April 25--Teachable

Experience teaches only the teachable.  --Aldous Huxley

    One would think spending 18 years in school, completing high school, college and grad school, would make one teachable. I guess I was, to a certain extent. 

    Relative to the school of life, however, it took a 12-Step program to give me the understanding of being teachable. I was so miserable that I was willing to take suggestions and learn from those who were living in recovery. It's a mighty powerful thing to admit we don't know the answer, to be willing to ask for help and to use that help to grow.

    The Twelve Promises of Alcoholics Anonymous describe what we all can experience if we are teachable:

1. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
2. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
3. We will comprehend the word serenity.
4. We will know peace.
5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
8. Self-seeking will slip away.
9. Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change.
10. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us.
11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

    Learning every day,

        Leta