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I’m going to try something new… today’s newsletter can be read or listened to. Here goes:

The best I can offer you this Friday morning is… ugh. Long week. Hard week. It was one of those stretches of time where I didn’t drink and definitely has hours where I felt sober. But there were also plenty of times where I was just hanging on.

I was all over the place this week. One of the most beautiful things about a strong sobriety program is that you can become steady, reliable and serene.

That wasn’t happening at my house this week. I hit a bunch of meetings, wrote a lot about recovery, prayed, made a ton of phone calls, and I’d still probably give myself a C+.

But hey, that’s passing, isn’t it?

So I’m going to tell you about something I do occasionally when I feel like I need a boost. I call it my “Take a B.O.W.” list. B.O.W. stands for “Best of the Week.”

The last time I read Step 10 (“Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it”) in recovery literature, I took particular note of how the text mentions—multiple times—the idea that inventory involves liabilities and assets. Too often, I am catching myself zeroed in on all the bad stuff I am doing: the resentments, the character defects, gossip, self-centeredness, amends I need to make, etc.

And because it is happening right now at the end of the business week, I know from past experience that it means I will end up limping into Saturday and Sunday as AN ABSOLUTE JOY for my family to be around.

Unless I take a positive action.

So that’s what best of the week is. What are the five best things I did this week? What are the assets I need to express some gratitude about? What are some things, good and bad, that I might need to thank my higher power for?

I like that our literature describes spending some time with the good parts of us, too, and spending 10 minutes digging into a short list of assets can be a nice way to do that. Picture if SportsCenter made a 60-second highlight reel from your week, what would be on there?

For me this week… I had quite a few moments where I was very irritated with people and the only person who knew that was me—restraint of pen and tongue! … I had a few work ideas that really turned out well, so I am proud to be of service… I worked out for a half hour or more every day… I had one night where my daughter started really snapping at me; it was unnecessary and I wanted to yell “F&^% you! but I didn’t—more restraint of pen and tongue.

But I will admit, by the end of the week, the level of restraint necessary for my pen and tongue looked like this:

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