Melody Beattie's Blog

Do you harmonize with other people or do you expect them to harmonize with you? When someone says no or something you don’t like, do you find yourself sucked into an argument and ready to disagree? What would happen if you said, “Okay”?

Application: Whenever we find ourselves in discord with other people, the circumstances in our lives, or even what we want, need, and feel, it may be time to stop forcing things and harmonize a little.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

Did you ever go to a concert? The musicians all play the same song, but each one has a different part in creating the music.

Whether they’re creating somber minor chords or cheerful major chords, the band is working together in harmony.

I had a difficult time with harmony when I first became introduced to it. It was right on the heels of beginning my codependency recovery. I became exposed to groups of people I had never encountered before. Some I found interesting, some irritating. I thought owning my power meant crashing like a cymbal wherever I went. It took a while to learn that I could own my power more effectively by harmonizing than by being a discordant note.

Harmony isn’t just a value to apply in our relationships with other people. We all go through changes in our lives. At one point, we may be going through a time of discipline, keeping our nose to the grindstone. Then it may be time to play. Then we may move into a time where we have a lot of emotions to deal with, and we’re moving slowly. Other times we’re sailing through in high gear.

Instead of expecting situations to change, we can learn to harmonize with them.

We don’t go to a funeral in a party mode, and we don’t wear our workout clothes to our office job. We harmonize our actions with the environment we’re in. We don’t have to live in conflict with ourselves, others, the events in our lives, or even with the different hats we wear.

If we really aren’t compatible with certain situations, it may be time to leave. But a lot of the time we can make sweet or at least interesting music by harmonizing—or by being flexible enough to meet the situation halfway.

Harmonizing is more than just a musical phrase. It’s more than live and let live. It’s living together. It’s compatibility, being on the same page. It involves enough self-awareness to be ourselves, and enough adaptability and flexibility to fit that self into different situations. Harmonizing means opening up, listening, letting go of self-will, practicing nonresistance, and extending tolerance.

Value: Harmony is the value this week.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

“Want what people have” is a saying from Alcoholics Anonymous. It doesn’t mean covet their belongings. It means let other people’s success inspire us to live by values that will help us be successful too.

Prayer: Help me believe that blessings will be given to others and myself. Protect me from the ill will of others. Help me be a force for good.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

Thank God we’re not in charge of karma. On second thought, maybe we are—our own.

Gratitude Focus: We can be grateful whenever something good happens to someone else.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

Some people suggest that thoughts are prayers. Maybe we could make sure what we’re praying for is good.

Action: Feel all your feelings. Repressing thoughts of jealousy, envy, or bitterness doesn’t help. It makes you dishonest and passive-aggressive. Perhaps you are pretending to like someone, but you think they’re a jerk. As soon as possible after identifying your feelings, begin practicing goodwill. Force it, fake it if you must. Deliberately think positive thoughts toward whomever you just wished ill.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

“What comes around goes around” is a phrase most of us have heard. Instead of waiting until other people get the pain and suffering we believe they deserve, how about generating goodwill so that can come around to us?

I nventory Focus: What’s the thing you’re most jealous or envious of in others? What do you find yourself judging most? What’s your sore spot, the place you feel you got cheated out of something important in your life? Sometimes I wonder why other people get to have their children and I don’t have my son, Shane. Maybe what you really want is to fill the empty spot and the hole in your own life.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

Looking at other people with jealousy, envy, and mean and bitter thoughts isn’t new to our world. The concept of giving other people the evil eye has been around for a long time. It’s mentioned in almost every religion and culture in the world.

Sometimes we’re not conscious of the darker thoughts we think. We might believe that ill will and the feelings connected with it—envy, jealousy, resentment—are wrong. So when we feel that way, we push those feelings and thoughts aside.

“I remember lying in bed one night, tortured by my marriage, but believing it would violate my religious beliefs to get divorced,” a woman said. “I started counting the years until I thought my husband might die. A light came on. I realized that wishing him dead was a lot worse than saying good-bye.”

We want to believe there’s a balancing force that prevails in the world. And while this force is balancing things out, we’d like to get some of the good stuff too. Hey, God, remember me?

Challenge: The hardest thing about practicing goodwill is believing that when we’re happy for other people—even when they’re happier than we are—it will make us the happiest people in the world.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

So an acquaintance is younger, is prettier, is in better shape, has a nicer home, has a more luxurious car, is more successful, has fewer problems, leads a more interesting life. Maybe this person is more creative, more popular, more gifted, more talented, more skilled. Or maybe we don’t see this person as more than we are. Maybe we regard this person as a jerk, but for some reason, no one else, including God, sees this—because this person appears to get all the breaks.

Ill will can take many shapes and forms, from feeling disgusted with other people to feeling satisfied when they have problems.

Sometimes ill will takes the form of coveting what others have. Goodwill, on the other hand, has only one shape and form. We wish other people well, we hope God blesses them abundantly, and we want them to be as happy as they can be.

Most of us understand the fundamentals of goodwill, but it’s tempting to slip. We may find ourselves doling out small portions of goodwill. We recall past slights and ask, “Don’t you know what a jerk this person is?” Practicing this value is difficult.

Application: Whenever we find ourselves wishing other people didn’t have what they do, maliciously gossiping, judging, thinking dark and bitter thoughts, or thinking if others had less we’d have more—whenever we start subtly or overtly giving other people the evil eye—it’s time to stop cursing them and practice goodwill instead.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

Have you ever envied someone else’s good fortune? Consider the friend who calls with a different ring to her voice. Instead of sharing her troubles and woes, she proceeds to tell you good news. Something exciting, financially beneficial, glamorous, wonderful beyond belief has happened in her life. It’s not a fantasy. It’s one of those rare moments when a dream has come true.

“That’s wonderful,” you may say, meaning every word. At first.

“Why her?” You may later think. “What about me? When am I going to get a break?” As hard as we may try not to feel that way, a little jealousy, envy, and self-pity replace the joy we felt for our friend.

Most of us want other people to be successful and happy. We really do. That’s not the problem. The problem comes when we think they’re going to be happier or better than we are.

I first learned about the value of goodwill after I got sober. The first couple years, I thought my financial struggles were appropriate. I was paying my dues to rebuild a life. After all, success takes time. But my financial struggles went on and on, while I watched my friends buy new cars, new clothes, and beautiful homes. I didn’t have a car or even a phone at times. I began to get concerned.

On one particularly poverty-stricken Christmas, a friend stopped by with gifts for my children. That year, those were the only gifts they had. I was grateful she stopped by. But I felt a wisp of envy. Why couldn’t I have enough money to buy presents for my family?

“She doesn’t have anything that belongs to you,” I reminded myself. “She has what’s come to her as a result of what she’s done and the individual circumstances of God’s Will in her life. So do I.”

Sometimes we know when we’re envying and resenting others. Other times it’s a subtle undercurrent that we’re not aware of, but it invades our lives. It may only be a slight feeling of smugness when we hear that something unfortunate has happened to someone we perceive as being more fortunate than we are.

Value: Goodwill isn’t just the name of a secondhand store or a phrase used in songs during the holiday season. It’s a particularly challenging value to practice, and it’s the one we’ll look at this week.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

We can draw a healthy line, a healthy boundary, between ourselves and our nuclear family. We can separate ourselves from their issues.

Some of us may have family members who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs and who are not in recovery from their addiction.

Some of us may have family members who have unresolved codependency issues. Family members may be addicted to misery, pain, suffering, martyrdom, and victimization.

We may have family members who have unresolved abuse issues or unresolved family of origin issues.

We may have family members who are addicted to work, eating, or sex. Our family may be completely enmeshed, or we may have a disconnected family in which the members have little contact.

We may be like our family. We may love our family. But we are separate human beings with individual rights and issues. One of our primary rights is to begin feeling better and recovering, whether or not others in the family choose to do the same.

We do not have to feel guilty about finding happiness and a life that works. And we do not have to take on our family’s issues as our own to be loyal and to show we love them.

Often when we begin taking care of ourselves, family members will reverberate with overt and covert attempts to pull us back into the old system and roles. We do not have to go. Their attempts to pull us back are their issues. Taking care of ourselves and becoming healthy and happy does not mean we do not love them. It means we’re addressing our issues.

We do not have to judge them because they have issues; nor do we have to allow them to do anything they would like to us just because they are family.

We are free now, free to take care of ourselves with family members. Our freedom starts when we stop denying their issues, and politely, but assertively, hand their stuff back to them—where it belongs—and deal with our own issues.

Today, I will separate myself from family members. I am a separate human being, even though I belong to a unit called a family. I have a right to my own issues and growth; my family members have a right to their issues and a right to choose where and when they will deal with these issues. I can learn to detach in love from my family members and their issues. I am willing to work through all necessary feelings in order to accomplish this.

From the book: The Language of Letting Go: Hazelden Meditation Series