Secrets of Successful Living

[00:00:00] Speaker A: And the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. And I just remembered to press record. Okay. The topic of the workshop is a trick. It says the secrets of successful living. Sorry. The topic of the workshop is a trick. It says the secrets of successful living. I wonder if any of you really know why you're here and what you're going to listen to. You'll find out. My name is Carol Ann and I'm a compulsive overreader. I'm seated with Margaret in and we are the co leaders for this meeting. Each of us will have up to 20 minutes to speak and then we'll open the room for shares for up to three minutes. Thank you, Kathy, for volunteering to be the timekeeper for this hour. This session is being recorded and I'm the first speaker and I'll be followed by Margaret. I want to get over with. Okay. All right, all right. Sorry. Okay. Okay. I think I'm going to just start. Okay. So this meeting is about the traditions. Now you now it's out there. And the traditions have principles, just like the steps. It's going to be probably an unusual way you're going to hear about them because I am studying the traditions for a couple years now and I happen to like the odd numbered ones. I feel a little more comfortable sharing them for my first time. And Margaret Ann is so flexible. That's fine. We were going to go back and forth but that'd be so hard for the timer. So I'm going to just do all the odd ones and then Margaret Ann will do the even ones. Okay. You just got to roll with it. So when I. It is great to see you all, even though there's a lot of you. I actually never went to a traditions workshop myself. I never thought I'd be speaking at one. And so first I'm going to qualify about my waist stuff. That's where I'm comfortable. And then I'm going to qualify about my traditions. So some of you know me. It makes me feel comfortable to show you my pants. I bring my pants everywhere because they keep me humble. I can't even believe this. I'm a hundred and ten pound person. And so why this? I only found this out when I was going to give away clothes to a clothing swap our intergroup was having. And I kept this and I'm really glad I did. It shows that this program works. It shows that the steps work. And now. And there's this page in the big book, one paragraph on page 88 that says it works. It really does. And now I've been learning that the traditions work. So my qualification for that is how it was. I didn't like them, some of them. I didn't even understand the words. And what happened? I heard someone at a meeting share how they use it in their personal life. And I always heard if you want what they have, you have to do what they do. So now she's my sponsor and we've been doing this. And what happened is, what happened is I keep reading either a sentence a week or a paragraph a week from the OA 12 and 12 or the A 12 and 12 and writing about it and sharing about it and making those words go into my personal life. And now I'm going to get to the real meat of this and here's my 0812 and 12. Actually this is a book cover on it and we have a pamphlet about the traditions and then we have the AA 12 and 12. Okay, so tradition one, the principles unity. I'm going to use my book a bit because it helps me. I don't know it. All our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon OA Unity. This, you know, of course at the beginning it has to be. That's like in the steps, honesties first. If we don't have unity, if we don't have this group, like we're nothing. We've heard it all day long. I'd be dead without this program. I'd be dead without all of you. And the proof in the proof and the pudding, no pun intending, when the place shut down so quickly, the people that know how to do technology had those zoom meetings going. We needed meetings. They weren't as great as this, but we had meetings and they've kept us. So the survival of the group is more important than me. And what does that look like? That means when I'm like in the group and things are happening like in business meetings and I might not like it or in my life or something, I need to. I need to give up my will or my wants and stuff sometimes for the greater good of the group, the unity. And I am going to tell you some of the little sentences from that book that are changing my life. I've read this book for years. I forgot to say that I've been in OA abstinence since August of 2014, nine years. But when I'm going paragraph by paragraph, it says a lot more. So this is, this is good stuff. We are connected to one another. Our emotional and spiritual health depends on the health of our relationships. So when I Study the steps. It's about getting, you know, good with me, with God. But when I go into the traditions that are relationships, and that's why it's the secret to successful living. Because when I'm in the food, I'm isolating, but I gotta go out in the world. I have to have a life now. And that's all about people and relationships. Excuse me. So kind of covered all that. Oh. My first sponsor said the traditions are like learning how to play in a sandbox. That's pretty good, actually. So, okay. The other thing I heard about traditions, I forgot to say, you may have heard it. Steps prevent suicide and traditions prevent homicide. Right. Margaret has one about concepts. I'll let her say that we don't really even hear about concepts. But that's. I'm