and verbal. Symptoms include hyper-vigilance, or being acutely aware of what is going on around you at every instant in time. People with PTSD usually replay the incident(s) over and over in their mind. They are highly anxious and they are depressed.

To answer the question, is PTSD more anxiety or depression, for me, they were equal. And, the depression led to despair and hopelessness. I prayed to die at that point. I suffered PTSD from a physically abusive upbringing, being both the receiver and observer of traumatic acts. I dealt with the effects of it until I was 54 years of age, which was several years into sobriety.

PTSD was diagnosed for me after I was placed on medication for depression and I continued to be highly anxious. In fact, I was diagnosed with panic disorder, which I believe was from the PTSD. Today, for example, since finding my purpose in life and forgiving my parents for the abuse, I do not feel that hyper-vigilance, that anxiety, that panic.

What can one do who has PTSD? Well, you can seek help from a mental health clinic in your county, or see a psychiatrist. You can also see a person who administers EMDR, which stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. It is a specific movement of the eyes guided by a therapist trained in EMDR, and that is what helped me, in addition to talking to a therapist, and anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications. You can go to this site and this, for more information about treatment of PTSD.

So, PTSD can be equally demonstrated by high anxiety, as well as depression. It is a heck of a place in which to be, as one struggles with low energy, but has the need to watch what’s going on around them. It is exhausting because of this. There are answers, and I hope you, the Vietnam vet who searched for the phrase “is PTSD more anxiety or depression,” finds those answers and some comfort and solution in this post. You deserve peace in your life and I wish it for you.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement Tagged With: EMDR, how to find peace, inner peace, peace, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, treatment for PTSD

The Side Effects of Sobriety

February 1, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, all! I chose “the side effects of sobriety” today because there have been so many for me, that I want to share about them.

The first effect of sobriety is the absence of hangovers. If you’re like me and experienced terrific hangovers every day, keeping you down until about 2 or 3 pm, then you will love this benefit of sobriety. Waking up clear is a true delight.

The second side effect of sobriety is healing of emotional wounds. For me, this took a bit of time, but the effort and wait were very much worth it. By remaining sober, the deep feelings I had numbed for years, had avoided for years, were brought forth for me to examine. At first it was very difficult, but over time, they softened and even got better as I did the emotional work to heal.

What do I mean when I talk about doing the emotional work to heal? I’m referring first to being present for the feelings that arise, allowing them to “be” within, without running, without numbing. Then there is the work with an outside, objective person to help dispel the ill-effects of various feelings gained along the way.

For example, as I grew up, I gained the feeling that I was worthless. This feeling stuck with me in adulthood and shadowed everything I did or tried to do. With external support and encouragement, I was able to realize that the words repeatedly said by my father, “you are worthless,” were a lie, not said about me. I learned that I was a very worthwhile person.

Another side effect of sobriety is the ability to look at the world around me in great detail. Everything is clearer, more noticeable to me.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of sobriety is the improvement I have had in my relations with others. I am able to come at a relationship with true caring and concern for the other, with true respect and tolerance. My vision of what they are saying to me is no longer skewed by the effects of alcohol, and I am not nearly as hostile or argumentative.

I can see others as spirited beings in sobriety, and this is something totally new for me. I delight in my dealings with others.

What are some of the side effects you have experienced in sobriety? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how to get sober, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

What Are Resentments & How To Get Past Them

January 28, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, all! I am having a slow morning getting started, as I am unwinding from a wonderful event I went to yesterday for aspiring speakers. I am slowly getting to my daily tasks, including this blog. : )

The search term I have chosen is “what are resentments,” and I have added “how to get past them.” Resentments are anger we hold against another about which we go over and over and over again in our mind. We stew about our resentments, turning them around and around. They keep us awake at night, as we seethe, and burn and churn inwardly. Often, we plot a revenge for the wrong done to us.

Resentments are deadly, especially to an alcoholic or addict like myself, as that is what we often used and abused about. They cause our health to suffer through raised blood pressure, heart disease, and increased incidences of cancer. They are bad news for us and rob us of any type of inner peace we seek.

So how do we get past resentments? We start by doing a self-appraisal. In that appraisal, we are looking over our actions and behaviors with the person we resent to see if we actually started the ball rolling on what has turned into a resentment for us. When we look at ourselves, we are honest, and we look for behavior to which the other person reacted in a normal, human way. i.e., we consider if we, ourselves, started the whole thing.

If we did, we need to own our behavior, admit our wrong-doing, and let go of the resentment. An apology may even be in order. We approach the other person humbly, without shame or groveling, nor defensive and abusive. We just simply state what we did, accepting the fact that we were acting in a human fashion.

If we were not responsible for setting the stage for our resentments, then we begin to look at the other person as being sick emotionally and spiritually, which they most likely are. We show compassion, just like we would for any sick person. We also try to understand what their experience(s) was that led them to act in the manner in which they did. Again, we can then see them with compassion.

With compassion comes forgiveness, and we offer them that forgiveness. This frees our heart and mind of our resentments. We offer forgiveness, not to condone what was done to us, rather, to free ourselves emotionally.

What are the resentments you are currently experiencing? What steps have you taken to resolve them? Leave a comment and let us know.

And, if you are interested in dealing with your resentments, I invite you to attend my up-coming support group, Transform Into Forgiveness. This group will meet the 2nd and 4th Monday from 10 am to 11 am, starting February 11th, or the 2nd and 4th Thursday from 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm, starting Feb 14th. Both groups will meet at the Wells Fargo Bank in San Rafael, CA. 1203 4th Street, 2nd floor. 94901.

There is parking in the rear of the building, and a double door to go through, where you will find an elevator. Take it directly to the second floor. For more details and to register, please contact me at 415-883-8325 or email me at carolyncjjones@yahoo.com. Get past your resentments and experience inner peace like you have never experienced it.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: alcoholism, cancer prevention, forgiveness, heart disease, high blood pressure, how to find inner peace, inner peace, peace, resentment, resentments

How to Show Compassion

January 27, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, everyone! May this day bring you peace. May it also bring you the gift of showing compassion to those in your life. The search term I have chosen today is “how to show compassion (to your husband).” I have dropped off the “to your husband,” in the hopes that we can learn how to show compassion to anyone.

Fields of Compassion

Compassion is defined as the ability to show sympathy for another’s plight, to have empathy, coupled with a strong desire to help. In the process of getting to compassion, we will end up clearing out our anger, our resentment, toward the other person. That means we need to look at our anger.

To do that, first look at what is behind your anger. Usually, it is hurt, betrayal. Allow yourself to acknowledge and feel those feelings. Remember, what we resist, persists, so we want to shine light on our anger, our resentment. Next, we always want to so a self-appraisal to see if we did anything to start the dispute, the situation about which we are angry.

If we find we did do or say something to which the other person is reacting like any normal person would, then we need to take responsibility for that and apologize, at the same time letting go of the anger. We need to own our behavior, honestly and completely.

If we didn’t do something to provoke the other person, then we need to look with the eyes of compassion. So, how do we do that? We acknowledge the difficulty the other person is experiencing, or has experienced in their life that leads them to behave as they do, and we have sympathy, empathy, for them. To do this, we think of what we would feel like if we had experienced what the other did or does experience.

Once we have compassion for another, we can move toward forgiveness. As we forgive, it is easier and easier to expand our compassion toward them, and we are able to forgive more and more completely. The depth of the hurt will dictate the length of time this process takes, with more hurt leading to more time needing to forgive.

This is all a process and we would do well to have compassion for ourselves as we move through it all.

In what way do you try to show your compassion toward another or yourself? Leave a comment and let us know.

I’d like to let you know that, if you like what I blog about, then you may be interested in a support group I am starting. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area and want to find peace-of-mind, want to find a way through any emotional turmoil, then I invite you to join me. There are two groups. One meets every 2nd and 4th Monday from 10 am to 11 am in San Rafael, in Marin. The second group meets every 2nd and 4th Thursday from 1:30 to 2: 30 pm, also in SanRafael. Both groups will run for three months.

We will cover how to identify the gates of your heart, learn the keys to unlock these gates, and understand how to push the gates open. In month one, we will deal with how to do a self-appraisal. Month two will be spent on getting through grief, and month three will deal with forgiveness so we can find peace.

If you are interested, call me to get more information or to register. The groups will start in February, 2013. Space is limited to twelve people per group. 415-883-8325.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: compassion, compassionate, how to show compassion, resentful, resentment

There Is No Failure, Only Learning Experiences

January 26, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning! I hope the day brings you great joy and comfort. Let’s start by clarifying that there is no failure in life. Yes, it seems like there is, and that was the search phrase that caught my attention…. someone was discouraged by their failures.

Yet, consider this: Every experience we have, no matter how it turns out, can be used as a stepping stone to success. Each experience can be seen as valuable as we walk down our path. We have the power to assign a belief to how something turns out, and we can choose the positive spin – that all happens for a reason and that all that happens is a lesson from which we can grow.

If we go around assigning the term “failure” to things that don’t turn out the way we planned, wanted, or expected, then we cast a negative light on those experiences. In reality, however, these experiences can be used to further our goals, to further where we wish to go, simply by looking at them in a positive light.

To take it even further, we can be grateful for this so-called failure, knowing that it is bringing us even closer to that which we desire. What we tend to call failure is simply the Universe telling us to go in a different direction.

The thing about labeling our experiences as a failure is that soon we begin to believe that WE are a failure! And none of us is a failure. We are simply beings on a journey, trying different things to succeed in life. We are each a success, simply by virtue that we have tried something that is likely out of our comfort zone. For that courage, we need to applaud ourselves.

Today, as you go through your day and consider your experiences, choose to see them as experiences that are moving you closer to your goal, closer to your dream. Take from your vocabulary the term “failure,” and replace it with the term “success.” See how that feels as you move through the day, and then leave us a comment to let us know what you found.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: failure, I feel like a failure, success

Overcoming Insecurity and Low Self-Esteem

January 22, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, all. May you have a day of growth and awareness as you journey today. There were four searches for overcoming insecurity and low self-esteem, so I will address this topic.

In the pursuit of getting past insecurity and low self-esteem, I wonder if we ever get totally over insecurity. I mean, I wonder if there are situations that arise for us all that sometimes lead us to feel insecure, even when we have a strong sense of self-esteem? It may be quite normal to feel pangs of insecurity, for example, when faced with a new situation, but we move through it and it disappears as we become more comfortable in the situation.

Having raised that point, let’s look at situations where we are acutely insecure… insecure all the time, with a low self-esteem. I believe that our esteem is formed as we grow up, and is further affected as an adult. Lots of berating, criticism, and being put down will lead to insecurity and low self-esteem, either as a child, or while in a bad marriage, for example. So, what do we do about it?

I suggest that we determine what is the root of our insecurity and low self-esteem. Can we recall the times when we were berated, criticized… told we were worthless, for example. That was my demise… being told I was worthless almost every day as a child. It took its toll and I have had difficulty with getting past a low self-esteem all my life. How did I do it, get beyond the messages I received?

First, I identified the cause of my insecurity and low esteem. It was not only childhood that led to this, but my verbally abusive marriage, as well. After identifying the causes, I wrote about my feelings… I journaled. And not just writing, but printing with my non-dominant hand, my left hand. When I did this, all sorts of deep feelings welled forth onto the page, and I began to feel some relief. My suggestion is for you to try to print with your non-dominant hand every morning for at least 5 minutes. You’ll be amazed what will surface.

Next, I began a rigorous self-talk campaign. I told myself that what was said to me were lies, that what was said was highly critical and I could never meet the expectations of the one who criticized me. Knowing there was nothing I could ever do to meet their expectations led me to feel freer, more secure in myself. Coupled with a self-appraisal of my traits, I saw my positive traits, and I began to remind myself of them every time insecurity or low self-esteem occurred.

I recognized that what was told to me was actually what the person who said them was feeling about themselves. Ahhh, what was said had nothing to do with me, only the other person. I recognized that they were emotionally and spiritually sick, not that I was bad.

So, with repeated soothing and positive self-talk, I began to grow my low self-esteem. I wrote about my positive traits, again with my non-dominant hand, to reinforce them in my heart and mind. Over the years, that has worked to raise my low self-esteem and has led to feeling more secure.

What about you? Can you identify where the feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem originated? Can you write, print, with your non-dominant hand and let the deep hurt surface? Can you follow up those revelations with positive self-talk, and recognize that what was said was really about the person who said those things to you? Give these things a try and let us know how it turns out for you.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement Tagged With: insecurity, insecurity and low self-esteem, low self-esteem

Getting Through Grief After a Divorce – Conclusion

January 21, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Hello, again. We are talking about getting through our grief after we have left a marriage or were left. Either way, there is loss and grief.

Perhaps the most useful tool I can recommend is to write about your thoughts and feelings with your non-dominant hand. I recommend you print, rather than write script. Printing is easier. I did this, printed with my left hand, and all sorts of deep emotions surfaced that I was then able to look at and process. I began to get through my grief more quickly and identified some feelings I didn’t even know I had.

There are stages to grief that are defined in the literature. For example, Elisabeth Kublar-Ross believes there are five stages that we go through. These are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We go from one to the other, not necessarily in order, and we may stay for a brief time in one, or a long period of time. We often jump back and forth from one to the other until we finally reach acceptance and gain some peace.

It is all individual and we cannot compare our grieving process to anyone else’s, nor should we allow others to compare us to someone, or a “norm.” There is no norm. There is only what is in our own heart. I believe it helps to understand these stages, as we are then prepared for what we might experience and we can put words to our feelings.

Another train of thought is suggested in the book The Grief Recovery Handbook, 20th Edition, by John W. James and Russell Friedman. They do not believe in stages, and state grief is a totally individual experience and cannot be placed into any stage or box. I highly recommend getting and reading this book, and doing the writing exercises.

These exercises are designed to get us to understand how we deal with grief, as the first step. Generally, we mirror what we saw when we were growing up. Often, that was the belief that we need to get over it, grieve alone, be strong… These beliefs are detrimental to our grief recovery. Instead, we can adopt the beliefs and attitudes that having feelings of sorrow, anger, and even guilt are natural occurrences when we experience a divorce.

To get through these, John and Russell walk the reader of their book through a process that identifies all the losses in one’s life, written on a timeline. Then, they have us look at all our important relationships in which there is unfinished business, also on a timeline. The loss of a divorce will most likely coincide with feelings about the person from whom we are divorced. Again, I urge you to get the book and do the program that is outlined.

After a divorce, there is often bitterness and anger. We can help to get through these by first recognizing what is underneath it. Perhaps there is hurt, fear we are not good enough, fear that there is something wrong with us. We may feel anger for abuse we received. We may feel guilty for things we said or did.

To deal with the anger, I found doing a self-appraisal to identify the things I did to bring the marriage to a bad place was of paramount importance. I discovered, for example, several things I did and said that brought the marriage to its demise. I also did not speak up for myself, so invited verbal abuse agaiin and again. Then, I played the victim, a role I played so others would feel sorry for me. I did this all unconsciously, of course, but I discovered it when I did an appraisal.

How about you? When you take a look at yourself and stop blaming the other person, what do you see? We all will find something or other that we did or did not do, that we are not proud of, that was detrimental to the marriage. We need to own those things, recognize we did the best we could at the time, and forgive ourselves. Then, we can find compassion for the other person and forgive them as well.

This does not happen overnight; it is a process that takes time and focus, a continual returning to exploration. Over time, though, we will find we have gotten through our grief, mainly because we allowed ourselves to feel our sorrow, and from that, the process of healing occurred.

I wish you well in your recovery from a divorce and hope that you gain peace from the experience. Take what was learned to the next relationship, which will be more whole and complete than the last, simply because you allowed yourself to heal and to gain insight of your behaviors from the past marriage. I wish you well.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement Tagged With: divorce, getting through a divorce, grief, grieving, grieving process, how to survive a divorce

How to Develop Tolerance

January 19, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, all! Once again, the morning got away from me yesterday and I had to leave for work for the day before I blogged. I really don’t like people coming to my site to find my blogs and not finding a new each day. Yet, there is a wealth of information to keep visitors busy.

How to develop tolerance was searched for three times yesterday and today, so I thought I’d write my thoughts on that. The definition in Webster that fits my belief of tolerance is to recognize and respect another’s ideas or beliefs without sharing them. The definition goes on to say, to bear or put up with something that is not especially liked.

I suppose tolerance boils down to one saying that is a good motto to follow, and that is, “live and let live.” If we pay attention to our own affairs, and allow others to pay attention to theirs, we are that much closer to practicing tolerance. This assumes, of course, that the other is not being a harm to themselves or others. When they are being harmful, we do not tolerate that behavior or action.

If we dislike what someone believes in or is saying, then we can remove ourselves from the situation. What if we can’t? For example, I disliked the verbal abuse I was enduring as handed out by my now ex-husband. I couldn’t leave at the time. I wasn’t strong enough emotionally. Yet, it was a choice to stay in the marriage. And, I tolerated the abuse.

In retrospect, I see that I could have made good on my threat to leave much sooner than I did. I also could have employed lots of self-talk while being verbally put down, by building myself up, telling myself what he was saying were lies, that what he was saying was a reflection of his insecurities. Much easier said than done!

In the end, when we have the strength to do so, we can remove ourselves from the vicinity of someone whose opinion and actions we do not like and thus, tolerate them, while still taking care of ourselves. We allow them to be themselves while, at the same time, we respect and tolerate our own views and opinions.

Tolerance has to do with ourselves, also. We need to learn to tolerate our foibles and failings, accept them, and then move forward to correct them. We have the power to change ourselves and our behaviors, actions, and beliefs, and we can exercise that power.

When we act in such a manner, we end up finding peace-of-mind. How do you tolerate those people in your life that you find disagreeable? Have you tried any of the things I’ve suggested here? How did it work for you? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: how to find peace, inner peace, peace, peace of mind, tolerance, tolerant, tolerating

Fear of Emotional Sobriety

January 17, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

Good morning, all. I hope this day is a productive one for each of you. I actually started this two days ago, and the days got away from me, so I’ll try again…

I liked it that “fear of sobriety” was searched for twice, as I had been thinking of writing about whether sobriety was for you. Fear of sobriety fits quite nicely into that question. Before we dive into it though, I want to redefine the way I will now be looking at sobriety, which is what led me to add “emotional” to “sobriety.”

Sobriety refers to more than just abstaining from substances. It also refers to behaviors, and this is what I wish to focus on from here on in when I blog. I would like to define it as the act of developing more awareness – of self, others, and surroundings – as well as becoming more enlightened spiritually. It is about going through the gates of your heart, the gates of your life.

Webs of Fear

Using this definition, let’s look at fear now. Like a fly or some other insect, we each can get stuck in the webs of fear. My fear was not only about leaving behind the substances, it was also about changing my thoughts and behaviors as well. In fact, I didn’t even know that if I became more aware of myself and others, I would find peace-of-mind. And isn’t peace our goal? Don’t we all wish for peace-of-mind?

I was slow to wake up to self-awareness and especially awareness of others, as I was so emotionally damaged. It took doing a lot of work on myself to even identify what I was feeling! I was afraid to look at myself… fearful that I would find a nobody, a worthless person with no merit.

