I am a charitable person. I give freely to others. I give to those in need without expecting anything in return. This is one of my positive character traits.

I give to others in many ways. One way is giving through organizations. I give financially to many charities that I care deeply about. I give food to my local food bank once a month. I give my time to my Quaker Meeting through service at many levels. I give my time to CoDA through my home group and higher service levels.

I also give to individuals in many ways. I give through listening, smiling at people in the hallway, holding the door for them, and making eye contact. Some of these people are people I know, but many are people that I don’t know. I give to the clerk behind the counter at the coffee place by making eye contact, smiling, saying hello, and asking them how they are. If a colleague forgets their lunch, I offer them some of mine. If a friend is cold, I offer them my sweater. If a friend needs a lift and I’m available, I give them a ride. I give to the road crew by smiling when I drive by instead of grumping at them. (Yes, despite my previous complaints about traffic, I am often able to do this!) I hope it helps them and I know it makes me feel better.

I have also been known to help out my students and their families, even during my off-hours or during summer. For example, there is a family in Pittsfield that has had one child or another in my orchestras for several years now. During this span of years and even after the children were out of my classroom, I would go out of my way to help the family when they needed it. For example, there were a couple of times that one of the children, we’ll call him Greg (not his real name), needed to have the chin rest on his violin replaced and then adjusted. I met with the mother a couple of times, once at my place of work and once at their home. I gave my time to them, without expecting anything in return. (I actually did receive coffee and cookies, which were wonderful!) The profit I received from this experience came in the form of gratitude, warmth, and friendship. It was well worth it.

These things may seem small, but they’re important. They are all examples of me being of service to others in a small way, giving for the sake of giving. Being charitable is vital to me because it helps me grow spiritually. It is the God in me reaching out to the God in others. I am aware that all of the charity that comes out of me is God’s doing. All good in me comes from God. How cool of God to allow good to come through me to others. I am grateful and humbled by His mercy and grace.

As my books and music attest, I am a very spiritual person. My spirituality is a huge part of my life. God is everything to me.

Being a spiritual person keeps me focused on what is real, right, and true for me. It keeps me from getting caught up in this materialistic world. It keeps me pointed towards God and away from Satan.

Living in a constant state of prayer makes it easier to let God live through me and live my life for me. Then comes holy obedience. This means doing what God wants, not what I want. What He wants is the best thing for me. It is what needs to happen.

In “The Principles,” the section on “Making Contact (Spirituality)” describes in very nice detail my spiritual practice, how it works, and how much it means to me.

I owe my spirituality to God. He is the one who put it there. How grateful I am that He is sovereign over my life and that He has a plan for me. All I have to do is listen, trust, obey, and let go. My relationship with Him has made me happier than I ever thought I could be.

I am so grateful for my spirituality. I can’t imagine living any other way.

Having addressed my persistence quite thoroughly in the “Perseverance” section of “The Principles,” it is clear to see that I am a persistent, diligent, hard-working person.

My workaholism has also been well-defined throughout this book as one of my defects of character. I have defined my workaholism as a defect of character and it is. But diligence, when taken in the proper dosage, can be seen as a positive character trait.

I’ve always been a hard worker. I come from a family of hard workers. We were always a very productive bunch of folks.

I also come from a family of list makers. We were always big on making lists. I still make lists to this day. I make a “to do” list every week. It is usually three pages long and includes everything I have to do for the week from journaling, worshipping, working out, to CoDA meetings, Quaker meetings, and lists of things for my job. I never get everything checked off on the list, but I sure try hard. The end result is that I’m very productive and I feel good about that. I like that about myself. Juliet gets things done. Good for her.

I work hard at learning the violin, viola, cello, and guitar, writing books, writing music, and teaching. I find great fulfillment in all of these activities.

I am a very hard working teacher. I labor over every detail of my lesson plans until they are just right. I try to make the lessons fun, informative, and engaging, while striving to provide a comfortable, friendly learning environment. I try to greet them with a friendly hello and a smile when they come in the door. I try to encourage them to work hard, do their best, enjoy the music they are making and the process of learning. As stories in other parts of this book have revealed, I am not perfect at this. Teaching is a difficult profession. I try very hard and do the best I can.

This hard work in the classroom has paid off for me. I have a cello student that we’ll call Curt (not his real name). Curt has been one of my students for three years. He’s one of the most enthusiastic students I’ve ever had. He is in my music room practicing and learning every chance he gets. He is very appreciative of all of the instruction he has received from me. I have received many kind notes of gratitude and gifts from him and his family. Curt is off to middle school now and I’ll miss him. How grateful I am to have had the privilege of teaching him. This student’s success in music is the result of his passion and hard work, combined with well-delivered instruction, a comfortable learning environment, and lots of encouragement. If the instruction lacked planning and inspiration and the setting was consistently uncomfortable, I doubt that the outcome would have been the same. This diligence has been worth it.