not gonna. We're not gonna do that today. Okay, that's a quick summary. We don't have a. We don't have enough time for this stuff. You'll have to. I'm just encouraging you to. I'm giving you, like, the stuff to make you want to go do it. Tradition. Of course, it's. Now we're doing the next odd number. Tradition 3. The only requirement for OA membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively. Okay. So I come in. Like, there's no rules. There's no dues, there's no things to sign. We just have to show up and we decide, right? We decide we belong here. We decide what category of food body dysmorphia. We have to. My personal life, the spiritual principle's identity. So I have to learn to accept people as they say they are. I have to, like, learn. What am I, you know, here I'm. I'm careful to say I'm a compulsive. Over here, I don't say the other programs I go to. And when I'm there, I don't say I'm a compulsive eater. When I'm at work, I'm an employee. When I'm in my family, I'm a daughter, mother, sister. And when I'm in those roles, I am different. So I need to learn to show up accordingly and say, excuse me. Okay? So at work, I don't have to be friends with everybody. Everybody doesn't have to like me. I'm there. I'm being paid to do a job. That's what my sponsor told me. So, you know, if I have to do, as a practical example, part of my job, I have to make people. I bring them packages, they have to sign purchase orders. I have to make them give me packing slips. And they don't like that. They throw them out, they do this and that, but that's okay. So I'm learning here my identity here. That's I'm a worker, that's my job and I need to do that there. It makes me more efficient, it makes me worry less and makes me more productive. I stay focused on my role. The other thing that before I move on is that when I accept others the way they explain themselves, there's no strings attached. Like nowadays. I believe them and I accept them unconditionally. And that's really important. I didn't always have that in my life. And so I'm learning it here. I'm learning to have. These are. Some of. This is a secret. You have to accept people for what they say they are and unconditionally. And that's the way. Especially because that's the way I would like to be received. Number five. Number five. Actually, number three and number five are traditions that if you go to a tradition meeting, you don't mind hearing because they're kind of like. The words are pretty easy to understand and we can relate to them. But let's hear what number five is. Each group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message to the compulsive overeater who still suffers. And the principle here is purpose. And this has been really important also because first of all, in the groups, what's our purpose? Our purpose is to carry our message. What's our message? Our message is we're a spiritual program with 12 traditions and 12 steps to keep our wait stuff in order, kind of the gist of it. But that's what's important to know. That's our message. So for example, this helps me with program calls because when I make a program call, I'm not calling a sister or something we want to talk about. Well, usually 10 minutes for the problem. We can talk about the problems or the day to day stuff, but it's a program. The purpose of the call is to talk about the solution. You know, even if it's like, what's your food plan? Or what's your, you know, what are you doing? What's your step? If it's the sponsor, a sponsor, you go over your writing and stuff like that. And it helps me because, you know, we don't want. We could go on for an hour. And I had that problem because I sometimes have trouble trying to have somebody stop talking or I keep talking, talking. Thank you Kathy. So I tell you something, even my son. My son loves this. I tell him, you know, this is the purpose of our call because, you know, we can both talk a long time, but sometimes we want to make sure we cover what the call was for. So here's another one. This is really practical. My phone, okay? So how many times I just want to look up a word, I go to Google it. Next thing you know, I'm like, it's an hour later, and I've been through Facebook and answering texts, and I lose a lot of time that way. So I need to, like. It's like reigning myself. What is my purpose? What is my purpose on the phone? What's my purpose? You know, on the phone? What's my purpose? Here's another good one. How I learned this in my life. What's the purpose of my adult kids? You know, they're my. To me, they're my kids. My baby turns 25, and so anyway, my sponsor told me my purpose, my time as a mother to teach is over. That purpose is behind me now. I didn't like that. I don't like a lot of things, actually. But from day one, I've done what I've been told that's important here. I'm going to digress for a second. I was telling a stranger, my first sponsor, everything about me. The only person that knew it all, besides her, was my therapist. I don't know why I was told to do that. And I just kept losing weight and getting a better life. And to this day, you know, even if I don't like it, I still do it. So now I really need to. This is what she. I have to do. I have to be there. I can give my thoughts and opinions if they ask me and they really like this one. I mean, forget. They like the purpose call, but they like it that I don't tell them what