This Week's R.I.S.E. :What Would You Say To A Friend?

This week's R.I.S.E. (Recovery Inspiration Strength Exercise) is What would you say to a friend?

Have you ever noticed that when someone you care about is hurting that you're able to give support, comfort, and advice from a place of love that seems reserved just for them? Do you ever hear what you're saying and think, "why can I say this to someone else and not to myself?"

For many of us, we see other people's problems and solutions much clearer than we see our own. Sometimes the solution seems so obvious and uncomplicated. Even complicated solutions still seem doable. Why is that? The reasons range from complicated to down right simple.

We're just too close to the problem.

Everything seems harder to accomplish when it's personal. It gets bogged down in the muck of our personal "stuff."

We're dealing with things like:

• Our past experiences/history
• How we feel about ourselves
• Fear of change 
• Fear of failure
• Feeling undeserving

.... and the list could go on and on.

So this week take a problem you're dealing with and pretend you're advising, comforting, and supporting a friend. Writing it down in letter form will help you reach your true "friend" voice (Dear insert your name here ). Don't read it when you're done writing it. Put it away for a day... or three. When you have a few moments to be all alone, grab yourself a cup of warm tea, settle into a comfy spot, and read it, slowly. Then read it again, out loud.

Now, follow your own advice.

You are deserving, and worthy of it.

©Weighing The Facts



picsource:http://www.flickr.com/photos/mel_rowling/6122321048/in/photostream/

Recovery Quote Of The Week: November 13, 2010

Kites rise against, not with the wind. No man has ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm.
John Neal


*See sidebar menu for more Recovery Quotes Of The Week and Inspirational Recovery Quotes

picture source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dalem/25978785/

Recovery Quote Of The Week: August 18, 2010

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to the know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr
click picture to see larger size.

See sidebar menu for more Recovery Quotes Of The Week and Inspirational Recovery Quotes.


picture source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/extranoise/156690123/

Eating Disorders: Inspirational Recovery Quotes #6

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
-Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel-

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.
-Emily Dickenson-

A gentle breeze blowing in the right direction is better than a pair of strong oars.
- Canary Island Proverb-

People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves.
- Salma Hayek-

Happiness rarely keeps company with an empty stomach.
- Japanese Proverb-

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.
- Anne Lamott-

The journey is the reward.
-Chinese Proverb-

Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make you a far happier and more productive person.
- David M. Burns-

You haven't failed until you quit trying.
- Anonymous-

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
- Richard Bach-

How long should you try? Until.
-Jim Rohn-

A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.
- Anonymous-

There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
-John F. Kennedy-

Success is the proper utilization of failure.
- Anonymous-

Your life will be no better than the plans you make and the action you take. You are the architect and builder of your own life, fortune, destiny.
-Alfred A. Montapert-

They are able because they think they are able.
-Virgil-

I have learned that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
-Henry David Thoreau-

Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.
-Baltasar Gracian-

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
-Auguste Rodin-

One cannot think crooked and walk straight.
- Anonymous-

Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.
- Henry Van Dyke-

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr-

Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it.
- Ella Williams-

Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
-John Wooden-

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
-Epictetus-

We are betrayed by what is false within.
-George Meredith-

When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way.
-Wayne Dyer-

See also Using Affirmations

See sidebar for more inspirational quotes and quotes of the week.

Poll: What Was The Inspiration That Caused You To Seek Recovery From Your Eating Disorder?

Please see sidebar for the poll, "What Was The Inspiration That Caused You To Seek Recovery From Your ED?"

The poll options are limited so if you have chosen "other," would like to add answers, elaborate on your answers, and/or discuss what led you to seek recovery please feel free to do so in the comment section of this post.

Thank you.

Completed Poll Results:

What Was The Inspiration That Caused You To Seek Recovery From Your ED? (choose all that apply)

ED treatment center	4 (11%)
Therapy	7 (19%)
Support of family	8 (22%)
Support of friend(s)	9 (25%)
Loss of friend(s) to ED	2 (5%)
Loss of family member to ED	1 (2%)
Fear of consequences	10 (27%)
Health issues	12 (33%)
Health concerns	13 (36%)
Severe illness	4 (11%)
Helping another with recovery	3 (8%)
Following the recovery of another	2 (5%)
Alternative medicine/methods	2 (5%)
Medication	3 (8%)
Art Therapy	1 (2%)
Meditation	2 (5%)
Hair loss	5 (13%)
Fear of dying	6 (16%)
Self-discovery	10 (27%)
ED awareness	8 (22%)
Support group	2 (5%)
Intervention	5 (13%)
I cant remember	0 (0%)
I'm trying but not inspired	4 (11%)
Other (please see below poll)	2 (5%)
I'm not in recovery	5 (13%)
I don't want recovery	4 (11%)

Votes: 36

More Poll Results

picture source:photbucket.com

Eating Disorders: Inspirational Recovery Quotes #5

Dedicate yourself to the good you deserve and desire for yourself. Give yourself peace of mind. You deserve to be happy. You deserve delight.
Mark Victor Hansen

Nothing happens by itself... it all will come your way, once you understand that you have to make it come your way, by your own exertions.
Ben Stein

In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.