I work hard for my Quaker Meeting and my CoDA Fellowships (in this setting, I am using fellowships to encompass all of the different CoDA groups I am involved with). This work is worth it as it feeds my soul. I am growing spiritually as a result of this work and thus I feel better about myself.

I work hard building and maintaining a close relationship with God. This is worth more to me than words can express. It is everything to me.

My diligence has produced good things in my life. I am very happy about this.

I like the part of me that is a hard worker. I just have to stop tying my self-worth up in what I accomplish. Binding my self-worth to my work only feeds my workaholism.

Taking the self-worth piece out of the equation will defuse the part of me that turns my diligence into workaholism. I have humbly given God this defect of character. He will take it away when He is ready to do that. In the meantime, I keep working my program. I give that to God too. It works if I work it.

I am a much more forgiving person than I used to be, thanks to program. I can actually put this character trait in the positive list. What a pleasure it is to be able to do that. It has taken a lot of hard work to be able to get to this place of forgiveness.

Thanks to program, I am now able to release the anger, resentment, and blame that I feel towards someone or myself for a wrong that has been done against me. I can now let it all go and move forward.

Now I need to qualify this. I can release the anger, resentment, and blame provided I work my program and the steps on the issue first. I do this along with the work I outlined in the “Forgiveness” section of “The Principles.” This enables me to come face-to-face either with what I’ve done to a person or what I think the person has done to me. Then I can make amends and make a commitment to change my behavior as is appropriate to the situation at hand.

I forgive Doris for not accepting my amends. I forgive her for thinking and speaking negatively about me. I forgive her for everything I think she has done to me.

I forgive myself for not being perfect in this friendship. I forgive myself for judging myself for not being available to her 24 hours a day. I forgive myself for calling myself selfish for not being available 24/7 when I was really just taking care of myself. I know I did the best I could with this friendship. That is all I can expect from anyone, including myself.

Thus I am learning forgive myself. I am trying to learn not to be so hard on myself. Being hard on myself does not serve me. I am learning to forgive others because I’m learning to forgive myself. It all starts with me.

Working my program has allowed me to put that bag of bricks of resentment down and feel the freedom that comes with true forgiveness. It feels great and is God-given. I am grateful.

I am very thankful for the willingness God has placed in my heart to follow this program of recovery. I am very grateful for the willingness He has placed in my heart to follow Him and do His will. Not only am I willing to follow and serve Him, but I yearn to follow and serve Him. That is a gift from God.

I am willing. What a wonderful positive character trait this is for my list. I am willing to follow and serve God. I am willing to do my step work, go to meetings, be of service in CoDA at the local and regional levels. I am willing to journal, worship, work out, pound and yell, read my bible, connect with my inner child, read my step work to my sponsor, and work with my therapist. I am willing to experience all of the good that comes from working this program.

I am willing to face the challenges that this program offers, because I know at those tough times that recovery is just around the corner. If there weren’t challenges, we would have nothing to face. I am willing to face them. I may not even see the results right away on something I am working on in the program. That is when I need to practice humility, knowing that I am on God’s timing, not my own, and He knows best. Then I need to accept His timing as being the best timing that could happen to me now. Then I have to practice patience until such a time that I see recovery start to happen. And it will happen. The fact that it has already happened in so many areas reassures me, plus I have my strong trust in God.

In being willing to face the challenges, I admit that I am willing to fall down and skin my knees once in a while. I may have fallen down with Connie in “Keeping My Eyes on Christ,” Veronica in “Fear of Abandonment and Fear of Rejection,” and Louis in “Don’t React in the Classroom.”  The good news is that I was willing to get back up and try again. Try again I did. The scars on my knees have healed and I have come away with new game plans, such as my wonderful Process Four:

• Don’t take it personally.
• Don’t react.
• Stick to business and just teach music.
• Think before you speak.
• This too shall pass.
• Let it go.

I had to be willing to listen to God to receive this process, which I did. Then I had to be willing to practice it, which I also did. I am forever grateful. This process has been very, very helpful to me, especially in my teaching life.

Thanks to this process, the story with my student Veronica has a happy ending. Veronica remained in orchestra for the rest of the year and we continued our lessons together. (Her class schedule was complicated and thus I found a time to teach her privately.) I practiced my Process Four faithfully during our lessons and it really paid off. Our lessons were focused and productive. She did a great job on the orchestra music and did a fantastic duet with me. I was very proud of her. At the end of the concert, her mom came up to me, gave me a big hug and smile, and took my picture with Veronica. I echoed their enthusiasm and told Veronica’s mom how proud I was of her daughter’s performance. It was a great ending to my evening. I was humbled and grateful. None of this would have happened if I had not been willing to follow my process and change my behavior.