What I have found instead over the years is a highly compassionate and caring person with lots of gifts and talents. I discovered many strengths and character traits that I didn’t even know I had! Today, I can recognize and celebrate these.

It works that way when we do our emotional work, when we take a look at who we are at our core. It is scary, and the reward is immense peace that is gained. It grows on us. We become more self-aware, and thus, develop more sobriety. Also, as we become more self-aware, we become able to be more aware of others… their needs, their desires, and we become able to treat others with respect, kindness, and tolerance.

Said another way, when we become more self-aware, we are able to show more love to ourselves and to others. We also become enlightened in spiritual principles, such as gratitude and compassion. The end result of all of this? Sobriety in our behavior and more peace-of-mind.

Will you walk through the gates of your heart to more self-awareness, awareness of others, and the ability to practice spiritual principles? Or, will you continue to allow the fear of looking at yourself keep you from emotional sobriety? The choice is yours. Which will you make? Leave a comment and let us know. : )

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: emotional sobriety, how to find peace, peace, peace of mind, Sober Living, sobriety

Surrender in Sobriety

January 14, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones 1 Comment

Good morning, everyone! I hope this is a glorious day for each of you. Today’s search term I have chosen to address is “surrender in sobriety.”

When we surrender, our sobriety moves along much more smoothly. When I say surrender, I am referring to giving in to sobriety, or letting go of trying to manage our drinking. There are many points along the way where surrender will aid the pursuit of sobriety.

Surrender of Pretense

The first thing to surrender is the pretense that all is fine for us. To quote my book Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing and the verse Surrender of Pretense, “I am no longer able to maintain the pretense that all is fine behind my gate of false bravado and politeness. It is time to let others see the pitted and rusted metal that is me. It is time to come out from behind my gate”

Once we give up the pretense that all is fine, we need to next surrender our thought that we can manage our drinking and stay sober through our own willpower. This is a myth. People are told all the time by friends and family, “You are a strong person. Just exert your strength and you will be able to stop.” It doesn’t work that way.

We need to give up our efforts to manage our drinking, to become sober, and turn to others and a higher power for help. We need to give in to the process that occurs in sobriety. This means letting go of trying to manage and control everything, of being in charge of everything.

After giving in to our efforts to manage our drinking, we need to next surrender to a higher power in our lives that will guide us, if we allow it to do so. This higher power can be anything we want it to be: nature, God, Buddha, our favorite place to be. The point is, we stop making liquor our higher power and allow something outside of liquor and ourselves to guide us, to support us, on an on-going and continual basis.

The next thing we surrender to is a major part of the process of sobriety. This includes looking at ourselves and our behaviors, our actions, and then apologizing if it has harmed another person. We give in and realize we are not perfect, nor is our behavior. This self-appraisal is a major step to freedom and peace-of-mind. The process then includes an on-going look at our behavior, catching ourselves when we act or behave poorly. By doing this, we can right our wrong immediately; this will help tremendously to maintain our sobriety.

We now surrender to the positive things that will come our way when we have surrendered all the things I have discussed above. Sometimes we feel we are undeserving of the good that comes our way, but if we have surrendered to all the things I have discussed, then we are worthy of the good. Welcome it in.

The photo and verse above are from my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing, which is an accounting of my journey of healing in sobriety. It is an excellent source of guidance for you to use through the feelings that surface in sobriety. Many claim they use it as a daily meditation guide. My book is available on this site, under the “Products” tab above. When you order my book, I sign it specifically for you. You can see examples of the pages under the “About” tab; then go to “The book.”

What are some of the things that get in your way of surrendering to sobriety? Or, have you found surrender to be easy? Please leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, peace of mind, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, surrender in sobriety

How Sobriety Leads to Joy and Peace

January 13, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

Good morning! I hope this is a gentle and fulfilling day for each of you. I wish for you a sobriety that is filled with joy and peace. That’s the search term for the day about which I will blog today… the relationship of sobriety to joy and peace.

All my life I looked for joy and peace, peace-of-miind. I looked to alcohol and drugs to supply these for me, and I thought I had them when I was drunk and high. It was not until I started and lived a life of sobriety that I discovered I had no clue what joy and peace could really be.

Burst of Joy

In sobriety, I learned it was possible to heal my wounds from early life and this brought me great joy to be free of chains that bound me. My heart burst with joy when I discovered that I even COULD heal.

At first, life was quite painful in sobriety, as I was feeling my feelings without anything to numb them, to quiet them. Ah, and it was extremely difficult to stay sober, but with lots of prayer and attending support group meetings (4-5 a day), I was given the gift of continued sobriety.

The more sobriety I accumulated, the more I healed from emotional scars and pain, the more joy I felt. It was a wonderful feeling, and still is in present day. You see, every day I feel joy… joy about the life around me, joy about my peace-of-miind.

Yes, with the joy I had found, I began to experience peace. I think the biggest thing that led me to peace was learning to conduct a self-appraisal, and conducting one on a on-going basis.

At first, it was difficult to do an appraisal, as I felt shame over my behavior, my actions. Every time I thought of what I had done, or who I was, I felt shame. This was one of the negative effects of an abusive past.

Promise of Peace

After a while of doing an appraisal, however, I began to gain peace when I completed one. It began to feel really good iinside to identify my poor behavior and thoughts, and to right them. It felt good to “confess” them to another person, as part of the appraisal process involves telling another person what I had discovered.

I think that when one commits to doing an ongoing self-appraisal, one is offered the promise of peace. But the real thing that brought me to peace was when I discovered how to forgive my parents. The act of forgiveness really undid the chains that bound me emotionally.

At the end of each day, if I had done an appraisal and forgiven myself and others, I experienced the promise of peace. To this day, that is true for me, and so I gladly and without reservation perform an appraisal and look toward forgiveness.

All of this is possible because of my continued sobriety. And how about you? Do you experience joy and peace as a result of your sobriety? How does that look for you? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how to find peace, inner peace, joy, living sober, peace, sober, sobriety, soebr living

Living in Gratitude

January 12, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

Good morning, all! Today I would like to talk about gratitude – how to live with it every day, how it benefits us to do so. One of my images from my book Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing is Visions of Gratitude, as seen here on the right.

Visions of Gratitude

The verse that accompanies this image is: “When I look with eyes that appreciate, everything around and within me is more pleasing, more beautiful.”

This has been my experience. The more I look around and appreciate all that I have, all that is in my life, the more pleasing life is in general. The more pleasant it is. The more grumbling I do about things, the more anger and dissatisfaction I feel. It’s my choice, and I like to feel good, so I choose looking with appreciation at all that I have.

We can all practice looking for the good in our lives, looking for things about which we are grateful. It starts from the moment we wake up… we can be grateful simply for waking up to have another day to live to our fullest, to experience life and all it presents.

Even if we are in the middle of hard times, we can be grateful that 1), we can feel the pain, because when we feel pain, we also feel joy when the pain clears, and 2), we can be grateful that from the difficult time, we will grow our spirit, our character.

When we express gratitude for all that we have, our demeanor is one of cheerfulness, of happiness. We are a joy and a pleasure to be around. We set a good example for others to show their gratitude.

Today, I am grateful for my home, my warmth, my kitty who is my companion, my health, my job… I am especially grateful to be an alcoholic because it led me to recovery and that led to healing that has occurred in my sobriety. Recovery has led to all the peace and happiness I have searched for all my life.

What are you grateful for today in your world? Leave a comment and share with us your joy and gratitude.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: attitude of gratitude, being grateful, grateful, gratitude, recovery, showing gratitude, sober, sobriety

Feelings of Despair and Hopelessness

January 11, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning and welcome back. Today I will discuss despair and hopelessness, and how to get past them. This was a search term from the 6th. There have been minimal visits to this site since that day and I am confused why that is. If anyone can clue me in, I’d be most grateful.

I have addressed despair and hopelessness before, and I would like to expand upon what I have said. Despair is giving up all hope, or being without hope. Hopelessness is the feeling that things will not and cannot get better. It is a sense of futility about continuing one’s efforts.

When one is in this space, there is a feeling of giving up. At least, that’s how it was for me in 2005 when I felt huge despair and hopelessness. I prayed to God to let me die because I did not have the courage to commit suicide. But I truly wanted my life to end because I could not go on feeling these feelings.

God did not let me die, obviously, because here I am, writing about how to get past despair and hopelessness. For me, it was a process; it did not happen overnight. The first thing that happened was I allowed myself to be treated in the mental health system; I sought out help at someone’s recommendation and urging.

When I sought out emotional help, I discovered I had major depression. Although I fought it for some time, I finally allowed the doctor to put me on an anti-depression medication. Boy, what a difference that made in my spirits! I learned that I had most likely experienced brain changes because of the physical and verbal abuse I’d endured in early years, and that the medication allowed my brain to function more normally.

That was the first thing that happened to me. The second thing that happened was when I discovered how my past experiences were of use to another person who was suffering. In fact, I was only a few steps ahead of him in the healing process, but it was enough to relay to him what I had done up until that point, such as books I had read that were helpful, the name of my therapist, and the trick of journaling, printing actually, with my left, non-dominant hand.

When I journaled that way, all sorts of deep feelings arose, as did comforting words to soothe me. The words just appeared on the page. All I did was to be willing to accept some responsibility for my healing, and to follow up by journaling, taking medication, seeing my therapist and reading self-help books that dealt with being an abused child. (Claudia Black, John Bradshaw, and Alice Miller are three that were very important to me and brought me solace and relief.)

With these practices and actions, I was slowly able to crawl out of my despair and I began to have hope. All it took was a little bit of hope, and that grew as I continued doing the things I mentioned above. Today, I am a whole person, still on medication, no longer seeing a therapist, and I experience peace and joy on a daily basis. I am extremely hopeful in the present moment and for the future. Like I said, I am at peace.

You, too, can experience relief from your despair and hopelessness. The path I took may be beneficial for you, as it was for me. The key is willingness, being willing to take an active role in your attempts to crawl out of the quagmire, and then taking action to follow up. If you elect to do that, to recover from despair and hopelessness, I wish you every success in the world.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement Tagged With: despair, despair and hopelessness, hopeless, hopelessness, how to find peace, peace, suicide

Just a Note…

January 8, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning, all! I hope you are each off to a great start in 2013.

I am going to take two days off from blogging, so will be back Thursday morning. In the meantime, please scroll down and read the post about how to conduct a self-appraisal. I hope you find it useful. It will bring you to freedom and peace if you start the practice of looking at yourself through an appraisal.

See you Thursday!

Filed Under: Self Improvement

How to Conduct a Self-Appraisal

January 7, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones 6 Comments

Good morning! I hope your day is filled with lightness and joy. Today the search term I want to address is conducting a self-appraisal. This is a look at ourselves, a performance evaluation if you will, and it has great benefit.

The purpose of a self-appraisal is to determine how we are coming across in the world. It is a way to assure we are treating ourselves and others with kindness, tolerance, and respect. Many believe that this is an exercise designed to beat ourselves up, but that is not the true way to do a self-appraisal. Let’s look at another way to do one.

The first thing to do when conducting a self-appraisal is to identify all of our positive points. List out in writing all of the things that we like about ourselves, all the things that others say are positive about us.

We study this list to praise ourselves and to realize that we are good people at our core. We don’t do it to brag or flaunt our positive points. Rather, we are humble about our goodness and we see our positive points as gifts.

Next, we take a block of time – a week, two weeks, or a month – and list out all of the positive things we did during that time period. We are looking at all of the positive actions and behaviors we performed during this time period. We are not braggarts in this exercise, nor are we demeaning or disregarding of our behavior and actions. Once these positive points are identified, we sit with them, being with them, allowing them to sink into our consciousness and awareness.

Then, to continue our self-appraisal, we turn our attention to our negative and less-than-desireable actions and behaviors. This is done in a fact-finding fashion. In other words, we do not identify these things so we can beat ourselves up or feel guilt and remorse, although these may surface.

When we identify our negative points, our poor behaviors – and we all have them – we resolve to be responsible for our behavior by owning it. To own it, we first become aware and conscious of it, then we do whatever is necessary to change it. This part of the self-appraisal involves either apologizing for our actions or resolving to not repeat the behavior. We do not apologize if it will be hurtful to another; we simply change our behavior.

We are totally honest in this part of the self-appraisal, not cutting ourselves slack or giving excuses for our bad behavior and actions. The point is to shine the light of consciousness and awareness on them. Once we have done this, we own it, as I said above.

Bad behavior includes gossip, by the way, as this is spiritual assassination of another. We stop engaging in this behavior as a way to apologize to the one we denigrated. Often, we have done something that was mean to another, they reacted in a predictable, human way, and we are now resentful of their response to our meanness. If this is the case for us, we let go of the resentment and apologize, if it’s appropriate.

The benefits of a self-appraisal are that we feel more peace, more freedom of mind and heart. We become more gentle, tolerant, and respectful of people. Inside, the feelings we have for ourselves improve, become stronger and more positive.

I cannot say enough how freeing doing a self-appraisal is. We will be amazed at the benefits we experience. It will make us better people, less angry and bitter toward others In fact, the article I wrote on going from anger to forgiveness spells out the entire process and is something you will want to read. You can get it by leaving your name and email to the right. So leave them now and you will receive the article, which will further this process of the self-appraisal.

Armed now with the way to do a self-appraisal, we can now enjoy the peace and freedom we experience.

Filed Under: Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: freedom, freedome, how to find peace, inner peace, peace, performance appraisal, self-appraisal

The Benefits of Compassion

January 6, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning to you all! It is the wee hours of the morning and I just popped awake, so I got up. I’m armed with a cup of coffee in me, and am ready to write. : ) This morning’s search term I chose is compassion. Let’s see where that takes us.

Webster defines compassion as sorrow for the troubles of another coupled with the desire to help. It also defines it as having pity, and here I disagree. Pity is also defined as sorrow for another’s misfortunes, and goes on to say it implies a slight contempt because the object is regarded as weak or ignorant. I don’t think people want pity, especially because it implies ignorance or weakness, yet I believe compassion is desired by others when they are suffering.

It is possible to feel compassion for someone who is ill or experiencing difficult times. For example, I am currently care-taking a woman who is unable to be independent in her life, and I show her compassion. I think, “What if this were me? How would I like to be treated?” So I show her a mixture of kindness, gentleness, and patience – all components of compassion.

The benefit is a feeling that I have done something good for another, and that feels satisfying emotionally. It feeds my spirit, my soul. The benefit to the other person is that they feel nurtured, cared for and about.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of compassion is that it leads to forgiveness – of others and of ourselves. Let me explain how I discovered this. I spent 38 years angry and bitter about my up-bringing and the damage it did to my psyche. Then, through the process of my recovery in sobriety, I was lookinig at the relationship I had with my parents at the time, and I began to think about what they had endured in their lives.

What I realized is that they were abused themselves in harmful ways, and they were just repeating that behavior with me. When seen in this light, I began to feel sorrow for their troubles, their experiences, knowing how difficult the after-effects of abuse are. And they never learned to examine the feelings associated with their misfortunes. I began to feel compassion for them.

I re-visited that space of compassion many times, as I thought about the effect their up-bringing had on mine, and I found my anger and bitterness melting slowly away. Eventually, I realized I was feeling forgiveness for their behavior, knowing they knew no other way. That did not condone their actions and behaviors, of course, but forgiveness does not mean you condone anything that happened, it just means you pardon it.

In a similar fashion, we can feel compassion for ourselves over our difficulties, our misfortunes, and even our bad behavior. After-all, we knew no better or we would have done differently at that time. We were most likely wounded people ourselves. Instead of feeling pity or remorse, however, we can allow ourselves to feel compassion for our ignorance, our woundedness that led us to poor behavior.

We can feel compassion for the damaged person that we perhaps became through our experiences in life. Yet, that is not grounds for excuses over our behavior or actions. We feel compassion for ourselves, learn the lesson, and move forward in our life, resolving to not repeat what led us to compassion in the first place.

So, there you have what I believe to be the benefits of compassion, with forgiveness of others and ourselves high on the list. In what way do you show compassion to others, to yourself? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: compassion, compassionate, how to show compassion, living sober, recovery, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, whay do we show compassion

Inspirational Thoughts for Feelings of Hopelessness

January 3, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

There were two searches for hopelessness this morning, and I would like to address this topic today. I wish to offer some solace and comfort to those of you who are feeling hopeless.

I remember what it was like to have feelings of hopelessness. It was a feeling that what I wanted and expected would not happen, that there was no sign of a favorable outcome. It led me to great depression and despair, and I spent every day praying to God to let me die. I was miserable and did not want to continue in life.

Then something happened which turned that around for me. I listened to the people who were urging me to seek professional psychiatric help for my depression and despair. I sought help through the County Mental Health system. What I discovered was, I was suffering from major depression and panic disorder.

Ray of Hope

Suddenly, armed with this new information, I saw a ray of light, a twinkling of hope. I felt less like I was a loser, a failure. I accepted the recommendation to take medication for my disorders and I began to feel better emotionally. It was like it says in my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing:

“A ray of light across the bars of my being lights my way, instills hope in my heart.”

Just that little bit of light began the journey out of my emotional prison. But what really transformed my hopelessness was being of service to another who was suffering the way I was. I shared with them about my story, and efforts I had made to heal from my past, which is why I was feeling so hopeless. I began to feel worthy, worthwhile. From that point on, I felt hopeful that things could get better.

The thing is, I had to keep sober to get to that point. I had to maintain my sobriety. If I had not done that, I believe I would have stayed in that feeling of hopelessness, unable to get out at all. As is was, I was given the gift of continued sobriety because I worked at it.

As that ray of hope grew, I began to look at my expectations and discovered that what I was expecting was unrealistic. My expectations were too high. In my case, I was expecting to clear the pain of my past away, to wipe it from my mind. What I learned to do instead was to use it to help others, and that led me to more hopefulness.

I began to set realistic goals and dreams, based in every day occurrences. The more I helped others, the more peace with my past I began to have. It was amazing how that worked, but it did. With just that small ray of light, that ray of hope, I was able to conquer my hopelessness and that occurred because I asked for help. Asking for help allowed me to get unstuck and move forward. I stopped asking to die, and thanked God instead for showing me a better way, for guiding me to be of service to others.

Today, I have continual hope and the feelings of hopelessness have not returned. I consciously try to not have expectations for anything, and my goals and dreams are more realistic and attainable. This has led me to peace and joy.

Do you have feelings of hopelessness, like life is not worth continuing? If you do, I wish for you the courage to ask for help, to talk it over with someone else. I wish for you to be of service to someone else who is struggling also, so that you feel that your experience is worthwhile and through that, feel more hope. I wish you well on your journey.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: depression, hopeful, hopefulness, hopelessness, how to overcome depression, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

The Power of Willingness

January 1, 2013 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

Good morning and Happy New Year to all of you out there! I hope you all have a wonderful year in 2013! I want to start the year off by talking about willingness, but before I do, I’d like to address the person who searched for “sometimes living is worthless.”