to do. I don't get involved with their stuff. So that's another example of how this thing about purpose. Let me see if that was all about that one. Okay, here's another thing about purpose. What is. Well, the Big Book tells me my maximum purpose. My primary purpose is to fit myself to be a maximum service to God and my fellows. And so in the morning, when I do my prayer meditation, I say, God, what would you have me say and do today? And then I be still. And I usually get some clarity. And it helps me know some purposes I will have to take care of that day. The other thing about purpose is it helps me keep things simple as A great addict. I like to complicate things and I like chaos and all that. So this thing about purpose helps me keep things simple. And it gets better. Number seven. This one really amazes me. I bet many of you think you know what seven's all about. That's the one that says every OA group ought to be fully self supporting. Declining outside contributions, that's pretty simple. We put our money in the basket, we support our groups because then we don't have to be like somebody else can't tell us what to do. A big donor or a company or whatever that would be giving us a lot of money. So we want to strive to be self supporting. So what did that look like for me? Well, I ended up raising my three young adult kids a lot by myself. My ex husband really didn't help support them. So I ended up with different debt and different stuff, you know, parent loans for college. So today I am self supporting. It means, so we have the groups are self supporting but we can be financially self supporting, you know, paying our own way. I live in my own apartment now and I pay my own bills with my own paycheck and I don't have debt and I stopped going back to court. It was very, very freeing. It truly is. But more than that, this book right here also tells me that self supporting revolves to service work in our groups. So if I'm doing the right thing, like I'm the type of person that might do too many things and then I'm taking the opportunity away from other people to take, you know, have the opportunity to do service, to learn to be supporting in that and in that part of their life. I never correlated that with this tradition which I thought was only about putting money in the basket. And I take it a step further. How do I apply it in my work life? I get over involved because that's just my nature. So if somebody's not doing their job or something, I might help them or I might do it for them. I think I can do it better. But I really have to learn when I'm looking at being self supporting, everybody's got to be self supporting. I shouldn't be doing things for other people, they shouldn't be doing things for me. Whether it be service, whether it be money, everyone has their own higher power. I was taught that. And when I forget it, I'm reminded and it's not me. I need to let go and trust that their higher power is going to take care of them just like the higher powers takes cares of our group. Our groups, they'll figure it out. Even if they make mistakes, it's going to be okay. I have to learn that. I've become a perfectionist throughout my life. I make myself hard on myself and others. And I've been told, like, how are you going to learn if you don't try something new, if you don't be willing to make a mistake? So a part of this chapter that meant a lot to me to be fully self, being fully self supporting helps me learn to rely on God for security instead of people. And I begin to look to God rather than people as a source of happiness and security. Just like, I don't know, this fills me up. People here, this makes me cry. I have it like page, you know, highlighted pages in there. Because when I started working with the sponsor, she told me, your job now forever is to stay abstinent and grow spiritually for the rest of your life. That's it. And why, why do we really do this? Because we don't want to eat. We don't want to eat compulsively. We don't want to do that. I don't, I don't want to. I don't want to fit in those pants. I gave away my pants to that clothing swap. I told you to. I only have that one left and I don't want to go back there. So all the things I do, whether I like it or not, you know, starts from that where I don't want to be compulsively eating, I don't want to be isolating. I'd rather learn how to be in relationships. I'd rather learn the secrets to successful living. So God is the source of everything for me. And I mean, I'm not perfect, right? Nobody's perfect. I mean, and I need people. We tie started with that. But when I'm working these traditions, I need to remember that being fully self self supporting helps me learn to rely on God for security and for happiness. It's another very freeing thing. So I got so much more out of that than just making my contributions online or putting money in the basket. And now I'm up to number nine and that's really where I am. I'm just finishing it. That's now check out the words on this. This is one of those ones that's not so easy. Like away as such. What do they mean by as such? I don't know, it doesn't really matter. But away as such. Let never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. And this spiritual thing. I have one minute. I got to go quickly. Structure. So basically here, this one's talking about structure and organization. Basically. I guess I'll just say here I learned to let go and let God. You know, this power structure is upside down in a way. The members are on top and the people down doing the service are there for everybody else. It teaches me that God. Well, you know, that God's in charge. Basically. There's, you know, we'll have to meet in the hallway or something to learn more about it. But what's really helping me in my life is that I need to set boundaries. Yeah. Not be too organized. Not to have too much structure, too little balance is really key. And with my quickly running out of time, I'll just read number 11, which is. It's about the public relations policy. Out of time and about anonymity. And basically what I'm learning there is about attraction. And it's not all about me. This program and any results or anything that happens is based on God. And anyway, that's my time. So I'm sorry I didn't get to, you know, put it all together better. But thank you very much. And I will pass to Margaret Ann and she will do the even numbers. Thank you very much. [00:22:20] Speaker B: Hi, everybody. My name is Margaret Ann. I'm a very grateful, recovered, compulsive overeater. I used to eat compulsively. I came into the rooms of O Readers Anonymous in February of 1990 as 215 pounds of chain smoking, suicidal fun. I just like to start out my qualifications that way. I'm sure many of you have heard that before, but if you haven't, that's an absolutely accurate snapshot. There's really nothing about the steps. Seriously. The room capacity is 80. Add six. [00:22:53] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:22:55] Speaker B: Because we got a full house here. A little scared too. Yeah. So the steps. Didn't like those. Didn't look at the traditions, didn't seem to apply. Eventually did hated them. And I love Carol Ann's idea of really talking about how they are the secrets of successful living. Not just recovery in oa, but I mean, it's all of a piece. You can't separate any of it. Right. So I came into oa. My disease showed itself in extra weight, but there was so, so much. Most of the weight was between my ears. And that there's the recover ing thing. As I said, everything about the principles of the traditions was something that I was absolutely dead set against. And you know, like most other people, I had absorbed a lot of Messages which were, status is good. Praise is good. Being right is great. Like many of us, when you are a fat little kid, you need to have the coin you have. You can be. So if you're smart and you get the answers right in class, you know, that was a good thing. In my case, I was also funny. So if I could get you to laugh at me, that meant that I was in charge of that. And so the coping skills that I had were, you know, the kind that if there's any discussion going on and I think I know the answer, I am going to wrestle you to the ground so that you know, I have it. Which is really how you win friends and influence people. Right? [00:24:40] Speaker C: That's not the secret to successful living. [00:24:44] Speaker B: So that's what I bring to this situation. And that's, you know, you are still looking at that person. The difference is that first. Thank you, God. This program arrested the progression of my physical disease so that I could start learning why I ate. The discomfort of living without my drugs was intense. And then I needed to learn a new way of living. And that was contained in the steps and in the traditions. And like Carol Ann, I have also. I've done step studies and tradition studies. My Saturday morning group some years ago, there was a woman. It was a how meeting. It's still a how meeting. It's very different than most of the how meetings that you probably know. But somebody decided that once a month we were going to do a step study. I was like, we're going to change things. Because I've learned there's only two things that this addict change and the way things are. So we did. We took on a step meeting. And then she, like, didn't come. She. But anyway, so we started having step meeting. It was great. Loved it. And then she came back. She was like, we need to have a tradition meeting. And people voter for it. Like, we don't want a tradition meeting. So, of course, we've been having a tradition meeting for years. And they're wonderful discussions. And I don't. It makes me a little sad sometimes when I hear people referring to the traditions as what they are not. They're not rules and they're not laws. A tradition is a way of doing things that you have passed down because it's for the good of the order. And so we have these traditions. You know, the other fellowship learned through hard experience, but we have our own. And if you've never read the book beyond our Wildest Dreams, please do. It'll give you so much background as why we needed these traditions ourselves. So. Okay, going now. I got the odd ones. And she's going through the Eve. It's like. I like that one, too, but I love tradition, too. For. For our group purpose, there is but one ultimate authority, a loving God, as God may express himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants. They do not govern. Oh, good. Okay. I just did that out of memory. [00:27:06] Speaker C: I was like. [00:27:07] Speaker B: I wasn't sure they had that right because I wasn't on the right page. And the spiritual principle is trust. And I'm sure there's not one person in this room who's ever been in a business