Just For The Day
Just For The Day
#17 - August 30, 2025 - Self Inventory
Jay and Diane read the NA Daily Reader for August 30th. They then explore how our treatment of others reveals our internal state and how changing our external actions can transform our internal thoughts and vice versa.
They discuss how identifying behavior triggers can help us to see, and correct, patterns in our lives.
Question: What are some of your interpersonal patterns and how do you intervene to change your natural reactions?
Jay and Diane's Just For The Day podcast is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Just for Today, any 12-Step program, or any other recovery-based product or organization. They should not replace your regular group or sponsor meetings.
The views expressed are solely those of the hosts and guests. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Welcome back everyone to another episode of Just for the Day. I'm Jay and I'm a recovering addict.
Speaker 2:I'm Diane and I'm codependent, and today is August 30th in our NA Reader Crazy.
Speaker 1:The title of today's reading is Doing Good and Feeling Good and the quote at the top is we examine our actions, reactions and motives. We often find that we've been doing better than we've been feeling.
Speaker 2:The way we treat others often reveals our own state of being. When we are at peace, we're most likely to treat others with respect and compassion. However, when we're feeling off-center, we're likely to respond to others with intolerance and impatience. When we take regular inventory, we'll probably notice a pattern we treat others badly when we feel bad about ourselves.
Speaker 1:What might not be revealed in an inventory, however, is the other side of the coin. When we treat others well, we feel good about ourselves. When we add this positive truth to the negative facts we find about ourselves in our inventory, we begin to behave differently.
Speaker 2:When we feel badly, we can pause to pray for guidance and strength. Then we make a decision to treat those around us with kindness, gentleness and the same concern we'd like to be shown. A decision to be kind may nurture and sustain the happiness and peace of mind we all wish for, and the joy we inspire may lift the spirits of those around us, in turn fostering our own spiritual well-being just for today.
Speaker 2:I will remember that if I change my actions, my thoughts will follow I feel like there's a bunch of little things in this so many things one of the things that came to mind is that um years ago we, um like many new parents, were kind of seeking counseling for one of our children who was a little angry and had temper issues, and one of the things that a very wise therapist taught us was that this son of ours was a barometer of our relationship. We learned that his outbursts were more likely to align with times when we were struggling financially or emotionally in our relationship relationship, and that when we were at peace in our home, so was he yeah, that he was a reflection.
Speaker 1:That's something I'm I'm seeing in this quite. I really love this idea that there's this inner and outer world and that our outer world is often a reflection of our inner world. Just as you you just described, our children, who were rather on the outside of our relationship, were a reflection of the dynamics of the inside of our relationship, and they're not perfect echoes of each other and yet they are reverberations, like waves in a pool, right when they look somewhat similar to the initial impact. And I think it's fascinating this idea that even at this end, I will remember that if I change my actions, my thoughts will follow. There's a connection to actually both directions. Right Is if you change the internal world, the external world will change. But what this is suggesting if you change the external, my actions, the internal will change, which is absolutely true as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's correlation, not causation. I like that, and one of the things that reminds me of is that when life is crazy busy and you think I don't have time for a meditation or a daily reader or whatever right, because my life is just so busy, where am I going to squeeze it in? And then you start to prioritize and you say I'm going to take some time, I'm actually going to sit down and do my daily readers, and what you find is that you have more time during the day, and I think a lot of that has to do with, at the beginning of the day, setting that tone of slow down Right, take some time, right, ponder, think.
Speaker 1:And when you take that time and you slow down your internal processes, you find that your day slows down too right and you're not as stressed, right and busy. Yeah, I also like this quote here, the top here. We treat others badly when we feel bad about ourselves. The way that we treat others is a reflection of how we feel inside as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what about the pattern when we're taking regular inventory? So this would be like your steps 10, 11, right, and as you take regular inventory you start to see what triggers you, right, and when am I most irritable, when am I most likely to be impatient? And you can kind of start to find these triggers and see the cycles it comes back with. You will notice a pattern. We treat others badly when we feel bad about ourselves, and I don't necessarily think that's the only time that we treat others badly. I think there's definitely aspects of if we know the halt. If I'm hungry, angry, lonely or tired I'm, I'm not going to be at my peak.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. So you're differentiating between um. You don't necessarily have to feel bad about yourself, but you could have something else going on internally that's affecting the way you affect other people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's interesting and you and I have discovered this over the last year or so with diet. Right, we did a while back we did a three or four day fast where we didn't eat any food, we were just having water, salt water, yeah, and what we found was that the first, you know, 24 hours were really hard and we just wanted to eat. But then the next, you know, the to hour 48 and 72 and whatever those those hours we were thinking more clearly and we were less irritable with each other. We were getting along. So I think diet does play a role in our ability to get along with other people too I think so as well so I think there's so many factors and the goal is, when we're taking these inventories, to pay attention to all the factors.
Speaker 2:Right, if somebody is gluten free, they figured that out because they noticed that every time they ate bread, they felt sick afterwards. So if I'm losing my temper with kids fairly regularly and I can go back and say, okay, well, this is what they're doing when I lose my temper, or this is what the scenario, maybe I'm flooded, maybe there's three or four things I'm doing at one time, find what the trigger is and then you can figure out. You know how to work on that going forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's this. I mean, implicit in this is this idea that you're kind of like diagnosing, using the external as the diagnosis for the internal. You're following the breadcrumbs to try to find out what, rather than just wrestling with the external, which is often what people do in early addiction and early codependency.
Speaker 2:You learn from it.
Speaker 1:You learn from it rather than wrestle with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you're trying to understand what's underneath the surface and what triggered it. Where did it come from?
Speaker 2:Which is interesting because the daily reader is kind of the opposite. When which is interesting because the daily reader is kind of the opposite when you take the time to slow down and meditate, what you're doing is you're working on your internal and allowing the internal to affect the external. So both approaches work and have value.
Speaker 1:The point is because there's a link, they're linked right, they're connected and by working on one of them, it affects the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a decision to be kind may nurture and sustain the happiness and peace of mind we all wish for. So I think it's also important to recognize it's a decision. We are actors in our own life. We are not being acted upon and we can choose to calm our mind. We can choose to change our reactions to triggers yeah it's very empowering yeah, because it's in our control, right?
Speaker 1:it's suggesting that a lot of these things that you're dealing with, that you're deeming that are outside your control, actually largely inside your control, yeah, and you just need to and you're just acting on the wrong part of it well, and yesterday's reading.
Speaker 2:We talked about the eighth step inventory, writing down all the ways that we had wronged, and this one is kind of like write down the the patterns that you notice write down as you're doing your inventory and pay attention, and it's a way of refining ourselves and kind of cleaning up our act yeah, absolutely love it.
Speaker 1:So today remember yeah, if you change your actions, you change. Your thoughts will follow that's right.
Speaker 2:Thanks for joining us today, everybody see you next time.