I am willing to change, grow, accept, surrender control, work hard, and admit when I’m wrong. Whenever I’m not willing, I pray for the willingness to be willing. I also make use of my mantras, positive affirmations, and additional practices as outlined in the “Willingness” section in “The Principles.” The more I do this work, the more willing I become. This is recovery.

I think I am a pretty humble person. Just saying that probably takes me out of the humility mode, but it’s true. I add humble to my list of positive character traits. I know that I am not better than anyone else. I don’t have all the answers and I’m not in charge. God is in control and I am here to do what he wants me to do. There is a God and it is not me.

I think my recognition of God as the ruler of my life is the key idea that keeps me humble. Humble and secure. I know He is in charge and knows all. He is not only all powerful, but super smart. It would be pretty scary to think that I had placed my life in the hands of a being that didn’t know anything. God forbid. Thank heavens that is not the case.

I start at the top of the ladder with God as the king of my life. Then I instantly know that I am not in that spot. I must follow him and do his will.

I try to follow this pattern with all of the leadership in my life. The leaders in my life are there for a reason. I humble myself before the administrators that lead me in my teaching job and do as they ask. They know how to do their job better than I do and I need to do my best to follow them.

In a previous section on pride, titled “I’m Not My Job,” I discussed a situation in which I was asked to teach a child music notation in a way consistent with the local music school’s and a parent’s wishes. In this case, I put aside my bruised ego, humbled myself, and did my best to teach the child letter names as I was asked to do. It wasn’t about me, it was about the student. I wanted to do what was best for the her.

This humbling act benefited me and the student greatly. At the end of the year, this student wrote me one of the nicest “thank you” notes I have ever received. In this note, she thanked me for teaching her how to play the viola. She also stated that she never would have played the viola if it wasn’t for me, that I’m very good at teaching her, and she is sad to not be studying with me anymore. I was moved to tears by this beautiful note. I have it framed on my wall. I will remember this beautiful student always.

I also humble myself before the authorities of law and government. They are clearly in charge and sit above me on the authority ladder. I need to follow their rules and guidance. Thank heavens I live in the wonderful United States of America where I can say that in comfort. God bless the freedom and safety I was born into in the United States. I am grateful to live in a country where I can practice my religion and not be tortured or killed for it. I live in a country where I can openly say that I am a Christian Quaker and I humbly follow God. Thanks be to God for this gift.

I will continue working my program to become more humble. I am thankful for the humility I have been able to acquire through my hard work, but I still have more work to do in this area. My mantras, positive affirmations, additional practices, and work on the principles will continue to help me with my humility.

Thank you God for helping me to be more humble.

Despite my episodic struggles with acceptance, I am grateful to report that working my program of recovery is turning me into a more accepting person. I am so grateful to be able to say that Juliet is a more accepting person today.

I am more accepting of many things in my life now, thanks to the work I’ve done in my program. I am more accepting of how much work I get done in a day, for example. I still struggle with workaholism, but just having an awareness of my tendency to go overboard in this area helps me to rein it in when I need to do that. Then I can pray for the willingness to be willing to accept whatever I got done that day as God’s will. Then I can pray to accept it, then let it go.

I still struggle with accepting difficult circumstances, such as my brother-in-law’s illness and eventual death that I have written about throughout this book. Illness and death are some of the most difficult issues for any human being to face and I am no different. The good news is that I have done extensive recovery work on this issue and have come to a place of acceptance around it. I still miss him very much and still fret about my sister and her grief process but now I am accepting that things are how they are. I’m not running down the street trying to change it.

I am much more accepting of my own defects of character. I still have these defects, of course; but thanks to the work I’m doing in recovery, the defects are lessening, bit by bit, a little at a time. In addition to this work, my practice in the position of the observer has enhanced my ability to step into that mode much more quickly than I used to in the past. I can then recognize when I’m practicing a behavior that doesn’t serve me. (This could be rage, workaholism, obsessiveness, or compulsiveness, etc.) Now instead of beating myself up every time I fall into practicing one of my defects, I simply acknowledge my awareness of the behavior, accept it, and make a different choice. This is progress. This is recovery.

When I’m having a difficult time accepting reality as it is, then I use the tools. I chant my mantras, positive affirmations, and slogans, engage in journaling, worship, take a walk, and focus on my breathing.

I am grateful to God for giving me this program that has helped me to become a more accepting person.

Moral 

I am a moral person. I have an inner sense of what is right and strive to follow that inner sense in all areas of my life. I am dedicated to living a life by ethical and moral standards that are based on honesty and truth. I am devoted to doing what is righteous in the eyes of God to the best of my ability. This is really important to me.

I am honest and forthright in my business dealings. I communicate honestly about what I want and need to the people I contract with. As I described in “Replace the Face,” I have had to work hard to be able to say what I mean, mean what I say, and stand up for myself in some of my business negotiations. This meant learning not to take things personally, keeping business as business, and learning not to place my past family issues on the people I work with today. None of this has been easy, but it has been well worth the hard work and learning that was required.

I pay people based on our agreements right away without argument, whether it’s a building contractor, the phone company, my mortgage company, the IRS, the Vermont sales tax folks, or the man in the toll booth on the highway. (Once I was driving home from Boston late at night and got into the EZ Pass lane by accident. I ended up having to call the highway department and pay a big fine. I highly recommend paying attention on the road and paying the toll. It’s much cheaper!)

I use my inner sense as an inner compass that points me in the direction of what is true and just for Juliet. If I am engaged in something that is dishonest, I can feel it. That is the God in me directing me toward the Light and away from the Dark. A good example of this is the incident with the CoDA meeting attender that was engaging in 13^th stepping that I wrote about in “Recovery in Program.” When I was on the phone with this individual and judgments were sent my way, I knew in my gut they weren’t right. It took me a minute to discern how I knew this and why it was so. It took me another bit of time to articulate this to the other person involved. But the inner compass was there working and it is of no credit to me that this was so. This was all God’s doing. All good in me comes from God. That is a gift from God to me. I am grateful.

Now this doesn’t mean that I’m always right or that I always do the right thing. I think the other hundreds of pages in this book are testament to the fact that I do admit when I’m wrong and I’m wrong a lot. That is part of knowing what’s true and admitting it.

My inner compass also helps me to engage in demanding honesty when I do my 5th Step (5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs^[1]). I tell the truth about myself, what I’ve done, what I haven’t done, how I feel, how I think I should feel, and how worried I am about how the person involved feels or what they think of me. I must engage in this absolute moral truth when doing this work. Otherwise I am just spinning my wheels.

As a Christian Quaker, I get a lot of guidance on what is right for me morally from the bible. That is just what’s right for me.

I am grateful that God has made to be a moral person. I am so thankful to him for placing in me a dedication to living a life based on honesty and truth. I’m not perfect at it, but He knows that and loves me anyway. Maybe He appreciates the fact that I keep trying. I hope so. Thank you God for this inner compass. May it always be pointing me towards your truth and love.

^[1] Co-Dependents Anonymous. Co-Dependents Anonymous. Dallas, TX:  CoDA Resource Publishing, 2009, p. iv.

I am a fearless and dedicated seeker. This is another one of my positive character traits. I am fearless about my seeking. I am fearless about searching my soul to see what is there. As I discussed in the “Soul Searching” section of “The Principles,” that is what I do when I do a Step 4, or a fearless moral inventory. If and when I do become fearful, I give my fears to God. I ask Him for help.

I am very dedicated to the soul searching that I engage in when I’m doing my inventories. I think my books and music are testaments to that. I have left nothing behind, no stone left unturned. That is the whole point, as far as I’m concerned. I need to keep working the program to keep growing spiritually. I need to keep growing spiritually in order to grow closer to God and become the kind of person He wants me to be. I can’t grow if I’m not willing to look honestly at myself to see what’s really there. Otherwise I’m just wasting my time.

And to me, working my 12-Step program means not working the steps just once, but multiple times (thus all the inventories). This takes the dedication of time, effort, and stamina. It involves being willing to look at myself honestly without getting so discouraged that I walk away. And when I get so discouraged at what I see that I want to walk away, I have to pray for the willingness to be willing to stay with it, accept where I’m at, and be willing to work on it to change. All of this is done with God’s help.

I am a fearless, dedicated seeker in other areas of my life too. That is how I came to play the cello. That is how I got my job of being a strings teacher. One has to be quite fearless and dedicated to do this job because stringed instruments are by far the most difficult instruments to play, especially the violin. In my opinion, it is the most difficult instrument of all of them to play. But I wanted to learn, so I started working at it. I got a job. I still work at it. I did not let the difficulty of the instruments or job scare me away. I dedicated myself to it. My soul is grateful as I have found playing this music very fulfilling. I have referred to this throughout this book.

I am proud of myself for being a fearless, dedicated seeker. Thanks be to God for the gift of this positive character trait.