AFFIRMATION
I will make an effort to hold at a minimum my expectations of other people, places and things.
The standard which your conscience demands is perfection. You who believe that you are irredeemably imperfect will accept less that perfection. Only perfection, you think, will overcome your sense of badness. Your disgust with yourself is mirrored in your disgust with the world. The world, you believe, ought to be perfect.
CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT
In my efforts to make a moral and fearless inventory of my life, I find that somewhere along in my development, for me to please those significant others in my life, I had to accomplish things perfectly. My C’s in school always had to be an A. D’s always were not enough. I was taught to believe that that if I was a good person, then I would always be a happy person. It seems the harder I try, the worse my life goes.
Dorothy Rowe in Breaking the Bonds says that “fearing imperfection, you become angry.” It is in these unrealistic goals that I set for myself that makes my life so rigid and demanding. I place myself in a straightjacket when I demand perfection of myself.”
Once I surrender my need to achieve perfection and just work toward progress, the happier I truly become. To admit that I am imperfect frees me to be less stressed and more secure with just the way I am.
MEDITATION
In our fellowship with our Higher Power, we know that we are always accepted the way we are. We believed that when it is said that God is perfect, and we must be perfect like Him, that what is meant is our heart should be full of mercy and kindness. God is merciful and kind to us. We should strive to love ourselves as we are loved.
RESOURCES
(C) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of 12 Step fellowship groups. (1999) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky. August 9. Page 131.
(C) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY.