Latest / Sober Readings / Looking Within
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Welcome back to Sober Readings for the first day of April, 2026. Today's reading from Daily Reflections. Looking Within. made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. That's from the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, page 42. Step four is the vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what the liabilities in each of us have been and are. I want to find exactly how, when, and where my natural desires have warped me. I wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and myself. By discovering what my emotional deformities are, I can move toward their correction. Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for me. To resolve ambivalent feelings, I need to feel a strong and helpful sense of myself. Such an awareness doesn't happen overnight, and no one's self-awareness is permanent. Everyone has the capacity for growth and for self-awareness. through an honest encounter with reality. When I don't avoid issues but meet them directly, always trying to resolve them, they become fewer and fewer. Today's reading from 24 Hours. April 1. AA Thought for the Day. Since I've been in AA, have I made a start towards becoming more honest? Do I no longer have to lie to my wife? Am I on time at work and do I try to earn what I get? Am I making an attempt to be honest with myself? Have I faced myself as I really am and have I admitted to myself that I'm no good by myself but have to rely on God to help me do the right thing? So I ask myself today, Am I beginning to find out what it means to be alive and to face the world honestly and without fear? Today's meditation for the day. and we make a mess of our lives. We can do nothing of any value without God's help. All our human relationships depend on this. When we let God's Spirit rule our lives, we learn how to get along with our fellow men and how to help them. Today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may let God run my life. I pray that I will never again make a mess of my life through trying to run it myself. And for today's final reading, since today is the first day of April, we're going to go to the grapevine for this month, April 2026. And this reading is titled Fishing for Truth. Since I was the only person in my family who loved to fish, none of them could show me how to do it. I learned by trial and error. Starting with a 12-foot bamboo pole, using earthworms I had dug up for bait, and talking to old men hanging out at the bait shop where I went to buy lures, grubs, and minnows. Although my father had grown up boating on Long Island Sound, he never took me fishing. Even after I begged him, I didn't know what a resentment was at age five, but I stayed bitter and angry at him all my life for depriving me of that traditional father and son experience so often boasted about by my friends. After 50 years of catch and release fishing for fun, I passed on my vintage rods and reels and my beaten up tackle box stuffed with hooks and lures to my teenage nephew, who is just beginning his fishing career. Around that time, my mother gave me a box of my father's belongings after he had recently died. I took the box home and as I was grazing through the faded black and white photographs, I found one that showed me and my father sitting in a rowboat, fishing rods in hand. I don't know who took that picture, but I could tell I was no older than seven years old when I was taken. I was shocked. All my life I had held a grudge against my father for something I believed he had never done and which I had never discussed with him. I learned an invaluable lesson. The truth we believe is not always the truth of what really happened. Perception matters. So today, when I write my annual grudge list, I first stop and ask myself if I know something happened or if I just believe something hap- how easy it is to accidentally distort the past. If I'm going to start looking at my feelings and my part in my resentments to remove them, I need to first ensure they aren't a figment of my imagination. That was written by Alex in Louisville, Kentucky. So that's the end of today's readings, but before I close I'd like to go back to daily reflections. There's a line in this reading that really stuck out to me. When I don't avoid issues but meet them directly, always trying to resolve them, they become fewer and fewer. And that line stuck out to me because I've been avoiding issues my entire life. Issues like bills that I didn't want to pay or problems that I didn't want to face. And really the issue behind all of that is fear. And I never really wanted to talk about fear or face my fears or accept the fact that I even had fear at all. I believe that it takes courage to talk about your fears, especially when you're talking about your fears to another person. And I don't believe I ever got that courage until I came into the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and honestly worked the 12 steps. And so I'd love to hear your experience on facing your fears and not avoiding issues but meeting them directly. Send me an email at soberreadingswithscott at gmail.com. So that's it for today's episode of Sober Readings. If you enjoyed the show, please do me a huge favor, hit that like button, share this episode with someone who might need it, drop a comment, And let me know what you thought and make sure you're following if you're in heaven already and subscribe to the show so you never miss a new episode and If you'd like to join me in reading some sober literature on sober readings and be my guest on the show I would love to have you just shoot me an email at sober readings with Scott at gmail.com and we can make that happen and If you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket, just go to sober readings comm and click the donate button So thank you so much for listening today, stay sober, keep reading, and I'll see you in the next episode. So until next time, remember just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day. And as my friend Larry says, best day ever.