March 1 “Turning it over”
Step Three brings us into the heart of the program and gives us a new set of challenges. To begin, there is a question of what it means to “turn our lives over,” whether to God or anything else.
What many people find when confronting this Step for the first time is their own resistance to letting go, a desire to control the results of their actions, and their ongoing conflict with life and reality as it is. This is a good place to start in the process of turning it over.
Here the words of the Serenity Prayer are a guide: “To accept the things I cannot change.” Many addicts have fought with life, unwilling to accept the failures, challenges, and even opportunities that arrived in their lives. Acceptance is the starting point of turning it over. “Things are as they are,” as some Buddhists say. In other words, it is foolish to fight reality.
How do we do this, to begin to accept things as they are?
The first thing is to see how it feels when you fight with reality, when you willfully refuse to accept things. This is where mindfulness comes in. When you find yourself at odds with a difficult or challenging situation, bring your attention into your body and feel the tension and stress you are holding. This reveals the painful element of non-acceptance and can inspire you to let go, to turn it over.
Today, begin to make it a habit that when you are stressed, angry, or resistant, that you pay attention to how that feels. Then practice breathing and letting go. See how pleasant it is to cease fighting. Use that pleasant feeling as an inspiration to continue to let go.
March 2 “Acceptance”
Acceptance is a theme that runs through Twelve Step recovery, starting with the oft-quoted line from the Big Book, “Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.” This suggests that non-acceptance is the cause of all my problems. Indeed, we could say that this is the cause behind our addiction: not accepting how we feel and believing that we have to control those feelings with a substance or behavior.
But the idea of acceptance is often misunderstood to mean that we should become passive or apathetic. In fact, acceptance is just one stage—the first—in a process that includes responding to how things are or to a situation.
Our ordinary way of being is to react impulsively and habitually to things without understanding or being aware of what is driving those reactions. That kind of impulsivity is what underlies addiction, the constant grasping after pleasure and pushing away of discomfort.
With mindfulness, we learn to observe and accept these reactions without judgment, resistance, or struggling to change—and without acting on them. The calm that comes with non-resistance brings more clarity so we can make wiser choices in response. Those responses can then be grounded in wisdom and compassion. They represent a truer and more reliable aspect of ourselves.
Today, begin to notice your reactivity, and try to let it go. See if you can accept the thing you are reacting to, then breathe, relax, and ask, “How could I respond to this situation wisely?”
Source: Buddhism And The Twelve Steps