To you who searched for that, I’d like to say, yes, sometimes it feels like living is worthless. There appears to be no hope, nothing to do that will improve the situation. That is what it was like for me anyway, when I was praying to God to let me die in 2005.

The operative word there is “feels.” It “feels” like living is worthless. The thing is, it is a feeling, and if we allow them, feelings will come and go. They pass if we just hang in there and wait for them to do so. What worked for me when I felt living was worthless, was helping someone to get through what I had gotten through in my suffering.

In other words, I was helped through that feeling by being useful to another, and I was useful to another by sharing my story with someone who was struggling with the same feelings with which I had been struggling. It worked for me to talk through these feelings in an effort to be of service to another. When I realized that by sharing how I made improvements in my life I was helpful to another, I began to feel that life WAS worth living. Perhaps you can gain something from that and your feeling that living is worthless will ease.

Key of Willingness

Let’s move on to willingness. In fact, willingness applies in the situation above, because one has to be willing to be of service to another, willing to let the feeling of worthlessness travel through.

Webster defines willingness as acting and giving readily, cheerfully, gladly… voluntarily. I found that asking the Universe for the willingness to be willing to have willingness was useful to get me to the point of having willingness. Unfortunately for my mental health, I had to be beaten down to the lowest low emotionally and with my drinking, before I was able to gain the willingness to do something about it all. I was so bad off, I became willing to do whatever it took to feel better.

Today, I define willingness as one of the major keys to use to open the gates of my heart when it is closed. In fact, I find willingness to be the key for the basis of everything I do. The power of willingness is remarkable. When I am willing, all sorts of positive things come my way. Often, problems solve themselves with my action and God’s intervention, but I have to be willing to do the work. Then, I have to be willing to allow God to work in my life.

The act of being willing opens doors that might never be opened for us. It’s like, when we show willingness, the Universe knows how to help us attain what we want and need. It opens our mind, our heart. There is great power in that.

How do you show willingness? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: being willing, key of willingness, willing, Willingness

Taking It One Day At a Time

December 31, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

There is a lot to be said for living one day at a time, whether you are in sobriety or not. This doesn’t mean you don’t make plans or think ahead; you do. But you focus on the day before you; you focus on the present.

I used to spend my time in the past and the future… anything but the present moment before me. Consequently, I missed out on a whole lot of pleasure and goodness. I was angry about the past and kept living it over and over again. I also stayed in the past with my guilt over my actions and behaviors, things I said to others.

I lived in great fear of the future, imagining every detail of what could and would happen in my life. I also created a fantasy life in my mind, looking toward the future with great hopes of this or that happening. I was rarely in the present moment, enjoying what was right in front of me.

Then I got sober and I began the journey to learn how to live one day at a time. You don’t have to have a drinking problem to live one day at a time, only a realization that you are in the past and future and not the present moment.

On my journey, I was taught how to live in the moment by focusing on the next indicated thing to do. In other words, I learned to go from task to task as it related to my goal or desired outcome. Sometimes, the next indicated thing was to wash the dishes or to take a nap.

As far as planning, I learned to make plans, but to hold them loosely, sometimes changing these plans according to my needs and desires when that moment rolled around. I was taught to make plans but to let go of the outcome.

The result has been that I no longer worry about the future or the past, and my fear of the future is much less. I have learned to accept the things I did or did not do in the past, and I have learned to make plans and let go of how it all works out. It is a most freeing way to live, taking it one day at a time. It has allowed me to focus on the moment, where all the richness of life lies.

How are you at living one day at a time? Have you mastered it or is that something you wish to learn to do? Leave a comment and let us know. And, have a Happy New Year… fun and safe.

Filed Under: Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: one day at a time, sober, sobriety

The Art of Gentleness

December 30, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

Good morning and happy almost-New-Year. My cat Izzy is walking back and forth in front of me, looking for pets, reaching out her paw, asking for more, so I pet her with great gentleness. She is so precious. She brightens my life.

This morning, I wanted to write about gentleness of heart, gentleness of spirit. I wanted to talk about gentleness to others as we interact with them and to ourselves as we grow and change. I feel light in my heart when I am gentle with others, when I treat them in a kind, serene and patient way.

The same goes for me when I treat myself with gentleness, with kindness, patience, and serenity. I am more gentle with others than I am with myself, as I forget a lot of the time to be patient with my progress, my attempts to learn, grow, and heal. Yet, when I show gentleness to myself, I progress further than when I am being unkind and impatient.

Bed of Gentleness

This is the image from my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing. The verse is: “Oh, could we not treat ourselves with great gentleness as we go through life learning, growing, healing? Would we then be more gentle with others, too?”

How do I show gentleness to others? It truly is as simple as being kind and serene… patient with them. When I am in that space, I am quiet and assured in my heart, and that is reflected in my actions, my behavior, my words, and my tone of voice. I am relaxed and others, in turn, become more relaxed as well.

And how do I show gentleness to myself? I use a lot of self-talk with quiet, reassuring words that I am okay, that I am doing fine. I show myself kindness and patience, and I act in a serene manner. This leads to a gentler way to approach my thoughts, my behaviors, and my actions.

Do you treat others and yourself with gentleness? How does that feel for you? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: gentle, Gentleness, gently

A Christmas Story of Gratitude

December 25, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

the van I designed and built

It was December, 2003, and I was traveling from Denver, where I’d been living since June, to Baja to run into the guy for whom I had the hots. That’s a whole other story… I was traveling in my full-sized Dodge camper van that I had gutted and redone in cherrywood, designed to look like a boat.

It was the 23rd and I pulled into a mobile home and RV park outside of Tucson. When I registered, they said the Christmas party was that night and if I came and brought a gift, I got one in exchange.

I found my spot and got settled in with my traveling companion, my 19 year old cat, Maynard. I went through the van, looking for something suitable for a gift, and finally decided upon a Christmas candle I’d had for years but never had lit. Ah, this will work, I thought. I wrapped it in a Viva paper towel, and tied the ribbon with fancy yarn I had for weaving.

While I was looking around, I sent up a prayer to the Universe, asking for something small as a gift because I didn’t have much space available.

Feeling pleased I was offering a suitable gift, I headed off to the party. The first thing I noticed was that everyone that was coming had lavishly wrapped presents, with ribbons and bows. I felt small in comparison. I was ashamed of my gift. I decided to stay anyway.

The next thing I noticed was everyone was drinking wine except me. Ah, wonderful, I said to myself. The only alcoholic in the bunch. I felt singled out and awkward, but I still stayed. I was after that gift I was going to get because it was the only gift I was getting for Christmas that year.

My turn came down the line, and when it was my turn, I went up to the tree and looked for something small. The only small gift left was one the size of a VHS tape. Wonderful, I thought. Perfect. I opened it and it was wine glass stem rings, markers. They were Santas, Christmas trees, a snow man. There were six of them. Ah, great, I grumbled to myself in huge disappointment. The only alcoholic in the bunch and I have to get the wine glass markers!

I was feeling sorry for myself, and although the rule was I could pick someone else’s gift, I noticed no one else was doing that and I didn’t want to be the only one. I walked back to the van, highly bummed. As I sat on the side step of the van looking out at the night, I was filled with self-pity over the gift I couldn’t use. I got up and put it in the trash.

Suddenly, as I was throwing the wine glass markers away, I thought of my cupboard door handles, pulls, of which I had six. The brilliant idea came to me to put the rings on the door pulls for Christmas decorations. Oh, my goodness! My only Christmas decorations! I realized I had gotten something small, as I’d asked for and it was something to boost my Christmas spirit. I can’t tell you how much my heart soared with joy!

My cherished ornaments

These wine stem markers have become an integral part of my Christmas each year, for I now use them as Christmas tree decorations. They are the first ornaments on the tree. And every year when I place them on the tree, I renew my gratitude for all I receive.

I learned some valuable lessons that day I received these wine glass markers as a gift. First, I learned to be more flexible and creative in my thinking about how to use objects.

Second, I learned to greatly appreciate everything I receive, for I never know what the true purpose or use a gift may have. This has been the most valuable of all that I learned that night in Tucson.

Third, I learned that the Universe, God, or whatever that source is in the world, does send me what I ask for. It just might not be what I was anticipating, but it’s what I asked for.

That ends my tale about my wine stem holders. In closing, I’d like to say Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to each of you.

Do you have a tale about Christmas and learning a valuable lesson? I’d love for you to share it with us.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: attitude of gratitude, gratitude

My Sincere Apologies to You, My Readers

December 24, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. It is with some mortification and certainly much embarrassment that I write today. You see, yesterday I decided to gather together my posts about living sober and see about turning them into articles. As I read them over, I became more and more mortified to realize the approach I was using, how I was talking to you.

My words struck me as preachy, presumptuous. I spout off ways to manage sobriety with blitheness, throwing out the advice to do this, to do that. “You must” this, and “do that.” Boy, that does not come across at all the way it was intended and I did not catch the tone of it when I reread the posts for errors before I posted them. The post “Staying Sober on Christmas Day” was especially preachy, and I truly apologize for that post.

My sincerest apologies for all the preachy, presumptuous posting I have been doing of late. My use of the word “you,” addressing you personally, was intended to be more personal than using the term “they,” or “people.” Also, I needed to preface my statements about ways to change with a statement like, “I invite yo to try…” But the way to remedy this all is to stick with relaying my experiences and then, perhaps, inviting you to join me on that path, that journey, if you so choose.

I realize that I come across as Miss Sobriety, which I am not. I am simply a person who has put some years together, who has found peace in a world of emotional pain, and who is so excited about this, that I want to pass along how I did it so you, too, can experience this incredible peace and freedom.

Please accept my deepest apologies. I resolve to change my approach to that of simply relaying my experiences and letting you follow suit if you want to. I resolve to not preach.

Join me tomorrow for my wonderful Christmas story about how I learned to make abundance out of scarcity. Until then, have a lovely Christmas Eve day.

Filed Under: Self Improvement

What Will This Day Hold For You?

December 22, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Yes, what WILL this day hold for you? Are you up-in-the-air, welcome to anything that comes along? Or, do you have plans that you are following through on, and waiting to see where that action takes you? Which ever way you are doing it, the point is to be open to what comes along.

Be willing to be flexible, to change your plans or how you do something. Be tied to the surprise of the outcome rather than your outcome to an action. When you approach everything that happens as a surprise, things have a feeling of newness, of delight. Disappointment is lessened.

The thing is, you have a choice of your attitude. You can choose to stay firmly aligned with a certain outcome and when it doesn’t occur the way you planned or wanted, you get angry, disappointed, hurt. But when you approach everything as a surprise, you are always appreciative of what comes up.

What do you choose for the day? Surprise and delight, or anger and disappointment? Leave a comment and let us know which you chose.

Filed Under: Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: anger, angry, choice, disappointment, the ability to choose

Is Living Worthwhile?

December 21, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

I was taken aback by this search term this morning, and want to address it. The question searched for was “Is Living Worthless,” and I changed it to “worthwhile,” as it is easier to address for me. The an answer is, no, living is not worthless, and yes, living is worthwhile.

How do you discover your worth when you feel worthless? First, let’s define worthless a little bit. It creeps up on you when you feel there is no use in continuing, when you feel your life has no purpose, no worth to anyone. It is a feeling that accompanies hopelessness, and leaves you exhausted, depressed. So, how do you get out of this feeling?

It is helpful to find someone for whom you can be useful, even if you are just two steps ahead of them in the healing journey. That help comes in the form of you telling your story to someone in need and relaying how you got past your own feelings of worthlessness, focusing only on what you have gained, and not on the distance you have yet to go. You want to give from one to three points of things the person can do to work through those feelings.

For example, it might have worked, or be working, for you to journal. If this is the case, tell the person who is feeling worthless that they can journal and feel better. Recommend they write with their non-dominant hand, as all sorts of deep feelings will come out and they can get to the core faster than if they write with their dominant hand. This has been tested and found to be true and I found it to be true in the writing of the majority of verses in my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing.

Taking a brisk walk or engaging in some other form of exercise may have been, or is being, helpful to you. Therapy may have been helpful also, as has been, perhaps, any group’s support meetings. And, there is always prayer, asking for the willingness and strength to get through your feelings of worthlessness.

Remember, you are taking the strife you have experienced in your life, turning it positive, and then relaying what you did, to someone who is feeling worthless. You are trying to be of service to another. There is nothing quite like realizing you have been of use to a person who is hurting, that helps you get out of the feeling of being worthless, nothing quite like discovering the purpose of your life. For, you see, helping another is your purpose in life. It just depends upon HOW you are intended to help them.

Once you talk to another who is struggling, one who is in great emotional pain, you will feel that life is worth living. You will see the purpose of your life to be that of being of service. This will feel wonderful and it will change your thoughts about yourself when you think about being of service to another.

This does not mean that you forget about your own personal pain. No, you keep it off to the side while you’re helping the other person; you put it on hold. But you do not want to negate it or sweep it under the rug, because the pain will just show up in a different way in your life. At its best, your personal pain ignored will keep you stuck, unable to move forward.

When you are not helping another, and are considering your own feelings of worthlessness, try to write about these feelings and why you feel worthless. Get in writing all the old stories, the old injustices, that have led you to this point of not feeling worthwhile. Allow yourself to feel the feelings and look them squarely in the eye. Recognize the hurt, humiliation, and shame that are beneath the worthlessness. As you focus on these feelings, they will soon float away, replaced by other thoughts.

Look at the ways in which you can take action to fix or right things that are wrong in your life, or that are not the way you want them to be. Follow through with these actions, or you will feel like a failure. Start with just a few, or even one, manageable actions to begin with and grow from there if you’d like. But, be responsible and do your part to get to a place of feeling worthwhile.

Do you feel worthless? Do you think you can be of service to another so you begin to feel more worthwhile? Write down the answers to these questions, using your non-dominat hand. List out people you know that are struggling emotionally, and think how what you have learned or experienced could be of use to that person. Resolve to tell them your story and you will be spreading hope.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: is living worthwhile, worthless, worthlessness, worthwhile

Fulfilling Your Dream in Sobriety

December 20, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Fulfillment of Dreams

Good morning! Today, I liked the search term “fulfilling your dream,” and I added “in sobriety,” because it has been my experience that in sobriety, dreams can and do come true.

I experienced one of my dreams – that of being in the big-time sailing world, when I lived aboard a sailboat for three years. I was still drinking at the time. In sobriety, the dreams I have fulfilled started as those of an emotional nature, and grew to be concrete things and experiences.

I had a dream, All of my life I dreamed of being happy, finding happiness and being at peace. I looked everywhere for these – in others, in experiences, in situations. But I never looked within for happiness, for peace.

Then, in sobriety, I began to learn how to find happiness and fulfillment from within. I began to experience more and more happiness the more I looked inside for it. If someone had told me I needed to look inside myself for happiness, for peace, for fulfillment of my dreams, I would have scoffed and turned away in disgust.

Now, in sobriety, I know that the only way to find fulfillment and, thus, happiness and peace, is ultimately through a self-assessment, a self-appraisal. In this process, I ferret out the things about myself that are keeping me from moving forward toward my dream.

In my case, my dream was to be a published author, and I have accomplished this with the publishing of my book Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing. That dream was present as a child, and I apparently stated one day that I was going to write a book. I don’t recall that, but the desire remained with me subconsciously, and here we are – with a book I wrote, photographed, and published.

Then, when I was a senior in high school, I was a lead in the school musical, and from that point, I discovered I loved being on stage and vowed to become a speaker one day. That dream is coming true for me. I have launched myself as a motivational speaker, and have been speaking to a variety of groups. It is all possible because of my sobriety, and only my sobriety.

Through that state, the state of being sober, I learned more about myself to dispel the myths and lies I was told at a young age, lies that shaped me into a distorted and stormy being in adulthood. I had to learn to see my goodness as a person, my positive points, and once I became able to see myself in a positive light, with love, I became able to see others with gentleness and kindness, and I experienced happiness, peace.

Since we’re talking about peace, I’d like to say that although we have not achieved that state, I can pass along the peace I feel toward others in day-to-day contact with them. It leads to a peaceful existence in my world. So, I am in the process of fulfilling another dream in sobriety.

So, how can you fulfill your dream in sobriety? You can focus on your sobriety, on learning how to do a self-appraisal to uncover your goodness, and then you can learn how to show yourself kindness, gentleness, and compassion for the wounded person you were, for believing the negative things about yourself that you were told.

Once you reach this point, you begin to relax and start listening to the tugging of your heart, the whisper of your soul, telling you that you have a dream that wants to be fulfilled. Because you have positive thoughts and feelings about yourself, you come forth with self-confidene in your dream, following your heart’s messages, and soon, your dream has started to become a reality.

Sometimes, that day comes after years, because you have held your dream in your heart, reserving a little space for it, sending it attention every now-and-again. It commies suddenly, as you realize one day that you are living your dream. Only through your sobriety, though, can you access your urgings. Only in sobriety, do you have the courage to move forward in the face of fear, to fulfill your dream.

What is your heart’s desire and what are you doing to fulfill it? Have you mastered doing a self-appraisal, such that you can define your positivity? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

How to Overcome Hopelessness in Sobriety

December 19, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

I have been silent for a couple of days and please pardon that. I tried writing a couple of posts, but the words just wouldn’t come. I needed a break, I guess… Today I am back with renewed vigor, and shall write about overcoming hopelessness in sobriety.

One of the greatest gifts of sobriety you will discover is feeling better about yourself, learning who you are at your core and learning to cherish what you find. It happens slowly, over time, often without you knowing it is happening, and one day, you just realize you are a good person.

When you get to this point in your sobriety, you begin to feel better. You have a new-found strength about you that helps you feel hope again. You are renewed with the ability to grow into hope for a better today, a better tomorrow. When you feel you have some redeeming qualities, you feel hopeful.

You can also begin to feel hope again if you provide service to others, specifically to those who are suffering from the same feelings you are. You can share with them how you have found hope again, and this will make your life meaningful to another. When this happens, you feel more hope. Remember, you only need to be two steps in front of them in the journey.

When you can be of use to another, the quality of your sobriety improves. As I said, the best way to do this is to be of service. It will help you get out of yourself for a time period and will show you that the experiences you’ve had are for a purpose – to help others suffering like you are suffering. When you are able to get out of yourself, you will be filled with more hope… hope that things can get better for you.

What shall you speak to others about that can offer them solace and hope themselves? How can you put your difficult experiences to use that are plaguing you? How will you be of service to another? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

How to Stay Sober During the Holidays

December 16, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Today, I’d like to discuss how to stay sober during the Holidays, how to rise above the family feuds and grudges that keep the fires of bitterness and resentment stoked. Taking a look at this will require action on your part, and the rewards are simply awesome. You will feel a freedom and a lightness you have not felt in years. You will not want to drink.

Perhaps the single, most effective tool to use to get through and past family feuds and bitterness is the self-appraisal. Let’s review how to do an appraisal and you will discover the secret of how to stay sober.

First, list out your positive points, the things about yourself that you like, that others say they like. Spend some time doing this, maybe a day reflecting on nothing but your positive points. Then, pick a time period, either a week or a month, and list out all the positive behaviors and actions you took during this time that were thoughtful, kind, gentle, compassionate – you get the point, I’m sure. You are trying to ferret out all your goodness, to identify it so you can feel good about yourself. Contemplate about these things for a day, just “being” with your goodness.

