Have a Plan

In recovery, we repeatedly hear that we should take it ‘one day at a time’ and ‘stay in the moment’…

But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t PLAN for the future….the things that we do in this moment WILL affect our tomorrow….we SHOULD plan..and prepare…just not WORRY about things that we have no CONTROL over right now…

I find that I ALWAYS do better with a plan – I don’t always HAVE one…but I should.

Long ago, I was at a g.a. meeting…and I KNEW that when I left that meeting I was going to gamble. It was strange…usually, when I was in a meeting…I was lifted…and began feeling stronger, empowered..but this day…I didn’t…I had gotten myself into a bind…I had spent money that wasn’t mine to spend and was supposed to take my children to a movie….I didn’t have money for that either. I had a ring with me…a ring I hadn’t worn in years and would never wear again…it was not from my husband….and I needed the cash. I had never pawned anything before…but I would today….but…I knew that…as soon as I got this cash…I was going to gamble.

Soooooooo when it was my turn to share…I said it.

That saved me.

After the meeting a few people stayed to talk to me….and that day I got my first temporary sponsor….but…I got a few other suggestions as well….one of them was…HAVE A PLAN….and don’t let gambling be a part of it.

See…that day…when I left my house…my plan was to go to the meeting, then to the pawn shop, then to play video poker…and the plan was to not spend ALL of the ring money gambling…and to take my kids to the movies AND to replace the money that I’d gambled that wasn’t mine.

That’s why I KNEW I was gonna gamble when I left that meeting…it was in my PLAN.

So…one of the people that spoke to me after the meeting suggested that…from now on… I not leave the house without a written list…that had a detailed PLAN of every stop that I would make…everything that I would do that day….and not to diverge from the plan….no distractions…STICK TO THE PLAN.

That helped me.
(by the way….I did not gamble that afternoon…or for the next twenty months)

But a plan ALWAYS helps me…

If I have a written list of things that I will do today, I am much more likely to accomplish them.

I recently started a list entitled ‘Things I want to do before I Die’.

I am excited about the things that I have put on the list already….I am pretty confident that, unless I die sometime soon, I am going to do these things….I am also pretty sure that…if I hadn’t started this list…given it thought..and written it down….I almost certainly would not have.


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Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be. – Zig Zigler