Just For The Day
Just For The Day
#19 - September 1, 2025 - Real Values
Jay and Diane read the NA Daily Reading for September 1st and explore how the 12 steps provide us with real values that help us make wise, loving decisions and live in harmony with ourselves and others, contrasting with the rationalizations of addiction.
They specifically discuss the values of honesty, openness, willingness, and responsibility as being on a spectrum.
Question: What values have you accepted as part of your recovery?
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 to September.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so nice to be in September.
Speaker 1:Can't believe it.
Speaker 2:There are some leaves on the ground. We're getting there. It's almost fall.
Speaker 1:And the heat is going to be breaking soon. It's awful.
Speaker 2:Depends on the day. Welcome back.
Speaker 1:Welcome back 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 we are on September 1st. The topic of today is real values, and the quote is we become able to make wise and loving decisions based on principles and ideals that have real value in our lives.
Speaker 1:Love. This Addiction gave us a certain set of values, principles we applied in our lives. You pushed me, one of those values, told us, so I pushed back hard. It's mine was another value generated by our disease. Well, okay, maybe it wasn't mine to start with, but I liked it so I made it mine. Those values were hardly values at all, more like rationalizations, and they certainly didn't help us make wise and loving decisions. In fact, they served primarily to dig us deeper and deeper into the grave we'd already dug for ourselves.
Speaker 2:The 12 steps give us a strong dose of real values, the kind that help us live in harmony with ourselves and those around us. We place our faith not in ourselves, our families or our communities, but in a higher power, and in doing so, we grow secure enough to be able to trust our communities, our families and even ourselves. We learn to be honest no matter what, and we learn to refrain from doing things we might want to hide. We learn to accept responsibility for our actions. Its mind is replaced with the spirit of selflessness. These are the kind of values that help us become a responsible, productive part of the life around us. Rather than digging us deeper into a grave, these values restore us to the world of the living.
Speaker 1:Just for today. I am grateful for the values I've developed. I am thankful for the ability they give me to make wise, loving decisions as a responsible, productive member of my community.
Speaker 2:Values.
Speaker 1:I love this word loving decisions.
Speaker 2:Why I think it's interesting.
Speaker 1:You know the quote at the beginning. It starts out by saying you know, we became able to make wise and loving decisions based on principles and ideals that have real values in our lives. And then it talks about the decisions we used to make that were hurtful and called them rationalizations, and instead it quantifies a decision based in values as a loving decision, which I kind of like. That message that a decision grounded in a principle is a decision that is selfless, that is focused on giving rather than taking Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't fully understand. I guess, as I'm reading it, I'm a little confused, as I'm looking at the values versus the rationalizations and I I'm not sure I understand how it's describing values when it's saying you pushed me, so I pushed back. It's mine, um, um, I don't feel fully understand. I guess it was like maybe those were like your slogans or your mottos that you lived your life by.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally yeah like, like, for example. So this I love. It brings up a very important one which is a selfish, and it doesn't label it but it calls it. It's mine, meaning like it's very self-centered and if it's not mine, I'm gonna make it mine because I liked it, the value being you know, I can take, I can, I can obtain. I don't have to, I don't have to respect others, I can just absorb and and and gather what I want.
Speaker 1:Right At the expense of anybody else, because if it's not mine, I don't care about it, that's right, and that's right, and I think that's why they call it rationalizations, because what it's saying is you had to make sense of it because it caused damage, which is why I love the opposite of their calling is a loving decision, because the impact of that is saying is that the decision has impact on others and it's giving, it's building, it's affectionate, it's contributing to the betterment to someone else's lives rather than taking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it seems like the values that they're promoting as positive values are ones that are going to build other people instead of tearing them down, and that the values that maybe we inherited that caused us to embrace addiction had to do with selfish and hurtful values.
Speaker 1:Which is interesting, because we don't have to agree with this. We can think what we want of it, but I think it's an interesting theory that it's saying is okay. The destructive behaviors I engaged in were ones that took and hurt other people.
Speaker 1:And I thus I had to rationalize them. The opposite is decisions based in values which inevitably and I love how they're characterizing generally with loving. I just can't get over that, because I got to tell you I wouldn't, at the, at the face value, consider the value of honesty as one that gives to other people, but it a hundred percent does.
Speaker 2:Oh, it totally does.
Speaker 1:Right and so like, like. When we think about the manifestation of that. When you are brutally honest, being willing to speak the truth to someone else when they're hurting you, but also to speak your truth when you've hurt other people, that does nothing but give the opportunity for people to be vulnerable but also to build other people, to tell them the truth, to show them that you're, that you're their friend, that you're trying, that you're looking out for their best interest right so, like it's interesting to think about that and think, okay, that's.
Speaker 1:my question would be you know they've listed two honesty, and the second one they listed was responsibility. Yeah Right, those are the two, but there are more. And I'm interested in what values, what principle-based values have you gained value from from the program? And I would ask that question do they benefit others and are they then loving, would be my question.
Speaker 2:Are they then loving, would be my question, and to answer it. What's funny is that I think that responsibility and honesty maybe would have been two values that I quoted for myself years and years ago.
Speaker 2:I've always been very honest, I was told as a teenager I was brutally honest, right, but I was honest in speaking my truth not objective truth and I was very vocal when I disapproved of something and that was not a positive thing and that didn't build other people up. But honesty in terms of self-honesty and in terms of I'm not going to let you self-destruct without telling you that you need to know this. Right, that's kind of different than I think your butt is fat.