After you have spent a day or so discovering and acknowledging your goodness, turn your attention to the darker side of your character, to your negative behavior. We all have such a side. Look at the ways in which you were unkind and demeaning to yourself and others. List these out so you can see them on the page. Acknowledge them. Practice being humble about them.

Now, look at the relationships with others that are problematic for you, ones about which you are resentful or harbor a grudge, ones that are causing a feud. Look at this closely. You are trying to determine if you, in fact, said or did something unkind or rude to another that led them to react in a predictable, human way. If you find situations that you instigated, that you started, rethink your anger, your bitterness and take responsibility for your bad behavior by letting go of the resentment.

This is the one, most single action that, when completed, will show you how to stay sober. You can dive deeper into the situation, also. For example, once you identify that you, in fact, started a feud, you can feel compassion for yourself, a troubled soul. You can feel compassion for the other person who responded like any other human who was treated poorly.

This exercise is the precursor to forgiveness and once you discover forgiveness, you will discover freedom of heart and mind. You will especially wish to right your wrongs during this Holiday season. This means being humble, admitting your fault, and apologizing to the other person for any grief you have caused them.

In a situation where you did not start the ball of hate and anger rolling – the other person did, then look at the other person as a wounded soul, someone who is sick emotionally. Extend compassion to this wounded person, just like you would for anyone who is ill. Really feel a softness in your heart, and let it guide you to forgiveness. It is from that place of forgiveness that you will find great peace. Even though there are situations in which you had no negative behavior, there are many that involve your self-righteousness, when you, in fact, started the ball rolling. That’s what we were talking about in the preceding paragraphs.

And now you know how to stay sober, merely by being responsible for your own behavior, by taking ownership for it.

Do you have some advice on how to stay sober during the Holidays? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how to stay sober, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Opening Your Heart in Sobriety

December 14, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Openness of Heart

Good morning. One of the search terms, the one we’ll talk about today, is opening your heart and I added “in sobriety.” You will find, as your sobriety progresses, that your heart will open. But there are specific things you can do to help this to happen.

The photo to the right is one from my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing. The verse that accompanies it is:

“We spend our lives behind the barriers of a closed gate, protected from the hurt and pain that may come to us. If we allow our hearts to open, we will see things in a different light. We will grow through the barriers of our heart and be able to fully experience the richness of life.”

So, how do you let down the barrier of your heart that you have erected to protect yourself?

First of all, if you approach yourself and others with gentleness, your heart will begin to open more. Next, kindness to others and yourself will help. Then, there is tolerance, which will add to your ability to open your heart in sobriety. Being tolerant of others’ differences, being tolerant of yourself and your foibles, will aid your journey to an open heart.

The most important thing, though, for allowing your heart to open is the practice of compassion – for yourself and for others. When you practice compassion, your heart softens. Sometimes, to get to compassion, it helps to do a self-appraisal, so you can discover the things you do that others do, to annoy you.

For example, you may get angry at others for something and when you do a self-appraisal, you may discover that you do the very same thing. Instead of continuing to blame the other, you can open your heart and see you both as wounded humans, and accept the foibles you are both demonstrating.

In sobriety, these steps will aid you to open your heart. And certainly, you do not have to be practicing sobriety to do these things.

How do you open your heart? Let us know what you have learned in sobriety that allows you to open your heart by leaving a comment.

Filed Under: Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: compassion, Gentleness, kindness, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, tolerance

Dealing with LIving Sober

December 12, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

The search term I chose today is “dealing with living sober.” This is a great topic for me, as I enjoy my sobriety so much, I am happy to discuss what I do to keep living sober.

In early sobriety, I dealt with things differently then in later years of sobriety. When I would “fall off the cliff,” as I called it, early in sobriety, I went right to my journal and wrote for a couple of hours. That provided a great deal of solace. And, I went to a support group meeting and shared about my angst, the feelings I was experiencing.

You need to have a plan for what to do when you are going to slip from living sober. For example, calling someone right away, going to a meeting of your support group, writing… You also can take a brisk walk or engage in some other form of physical activity. When things are really squirrely for you, remember to just do the next indicated thing, the next thing that appears on your path. This might be washing the dishes, or taking a nap.

That’s how I dealt with living sober when I was new to sobriety. Now, after twelve years, I still do the next indicated thing in my path to do, and that often includes going to a meeting or calling someone. It also involves getting involved in my work, or doing chores around the house. I actually have few moments when I want to slip from living sober, if any at all…

We, as drinkers, often drank to celebrate the good things that occurred in our lives. You will have to have a different plan and way of celebrating so you can remain living sober. Again, sharing about your successes at a group level, or writing about them is helpful. Pat yourself on the back for your success, and don’t get cocky about it. Be humble and gracious.

You may wish to get involved in activities that feed your soul to maintain living sober. Maybe a woodworking group, or a card game such as bridge. But the most definite way to remain living sober is to help others, to be of service. As soon as you help another, your spirits lift and you are so happy to be living sober that you vow to do anything to stay that way.

Here are just a few ways of living sober when things get tough or are glorious. They have helped me, anyway. What do you do to stay sober, to remain living sober? Leave a comment and let us know what you do.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: dealing with living sober, how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

The Joys of Sobriety

December 11, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones 2 Comments

Good morning. I hope the two-part series on PTSD despair brought you solace… comfort, and that you were able to see there are actions you can take to help you out of despair. Today nothing really jumped out at me in the search terms, and I am going to write about the joys of sobriety.

Perhaps the biggest joy initially for me was the lack of hangovers. Mine had been extremely severe for about seven years, so not having them was a very welcomed relief. Today, it is nice to wake up clear and wide-eyed, ready to enjoy the new day without nausea, without vomiting, without a splitting headache. You, too, will revel in this new-found result of sobriety.

The faces of my sobriety changed as time went on, and for about six months, I was on what is referred to as a pink cloud, where everything is grand, where everything was so exciting, seen for the first time in years with eyes of wonder and awe. Yes, I felt the pain of my grief from the unrequited love, but it was interspersed with the joy of sobriety, so much so that it gave me the overall sense of well-being for a few months.

You may experience the pink cloud. If and when you do, enjoy it to the fullest. It is helpful to combat the feelings of angst that will arise as you begin to feel more and more of your feelings. Speaking of the angst that will appear in sobriety, know that it is passing, it will pass, and what you are left with is incredible freedom, incredible peace.

Think of the period of angst as one in which you are healing from old wounds so you can start fresh, start anew with your life. Stick with sobriety through this difficult period because the rewards are tremendous. First is the lack of hangovers, as we said, and then the pink cloud. Then, there is a depth to everything you do, everything you see, where you feel connected to the world around you, as well as the people in it.

In sobriety, you become able to see others with softness, gentleness, kindness, and compassion. When you heal, you become more and more interested in helping others, in being of service. You think less and less about making sure you get what you want, because it just comes to you. You become more in-tune with the physical world around you, as you begin to notice plant life, architecture, scenery.

Sobriety leads to a positive attitude, an attitude of gratitude. You see everything that comes along with gratitude… you are grateful for all that occurs, as you know it is for your highest good, even though it may not feel like that at times. Sobriety helps your relationships, as you are less judgmental and critical of yourself and others. You have less to argue about, less fault to find.

In fact, sobriety eventually allows you to take full responsibility for your feelings, your actions and behaviors, and you are fueled by this in your ability to maintain a positive, grateful attitude. You look forward to life unfolding for you, taking action, while letting go of results and letting life flow to you.

Yes, sobriety is filled with joy after you go through the angst of examining and repairing the past. Perhaps the best thing is the feelings of goodwill that you have toward yourself. Your self-pity will have resolved. You will feel good about who you are and you will recognize you are worthy of good things, that you are a worthwhile person, not the worthless one you were told you were.

There is a saying in recovery circles, “Don’t leave before the miracle happens,” and that is so true. I invite you to stick with your sobriety so that you, too, can experience the miracles and joys of sobriety.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: attitude of gratitude, compassion, gratitude, how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

PTSD Despair – the Conclusion

December 10, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Today, we conclude the post about PTSD despair. Yesterday, we ended with me saying I wanted to share my experience of what was happening at the end, when I was praying to die. Here’s what was going on for me.

I had been in a state of decreased energy, of lethargy, for weeks, feeling that my abusive past had occurred only to make my life miserable. Other than that, there was no purpose to it, there was no purpose to me, to my life. This was my state-of-mind at about five years of sobriety. One day, I was at a group meeting for that sobriety, and a man shared about the difficulties he was experiencing from his childhood that were affecting him today. It sounded like what I had been through, but I was a few steps ahead of him in the process of healing. So, I went up after the meeting and began to talk with him.

I first asked him for permission to share some things with him. After he said yes, I related to his experience by relaying some of what I had been through. Then I began to talk of the books I had read that had been helpful with the symptoms of abused people, such as Claudia Black, Alice Miller, John Bradshaw, books that had helped with my healing. I relayed how wondrous my therapist was in dealing with recovery issues, both for my alcoholism and my abusive past and the characteristics I was displaying, and was able to give him her number.

What I had to say was useful to him – I could see it in his face, in his eyes. He was so grateful for the information, he almost cried. As I walked back to my car, I realized in a flash that I DID have purpose, my abusive past WAS for a reason. That reason was to help others who were dealing with what I had overcome, even if I was just two steps in front of them in a couple areas. If I had not endured the abuse, I never would have been able to offer him anything. Therefore, my abuse had a purpose.

I had a purpose. From that point, I realized my purpose in life was to connect with people who were suffering emotionally, and relay the things that had helped me, so that the information could be of use to them.

In your case, with PTSD, let’s say you are a veteran, reliving the trauma you experienced, the terror, living in anger over the grief of premature deaths you witnessed, dealing with the guilt that somehow you could have prevented it. You are living a nightmare, and, yet, I invite you to take action to get out of the place where you currently are. Here is what I invite you to try. It worked for me.

Seek assistance from a qualified therapist, versed in PTSD issues. They exist at VA medical centers, if you are a vet, and interviewing a potential therapist about their experiences with PTSD treatment will help guide you in the right direction in selecting a well-versed therapist. I looked for a therapist that was versed in alcohol recovery and who knew the effects and treatment for being an abused child, for example, because at the time, I had not been diagnosed with PTSD.

After you select a therapist, ask about the use of EMDR, or get that yourself. It was roughly $100 a session and I needed three. I would imagine the VA centers have someone available to do it or could refer you. Do some reflection about your feelings of despair, your lack of purpose in the world, your guilts, your grief… writing, journalling was extremely helpful to me to get feelings out, and especially because I wrote with my left, non-dominant hand. They say that writing with the non-dominant hand brings forth new information from the other side of the brain, and it stimulates you with deeper thoughts. I invite you to try it.

I invite you to stop drinking, if you are doing so. The liquor fuels the symptoms that you are experiencing, especially the anger. I know it doesn’t feel that way when you’re in the middle of it. But your world remains very small while you are drinking, filled with resentments and bitterness, guilt and remorse. You look for relief for these things in the alcohol, yet you will never find them there. It is in the absence of alcohol that you will find relief. There are many resources to help you stop drinking that are listed in the yellow pages, or on the internet. For me personally, I found getting sober to be the beginning of the process that has allowed me to find the peace I looked for in alcohol and drugs. I invite you in from the cold.

Finally, I’d like to invite you to look at the cause of your PTSD despair, and discover how that experience, the experience over which you despair, can be useful to another if you were to share with them your experience and what one, maybe two, steps you’ve taken to heal. All you have to be is two steps ahead of them in the healing process. I cannot describe the way my heart soared to know I had been of use to another and I invite you to experience it also.

I hope these two posts have been useful for you. I wish you well in your journey. May you have peace.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: EMDR, how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, peace of mind, PTSD, PTSD despair, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

PTSD Despair – the Beginning

December 9, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Yesterday, there were two searches for PTSD despair, most likely the same person, yet I want to address it today and relate it to sobriety. I am thinking that whoever searched, was referring to the despair they feel because of their PTSD. So, let’s address this.

PTSD stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. According to all the information I have read, and based on my personal experience with PTSD, it is comprised of three categories of symptoms:

re-experiencing the traumas through flashbacks, bad dreams, and frightening thoughts about the trauma;
avoidance symptoms such as feeling numb, strong guilt, depression, or worry, avoidance of people and places that remind of the event, losing interest in once-enjoyable activities; and
hyperarousal, being on edge, getting angry easily, being easily startled.

You may be dealing with these symptoms as a result of recent trauma, or even years after an event that was traumatic for you. Or, you may be a veteran, dealing with either the long-term effects, or from the effects of recently being in service. If you are dealing with these symptoms and have not been diagnosed with PTSD, I gently invite you to seek assistance from a qualified therapist or someone at a VA Medical Center. There is great strength and courage demonstrated in the act of asking for help. For those of you long-term sufferers getting help, good for you! I applaud your efforts.

From my own perspective about PTSD and despair, I was diagnosed with PTSD at the age of about 53, and had been dealing with it since childhood, as a result of the trauma I endured and witnessed. I experienced all of the above symptoms, and I easily went to depression and despair. When I say despair, I am referring to the feelings that nothing is okay, in fact, everything is useless and there is no purpose in living. There is no hope.

In my case, I got to the point that I was praying to die because I was too scared to commit suicide. My anger had long-since been turned inward and it appeared in my life as major depression. I was a walking mess, feeling emotionally aweful. Fueled by my bitterness and under-lying anger at just about everything, I drank heavily, which only added to the flames. I felt there was no purpose in the events of childhood that had led me to misery in life. I had no purpose in life, no reason to be living.

Can you relate? if you are dealing with PTSD despair. I am thinking you are at the very hopeless stage. If this is the case, my heart goes out to you because I know how badly it sucks. Please know, however, that there is another side, another possibility. There is hope.

Hope came for me in the form of EMDR, a rapid-eye movement that retrains the pathways in the brain to lessen the effects of the trauma. With three of these treatments, my symptoms began to decrease, and even though some despair remained, I could see that there were possibilities to get out of the hole I was in. The despair was resolved in an instant, however, when I experienced the power of helping another, being of service to another.

And I’m going to address that tomorrow, because this post got to be well over 1000 words, so I decided to make it into two blogs. Tomorrow when I join you, I will be sharing my experience with you in the hopes that you may gain something from it that is of use to you.

I wish to acknowledge your pain by saying, yes, it is a very difficult place to be. I feel for you. You have great courage to face it and I invite you to keep putting one step in front of the other, doing the next thing that comes along your path to do. Writing in a journal with stream-of-consciousness writing works well. That’s where you write whatever comes into your head, in whatever order. It is very cathartic.

Join me tomorrow for the conclusion of PTSD despair. Until then, remember, hang in there. You never know when things are going to change around suddenly. Don’t leave before the miracle.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: despair, despair about PTSD, PTSD, PTSD despair

How to Open Your Heart More

December 6, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“How to open your heart more” was searched for 4 times yesterday morning, so I thought I’d address that. I apologize for no post yesterday… I started this and the day got away from me before I could develop the blog. So, here we are today, in this moment, and let me write about how to open your heart.

The first thing needed to open your heart is willingness to do so, willingness to go there. Once you are willing, the whole world opens up, and you are able to see the things around you that you couldn’t see before. You see your physical world more intently; you see others with eyes and heart of gentleness and kindness.

Once you are willing to open your heart, the next stage involves identifying the wounds you have endured during your lifetime, and the feelings that accompany these wounds. Look closely at your fear and how it holds you back in life. Look closely at grief you may be experiencing, a feeling associated with loss of any type. Allow yourself the time to look at these feelings and try to be straight while you do so. Try to just “be” with them, without numbing them out with substances or activity.

Now, feel compassion for yourself for the wounds you have received and endured. See yourself with gentleness, kindness. Do not slide into self-pity… this is not a pity party I am suggesting. More, it is an objective assessment and acknowledgment of the damage you have received. Now it’s time to start seeing the world around you with gratitude. Be grateful for the simplest things and soon that gratitude will expend to larger things in your life.

Now you are equipped to begin a self-appraisal, looking first at your positive traits, behaviors, and actions. Really praise yourself for these things. Then, look at your negative behavior, the things you do for which you are mad at others for doing, when you do the very same things yourself. For your bad behavior that was hurtful to others, take ownership of that behavior. Be responsible and accountable for it by letting go of any resentments, and apologizing, if indicated.

This tool is invaluable as one to use on an on-going basis, throughout each day. It becomes second-nature to see yourself honestly, objectively. Rather than allowing this appraisal to be a jumping-off place from which to beat yourself up, use it instead as a method of keeping yourself right-sized… not bragging or boastful, nor insecure and self-reproachful. Use a self-appraisal to locate where you are in your world, both outer and inner.

Once you learn to follow this process, you will have opened your heart so very much. There is one more tool to use to get to deep peace and freedom, and that is forgiveness. Forgiveness allows you, without condoning what was done, to put to rest your heart-burning resentment, the thing that keeps you simmering with anger just below the surface. Once you come to forgiveness, you will begin to be really free, able to open your heart even wider.

So, this is the process to go through to open your heart. How does it work for you? Do you have a different method? What works for you? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: compassion, fear, forgiveness, grief, how to forgive, key of willingness, loss grief, open your heart, overcome fear, Willingness

How Living with an Open Heart Helps My Renovation Project

December 4, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. It is later in the day than I normally write, and that is because I was a bit befuddled about what to write. I just do not have it within right now to go to those negative emotions and how to get out of them. If you’re looking for that, please scroll back to fairly recent blogs, and you will find them.

No, today I want to talk about what it’s like to live with an open heart, how my inner world has changed as a result. I, for example, am rolling thoughts in my head about the renovation project of which I am smack in the middle, and remembering back to the days that trained me on the supplies to be using, the knowing of even where to start and what to do.

And to think of those days used to be quite painful and induced guilt, even very recently. Painful because it involved the last three years of a tumultuous marriage, and a bad ending, for which I have regrets and guilts, followed by an unrequited love experience for me, which was excruciatingly painful. Both experiences have left me finding it difficult at times to live with an open heart, but I am surpassing that.

Yet, today, I am enjoying the remembering, the memories, for I am recalling my boating projects, my other renovation project that got me to the capable point at which I find myself in my project that is underway. You see, it was actually my boating experience and experience with rotted wood in a wet environment that led me to discover and fall in love with penetrating epoxy (PE).

The viscosity of water, PE penetrates rotted wood that has been cleaned as much as possible, and it strengthens the wood when it hardens, or “kicks.” I happen to love the smell of it… it’s my most favorite in the world. I also love the effects it produces. Well, I am aware it is more expensive at the boating store than at my favorite TAP Plastics in SanRafael, CA. And TAP sells measuring utensils, etc, that are needed for application of the stuff. They also sell the actual epoxy, so I got that at TAP.

