A Day at a Time Reflections
Reflections from the Gamblers Anonymous little blue book, A Day at a Time, published by Hazelden Information and Education Services www.hazelden.org Available on Amazon - A Day at a Time https://amzn.to/3EOjuiH G.A. A New Beginning https://amzn.to/3E9YgPC
Episodes
November 7, 2025 • 1 min
There are those in the Gamblers Anonymous Program who, at the beginning, shun meditation and prayer as they would avoid a pit filled with rattlesnakes. When they do finally take the first tentative and experimental step, however, and unexpected things begin to take place, they begin to feel different. Invariably, such tentative beginnings lead to true belief, to the extent that those who once belittled prayer and meditation often ...
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November 6, 2025 • 2 mins
There are no boundaries to meditation. It has neither width, depth, nor height, which means that it can always be further developed without limitation of any sort. Meditation is an individual matter; few of us meditate in the same way, and in that sense, it is truly a personal adventure. For all of us who practice meditation seriously, however, the purpose is the same: to improve our conscious contact with God. Despite its lack of...
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November 5, 2025 • 1 min
For many months after I came to Gamblers Anonymous, I paid little attention to the Eleventh Step, to the practice of serious meditation and prayer. I felt that it might help me meet an emergency - such as a sudden craving to return to gambling but it remained among the lowest levels on my list of priorities. In those early days, I equated prayer and meditation with mystery and even hypocrisy. I've since found that the results of p...
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November 4, 2025 • 2 mins
In the words of Teilhard de Chardin, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." Even though we acknowledge in theory that we are spiritual beings, most compulsive gamblers had to experience some sort of spiritual awakening before we were willing to turn our lives over to a Higher Power. It was then that we could finally say we were spiritual beings. For some of us, i...
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November 3, 2025 • 1 min
The Gamblers Anonymous Red Book says: "The word spiritual can be said to describe those characteristics of the human mind that represent the highest and finest qualities, such as kindness, generosity, honesty, and humility. Inasmuch as the Gamblers Anonymous Fellowship advocates consideration of these principles as a way of life, it is said that ours is a spiritual fellowship." I have begun to understand that my spirituality has t...
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November 2, 2025 • 2 mins
The more self-searching we do, the more we realize how often we react negatively because our "pride has been hurt." Pride is at the root of most of my personal problems. When my pride is "hurt," for example, I almost invariably experience resentment and anger-sometimes to the point where I'm unable to talk or think rationally. When I'm in that sort of emotional swamp, I must remind myself that my pride and nothing but my pride has...
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November 1, 2025 • 1 min
Those whom I most respect in the Gamblers Anonymous Program - and, in turn, those from whom I've learned the most - seem convinced that pride is, as one person put it, the "root-sin." In moral theology, pride is the first of the seven deadly sins. It is also considered the most serious, standing apart from the rest by virtue of its unique quality. Pride gets right into our spiritual victories. It insinuates itself into all our suc...
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October 31, 2025 • 1 min
The mystery of ego: painful when inflated and painful to deflate, often keeping me from wholeheartedly working the Gamblers Anonymous Program. Even armed with the truth, I too often fall back on the old, familiar ideas that led me to the edge of despair. It takes such work to shrink the ego, and sometimes it inflates without my knowing it. I always thought my gambling systems would work; they never did. I doubted GA would work; an...
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October 30, 2025 • 1 min
When I'm motivated by pride - by bondage of self - I become partly or even wholly blind to my liabilities and shortcomings. At that point, the last thing I need is comfort. Instead, I need an understanding friend in the Gamblers Anonymous Program-a friend who'll unhesitatingly chop a hole through the wall my ego has built so that the light of reason can once again shine through.
Do I take time to review my progress, to spot-check...