meeting, conference, region, whatever, where you have not had that situation that I had in my meeting where I was absolutely dead set against the thing that was being proposed. And in hindsight, it turned out to be the perfect thing. Anyone who's ever seen literature, the story of our 12 step and 12 traditions, I heard a wonderful description of that process. It was in conference for 14 years. Some of you all remember that we first had just the first 12 steps, but that's how long it took for it to. For this power that guides us to guide it to where it needed to be. I hate that I know exactly what we should be doing. But these, you know, Tradition two slows me down. And Tradition four, that's a corker. Autonomy. That's a really hard one, because I think we have all had this situation where we left a meeting. It's like, oh, somebody's got to come in and shut this meeting down. And anyone who's ever served in a position like regent chair or regent trustee has had somebody come to him and say, oh, you got to shut this meeting down. And we don't do that again. That inverted triangle. We trust that God is going to express itself in our group conscience and that if we're operating out too far outside the principles of our traditions, we will not survive. But you know, what? If there's a meeting that you've hated for 20 years and it's still going, chances are there's something that's just not your meeting. Don't go away. You know, there's other meetings. So there's that autonomy that, yeah, we really do have that dignity to make our own choices. The tradition, Tradition six, which is a. You know, that's another really. And here I am scrolling on my device to get to tradition 6 on fresh 210. An OA group ought never endorse finance or lend the OA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest Problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. And, boy, you know, if any fellowship was prone to that kind of thing happening. Because who doesn't have opinions about eating disorders, food, plants, you know, whatever. It's such a physical thing. Solidarity. We come together on the single solution that we all have. It is the 12 steps and our nine tools that are used. You know, abstinence really is the solution for the compulsive overeater that we, you know, our purpose is to abstain from compulsive eating and to, you know, carry that message. So we need to have that thing that we agree on and how that's achieved. We can't get involved in that. I'm just going to tell a quick story. Who was at Friar Tuck? [00:30:12] Speaker A: Anyone? [00:30:12] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:30:13] Speaker B: Okay. The year it flooded, we were. We had Region six convention at the Friar Tuck. Amazing place. It rained, the whole place flooded. People lost cars. And afterwards, the poor manager, he was, you know, the Regent board is there going, dude, you got to make this right for us. And he's like, you know, I have a great idea. Next year when you come back, you know, we're going to have this whole weekend, we're going to have a chef who comes in and prepares all your abstinent meals. And we're like, thanks, no, because we can't. We can't do that. So we have to agree on what we agree on and agree to let go of what is an outside issue. And sometimes that can be kind of difficult to determine. But solidarity is what that's about. Tradition 8 Overeaters Anonymous should remain forever non professional. But our service centers may employ special workers. And I'm not talking very much now. I should be talking more about how I apply this in my life. So this, you know, in terms of other places, it's equality. But the principle in the book, it says is fellowship. But I think what, you know, that means is I'm a worker among workers. I'm a friend among friends. We do hire people to do the things that we don't have the expertise or the time and money to do. Like, you know, maybe make a website, run a world's service office, larger groups and intergroups. But in the rest of my life, in my workplace, of course, we're all professionals, paid to do what we do, but we come together to further the mission of my organization. Not me. So how does it mean, how do I practice that in every place? I keep, I keep my. Yeah, I keep my eyes on what I was hired to do on my Job, not you. And I collaborate. I have a lot of conflicts because I'm a resentment generating machine. And I already told y'all, I'm a right. Thank you. I'm a right fighter. So what I am, what I have had, really had to learn, learn to do is that when I'm in conflict with a coworker is to go, this is my collaborator, not my adversary. Because that's what I find myself doing. And in terms of Overeaters Anonymous, it also means, yeah, we're all working for the same thing. We have different ways of doing it. But the one thing we agree on, we are not doctors, we are not psychiatrists, we are not psychotherapists, even though some of us may be those things in our outside life. But we already know in Tradition six, you know, we don't bring that into the rooms. We come together as fellows. Some of have been around longer, you know, seen a thing or two, can help somebody else along. But we come here to practice the same thing as fellows, as equals in tradition 10, which is now just completely flown out of my mind. But that's a good. That's another one about, you know, non affiliation over eaters. Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues. Hence the away name ought never be drawn into public controversy. Now this is, this can be difficult because I think there's also the idea that in our meetings we are very careful to keep outside issues, politics, religion, things like that, outside the rooms. So the main thing about this neutrality is the principle it says in the book. And what I like is what it says in the book. As individuals, we are free to believe in and work for any cause we choose. The tenth Tradition asks us to leave these issues outside when we walk through the doors of oa. Even the most worthy of other causes has no place in an OA meeting. And this can be a little tricky because is my identity an outside issue? And some ways in which how I am in the world is affecting my recovery, my abstinence. No, I should be able to talk about, yeah, being careful not to bring controversies, political, you know, endorsements or anything like that into the rooms. It also means that neutrality, that I extend that dignity to other people and, you know, I give people the benefit of the doubt, basically that, you know, I listen to you, I respect you, you listen to me, you respect me and live and let live. We let each other be who we are. And of course, you know, this is definitely something that I can bring into bear in my family relationships. I mean, all of these trust, autonomy, solidarity, fellowship, neutrality. That applies to my family, to my workplace, to anything that you can say in the world, to riding on the subway, really, driving in a car. I have to remind myself I'm trafficked, too, because my tendency is, everybody in my way is in my way. No, we're all going, okay, but use your blinker, please. Use your signal, for God's sake. It's not a sign of weakness. Please. And I'm from Massachusetts, where it's like, no, never, never. I'll never cave in. You'll know where I'm going when I'm there. Anyway, finally, tradition 12. And. And this is really beautiful, the way 11 and 12 do work together. Because 11 is about the anonymity that we practice as people. We don't, you know, we don't trumpet our OA membership publicly, and we don't promote oa, but we, you know, as Roseanne used to say, we're an anonymous fellowship, not a secret society. We want people to know about us. But the other. The thing here is the deeper principle of it says the principle is spirituality. And there's something about just having the willingness to drop that whatever it is. That's that meanness. And it is, you know, kind of the bondage of self. Not meanness, meanness, that self absorption or that self importance, whatever you want to call it, self centeredness, you know, and when I use the word selfish, I mean it without any kind of, you know, shaking of the finger. It means my perspective, seeing things only from my point of view. And great. Thank you. And being able to open it up to more. And that, to me, is the real essence of spirituality and anonymity is. I mean, this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of practicing the principles of this program. If I am genuinely able to walk into a meeting, oh, they're new, or, oh, last time I spoke, you know, last time I heard them, they went on, you know, whatever it is, and listen with fresh ears or in a business meeting, you know, same thing. Let go of all my, you know, years of experience. And it's a beautiful thing to. But this is such a beautiful thing to bring into the family. You know, I have a niece. She's much younger than me. She's. Well, she's almost 30. And how I can practice anonymity in my family is to stop treating her like a kid in my workplace. Same thing. To genuinely think about, how am I being well again? What am I contributing? What am I bringing to this day? Not how am I defending myself against or building myself up to or protecting you know, it's dropping all of that because anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all these traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. And the first personality that I have to place them before is me. When I am disturbed, you know, that whole thing, whenever I find a person, place, thing or distance disturbing to me, I have to find the disturbance within myself and the principle of anonymity again. This goes against everything that I brought into this program. A person who was scared, defended, hurt, shame, filled with shame, who didn't want you to see the real me. And anonymity means I allow myself to be seen. It means I see you, I accept you, I'm in community with you. And I am reminded over and over. It brings me right back to tradition. One, our recovery depends on oauth. If there is a they, I'm sunk. If there's a we, then I have. I have hope. So, yeah, I'm probably bringing it in for a landing here. But I really want to thank Carol Ann for having this interesting frame that we did. The odds and the evens. And I'm so glad that as soon as y'all heard this was about the traditions, y'all didn't just get up and leave, but, you know, it's always the case. No, seriously, they're still here, Kathy. [00:40:59] Speaker A: They're still here. [00:41:00] Speaker B: Yeah, but I think you all, you know, you all know that once you start, once you get into this discussion, they're just. They're so rich and they're so wonderful. So I think it's time for us to hear what you folks have to say about this as well. So the workshop