But, it is not the viscosity of water. It’s more like a thickened syrup, so it does not penetrate the wood as much and that concerns me. You see, I have a leaking window in a mobile home and I cannot find the leak. I have caulked everything upstream that I can find. So my thought is, pull out the rotten support beams (1×2′s), epoxy with penetrating epoxy to strengthen the remaining wood, caulk the metal separation in the window frame itself that may be the source of the leak and along the wood to metal seam, using boat caulk designed for wood and metal in a wet environment that I got at West Marine in Sausalito, CA, then fill the gaps where I pulled out the 1×2 supports with new 1×4′s.

I’m getting really technical, aren’t I? Sorry. I really enjoy the thought process, the planning and reasoning out, that goes on in a renovation project. lol The point is, with more of an open heart, I am finding myself thinking about the marriage and how we worked together to turn wrecks into things of beauty – homes, boats, cars, thinking about the hurt of the unrequited love, remembering with fondness the projects we did together also.

Because I am opening my heart, seeing with an open heart, I can see the gifts that came out of the experiences. They led me to what I know today with my window renovation and I can remember reasoning through the process with sales people, my husband-at-the-time, and after the marriage ended, with the man who turned out to be an unrequited love. These are fond memories, and I find myself choosing to live in that space today, to live with an open heart so I can receive them in as positive experiences. Wow, this is amazing! This realization is occurring as I write, as I blog – the fact that I am choosing to live with the positive instead of looking at my regrets and guilts. Thank you for being a witness to my process.

How about you? What are some of the ways in which you live with an open heart, and how do you choose to live with the positive thoughts, the positive memories, rather than stay mired in the guilts, the regrets? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Self Improvement Tagged With: living with an open mind, open heart, open heart and mind

Is Sobriety Worth It? Nine Reasons Why It Is

December 3, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. I read this search term and had a resounding “Yes! Sobriety is worth it!” slip out of my mouth. That has been my experience anyway. Let me tell you more…

First, there is the absence of hangovers. If you’re like me, you had bad hangovers every day. Bad nausea, that eye-splitting headache. Well, once you get sobriety in your life, you won’t be experiencing them any more, and that’s glorious!! There is nothing that feels better than to wake up with another day of sobriety before you and having a clear mind with which to do it.

Second, you will notice you are being present for all areas and parts of your life. Where before you were foggy, even high somewhat, now in sobriety, you will experience a clearness that you have not experienced in years. It brings you an aliveness that you haven’t felt since you don’t remember when! It feels fantastic!

In sobriety, you will thirdly be able to express and feel your emotions. You will feel feelings along the whole continuum, from great joy and pleasure to the depths of despair or sadness. You may not be experiencing despair in sobriety and if this is the case, I am happy for you, as it is the pits to be sober and be in deep despair. The point is, you will be able to feel what comes up for you, ever-changing, and in sobriety, you are present for these changes and states of feeling.

Fourth, you are available to do projects, to go places with others or by yourself. This is great fun, as you get involved in those projects you have avoided for years. With the time you have freed up from not drinking, you have more time to do things and go places. You begin to feel connected to others again, less isolated. And you can drive anytime, anywhere!

Fifth, you have the ability to hear what others are saying, to realize you don’t know everything. You look at everything with a beginner’s mind and you are teachable. This will expand your world tremendously and you’ll feel great about being able to let someone be important for the brief time you have listened to them. This does not mean you have to take the advice that is given. That depends upon whether or not it will further you in your goals, your purpose in life.

The sixth thing you will experience in sobriety that makes it worth it is your new-found ability to care for others. I mean really caring for them deeply, and wanting to reach out to help in any way possible, with your gifts.

That brings us to the seventh thing that makes sobriety worth it… and that is the discovery, acceptance, and nurturing of your gifts. You realize you have a purpose in life, and you begin to get clear on what that purpose is. You begin to see the uniqueness and beauty that is you, and, when you are practicing humility, you get a deep sense of satisfaction from this.

There is the desire to share your gifts, your time, your energy, your love, and that brings us to the eighth thing that makes sobriety worth it. You feel so grounded in yourself, so good about who you are that you want to share of this with others. You are over-flowing with the desire to be of service to others and that comes from a strong sense of self.

Finally, the ninth and not final reason is because you will begin to practice spiritual principles like gratitude, willingness, humility, compassion, and it feels so good to feel these, to practice them.

Here are several reasons why sobriety is so well worth it. How has it been worth it for you? Share about the pleasures you have experienced in sobriety. Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Living in Wonder in Sobriety

December 2, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

I was going to take Sundays off, yet I am pulled to the keyboard this morning to write again about sobriety. I don’t see anything in the search terms that grabbed my attention. There were two about having no value, however, and I just cannot go there this morning. I will say to those of you who feel you have no value, hang in there, and if you are struggling with a drinking problem, I invite you to try sobriety.

Sobriety is a powerful tool against the feelings of worthlessness, the feeling you have no value. Oh, you may feel those feelings more intensely for a bit after you get sober, just as you will feel all of your feelings more acutely, including things like joy and wonder. In other words, when you get sober, you will feel your feelings again, and you have the capacity to feel all the feelings along the continuum, from the very difficult to the sublime and empowering.

The sublime and empowering feelings are available in sobriety, just as much as the negative and difficult ones, but we forget to access them because we get so mired in the difficult ones. They consume our energy. We would do well to practice seeing the joy, the wonder… seeing with gratitude when we can.

The more we can recognize the good and tender feelings in our lives, the sooner we will pass through the acuteness of the negative and difficult ones. Maintaining our sobriety is key during this process. When we keep on drinking, we delay the thing we need to do to get through to the other side… through to peace-of-mind. That thing is feeling our feelings, all of them.

Remember to look for the positive… the joy, the wonder in a flower along the way, or a child growing and experiencing life. Set the intention to look with those eyes, and soon, it becomes something we naturally do. This took me years to learn to do in sobriety, as I got really hung up on myself and my pain. I wish I would have had this input; it would have saved a lot of heartache, or at least, would have given me a welcome reprieve from the pain of my difficult feelings periodically.

How about you? Do you make it a practice to notice the joy, the wonder around you? Or, are you mired in the difficult, the painful? If you are experiencing the latter all the time, I invite you to try looking with new eyes, and letting us know what that was like for you by leaving a comment. By looking with new eyes, the eyes of wonder, you will enhance your sobriety so much, and you will know your own value. Are you in?

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how do I find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, peace of mind, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Gracefully Accepting the Path of Sobriety

December 1, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

I added “of sobriety,” and chose “gracefully accepting the path” to talk about today because it raises the point of the positive. Showing grace, knowing when it has descended upon you, is a positive, as I see it. Only in sobriety did I even know grace existed! It took several years for it to reach me, for me to know I was experiencing it.

Let me explain to you one moment of grace that I am experiencing as I type. It is the wee hours of the morning and I just popped awake, so got up and started writing on my website, changing it around, especially the description of my speaking and coaching services. And it is raining… spurts of fast, staccato drops, interspersed with slow, lazy ones.

I am not fond of the rain, especially when I am driving in it. Makes me nervous, especially because my wiper blades are the pits and I can barely see. You could even say I hate the rain, which is true. I hate being wet and cold… soggy. So, what am I going to do about it? I have a choice. I can bitch and moan about it to everyone when it rains, or I can accept that I don’t like it and then take action.

I choose to take action, and so I go to the auto parts store and buy a new pair of blades. Oh my gosh! What a difference. I have been missing out on this pure delight for months now. I really digressed here… The point is, the fact that I am able to accept the rain as a fact of nature, and move forward in a positive manner, I define as grace. The fact that I can smile at the rain, knowing the season will end, and so being pleasant about it, is called grace.

Here’s another example. My sobriety is because of the grace of God. You can call that higher being, or source, whatever you wish, and the point is, it was their grace that led to sobriety. It was a gift and I choose to graciously accept it as such.

Grace is what allows me to “flow” in the, with the, present moment. For example, I just got done taking a dozen eggs off the stove where I was making hard-boiled eggs. I was multi-tasking, I admit, writing the blog, as well as doing small things around the house. I actually got sidetracked because I went to fill up my coffee cup.

Anyway, grace allows me to flow from one activity to the next, just doing the next indicated thing that’s presented for me to do, and being okay with that. It’s like a dance, this flow, this going from one indicated thing to the next, and when we learn to join in the ballet, we experience grace.

How do you experience grace in your life? Is it similar for you to what I described? You’re invited to share your thoughts. Leave a comment and let us know.

I see I have deviated from the topic implied by the title, and the discussion is equally interesting and valuable, I trust. Perhaps tomorrow I will address Gracefully Accepting the Path of Sobriety.

p.s. I notice a lot of people are visiting my website each day, and that number has been consistent lately. I am thinking that many of you are repeat visitors, following my blog. That’s cool! I’m thinking that the blog is useful to you, or you wouldn’t return. If that’s the case, my heart fills with joy, for this is my hope, my passion.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: acting with grace, grace, graceful, gracious, how to show grace, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

How to Maintain Your Sobriety

November 30, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

The search terms about sobriety always jump out at me, and this morning, I have chosen how to maintain your sobriety to which I would like to respond, as there are many actions you can take to maintain it.

First of all to maintain your sobriety, don’t drink, no matter what. No matter if you have experienced difficult emotions, experienced the death of a loved one, or loss of a job or marriage, don’t drink over the feelings that arise. Instead, talk to someone about your feelings. Remember, a pain or struggle shared is a pain or struggle divided and conquered.

You can also journal about your feelings that have arisen. I recommend journalling with your non-dominat hand, as all sorts of things will surface when you do this. You will get to relief more quickly if you journal with your non-dominant hand.

Secondly, to maintain your sobriety, join a support group of your choosing. This is paramount to your success. You see, when you are part of a group that you attend regularly, you have at your disposal a release for your emotions. You can talk at group meetings about any pain or struggles you are experiencing, and in doing so, you will find relief.

Thirdly, in sobriety, it is necessary to learn how to take a long, hard, honest look at yourself – your strengths and good points, and then your negative traits and behaviors. It is especially important to keep an eye on your negative or bad behavior and to apologize when you recognize that you have erred. By keeping on top of your bad behavior, it offers the chance to practice humility and compassion for yourself.

Fourth, make the choice to see the world around you with joy and wonder and gratitude. Adopt these attitudes and you will go through your life with more grace. You will be more able to maintain your sobriety.

Fifth, be of help to another. Being of service helps you to get out of yourself and your woes. It lessens the chance to fall prey to self-pity. You see, self-pity is a real killer of peace and happiness, a killer of sobriety.

There is a sixth thing I’d like to mention and that is to be responsible for yourself in all ways. That includes taking responsibility for your healing. Whether you were wronged or not, you need to grab ahold of the ring and learn how to get through and past your hurts and angers, your sadnesses and grief. Your job in life is to heal from the wounds you sustained while growing up. You see, we all experience wounds in our early years, and our job is to get to the bottom of those wounds, and to heal and grow from them.

When you do these things, you experience both physical and emotional sobriety. Isn’t that what you’re looking for? If it is, then you can create it.

How do you maintain your sobriety? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Opening the Gates of the Heart

November 29, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

The creation of my nationally-acclaimed, award-winning book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing, is evidence of God at work in my life, as He, through me, created a lovely book of photographs of wrought-iron gates and inspirational verses that is a pathway to peace, a daily meditation or reflection.

You see, I had no idea I was creating the book for the first several years of its existence. This is a story that is so profound, as I discovered the verses for the book, written in my journals before I even photographed and titled the gates! It was nine months after shooting the gates that I realized verses from my journals gave words to the images far beyond the visual element, words that flowed upon the page, that emanated from deep within me as I journaled with my left, non-dominant hand. These are the verses that comprise, verbatim, seventy-five percent of the verses in the book.

As I reflected upon these words, I realized that I want to extend an offer to you for the book, for the holidays. I am offering my book, personally signed for you, a friend, or a loved one, for $20.00, from now until December 24th. This cost includes shipping via media mail.

To get this offer, you need to circumvent the current price of $25.00 on the website by calling me directly to place your order. 415-883-8325. I will send you the book with an invoice and you can send me a check, or you can pay by credit card over the phone.

I want to offer this special because I want you or your loved one to experience the hope, joy, and peace that you will experience when you read Opening the Gates of the Heart. And, I offer this because I want to thank you for your loyalty in following my blog, my work. It is what I have to offer to you. Whether you are trying to get or stay sober, recovering as a child of a alcoholic parent, or a veteran looking for solace, you will find magic in the book’s pages.

To see if Opening the Gates of the Heart is a match for you or as a gift for that someone special in your life, check out the endorsements, under the “About” tab above. You can also see some of the book’s pages on “About the Book,” under the “About” tab above. The book is a tribute to the resiliency and beauty of the human spirit, and will bring you more calm, more peace, in your life.

Spend some time checking out the book and then call to order your copy or copies today. I look forward to being of service to you through my book.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: how to find peace, inner peace, joy, Opening the Gates of the Heart, peace

Maintaining Sobriety Day After Day

November 27, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“Maintaining sobriety day after day” piqued my interest and I am going to write about staying sober this day… today. That’s the thing about it. You only need to stay sober today.

Sometimes, that day is long and treacherous. You may feel like drinking at some point during the day, and there are some things you can do to keep from following through on that desire. Those “things” can be boiled down into one thing… action. It’s about taking action throughout the day.

It’s about doing the next indicated thing to do, doing the next thing that presents itself to you. You will know what that is if you are being aware of what is going on around you, if you are paying attention to the cues of which way to go next.

What do I mean by that… what “cues” am I talking about? I’m talking about watching for when things go smoothly and fall into place easily, without any pushing on your part. When you experience this, you are on the right track with your actions. You are headed in the right direction. Sometimes, I have exhausted all the things I have to do, and I am still antsy. So, sometimes, doing the next indicated thing means washing the dishes, or taking a nap, or a walk.

Do you see that if you follow from one indicated thing to the next, you will be creating your path? You will be moving forward when the going is easy, moving in another direction when things get tough. In that manner, you create your future by shaping your present. If you elect to maintain your sobriety, then you will become more and more aware of how things are working in your life.

Yes, we have to plan ahead, make plans and get something on the calendar. Do that if it will move you forward in the present moment, if it will further and honor your goal. If it’s the next indicated thing to plan something, go for it. I caution against living in the future, paying more attention to it than the present. That leads to worrying, and that is something you can manage depending upon how well you can keep out of the future.

Think of it this way: make plans that further your goal, your mission, your purpose in life. This requires, of course, that you know what these are, and it is a useful exercise to figure out for yourself personally and in a business role. Doing this will strengthen your sobriety, as it will give you a focus and put an end to aimless wandering. Determining your goals is something we do when we work together. Once you realize your goal, your purpose, efforts can be made toward reaching that goal. Before you know it, day after day has accumulated and it has been twelve years! That’s how sobriety works.

How do you live in the here and now in order to maintain your sobriety? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Moving Past Resentments in Sobriety

November 26, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“Moving past resentments in sobriety” and “I promise you a life of joy and wonderment” were the search phrases that jumped out at me this morning. They go hand-in-hand, one follows after the other. When you get past your resentments, there IS a world of joy and wonderment out there.

In recovery circles, it is a well-known fact that resentment is the number one reason people drink. Interestingly, the CDC cited that in 2011 in the US, there were 11.8 million substance abusers. Wow. Assume that most of them have resentments, and that’s a lot of resentment flying around out there!

I found it possible in sobriety to get past my resentment I had held tightly for 38 years. It was against my parents for things that happened while I was growing up. I was very angry and bitter, but didn’t show it. I kept it all inside, bottled up. But when I drank, it came out, often big-time. in the form of rage or huge despair and wailing with grief from my losses.

My life became one of victimhood, living life as the victim, and “poor me,” “you’d drink, too, if you suffered what I did.” I was consumed by self-pity. Before sobriety, while I was still drinking, I had no clue that there was a way out of this nightmare. I had no ability to see that I was creating my own misery through the fueling of my resentment against the folks.

I was creating my own misery by failing to take responsibility for my own feelings, to heal from the grief and hurt. That took some time in sobriety to discover that it was my responsibility to do so. And, I had a choice to continue being bitter or to work myself free of the chains that were binding me. Ahhhhh, a choice… Sobriety led me down the path to freedom when it helped me realize I always have a choice in everything I do. We all do. Yes, even you.

What I found after I worked through my resentments, has been great joy and wonder at the world around me… the physical world and all Her wonders, as well as the people in the world, and all of their wonders. I learned to have greater kindness and tolerance for others… great compassion. The more I practiced those things, the more wondrous things became in what the person revealed to me about themselves, what they shared with me, how they treated me. Closer bonds have been established. It has been true joy and wonderment.

So how can you get from your resentment to that joy and wonder about which I speak? It’s a process… a process of looking at your wounds and feelings, and identifying where that keeps you stuck in present day. It’s about using that process to look with new eyes at the resentment and the person whom you resent, until you are able to reach forgiveness.

This is a process I guide people through in my one-on-one coaching. If you want to experience joy and wonderment in your life, you may be interested in learning more. Go to “Coaching” under the “Services” tab. We can work on that resentment that is keeping you from joy and wonder, and you can experience more peace during this holiday season.

I was indignant about looking at my “stuff.” After all, I was justified! I WAS a victim. That’s a fact. But there came a time in sobriety when I realized I just couldn’t carry my bitterness any more. It was affecting my ability to get to true sobriety, emotional sobriety. What I discovered was forgiveness and that helped me to find joy and wonder, peace and freedom.

How about you? How do you work through your resentments in sobriety? Have you reached joy and wonderment in your life?

Filed Under: Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how to find peace, inner peace, joy, living sober, peace, resentful, resenting, resentment, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, wonder, wonderment

How to Open Your Heart More in Sobriety

November 25, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“How to Open Your Heart More in Sobriety” was in the search terms four times this morning. Well, the term was really how to open our hearts more, and I changed it a little, embellished a bit to add sobriety. I like adding the angle of sobriety in, because sobriety is so often what allows you to live with your heart more open.

Often, people who have been through the hell of hitting bottom and then getting sober, find that they can open their heart more than someone who has not been through hell. It’s as if the person who got sober knows what the other side is, and is so grateful to be out of there, out of that space, that opening their heart becomes a joy.

Perhaps one of the most valuable tools to use to open our heart more is that of honesty about ourselves… our actions and words, our behaviors. When drinking, we tend to be mired deeply in ourselves, concerned about how what everyone is doing is damaging or hurting us. In reality, we are manufacturing our own misery, but most drinkers would become engaged if you said that to them.

Anyway, back to honesty. When we take a real, hard look at ourselves and see our errors, our weaknesses, our bad behavior, we realize we have done the very same things we are mad at others for. In one way or another, we have. Wow. That’s a sobering realization! And once we realize we do the same things others do, we become humble, taking ourselves off that pedestal we’ve put ourselves on, making ourselves right-sized.

There is no need for shame at this point, thinking we’re a bad person. It’s just our behavior that’s bad, and that can be changed. So, once you are honest and open your heart to yourself, you can open it to others more, seeing them with different eyes, realizing that perhaps they, too, have wounds behind their bravado, their bad behavior. When you realize this, you can see with compassion and compassion helps you in your sobriety to open your heart more and more.

I don’t think that we can get to this point of having a truly open heart unless we are in sobriety. In other words, sobriety is what allows us to open our hearts more in life, to life. When we are drinking, we are too wrapped up in ourselves and our little (and big) dramas which we have created in some way or another, that we cannot get out of ourselves enough to see the surrounding world with tenderness, with compassion. We are mired in what the other guy has done to hurt us.

I am watching this very situation occur in realtime with a friend of many years. She lives out-of-state and so, everything I get is from her point of view, or the report of other friends. I have gotten the most recent update from a friend, and the truth is somewhere in the middle, but the drinking friend is driving everyone away through her bad behaviors and actions, and then claiming everyone is deserting her.

In reality, if she looked honestly at her own behavior, her own actions, she would see this and how she is reaping the consequences of her behavior. In other words, she is creating her misery. Tragic situation I am observing from afar, as I watch lives being ruined by the actions of one who is choosing to reject sobriety.

It is with a heavy heart that I wrote about that situation because I know if she took the route of sobriety, she would be able to open her heart more to others, to herself.

At any rate, after honesty is used to help open your heart in sobriety, openness of heart and mind follows. It is crucial to be open to suggestions and new ways of thought once you get into sobriety. And, of course, willingness is the key after honesty and openness are achieved. Willingness turns the key in the lock of a closed heart. You can have all the honesty and openness you want, and until you have willingness, you cannot put your sobriety to work for you.

Once you have looked at yourself with honesty, openness, and willingness, once you have added compassion to the mix, your sobriety will be enhanced and you will be able to open your heart more.

How about you? Are you able to open your heart more now that you are sober? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: being willing, honesty, honesty with self, living sober, open heart, open mind, Openness, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, Willingness

Staying Sober During the Holidays

November 23, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

I see in the search terms, “Vietnam vets gets sober,” and that’s great! I hope it goes well for you. I hope it goes well for any of you out there who are getting and staying sober. How did it go yesterday? Was it difficult to stay sober through family functions? Were you alone, feeling somewhat sorry for yourself because of it, and drank? If so, I invite you to jump back on the wagon and follow along with my blog.

In my experience, what made Thanksgiving and the holidays difficult was dealing with family for whom I had a resentment. Because of those resentments, I wanted to drink, and before I got sober, that’s exactly what I did. I was in my home in Colorado, drinking in resentment over relatives that were in other states!

I resented, for example, that I “had to” get gifts for those that I wasn’t fond of. I resented having to get soooo many gifts. (I come from a large family). But we changed our method of gift-giving and drew names, so that resolved that issue. In later years, the adults stopped giving gifts altogether, and we just gave gifts to the children.

That helped to decrease my resentment. But I still couldn’t fully enjoy my family, still resented it was so large, resented one or another of them for something-or-other. I lived with such resentment. That was a big reason for my drinking. Wow. I am so glad that’s not me today.

Today, I enjoy my family, am grateful for each of them, even my grumpy brother who drives me nuts with his negative attitude. That all happened after I got sober and did some healing work. I grew fond of them, even though sometimes I don’t like them. I learned to accept their quirks, their foibles, as who they were and are.

Anyway, that helps a lot with staying sober during the holidays… having worked through some healing. What if you haven’t, though? In that case, I invite you to spend some time practicing gratitude, and find one thing about your family for which you are grateful. Focus on that thought, that feeling, and know that your drinking over a resentment, over them, will not help the situation, but will fuel your resentment.

I used to drink over my feelings, thinking it would numb them out, and what I found instead was that the drinking fueled my negative and angry feelings. Of course, I could’t see that at the time. All I saw in my drinking days was that I was justified in my anger, my resentment, my feelings.

After I got sober and ended up spending some holidays by myself, I learned to have a better attitude about it. It was a choice I made, so I would feel better and not want to drink. I chose not to be sorry for myself that I was alone and, instead, reached out to do something for those less fortunate. I visited old folks in nursing homes and an inmate in prison. He has become a close friend…

The message here is, to stay sober, make the choice to do something for someone else. You will feel good about what you are doing in service of another and you will want to remain sober so you can enjoy the experience to the fullest. You will want to be sober so you can be present for the other person.

It also helps to disengage from friends and family with whom you have a dispute. Make the decision that you want to stay sober and keep peaceful more than you want to deal with the family dysfunction, and do what you need to do to stay away from it. If you must be present, make the decision to stay detached from arguments, if you can. If things get to a point that you feel like drinking, politely excuse yourself and leave. You may get some flak, but do it for yourself anyway.

If you’re by yourself, watch for self-pity, as this can run rampant, especially during the holidays. To avoid getting mired in that pity, and to stay sober, make the decision to do something for another, for an individual, for a group. Make the decision to do something that will feed your soul, bring you joy and happiness for that moment. And then go do it. Helping others is truly a cure for self-pity.

So is doing something special for yourself, doing a special project you’ve not been able to get to. I have a friend who is struggling with trying to stay sober, and who spent Thanksgiving day by herself in a home she is losing to foreclosure in the next two months. A dismal and difficult situation, at best. And she made herself a full turkey dinner, intending to enjoy the last time she’d cook that meal in her home of 20+ years. I don’t know if she stayed sober, but here was a chance to practice gratitude… for all the holidays she HAD spent in the house, for one last opportunity to cook a holiday meal in her home, etc.

The key to staying sober during a difficult time when it would be so easy to go to self-pity, is to be grateful. Start talking aloud to yourself, listing the things for which you are grateful. Don’t forget to include your ability to cook and feed yourself, ie, for having a functioning body.

This post has gotten waaaaay long, and I need to end. I may continue this topic tomorrow, or I may decide I have said what I want to say. We shall see.

How do you stay sober during the holidays? Leave a comment and let us know your solution.

Filed Under: Self Improvement, Sober Living

The Purpose of Resentments

November 20, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning! I hope today is a pleasant day for you. I was affected by three search terms this morning: why is it important to respect rights of others, what purpose do resentments serve, and how does compassion help. Wow. Three very important issue and I’d like to address all three today.

Let’s start with why is it important to respect rights of others? In a nutshell, my response to that question is because it is the considerate, kind, and appropriate way to treat others. We each, in my opinion, have the right as people to be treated as if we matter, to have our rights as people treated with respect, to be respected for who and what we are. That is, unless we are harming others, and that I don’t respect.

But consider this, if we want our rights respected, we need to offer it to others first. Then it will come back to us. When we respect another’s rights, they thrive and grow, becoming all they can be. For example, my rights to have a safe and happy home, to be treated as a valuable being, were not respected while I was growing up. As a result, as an adult I had great difficulty being myself, let alone growing into my greatness. It was only after learning to respect myself that I overcame that early treatment and have been able to grow.

The rights we each have, in my opinion, are to be treated as valuable human beings, worthy of consideration and kindness. We have the right to be in safe environments, rather than ones in which physical, verbal, sexual, or emotional abuse are present. Consider that you want your rights to be respected and, therefore, you need to respect another’s rights for that respect to be returned to you.

Let’s look now at the purpose of resentments. In my case, my resentments served the purpose of keeping me a very closed and self-centered person, seeking attention in the form of pity. My resentments gave me something to spend my energy on. It gave me the free license to be critical and demeaning toward others.

Perhaps the most important role that resentments play for us is allowing us to avoid being responsible and accountable for ourselves. We place the blame for our woes or failures on another and that takes the attention and the heat off of us. After all, it is difficult to look at and own our own behavior, especially when it is poor behavior. This is the only benefit to keeping resentments and, in my experience, when cleared of them, I experienced great freedom and peace.

How does compassion help? Well, for me, compassion was the precursor to forgiveness. Compassion softens everything, allows us to see others as humans – fallible. Often, we can see our own behavior being played out by another, and that leads to compassion not only for the other, but for ourselves as well. Yes, compassion is a softening emotion, easily practiced when we look at our own foibles and bad behavior.

How does compassion help you? And do resentments serve a purpose for you? How about respecting the rights of others… what do you see as another’s rights? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: compassion, compassion for others, compassion for ourselves, resentment, resentments, respect, respect the rights of others, rights of others

Willingness is the Key to Sobriety

November 19, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. I see that I forgot to write yesterday and I apologize to those of you who visited and found no new post. I think from now on, I will take Sundays off from blogging…

Today, the search term that caught my attention was “willingness is the key.” I wanted to write about this because it IS the key to sobriety and to so much more. Willingness is the thing that can bring so much into your life, when you practice it.

Webster defines willingness as the noun of willing, which is to act readily, cheerfully, and gladly. Notice it is to “act,” so willingness takes action on your part. I have found that to be willing, I have to approach situations with a new look, with new eyes. I have to let go of my idea of how things need to go, for example, take action and see what evolves as a result.

Willingness involves being open to what can happen in your life – open to change, open to new ways of doing things. It is a softening of your resistance so you can accept in the new. In the case of sobriety, it is being open to try it, to do it, to commit to it. If you are having trouble being willing, ask the Universe for the willingness to be willing to have willingness.

Once you show just a little willingness, the door opens wide and the ability to be willing comes flowing in to you. It is not just a softening of your resistance; it is also an excitement of anticipation of what can happen. In the case of sobriety, willingness will make or break your efforts.

First, you have to be willing to even get sober, to try sobriety. That involves acting readily to let go of alcohol as your friend and companion. Next, you will need to have the willingness to approach what you find in sobriety with an open mind – open to new ideas, new ways of doing things. It means getting rid of your contempt prior to investigation. The act of willingness allows you to look with excitement at what you are doing.

Along the way, you will need the willingness to feel your feelings without numbing them out with substances or activity, just being with them. If you show the willingness for this, the Universe will help you through your feelings. You will need the willingness to take others’ suggestions, even when you don’t want to. You may need to be willing to seek professional help, for example, to get through emotions related to the past.

Yes, willingness is truly the key to getting sober and staying sober. It is the key to open the doors in so many areas of your life. How do you practice willingness? Does it come easily to you, or do you struggle with it? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: being willing, how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, Willingness, willingness is the key

One Day at a Time in Sobriety

November 17, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning and welcome to this rainy day, if you are in the San Francisco area… It is the rainy season here in the Bay Area, and I am not fond of the rainy weather. Oh dear, we are just at the beginning of the season. How will I make it through? I will make it through one day at a time, just like my sobriety. I accumulated 12 years one day at a time.

It is our tendency to want change to happen to ourselves and our situation right now, but that is not how things work in sobriety, or in life. Things evolve, they happen slowly when it comes to changing ourselves. My sponsor once told me everything in my life was going to shit because God was breaking me down to nothingness so He could rebuild me in all my glory, all my worthiness.

So, all the old messages and beliefs that I was worthless needed to be dispelled. I needed to learn to see myself with eyes of love, and the only way to do that was to strip me of all the old messages that I was no good. I was brought back to the past for the purpose of healing from it so I could move forward in the present. The only way to do that was one day at a time.

Then, each day was broken down into one action after another, a day of doing the next indicated thing, and then the next, and the next, and so forth, until the day had passed. It was difficult to get through some days, and sometimes, all I could do was take a nap or go to bed, even at 6 pm, for example.

If you are contemplating sobriety, or are in the middle of sobriety, you can adopt the philosophy of taking it one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time. By doing this, you allow yourself to see your past, the old messages of worthlessness, and you can begin to build upon the ashes that have become your life. Emotional pain may be needed for a time, and that will disappear as you replace it with good feelings about yourself, as your situation improves, one day at a time.

My suggestion to you is to start taking it one day at a time, doing the next indicated thing to do throughout that day, until the day is over and you can start over again the next day. Make plans only so they can move you forward, but let go of the outcome and be flexible with your plans, wants, and desires. Try not to live in the past or the future, but squarely in the present day.

So, tell me, how are you doing with living one day at a time in sobriety? Leave a comment and let us know how you do that and how it works for you in your sobriety.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: feelings of worthlessness, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, worthless, worthlessness

What Happens When You Surrender to Sobriety?

November 16, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

I am going to address two of the search terms from early this morning – how to surrender to sobriety and joyous emotions. The reason I chose these two is because once you do get sober, you experience joyous emotions. I want to be very clear that my joyous emotions are possible only through my sobriety. I proved otherwise for 26 years of drinking.

The “how to surrender to sobriety” sounds like a plea to me. Sounds like someone is recognizing their need to start sobriety, and cannot get to surrender, can’t go there. I surrendered after spending several months in deep and debilitating grief over an unrequited love. So, my surrender was very difficult and when I finally asked for help, I was desperate. I was begging for help. You don’t have to get to that point.

On the other hand, my surrender to decide to attend a support group to help to stop drinking came with grace. The friend I was living with said to me that she had been to this group before and did I want to join her? I just quietly said yes, without even thinking. This part was easy. It was getting to the decision to quit, finally quit, that was difficult, that brought me to my knees emotionally. Let’s look at that for a minute.

I kept on and on with my drinking because I knew of no other way to deal with my pain over the unrequited love, over childhood issues. I was afraid if I quit, I would wither away to nothingness, that it would zap what little energy I had left. The reality was, starting in sobriety actually gave me more energy, I found, because I was not so badly hung over every morning, that I had to eat greasy or spicy foods to control it.

I couldn’t even name my pain, I was that far gone in the ability to know what I was feeling. The thing is, as I said, I was afraid to give up the only way I knew of to deal with the pain. What I didn’t know was, the longer I kept drinking, the longer I prolonged the ability to feel joyous emotions. I prolonged the ability to get through and past my grief over the unrequited love, the anger over my childhood. It was a vicious circle.

Let me just say that, in the end, I adore and cherish my sobriety and if I had one regret, it would be that I didn’t do it sooner. If I had, I could have spent less years in emotional misery from childhood issues. That’s because, with the aid of the support group, I was able to get to the point of dealing with the childhood issues and thus, healing from them.

If you were to ask me, I would tell you that sobriety is so well worth it. Yes, it sucks at first and sometimes for a few years. But in the end, when you clear out all the past debris, when you can visit the past only to make it possible to move forward in the present, you reach a space where you find peace and freedom. And joy. Tremendous joy and excitement about the things around you, especially the people.

Then there’s wonder. In sobriety. You see everything and everyone with great awe and wonder, as you focus on one moment to the next, taking it all in. Along comes grace, that space where you somewhat float along, where the ability to roll with everything that is going on descends upon you like a cloak. And, of course, there is peace, a deep knowingness that all is well, that all is going as planned.

I wish you well on your journey to sobriety and hope that you can approach surrender to it with grace and wonder, instead of with the attitude of giving up in defeat. Yes, you are defeated by alcohol, but that doesn’t mean YOU’RE defeated as a person. You have treasure trove of things to discover about yourself and others. Happy discovery.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how do I surrender to alcohol, how to find peace, inner peace, joy, joyous emotions, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, surrender

The Rewards of Sobriety

November 15, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

I decided to speak about the rewards of sobriety because I am going to talk about an activity in which I engage, only because I am sober. Because of my sobriety, I have been able to heal from 38 years of huge anger and bitterness against my parents, as well as to recover form deep and debilitating grief that lasted seven years. Because of my sobriety, I am able to be a motivational speaker, sharing how I did that so I can be of service to others.

How did I do that, you may ask? Well, I got sober and the rest just seemed to fall into place over the years of healing I did. Note, though, that I took action. I took responsibility for my own healing by maintaining my sobriety, writing about my feelings, and getting professional help. The feelings uncovered were difficult and at times excruciating, and still, I maintained my sobriety.

I didn’t think I could do it. There were many times during the first five years that I would scream that sobriety was not better than drinking. Ah, but it is… once you get beyond all the debris of the past so you can bring forth the healing that needs to occur. In sobriety, you have abilities that you don’t have when drinking. For example, when in sobriety, you have the ability to be willing to consider new things, to look at things with new eyes, to hear differently. Willingness takes you a long way. So does gratitude…

You see, before sobriety, when you are still drinking, when I was still drinking, we don’t have the capability to open our mind to new things, especially when it involves looking honestly at ourselves, especially when it involves letting another be right… and on and on. You see, when we are drinking, we are often self-righteous know-it-alls who are overly concerned about ourselves… how we look, act, are being evaluated. We do everything to assure we get what we want, even if it is hurtful to another. These traits are common to alcoholics, I’ve discovered over the years in sobriety.

It takes so long to beat down the ego and the need for control that that’s why it takes some of us so long to find sobriety. I’d like to address the need for control for a minute. It helps to have compassion for those who try to manage and control everything if you understand where that comes from. Many of us who drink grew up in a chaotic, often abusive, environment, and as a result, are trying to be in control of things to avoid that chaos we’ve dealt with all those years. It’s a skill we mastered while living in that unstable environment so we could maintain ourselves through the craziness.

But the need to control gets in the way of your ability to get and maintain sobriety. As with any survival skill we learned and practiced during our formative years, you need to evaluate if it is serving you in present day. Chances are, these skills that saved your life are the very ones that are holding you back now. Being aware of all of this helps to keep you conscious of your behaviors. When you are conscious and aware of them, you can choose to make a change in them, from battling to control, to going with the flow.

When I say going with the flow, I do not mean you do nothing. Wrong. In sobriety, you will learn that life is a series of doing the next indicated thing in front of you to do. In other words, its a series of continual actions you take. You learn to be accountable for yourself, responsible, and that is a gift of sobriety, because it sets you free. You also learn it is a choice… yes, we always have a choice. Even doing nothing is a choice. Learning that is yet another gift of sobriety.

For me, it took a process of getting to the point where I realized I had choice in everything. I didn’t used to think I did, I was so mired in the blaming of my parents for my misery, so mired in blaming the rejection by an unrequited love. But I made the decision to keep in that space of blame. I could have, instead, elected to look at my own actions and behaviors that contributed to my misery. But I could no more do that then fly to the moon without a spaceship.

Well, here are some thoughts to leave you with for the day… thoughts about your sobriety and how it’s going for you, thoughts about what you may experience if you get sober. It is 1:43 am and I am up at this time of night because I awoke and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to blog. And, I am ready to go back to bed now. Good night. Thank you for being tolerant my rambling today…

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living

The Rewards of Sobriety

November 15, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Well, here are some thoughts to leave you with for the day… thoughts about your sobriety and how it’s going for you, thoughts about what you may experience if you get sober. It is 1:43 am and I am wake at this time of night because I awoke and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to blog. And, I am ready to go back to bed now. Good night.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living

How to Overcome Fear

November 14, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. It is dark and early at 4:38 am PST, and I see that fear was searched for three times yesterday, so let’s talk about that.

Fear can be positive or negative. For example, it is positive when it warns us of danger. We can jump right into the survival mode, the fight or flight state-of-being. But what about when it’s negative?

Negative fear includes such things as fear that you are less than, not good enough, fear that you’ll look stupid… things like that. When you go to this place, you are in a contracted, pulled in state, versus being free of fear which allows you to be open and expansive.

To identify fear, look behind your anger. It often hides there. When we are angry, usually there is fear of something attached to that anger, as is there hurt. Hurt and fear.

When you identify you are in fear, there are three things you can do to get through it to another mindset:

Once you identify the fear you are in, breathe, ask for help, and take action.
Now acknowledge you are in that fear state, stare it in the face. It will dissipate.
Choose to leave the fear state or stay in it.