Speaker 1:Yes, right, like. That's a very different type of honesty. It's not honesty. It's not honesty because because your butt is take that for an example your butt is fat is a judgment.
Speaker 2:Judgment is subjective.
Speaker 1:It's completely subjective. There's probably a hundred thousand people out there that would have found that fat but attractive, right? So like you know, so you're speaking, speaking your truth isn't necessarily the same as being honest. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So that I think a lot of the values that I would have said at the beginning of program that I was bringing into program they've evolved and they aren't the same values Like just same with responsibility. I can tell you that from the youth what my parents took pride in was that they instilled a sense of responsibility and hard work ethic in each of their kids. But the reason they did that was because they really neglected their kids and forced us to.
Speaker 1:We had to. I had. I was cooking my own dinner at 10 years old, right right like.
Speaker 2:So that's not necessarily a positive thing either, because on the flip side of that, and you know all of these character defects or all these character strengths or all of these values they're a spectrum and you can take them to the far end of either side and usually, you know, for me it was. I was so responsible, I worked so hard that I didn't trust anybody else to step in, that I didn't ask ask for help. I couldn't ask for help.
Speaker 2:There was all these, you know, there was all that negative part of I'm resilient and I can push through even when you know, the world is telling me don't, I'm going to show that I'm going to do it anyway, because there's no denying, diane and like so. There was all that, that drive and that push when it wasn't necessarily healthy or good for me, and then you have to kind of swing back and say, oh wait, maybe I do need to accept help, maybe I do need to recognize that I can't control everything, maybe I don't have to take responsibility for everybody's crap. Right, just mine. And and there's this you, you have to. There's that swing before you find that middle ground of okay, now I found actually a healthy balance of accepting my responsibility and not accepting yours yeah, yeah and like so.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I I think that for me, the values have changed and I think that now definitely I have values where I'm I'm more calm and patient and I think that's a benefit for other people that are around me, and I'm definitely less judgmental than I was, because I definitely had black and white thinking when I was younger and I've learned that nothing in life is black and white.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I don't really judge people as much as I did.
Speaker 1:So those will be the values of like mercy and the values of like of patience and compassion.
Speaker 2:I definitely have compassion and I never had compassion as a kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like those are all spiritually based, real values.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:That are building the X acts of love towards other people.
Speaker 2:Right, what about you?
Speaker 1:Well, the first ones that come to mind are, you know, my three favorite, which is openness, honesty and willingness.
Speaker 2:Those are the program ones.
Speaker 1:Because they're they're they're the core ones right, and you've got honesty here. You've got responsibility that were key for me because for the longest time, I'd come into the rooms and I would be willing to do what I was willing to do and nothing more.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, don't tell me to do something I don't want to do, but if I'm, if it's something I want to do, I'll do it.
Speaker 1:And I remember sitting in a room in a meeting in my home group one day, probably six months into the program, and they were talking about how there are those of us that the reading was about. There were those of us that the reading was about. There were those of us that come to meetings late and leave early and never say hi to everybody and blah, blah, blah and give this whole and I'm like that's a hundred percent me. And I remember thinking to myself I don't need that, I'm not like them. And I caught myself saying that and I thought, okay, am I in or am I not in? Because if I'm in, what I'm being told is I need to be willing and open which would dictate me to try this on Now.
Speaker 1:I didn't change it right away. For the longest time I still came late and and, and I still struggle with not wanting to leave early, right, because I just want to get out of there. But that's part of like. Even though I may not have worked on that thing, I recognized at that moment that I needed to be willing and open, and so those and those have been.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you since then the number of times that I've had a difficult conversation with you and, uh, you know, something's coming to mind now where, like, I may have come to you to express a need and all of a sudden, you're launching at me with the things that I'm doing wrong, because it was a tender subject for you and I sat, and I would just sit there and be like, okay, be open to it and just sit there and listen, right, there are so many times where openness and willingness have allowed me to build our relationship better and become and be a better, more effective partner and be able to hear and it didn't hurt me in the long run and it didn't. It didn't end up damaging me the way you usually fear. It is if things that are said that are hurtful, you know.
Speaker 1:So there's so many different values, but the point is is that a life lived on values, a life lived on these types of things, can build into a serious recovery, versus the opposite, which is not values-based, which is which is essentially whatever, and I love that. It highlights that, because this is the this characterizes all of that type of behavior. It's on me, whatever I want it's based on it. I'll change it in the moment. Sure, I'll be honest with you if it suits me for the moment, but next moment, if it doesn't, I won't be honest. That's not a principled life, that's not a value, a value-based life Right?
Speaker 2:Right. Well, and it also leads us to where the different values will lead to right. It says digging us deeper into a grave versus restoring us to the world of the living. Do you want to live life on life's terms? Then find values that are actually going to allow you to contribute, allow you to you know, interact with your environment and the people in your environment more positively yeah I like.
Speaker 1:what you said, though, is that you know the values evolve because you never deploy them initially the correct way. It's a learning process, and over time you get better at deploying them. You can't learn to deploy them any other way other than in practice.
Speaker 2:So I love that you highlighted that. Yeah, anything else.
Speaker 1:No real values.
Speaker 2:Just for today, folks, be grateful for the values you've developed. Be thankful for the ability they give you to make wise, loving decisions as responsible, productive members of your community.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us.