is going to end at 4:45. That gives us. Oh, okay. The rest of the time we'll hear three minute pitches from the floor. So Kathy will signal you when you have one minute left. So come on up, don't be shy. Please say where you are from and how long you've been in OA and devote your share to your OA experience on the topic. Which is the Secrets of Successful Living. The secrets of Successful Living. And this is being recorded so it doesn't have the whole thing about. To speak up here means that you are assenting to be recorded. If you don't want to use your real name, use another one or none. Thank you so much. [00:42:10] Speaker D: Good afternoon. Good afternoon, family. My name is Kathy. I'm a grateful, recovered, compulsive over ear. So happy to be here, so happy to see everybody. Thank you, Margaret, and thank you, Carol Ann. My emotional support. Human. How tricky. She says These are the traditions. Like, we've got you. And I came into the program, work the program starting 14. Did anybody want to work the steps? So when people say, oh, it's a tradition meeting, I don't know people that came and going, I can't wait to do step four. And you know, three years later, I can't wait to do step four. So one of the one I wrote down about the groups of be autonomous and stuff, and I went to an assembly years ago and one person had everyone read the steps altogether, always lifted me up. I went back to my three home meetings and we did that, and people started to complain about it. In one of the meetings, we had a business meeting and I came back and they stopped doing it. And I go, what happened? They go, we voted against it. And I wasn't at the business meeting. I go, oh, when we have the next business meeting, should I bring it up? And they said, let it go. So I had to learn to let it go. When you said about God is the source, and, oh, how I learned that, How I learned that I have to depend on God because I can't depend on myself. And this program has brought me so many, you know, like I was going to say prizes. But the joys that I get from this program that, you know, like being in a workshop like this, like, you have a pick to go to any workshop and you're going to get something out of everything. And, you know, I was put in a position, a service position, and God showed me about a defect that I need to work on. And when I asked someone to do service and they say, I have to do this, I have to do that, the hair over on my. Well, I have a neck issue. But what do you mean you can't do it? And just because I'm doing something doesn't mean that. But when you do the right thing, I mean, when you wake up in the morning and thank you, God, for giving me another day, and this is what my role is. So here's the line to speak. So I'm the timer and I'm ready to time you. Thank you again. [00:45:02] Speaker E: Good afternoon, everybody. I'm a compulsive reader. My name is Shannon. [00:45:05] Speaker B: Hi, Shannon. [00:45:06] Speaker E: I didn't want to come up here, but my heart is pounding. And I was told early on in recovery, when your heart's pounding, something's gonna come out. I first came into oa and I love the traditions. I was a freak. But I wanna tell you about the relationship to the traditions, to my personal life. So I Don't know if anybody here has ever had to call or maybe correct somebody on a break of tradition. And nobody has ever said to me, thank you, Shannon, for calling me out on that. So it taught me to be brave, it taught me to have courage, it taught me to have principles. And so I got to translate that into my personal life. I'm a person that had to learn about boundaries. And what I was able to apply the traditions into my personal life was when I had to say to you, no, don't do that, do this, you know, any kind of correction I needed to have you do. And then I had to let you sit with it. [00:46:13] Speaker A: Right? [00:46:14] Speaker E: That's the hard part. I never wanted to say anything to anybody that would be difficult because I couldn't handle the way that you would respond to me. So OA has given me the courage to speak up for myself and to give you the dignity to have the response that you need to have. And I pray for myself and I pray for you, so it works out beautifully. Thank you for letting me share. [00:46:56] Speaker F: Hi, I'm Dale. I hesitate to be a service hog, but I don't see a lot of people jumping up here. For me, I'm quickly qualifying. I came in 42 years ago, over 300 pounds, and this program is life saving, life transforming for me. With that said, I was also very deeply involved in service in my first 10 or 15 years in the program, and that saved my life. It gave me an opportunity to have a meaning and a purpose where I knew I was helping people and couldn't do too much harm, mostly because of these traditions. For me now, the traditions really are something I incorporate into. How do I live my own life? So when I hear of a tradition of unity, you know, to me, that means for myself, there's my mind, my body, my spirit, and I need to achieve oneness, wholeness, unity, integration, all of me. 1. When I think about a primary purpose for me, my understanding of goodwill and God's will for me is I devote my life to the practice of unconditional love for myself and for all others. So in terms of a primary purpose, always to add whatever I can to the stream of goodness and light in this sometimes dark and troubled