Fear is an acronym standing for False Evidence Appearing Real. We take non-facts, figments and worries of our imagination, and we run with them, expound upon them until we think they are real. It is often based on something that didn’t or won’t happen. Keep an eye out for this and stop yourself when you catch yourself going to this place.

Perhaps the biggest antidote for fear is to take action, to choose to leave the fear state and take action despite the fear. That action might be small, such as contacting someone we have been putting off contacting, or huge to us, like approaching someone to be a joint venture partner. The thing is, you need to identify it and take action despite your fear. Go through the steps above, and you will find yourself moving forward through and past the fear.

What are some of the things you fear that you cannot seem to get past? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: fear, fearful, how do I get past fear

Overcome Despair with Sobriety

November 13, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. I haven’t done the rest of my grief work yet, so do not have the rest of the process to report on this morning. I will have it tomorrow. Meanwhile, let’s talk about the benefits of sobriety, for with sobriety, it is possible to overcome despair and feelings of worthlessness.

When I was in my drinking days, it was easy to keep being in despair and worthlessness because the drink fueled those feelings, kept me in self-pity and blaming others. Then when I started in sobriety, the fuel for that fire was gone. Suddenly, I had to look at the actual feelings behind my despair, my worthlessness. I had to feel the hurt at a very deep level. I had to be responsible for my own feelings… and it was difficult.

Yet, by keeping my sobriety intact, I was able to ease my way through the feelings. My sobriety allowed me to discover a place inside where I wanted to give to others. And when I wanted to give to others, I found my purpose in life. When I found my purpose in life, the despair left me. It was only by staying sober that I became able to get outside of myself and really care about another, really care about being of service to them. It’s actually a glorious place to be.

But if you are in despair or feeling worthless, you cannot imagine that place, I know. At least, I never would have been able to imagine that place. Trust me when I say that it may be obtained. It is possible. So, let me tell you how I got there and maybe you, then, can get there yourself.

My despair dissipated when I told my story to someone and it was useful to him. Recognizing that, I came to the realization that by telling my story and how I recovered from a horrible upbringing, horrible anger and bitterness, horrible grief, it might be useful to others so that they, too, could get through and past their horrible experiences, their resentments, their despair.

It took being in a state of sobriety, where I was “clear” enough to recognize this. It took being in sobriety to be able to get beyond myself so I could consider another, could be of service. I did this by being willing to be open to what came to me, by being willing to maintain and practice my sobriety.

How about you? How can you take what you have learned in sobriety and be useful to another with that information? How can you be of service from that deep place of knowingness that we discussed yesterday… that place of great worthiness. All you have to be is two steps ahead of the person to whom you are being of service.

Move forward in your day with awareness. Be conscious of the ways in which you can be of service to another. Look for how your story, your experiences and the healing you’ve done-to-date could be useful to another. Remember… you only need to be two steps ahead. Then make the decision to be of service, to be of use and take action. May you discover your purpose as a result of this process, and may you replace your despair with hope, with feelings of goodness.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: despair, despairing, how to get past despair, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety, worthless, worthlessness

Overcome Worthlessness with Grief Recovery

November 12, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

It is with a great deal of experience in the area of worthlessness that I write today. i.e., it is something with which I am quite intimate. You see, every day or so throughout childhood, I was called worthless, told I would never amount to anything. I grew up and flew the nest with that belief firmly stamped into my deep sub-consciousness.

This is how I started the blog that I planned to post yesterday. It ended up being 950 words, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to post such a long one, filled with a great deal of personal experience that I thought you’d find boring. I was afraid it would be too much. Confused, I took no action…

Interesting. I wonder how much of my inability to edit it down has to do with the effect that feelings of worthlessness have on me today, which make it difficult to speak about it without getting carried away. In other words, I believe that I still hold some feelings of worthlessness and they come up for me from time to time. Oh, I have made great headway. Example… in days past, I would forget to post, or not get to it, and I’d feel like a failure, worthless. I no longer go there.

Enough about me. At least you understand why I didn’t post yesterday and I hope you returned today for the post on worthlessness.

Before I write about that, I want to acknowledge all the Veterans who are reading this post and say thank you for your service. You have made a sacrifice that will affect you for the rest of your lifetime, and I want you to know that I recognize that, and am especially appreciative of what you did to help our country.

On to our topic… Webster defines worthlessness as being without value, without merit or worth. Worth is defined as that quality of a person that lends importance. I believe that we each have something of importance to bring to the world. I believe that at our core, we are each inherently good people, filled with worth.

Even though I believe this, I struggle some days with feelings of worthlessness, days in which I feel of no importance or value to anyone or anything. On these days, I have to consciously talk myself through it, reminding myself over and over that when my father called me worthless, it was a lie. Also, I consider that he said it, but meant it about himself, not me. I find I can them go to the affirmation of “I am worthy and worthwhile.”

I know the feelings of worthlessness I hold go deep within my being. So it was with interest that I decided to get help through this. An opportunity came along to be coached in a grief recovery program. What I have discovered is as expected… continued feelings of worthlessness, the grief from the feelings of worthlessness. I never even thought to look at what losses I endured as a result of those words. So I have been looking at that.

The losses I’ve identified so far are loss of self-respect, loss of all beliefs that I am a good person, loss of a positive image, loss of ability to receive acknowledgment or compliments about me and my work. I imagine more will surface. Next, the process involves allowing myself to feel those losses, the grief from losing those things. I then make a choice to let the worthless feelings go.

The next part of the grief process involves choosing one person with whom I wish to get closure, to put to bed my feelings of worthlessness. I, naturally, chose my father and his calling me worthless all those years.

As I explore my feelings, I come to a place of forgiveness for him. I get there by realizing that he was a wounded person when he said that, and I feel compassion for his woundedness. From that place of compassion, I have been able to reach forgiveness for him.

My assignment for the week is to write a letter of closure, putting to bed my feelings of worthlessness, breaking the connection of my father’s words with my current-day reality. I will be working on that today and tomorrow, so can report back on what I discovered through the process.

What about you? What wounds have you endured in life that have led you to develop feelings of worthlessness? Take a look at that/those and see how it/they manifest in your life. Then, identify all the losses you have experienced as a result of those feelings of worthlessness. Allow yourself to look at them, to feel them. Acknowledge the hurt you felt every time you were told you were worthless, or whatever it was that led you to develop worthlessness.

Then tell yourself that is not who you were or are at your core, the center of your being. Step outside of yourself for a minute and picture your outer self smiling to you, the real person. Smile with great knowingness that you are a person of great worth, with value to share with the world. Smile with deep belief and understanding that you are filled with worth and value, value to yourself and to others. When you slip into worthlessness, return to that place of knowingness. Gradually, you will find your feelings of worthlessness are fading away.

Well, I have managed to write another long post today, and I’m going to let it stand. I’ll return, hopefully tomorrow, to let you know how the letter-writing went. Remember your mantra for the day… “I am a person of great value and worth.”

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement Tagged With: feelings of worthlessness, how do I feel worthy, worthiness, worthlessness, worthy

Life On Life’s Terms In Sobriety

November 9, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

I would like to share an experience I had in sobriety. The thought came to me because I am without heat – can’t get the pilot lit – and I have the oven on and open so I can have heat. I am bundled up in a blanket as I type. The experience happened while I lived and traveled in my van that I gutted and rebuilt in cherrywood.

my home, the van

I was in Arizona, looking for a place to stay for the night and I saw a sign for a canyon. Thinking it was truly a canyon, ie, at the base of hills and mountains, I set out down that road. Soon I was traversing a hillside, climbing up the side of a mountain. Not a canyon in my book, but hey. Here I was, couldn’t turn around, so I continued.

At the end, at the top of the road was a clearing and flattened area as I reached the top of the mountain. (I say mountain, but, being from Colorado, it was really just a hill.) So here I am, having reached the top, and my rear tire blows – I have a flat. Freaking out, I try to call an auto repair shop to come up and fix it, but no one would do that. I try to fix the flat and couldn’t get the jack up enough to get the tire off the ground so I can pull the tire off. AND, I discovered that my spare was very, very low on air, if not flat itself. This was truly a challenge to maintain my emotional sobriety.

The fact that I would have to spend the night on top of the mountain then became evident, so I snuggled into bed, and lit the oven for heat. I awoke refreshed, ready to set out looking for help. So I did. As I walked, I did what was taught to me in sobriety… I prayed for help, prayed for God to remove my fear, to show me the way.

First, I came across a pickup truck, with the driver passed out over the steering wheel. I could see empty bottles in the bed of the truck. As I started to approach it, I realized that he could still be drunk and might be a mean or violent drunk. I could see myself getting accosted, raped even, killed, left to die, and no one would know what happened to me. I decided to continue searching for help.

At this point, I was talking myself through the twelve steps, trying to maintain my sobriety, my emotional sobriety. I decided to return to the van and leave a sign on the main road that I was in trouble. You see, I was tucked in a little clearing off of the dirt road that went through the area. I put a red T-shirt on a bush by the road, hoping someone would drive by, see it, and stop.

After about an hour, lo-and-behold if I didn’t hear a vehicle approaching, so I ran to the road. There was a van coming down the road! THEY’D have a jack that would work for me, or they could give me a ride to town with my flat spare. They stopped and determined that my spare had enough air in it to get down the mountain, and changed it. I then followed that van down the mountainside, and I went on to a local tire shop, where I got a new set of tires for my old and worn ones.

Alls well that ends well. What I learned from the experience that helped my sobriety was that when I take action on my own behalf, help comes in the least-expected way. If I don’t force things, but let them come to me, they work out better than I could have expected.

So, for your sobriety, here is my input: Continue on your path, doing the next indicated thing to do and take action on your own behalf. Don’t force things to go the way you think they need to go. Rather, keep taking action, one action at a time and things will work out better than you planned. You will maintain your sobriety, especially your emotional sobriety.

How do you handle difficult situations in your sobriety? Do you fret and stew, forcing a solution, or do you take action and then leave the results to God? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Practicing Honesty in Sobriety

November 7, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Today we’re going to talk about what it means to have honesty in sobriety, or to be honest any time, for that matter. When you thought of honesty, your thoughts went to stealing or telling lies, right? If you don’t steal and lie, you are honest, right? Possibly. Possibly not.

It depends. Are you practicing honesty in your sobriety about your feelings and about who you are? It is easy, even in sobriety, to not be honest, to not tell the truth about your feelings, to not speak up for yourself when needed. Honesty means owning your bad behavior… identifying and taking responsibility for it by apologizing if you hurt someone.

How can you know if you are being honest? Well, you can ask yourself these questions… “When I am feeling badly, do I say that, or do I say, in a huff, ‘I’m fine?’” If you say you’re fine when you’re not, you are not practicing honesty in sobriety because you are not saying what is true for you in that moment.

You can ask, “When I have intentionally, or even unintentionally, hurt someone else, am I apologizing for what I said or did… am I taking responsibility for my bad or hurtful behavior?” If you apologize in these situations, then you are showing honesty in sobriety because you are sharing your feelings of remorse, you are being honest about what you are feeling in the moment.

Honesty in sobriety is all about unveiling who you are at your core. It is about who and what you are in each moment. For example, I spent the majority of my life being dishonest. Oh, I didn’t cheat and only told a few lies here and there to protect others, but I considered myself honest. Then, I had to look differently when I got sober and I re-assessed my honesty in sobriety.

I discovered many things. First, when I was hurting or hurt, I did not relay that to the other person, thinking I it was better not to hurt the other person or to bother them. The thing is, the energy behind that deception came out in other ways, usually by being a bit standoffish in my approach to them, or making snide comments to them. Being passively aggressive. Whoa! It’s embarrassing to admit that, but it was true.

The fact is, I was not relaying my true feelings because of fear. I was afraid that if I displayed honesty in sobriety, then the person would get mad at me and harm me in some way because of that anger. Now, I find myself learning to tell others how I am feeling in the moment, and I say it especially gently if I think it will be difficult for the other person to hear.

That’s just one example of how to practice honesty in sobriety. I could go on, yet I’m sure you get the gist and my point. In case I didn’t make my point, it is that you can be ever-aware of your feelings and relay them to others when they occur. First, however, you need look at what is behind those feelings. If what you discover is something that will not harm the other to divulge, then be honest with them about what you are feelings.

If. on the other hand, you discover a personal problem or issue, then you will not want to tell the person your feelings. For example, someone said something that hurts your feelings and you, upon reflection, realize your old wound of feeling “less than” was triggered. You can consider that the hurtful comment was not said to harm you, and you were sensitive it to it because of your wound; you can consider not saying anything. You can also consider saying to them that an old wound was touched when they said what they said, and that you are having difficulty dealing with it.

By divulging that much about yourself, you open the way to share your honesty in sobriety, to share who you are at a deep level, and you further the relationship’s deepening with your action. That is practicing honesty in sobriety at its deepest level.

How do you display your honesty in sobriety? Leave a comment and let us know.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: being honest, honesty, honesty in sobriety, how to be honest, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Judging Others

November 5, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“Why do others judge me so harshly” is the search term that stuck out for me this morning. Most likely, it’s because I have spent a great deal of my life being judged harshly by another… I won’t say who, but you may be able to figure it out as we go along. Ay any rate, I have a sense of why people judge others so harshly because I know how I’m feeling when I am judging others.

Are you guilty of judging others harshly? If so, what are you thinking and feeling when you do? For me, I am thinking harshly of another when I am feeling the most insecure about myself. I would do well to fetch myself up when I start judging others and think about how I am feeling that led me to be so critical.

I hold others to my standards. The down side of that is that my standards are high and unachievable by some. Sometimes, they are even unachievable by me. They are unrealistic and at times, often, they are my parents’ standards. Boy, will I ever be free from the influence they had over me while growing up? I keep working on that, weeding out what is my belief, what is theirs.

I find I am judging others when I am feeling less than, insecure, and down on myself. Perhaps, that is true for others, too. So, when someone is judging you harshly, consider they are really reflecting their negative thoughts about themselves. That might make it a little easier to bear…

The other option, of course, is that they feel superior and will try and hold you to their standards. The trouble with that is, like I said, they are usually too high and unachievable.

I find that people are so busy paying attention to others, judging others, that they forget to pay attention to themselves and how they are in the world. Hmmm. Now, there’s an interesting thing for them to do with their time… to be aware of themselves in the world. Aware of their behavior, aware of how they treat others and themselves. Think of the harmony that would exist if that were the case…

The difficulty is, of course, that we can do nothing to change or guide the behavior of another. What our job really needs to be is watching ourselves… our behavior, how we treat others and ourselves. Sometimes, even treating others the way we what to be treated is not enough because we are not interested in treating ourselves very well. Aa a result, the “do onto others…” practice would not fare well.

At any rate, I find that since I have become sober, I am much less judgmental of others. From my participation in sobriety, I have gained the ability to hear what a person has to say, to bring up kind, loving thoughts about them in my head, rather than criticizing them for how they might look, for example.

I used to have this thing about tattoos and people with them. (Sorry if that’s you…) I frowned on them and the people with them. Then one day, I heard a highly tattooed guy share the most profoundly beautiful words and concept. My frown flew out the window, as I realized how my judging others almost kept me from hearing what this man was saying, and I would have missed out on a beautiful opportunity to grow, to see another human being in great depth.

Of course, judging others leads right to comparison. We compare one to another and find fault with “another,” demanding that “another” be more like “one.” In that process, we squash the spirit of “another,” and totally miss the beauty they have to offer the world, to offer you.

I will write more about comparing one to another tomorrow. To close, I would like to share two images from my book Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing and the corresponding verses that go with them. They relate to judging others, and comparisons.

Practice of Tolerance

“I have the most difficulty being tolerant of others when I am feeling inadequate, insecure, and uncomfortable with myself.

Yet, when I am able to look beyond the imperfections of others, I discover great beauty and worth in them.

And, I discover that another’s value does not diminish my own.”

Cultivation of Differences

“We ask, require, demand, that others around us be like us, share our attributes, our beliefs. And in so doing, we compare… one to another. In that process, do we not squash the spirit of the one who is different from us – one whose thoughts and dreams and talents lie in a different place?

We are like the gates. Although similar in design, what thrives in one spot does not grown in another. On one, there is rust or corrosion or patina, while on the other is mellowed brass.

One is not more beautiful than another. Each has beauty in its own right, if we will only look… if we will only see.”

Have a day filled with lovely thoughts.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: judging others, judgment of others, judgment of self, living sober, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

How To Strengthen Your Sobriety

November 4, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“How to strengthen your sobriety” is the search term that caught my eye today, although “how to deal with feelings of worthlessness” tugged at my heart. I chose writing about sobriety because I want to write about living in the solution in sobriety versus in worthlessness. It’s an easier place from which to start. And, worthlessness can occur in sobriety, so I will touch upon it.

Sobriety often starts out on a pink cloud, a feeling of euphoria for the first few weeks or months. The absence of hangovers is enough to be joyous about. Then, as the fog lifts and feelings start to surface, it can become difficult. Although my feelings were raw from grief over an unrequited love from my first day of sobriety, after about 6-9 months of sobriety they got really intense and excruciating. I used to yell at my sponsor that sobriety wasn’t worth it, that I was better off when I was drinking.

Well, yeah, I was, if you want to forget about the days when I was in such despair and feeling so worthless that I just sobbed and keened. I was better off when I was drinking if you forget about my extreme anger and bitterness against my parents that permeated to every area of my life. Oh, and forget about having a verbally abusive marriage, one in which I was emotionally miserable. If you forget all of those things, then, yeah, I was better off when I was drinking.

Wrong. For me, drinking took to me deep and devastating places in my mind and heart, fueled my anger and bitterness, my loss and grief. Somehow, these issues slipped my mind when I was in the throes of emotional pain over a lifetime of being discounted as worthless, useless, of no value what-so-ever. I had to feel the feelings associated with the loss of esteem, worth as a being, loss of a normal childhood, loss of emotional security and safety… That’s a lot to feel and to grieve. No wonder my feelings were raw.

Just to be clear, sobriety is absolutely worth it. It gets better and that acute pain fades as you do the healing work, but you must take action, do the work. So, what do you do when you are in that raw space, wanting to pick up a drink? How can you strengthen your sobriety? I can offer to you what worked for me…

I think the most valuable thing for me was the 4 or 5 -a-day support group meetings I attended kept me focused on the end goal… serenity and peace. When I was “wigging out,” as I so aptly called it when my emotions went raw, going to a meeting helped me to put things in perspective. It quieted my nerves, my thoughts. I did that for the first year-and-a-half of my sobriety. If I had gone to a rehab, though, I would have gotten a lot of concentrated, focused healing work, and I might not have required 4-5 meetings a day. I’ll never know. All I know is it worked for me.

The second most impactful thing I did was to journal every day with my non-dominant hand. Using my “other” hand and the “other” side of my brain led to the surfacing of all sorts of deep feelings. Research studies have been done, actually, which show that when you use your non-dominant hand to do tasks, it unleashes great creativity.

Equally as important was my voracious reading of spiritual books. Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s The Invitation and The Dance were mind-altering for me, as were Until Today and One Day My Soul Just Opened Up by Iyanla VanZant. Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now provided great insight into my habit of worrying about the past and future all the time. Gary Zokov and The Seat of the Soul, and there were many others. These books became my solace, my refuge, the place where I sought hope.

Reading this spiritual material helped me to develop my spirituality, which is needed for sobriety. It is essential to have some higher being or force that you believe in, so as to get help from that force when humans are not available. Sobriety is strengthened when you realize you cannot run the show, when you submit to being humble. It is strengthened when you choose to be honest, open-minded and open-hearted, and willing.

These are the things that strengthened my sobriety in the earlier days, for the first 5-6 years of sobriety. Now, it’s writing in my blog, being of service to others that strengthens it. What strengthens your sobriety? Leave a message and let us know.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living

Feelings of Grace

November 3, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“Feelings of Grace” was the search term many times over this morning, so I will write about grace. I invite you to look up the meaning of the word in the dictionary or in wikopedia, as the description is lengthy. Just to recap, though, it is a pleasing quality, a favor, or thanks. It is an attractive quality, feature, or manner.

For me, grace is something that comes to me, that is a gift. Here are the image and verse that are in my book, Opening the Gates of the Heart: A Journey of Healing.

Sweep of Grace

“Gently, quietly, an unearned favor of great beauty and pleasure is bestowed upon me.”

It swoops down on me and does things like give me the ability to show true compassion for another’s plight, another’s sufferings. And I mean at a very deep level. And grace allows me to offer understanding to that other through my words of solace and comfort. Grace is that gift that came to me in the form of a book that has allowed me to even know what words of solace and comfort are actually comforting and which are not.

I got that information, btw, from The Grief Recovery Handbook, 20th Edition, by John W. James and Russell Friedman. This book is appropriate for any of us because they deal with all losses that we experience, such as the familiar – due to death or divorce – yet they expand the scope of the need for grieving by adding losses due to moving when we were children, or even adults, to moving or losing a job, or losing a pet. They define it as any loss and we all have endured many losses during the course of our lives which they contend we have not addressed and which continue to affect our feelings, and, thus, our actions and behaviors in the world.

Grace is that pleasing favor which descends upon me and allows me to write these blogs, to share about my past, my personal life in a desire to be useful to you. It just quietly shows up. I feel knowingness deep within when it does, and that’s what part of being in grace is for me. Deep knowingness, abiding peace.

Grace is one of the multiple gifts I have received as a result of my sobriety. I’m sure I felt grace before getting sober, yet, I didn’t recognize what it was, probably thought it was my due right and something I caused through my efforts. Not that getting to grace doesn’t involve action on your part – it does – yet, I am referring to things that occur in my life due to the Universe’s grace, or God’s grace, that I set in motion the energy from which it evolved.

This is getting very deep for me and I will close by saying that grace is one of those things that brings a slow smile to you face, a deep contentment to your heart and soul, and I invite you to let it in by relaxing and seeing what flows into your life after you take action on a need, want, or dream.

May you have joy and peace on your journey.

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: feelings of grace, finding inner peace, grace, how to find peace, inner peace, peace, sober, sobriety, sweep of grace

Compassion – the Forerunner to Forgiveness

November 1, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Yesterday, I spoke about forgiveness and said that to get to forgiveness, one needs to feel and show compassion for the one who has wronged you. Compassion is sorrow for the sufferings of another, often accompanied with the urge to help. You can feel deep sympathy and tenderness for the other, but you might not want to help them, and that’s okay. You can still feel compassion.

I discovered how compassion can lead to forgiveness quite by accident. One day, after about 2 years sober, I was doing my second or third self-appraisal, in essence a performance evaluation. I was considering the few relationships I had had with men, and what I did to lead to their demise. One of the things I identified was the way in which I would get drunk and scream at these men how worthless they were, that they would amount to nothing.

I was appalled when I remembered this! I was responsible for the ravaging of their soul and it was a bitter pill to swallow. I felt compassion for them for having to endure what I inflicted. I also felt compassion for myself because I actually said those words to them, but I meant them about me; I felt worthless and that I wasn’t amounting to anything. I felt compassion for the wounded soul I was.

One day soon after this realization, the thought hit me that my father might have actually said those words to me repeatedly because he felt them about himself. After all, that had been the case for me, why not him also? I began to realize he endured his own wounds at the hands of his father. Suddenly, the door was opened a crack to compassion for him, another wounded soul.

With the door opened a little bit, I kept returning to that feeling of compassion and soon, after about another two years, I had found my way to forgiveness for both of my parents for the treatment I received while I was growing up. The feeling of peace that washed over me was tremendous. Years of pain and misery melted from me. The key to my forgiveness was the compassion I felt for my father as a wounded person himself.

You, too, can look with compassion at the one who wronged you. The chances that they received their own wounds is high. Think of them as you would think about any wounded person, feeling sorrow and sympathy for them. When you extend compassion to them, you will experience forgiveness, and this will lead to more peace.

How to Achieve Forgiveness

October 31, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“How to achieve forgiveness” is the search term which stuck out for me this morning. Interestingly, I just finished revising my report about forgiveness. You can get that report by leaving your email address to the right. The report details step-by-step how to get past anger and find forgiveness.

The thing is, if you are dealing with anger and grudges that you have held for a long time, they are affecting everything in your life. That anger winds its way into everything you do, affects everyone you talk to. You may be seeing the effects of anger in your relationships with your spouse, children, boss, or others. If you’re tired of this, then read on to find out the process of forgiveness.

Once you identify you have an underlying anger, you can make the decision to do something about it. Perhaps you are being forced into doing something about your anger, like… you are heading for a divorce or loss of your job. If something like this is the case, then you will want to read on…

To overcome anger and grudges, you need to look at forgiveness as a way to dispel that anger. Most people think that to forgive means you are condoning and pardoning what was done to you. That is not the case. You are not letting the other person off the hook, you are merely deciding to forgive because the anger is affecting your life.

To get a handle on your anger, your grudge, look at what is underneath the anger. It is usually hurt, or the pain of betrayal, for example. Allow yourself to feel that hurt, that pain. Then make a decision that you want something better for your life than a life filled with anger and bitterness. Make a decision that you want peace in your life.

Many people drink over their angers. In fact, resentments are the number one reason people drink, according to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. That was the case for me; I drank heavily to fuel my anger, my indignation. I stayed a bitter person for 38 years as a result. Then I found sobriety and after a while, that all changed. I found forgiveness and then I realized I wanted peace instead of anger.

Actually, I stumbled across forgiveness one day. I realized I did the very same thing to others that had been done to me in childhood… I called others worthless and no good. When I realized I meant those words about myself, I began to wonder if the person who said those words to me actually meant them about himself rather than me.

That opened the door to allow me to consider that person with compassion. Through compassion, I was able to discover a way to forgive. I do not condone what happened nor excuse the behavior, but I can see why it occurred and that has made all the difference. It was possible through my decision to get sober and then lead a life of sobriety. In order to remain sober, I needed to let go of the anger. Luckily, I discovered forgiveness.

If you are looking at your anger issues and thinking you need to do something about them, then you may wish to read the in-depth description of how to find forgiveness that is in my special report. Get that report by leaving your email to the right. In exchange, you will receive an occasional, about once a month, email from me with tidbits about ways to maintain peace in your life.

Here’s to your ability to find forgiveness. It leads to freedom like you have never experienced. May you enjoy it!

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: dealing with anger, forgiveness, forgiving, How to Achieve Forgiveness, how to find forgiveness, how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Overcoming Hopelessness

October 30, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

There were three search terms about hopelessness yesterday, so I want to address it. Hopelessness is the feeling one has that things cannot and will not get better. It is a feeling that you are at the end of your rope, cannot go on. It’s a miserable and difficult place to be.

I was about 5-6 years sober when hopelessness hit me full-force. Nothing I did mattered. I had no energy or “spark” to try anything new to get past the hopeless feeling. I just wanted to die and I prayed to God to let that happen.

Well, I continued to live until one day, I had the good fortune to discover my purpose in life, which gave me a reason to live, and that gave me hope. My purpose involves being of service to others. There is something grounding about being of service to others, something that makes your actions so much more meaningful than if you are doing something just for yourself.

I had been despairing and hopeless about the years of abuse I had endured; I believed there was no purpose to that experience. Then, I was shown that there was a purpose to that experience, and it was that I was to share with others how I healed from the effects of the abuse so that others might be helped past their pain and wounds.

With a purpose, my hopelessness was silenced and I came out of despair. All my actions had as my purpose to be of service to others. This further silenced my hopelessness.

You, too, can find hope when you discover your life’s purpose, your purpose right now. It may be to nurture your children or husband, or to share your story with others so that they might grow and heal. As you go through the day, stay aware of what is going on around you and notice when you feel “at home” with an activity or feeling.

Notice what you are doing when that feeling of being complete and whole comes over you. Perhaps, this is your calling… doing in the world the activity that brings you calm and peace. Once you have identified the thing that gives you great pleasure, keep engaging in it. If it is helping others through sharing your experiences and triumphs, then keep sharing.

To overcome hopelessness, uncover your purpose in life and engage in it. It will fulfill you, and you will get past the hopelessness.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: hopeless, hopelessness, how to find peace, inner peace, motivational words to the hopeless, peace

Living Sober Is Not Rewarding When You’re Dying Inside

October 29, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“Living sober is not rewarding when you’re dying inside” is today’s search term that stuck out for me. How very true. When you’re in the middle of your healing, your growing, your awareness, living sober is harder than hell. It IS hell!

I can remember screaming at my sponsor that living sober was not better than drinking, that life was far better when I was drinking. It was at that time. However, I neglected to recall the emotional misery I was in inside during my drinking days. Also, I was not waiting for the pain to surface fully, to be healed, and then to dissipate. It does that, you know… comes upon us, makes itself known. We take action, or not, and the pain eventually gets less intense and soon dissipates. The more we take action, appropriate action, the faster it will resolve itself.

The best I can say when the going gets tough and the feelings get excruciating is to hang on and keep living sober. It gets better. It really does. It gets better and you begin to experience the rewards that I wrote about yesterday. Make it a mantra if you must… “it will get better. I am growing, and healing.” The thing is, the pain is being brought forward for you to experience so you can heal from the specific issue that is bringing you the pain.

The depth of that pain will vary from person to person and is directly related in intensity to the depth of the pain one felt with the infliction of the wound. To make it through, remember one thing: The depth of your pain is equal to the depth of the joy and peace you will experience. Notice I said “that you will experience.” That states that you WILL experience relief. And you will, as long as you stick with it and keep living sober.

In your efforts of living sober, I suggest you get help. Trying to do it alone is not necessary nor is it recommended. There is lots of help out there from support groups that deal with getting sober. For me, a 12-Step program worked wonders, and I was able to not only stop drinking as a result of my involvement, but I was able to heal emotional issues, as well. It will work if you are willing to hear with new ears and heart.

Back to me screaming at my sponsor that living sober sucked… As I stated, I was neglecting to recall the emotional difficulties I had experienced throughout my lifetime, the times when I was wailing… keening… in emotional misery. In my drinking and drugging days, I was searching for peace-of-mind, and it was ever-illusive. It was not until much pain had been brought up for me to deal with in sobriety that I began to feel better.

Of course, I had to take action. I had to put in the effort to heal. I had to look at how I was treated and come to grips with it. Coming to grips with it means I allowed myself to feel the pain of betrayal, confusion, hurt. There were losses I endured as a result of how I was treated… loss of safety, loss of trust, loss of a normal childhood. All of these losses had to be mourned and healed. I had to recover from them.

In order to heal from them, I had to feel them and it was awful. That may be where you are now in the process. If so, please remember, the depth of your pain is equal to the depth of joy and peace you will experience. Hang onto that thought through the rough times. Just keep living sober to the best of your ability.

Reach out to others; for the most part, they will feel closer to you and be anxious to help. Cry, wail, if you must, and wear yourself out. Do the dishes, take a nap, and don’t drink. Stay living sober. You will be rewarded in the end with feelings that exceed your wildest notions.

Where are you in the process? Are you dealing with difficult times right now? If so, I send you my heart-felt wishes that it works its way through soon, that the purpose of the difficult feelings is soon resolved. Remember that your difficult feelings are being raised so you can heal from the issue related to the original wound.

Take breaks from your recovery – some tasks can be healthy and can serve as distractions. Engage in them. Help another. Be of service. Know that you can define your purpose by telling another the message you have to relay to them, by speaking to them of your experience. Use your miserable times to set an example for another who is suffering, too. You’d be surprised how much inspiration your painful experiences can be to another because you will have demonstrated it is possible to be in the pain and not drink. Above all, keep on living sober.

Filed Under: Difficult emotions, Healing Emotional Pain, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how do I get sober, how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Rewards of Sobriety

October 28, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

“Rewards of sobriety” is the search term I’d like to blog about today. I chose this term because there are so many rewards to sobriety which I would like to share with you in the hopes that you find it compelling enough to try sobriety.

I adore my sobriety. Right off the bat, I reveled in the lack of hangovers. You see, for the last seven years of my drinking, I drank myself into oblivion every night, and awakened with a horrific hangover every day. Every day for seven years I had trouble dragging my hurting head and sick stomach out of bed, so I would lie in bed watching movies on TVtill about noon. Then up I’d get and go to either Taco Bell or KFC for hot or greasy food to burn out or soak up the hangover.

It worked and I began to be able to function, even though still with a headache. I was extremely productive in those ensuing four or five hours until 5:00 pm, when I would start drinking all over again. A miserable existence, absolutely miserable…

I was always angry in an underlying sort-of-way. If I wasn’t grumbling about my dislike of something, how it wasn’t what I wanted or wasn’t good enough, then I was displaying full-blown tantrums, taking my anger out on others, usually my husband. I took it out on myself and it showed up as depression.

When you choose sobriety, you choose to awaken each day, awake and fully present and excited to greet the world, and greet it you will. You will delight in feeling physically fine, and especially get off on the clear-headedness you experience. Your attitude is one of gratitude, not anger, so your relationships with others are improved.

Then there’s the driving issue. Drunk, and even still while hung over, you are not all there to drive. In fact, you are dangerous to other drivers out there. I know, I know. You tell me you are just fine behind the wheel, a better driver drunk than sober. If you think about that for a minute while you are sober, you will hopefully see the falsehood in that belief.

When you choose sobriety, you can drive anywhere at any hour of the day and not have to worry about being pulled over for a DUI. You are TRULY a better driver, alert to what the other cars are doing around you, alert to where you are on the road in relation to them. Your reactions are quicker. But the best part of this reward is that you can drive at any time and feel safe behind the wheel.

Another reward of sobriety is the acute awareness you have for the world around you… the plants and vegetation, the architecture, other people. It is possible to focus-in intently on those things, and because you are able to do this, you will experience awe and wonder. These are pretty exciting to feel, especially for the first time and especially when you realize what is causing that feeling of goodness. It’s hard to look around you in the world and not be inspired, awed. So this is clearly another reward of sobriety.

Perhaps the biggest reward is your ability to see how your actions and behaviors have affected yourself and others. You begin to be able to see how you started a fight, for example, or are keeping a resentment going that was your doing in the first place. You also begin to be able to apologize to others for your harmful behaviors, your hurtful words. This reward will help your relationships to soar, as you discover a softer, more approachable side of others and yourself. You will be able to go down the road of forgiveness, both of others and of yourself. There are huge rewards and you will relish them once you learn how to practice them.

Ah, there is one bigger reward of sonority, and that is the ability to reach peace-of-mind and to live in grace and gratitude. This you will not want to miss…

What are the rewards of sobriety that you seek? Have I addressed them above? Leave a message and tell us what the rewards are for which you search.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Joyous emotions, Principle of living, Self Improvement, Sober Living Tagged With: how to find peace, inner peace, living sober, peace, sober, Sober Living, sobriety

Overcoming Feelings of Worthlessness

October 27, 2012 by Carolyn CJ Jones Leave a Comment

Good morning. Please forgive my silence for the past three days. The days got away from me while planning and preparing for my workshop that is today. I hope you have enjoyed looking at the images and reading the verses… There were three searches for worthlessness yesterday, and I will address that today.

How did you learn or come to believe that you are worthless? In my case, I was told I was worthless and would never amount to anything every other day or so while growing up, and I got to adulthood feeling a great deal of worthlessness. It has been a lifetime of trying to overcome that, and on most days, I am successful.

How about you? You must be stuck in the feeling of worthlessness if you are searching for that term. Webster defines worthless as without value or merit. It is pretty devastating to believe you have no value, no merit. And the thing is, it is false. The truth is, you ARE worthy, you are of value and merit, simply because you are a human being alive on this earth, with experiences and wisdom to share with others.

Worth is further defined as that quality of a person that lends importance, value, merit, etc., and that is measurable by the esteem in which the person is held. Worth implies an intrinsic excellence; intrinsic means located within, not dependent on external circumstances. Worth is inherent… which means existing in someone as a natural and inseparable quality or characteristic. It is inborn.

So you see, just by definition, you are valuable and of worth, and can begin to shake off your feelings of worthlessness. Yet, it still needs to resonate with your heart that you are valuable, worthwhile. And therein lies the difficulty. Until you feel in your heart that you are worthy, that you have merit, then life is difficult and you are left feeling worthless.

What I have to offer as wisdom is what has worked for me to dispel, to hold off, my feelings of worthlessness. It is something I do in present day when I have feelings of worthlessness. The first thing to do is to practice being aware of when you are feeling worthless. For example, when I believe I have failed at something, the feeling of worthlessness accompanies that feeling of failure.

The problem could be that you don’t know when you are experiencing worthlessness. For me, I know I can slip to that space of worthlessness when I am feeling defeated, feeling that I goofed somehow, that I blew it. My thoughts don’t stop with those thoughts; instead, they continue twirling downward until I have decided that I have no value as a person, that what I offer is not wanted by others, that I suck as a person.

It is at that point that I need to stop and realize I have gone to that space. Actually, I need to catch myself before I get to that place. To do that, I recognize that my trigger to feeling worthless is a feeling that I blew it. When I feel that, I start talking to myself, building myself up, telling myself I am still a good and valuable person, telling myself I have experiences worthy of being shared with others.

So, I consciously go into the “build myself up” mode. That helps to hold off the feelings of worthlessness. Then I try to write about my feelings of failure, getting at what is behind them, and always, always, building myself and my abilities, my inherent values, up, always touting them. I don’t do it to brag or to admire myself. Rather, I do it to keep myself from sliding down the worthlessness hole. It works to keep me from going there.

You, too, can start monitoring your thoughts, starting with being conscious and aware of what triggers you to go to that space of worthlessness. Think of it as an adventure to solve the problem, to find the trigger(s). Once you do, stay aware of your behavior and your internal thoughts and feelings. When you reach your trigger point, start talking positive to yourself in an effort to prevent a slip into worthlessness. When you have tried this, leave a comment and let us know how that worked for you.

Filed Under: Healing Emotional Pain, Inspirational Quotes About Life, Inspirational Sayings, Principle of living, Self Improvement Tagged With: feeling unworthy, I feel worthless, not worthy, unworthy, worthless, worthlessness

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