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October 29, 2025 • 1 min
Virtually all of us suffered the defect of pride when we sought help through the Program, the Twelve Steps, and the Fellowship of recovering compulsive gamblers who truly understood what we felt and where we had been. We learned about our shortcomings and of pride in particular-and began to replace self-satisfaction with gratitude for the miracle of our recovery, gratitude for the privilege of working with others, and gratitude fo...
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October 28, 2025 • 1 min
I never cease to be amazed at how appropriate the topic at meetings I attend seems to be in relation to my life at that particular time. We can only become students in the presence of a teacher-and when a student becomes ready, a teacher will appear. We can only learn if we are being taught, and we can only teach after we learn. I have come to realize that, although God is the greatest teacher of them all, most often we learn from...
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October 27, 2025 • 1 min
The Gamblers Anonymous Program's Fourth Step suggests that we make a fearless moral and financial inventory of ourselves. For so many of us, especially newcomers, the task seems impossible. Each time we take pencil in hand and try to look inward, Pride says scoffingly, "You don't have to bother to look." And Fear cautions, "You'd better not look!" Eventually we find that pride and fear are mere wisps of smoke, the cloudy strands f...
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October 26, 2025 • 2 mins
From time to time when I see the slogan "There, but for the Grace of God Go I," I remember how I used to mouth those words when I saw others whose gambling addiction had brought them to what I considered a "hopeless and helpless" state. The slogan had long been a cop-out for me, reinforcing my denial of my own addiction by enabling me to point to others seemingly worse off than I. "If I ever get like that, I'll quit gambling," was...
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October 25, 2025 • 1 min
My gambling addiction was like a thief in more ways than I can count. It robbed me not only of money, property, and other material things, but of dignity and self-respect, while my family and friends suffered right along with me. Gambling also robbed me of the ability to treat myself properly, as God would treat me. Today, in total contrast, I'm capable of true love of self - to the extent that I'm able to provide myself with more...
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October 24, 2025 • 1 min
"You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn't reserve a plot for weeds." Dag Hammerskjold. If I want to keep my garden tidy, I must always remember not to save a place for weeds and then be caught off-guard. By putting myself in tempting situat...
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October 23, 2025 • 1 min
"One's own self is well hidden from one's own self," a renowned philosopher once wrote. "Of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up." The Gamblers Anonymous Twelve Steps of Recovery have enabled me to unearth my "own self," the one that for so long was buried beneath my desperate need for approval from others. Thanks to the Gamblers Anonymous Program and my Higher Power, I've begun acquiring a true sense of self ...
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October 22, 2025 • 1 min
"Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well," wrote La Rochefoucauld. The Gamblers Anonymous Program is of inestimable value for those of us recovering compulsive gamblers who want to know ourselves and who are courageous enough to seek growth through self examination and self-improvement. If I remain honest, open-minded, and willing, the GA Program will enable me to rid myself of my self-deceptive attitudes and ...
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October 21, 2025 • 1 min
There's a world of difference between the idea of self-love and love of self. Self-love is a reflection of an inflated ego, around which - in our distorted view of our own self-importance everything must revolve. Self-love is the breeding ground for hostility, arrogance, and a host of other character defects that blind us to any points of view but our own. Love of self, in contrast, is an appreciation of our dignity and value as h...
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October 20, 2025 • 2 mins
Before I admitted my powerlessness over gambling, I had as much self worth as a "peeled zero." I came into Gamblers Anonymous as a nobody who desperately wanted to be a somebody. In retrospect, my self-esteem was shredded, seemingly beyond repair. Gradually, the Program has enabled me to achieve an ever stronger sense of self-worth. I've come to accept myself, realizing that I'm not as bad as I had always supposed myself to be.
A...
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October 19, 2025 • 1 min
There are countless ways by which my progress and growth in the Gamblers Anonymous Program can be measured. One of the most important is my awareness that I'm no longer compelled, almost obsessively, to go around judging everything and everybody. My only business today is to work on changing myself, rather than other people, places, and things. In its own way, the obsession of being forever judgmental was as burdensome to me as th...
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