world. Help other people to do likewise also for our group purpose. One ultimate authority. There are many parts of me, at the very least, there's my addicted self and my sober self. But there's also the whole committee. The I personally like calling all of my parts the beloved bozos on my bus. But I have to be in the driver's seat of my bus. I don't own the bus. I don't tell the bus where to go. I'm just working there, driving the bus. But it's my bus and I don't let the bozos on my bus jump into the driver's seat, do an emotional hijacking and crash the bus. I love them all and that loving God, that is the one ultimate authority of what we do, how we do and why we do. And I say we in that royal sense, I guess I'm saying is that all of me, it's unified. There's also the self supporting thing has been something I struggled with forever. The bottom line on my inventory after losing 150 pounds daily, used to be a fat, lazy bum. Now you're just a thin, lazy bum. Because I did not want to grow up. Everything about being an adult seemed like a royal pain in the ass of a bunch of things you have to do that I didn't want to do. And being self supporting has been a lifetime process that I'm still working through some of the same difficulties that I've had. And the other, the principle of autonomy is I realize every, everyone is autonomous. Every group of all these different sub personalities within a given person, no matter how obnoxious and acting out they may be, they're autonomous. I can't even dream of wanting to control myself hardly, much less anyone else. [00:50:12] Speaker A: Thank you for letting me share. [00:50:39] Speaker G: There we go. Hi, I'm Lou, grateful compulsive love reader. Sorry, I want to tell you about something that happened to me in the second month of program. I was searching for a sponsor and I called, I was looking for a male and I called up a couple male sponsors and I said, I can't sponsor. And then I called one guy up and I said, like to, you know, you know, see if you could sponsor me. And he says, oh, I heard about you, you're too tough. I don't want to have anything to do with you. And he hangs up. [00:51:28] Speaker A: Jesus. [00:51:29] Speaker G: Someone broke my anonymity to him. I don't know what. Well, I looked for some other names. Now this guy had two names. I found his second name under another number and I called that number and I said, I'm having a problem. I just spoke to some jerk and he wanted, he told me right to take a flying leap and he wasn't going to sponsor me. And all of a sudden I realized I'm breaking his anonymity to him. So be careful who you talk to and what you say. [00:52:03] Speaker A: Thanks. It. [00:52:36] Speaker C: No one's going to share. I'll share. [00:52:38] Speaker A: Hi, Lynn. [00:52:39] Speaker B: Alcohol. [00:52:40] Speaker C: I'm a compulsive overeater. And this is the second time I'm saying that I'm in a bouquet of fellowship. So I am a compulsive overeater. I belong here. And thank you guys so much. And I was thinking about, you know, the only requirement for maximum membership is a desire to stop eating and how it pertains. Like, in my family, in the workshop before we went through, it was like the 12 stepping, one with an issue. And my mom is this issue, right? And she's part of the family. And, you know, that's it. You know, it's like. It's like when I couldn't get abstinence in the beginning, right? No one ever told me, lynn, don't come back to oa. You don't belong here. And it's like kind of the same thing. Even though it's a very difficult situation with my mother, like, I would like to tell her, don't come back because there's a lot of chaos and there's a lot of dysfunction and there's a lot of mental health and there's a lot of stuff. But, you know, she wants to be part of the family. And I am the one with the program and can really use for me, I can use that tradition with her, which is it never occurred to me until today. And then, you know, I'm very tired. So, you know, the one with, you know, the outside issues and controversy and all that. And, you know, that too, you know, in the meetings, like, what was said, you know, regarding, like, politics and all that stuff within my family. Like, I don't have to, you know, take do the dance with people. You know, I don't have to bring up provocative things with my family and my friends if I know that we're not going to agree on it. So. Because, like, do I want to be right or do I want to be happy? You know, And I'll just end with saying, you know, my sister calls me out on it sometimes because we have very different views. And she says, well, people I know, they want to discuss the differences. And what I realized in OA is that I don't want to discuss the differences. You know, I appreciate your opinion, but, like, appreciate that I can be quiet and accept what you have to believe in and not prove a point, like I always did for many. So thanks. [00:55:46] Speaker A: Does anybody have a burning desire to share on the secrets of successful living? All right. I hope that your attendance here has at least sparked your interest in reading the literature about the traditions. Would you like to say anything in closing? Okay, so that's all the time we have for sharing. Thanks for attending the workshop. And we'll close with the Serenity Prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, the wisdom to know the difference.