Michael Korda

You can't pick the hand you're dealt, but you can choose how you play your cards.
T. H

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Confront your fears, list them, get to know them, and only then will you be able to put them aside and move ahead.
Jerry Gilles

When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.
Edward Teller

It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not.
Anonymous

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Loyd Wright

Flowers grow out of darker moments.
Corita Kent

Always direct your thoughts to those truths that will give you confidence, hope, joy, love, thanksgiving, and turn away your mind from those that inspire you with fear, sadness, depression.
Bertrand Wilbertforce

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
Ralph Hodgson

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
Anatole France

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.
Les Brown

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." . . . You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt

It's not what you go through that defines you; you can't help that. It's what you do AFTER you've gone through it that really tests who you are.
Kwame Floyd

The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become.
James Allen

Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution.
Dr. David Schwartz

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind.
Dale Carnegie

Prepare your mind to receive the best that life has to offer.
Ernest Holmes

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.
Bernard Williams

Listen to the mustn'ts child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn't haves,
the impossibles, the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves,
then listen close to me.
Anything can happen child.
Anything can be.
Shel Silverstein

See also Using Affirmations

See sidebar for more inspirational quotes and quotes of the week.

sources:
http://inspirationalquote.blogspot.com/2006/08/quotes-on-believing-in-yourself.html http://www.happypublishing.com/quotations/belief-quotes-believing-in-yourself.htm
http://www.realmentalhealth.com/inspiration/inspirational_quotes
picture source: MrsMenopausal

Eating Disorders: Inspirational Recovery Quotes #4

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
-George Eliot-

He who has hope has everything.
-Arabian Proverb-

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
-Thomas Edison-

Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget about everything except what you're going to do now - and do it.
-William Durant-

You don't have to control your thoughts; you just have to stop letting them control you.
-Dan Millman-

Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
-Og Mandino-

Determination, patience and courage are the only things needed to improve any situation.
-Peter Sinclair-

Just go out there and do what you've got to do.
-Martina Navratilova-

Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.
-Dale Carnegie-

What we actually learn, from any given set of circumstances, determines whether we become increasingly powerless or more powerful.
-Blaine Lee-

Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.
-Unknown-

The most important of life's battles is the one we fight daily in the silent chambers of the soul.
-David O. McKay-

Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.
-M Scott Peck-

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.
-Booker T. Washington-

Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us.
-Earl Nightingale-

Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.
-Zig Ziglar-

Picture in your mind a sense of personal destiny.
-Wayne Oates-

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.
-Dale Carnegie-

Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.
-Kahlil Gibran-

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
-Napoleon Hill-

What happens to a man is less significant than what happens within him.
-Louis L. Mann-

Suffering is but another name for the teaching of experience, which is the parent of instruction and the schoolmaster of life.
-Horace-

The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.
-Ben Okri-

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.
-Helen Keller-

Faith in one's self... is the best and safest course.
-Michelangelo-

To be a champ, you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will.
-Sugar Ray Robinson-

Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.
-Joanne Kathleen Rowling-

I need to put things in perspective because I have a disease of perception.
-Unknown-

Resentment is like you taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
-Unknown-

It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life that no man can sincerely try to help another, without helping himself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson-

This one step - choosing a goal and sticking to it - changes everything.
-Scott Reed-

A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.
-Mark Twain-

I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them.
-Pablo Picasso-

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite well that just to be alive is a grand thing.
-Agatha Christie-

When you dance with a gorilla it is the gorilla who decides when to stop.
-Unknown-

• Please see "Inspirational Recovery Quotes" in sidebar for links to more recovery quotes.

• See also Using Affirmations

Sources:
http://www.realmentalhealth.com/inspiration/inspirational_quotes_recovery.asp
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/recovery/
http://www.recovery-man.com/rec_quotes.htm
http://fishyvb.something-fishy.org/
picture source: MrsMenopausal

Eating Disorders: Inspirational Recovery Quotes #3

Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget about everything except what you're going to do now - and do it.
-William Durant-

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
- Thomas Edison-

It does not matter how deep you fall, what matters is how high you bounce back.
- unknown-

You don't have to control your thoughts; you just have to stop letting them control you.
-Dan Millman-

Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.
-Og Mandino-

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon-

Determination, patience and courage are the only things needed to improve any situation.
- Peter Sinclair-

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
- Japanese proverb-

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
-Martin Luther King -

Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born.
- Dr. Dale Turner-

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
- Anatole France-

He who has hope has everything.
-Arabian Proverb-

If you share your pain, you cut it in half, if you don't, you double it.
-unknown-

People with goals succeed because they know where they're going.
-Earl Nightingale-

We will either find a way, or make one.
-Hannibal-

I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them.
- Pablo Picasso-

Happiness is like a butterfly.
The more you chase it, the more it eludes you.
But if you turn your attention to other things,
It comes and sits softly on your shoulder.
-Anonymous-

Open your eyes and look within. Are you satisfied with the life you are living?
-Bob Marley- Exodus.-

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite well that just to be alive is a grand thing.
-Agatha Christie-

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
-W. Somerset Maugham-

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
-George Eliot-

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
-Emily Dickinson-

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.
-Kahlil Gibran-

See also Using Affirmations

See sidebar for more inspirational quotes and quotes of the week.

sources: http://www.realmentalhealth.com/inspiration/inspirational_quotes_recovery.asp
http://www.something-fishy.org
picture source: MrsMenopausal

Eating Disorders: Inspirational Recovery Quotes #2

Health is not merely the absence of disease, it is the balance of mind, body and soul.
Hippocrates

Finish each day and be done with it ... You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men (sic) - true nobility is being superior to your former self.
Author Unknown

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created --- created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.
John Schaar

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
William James

Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky.
Ojibwa saying

The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only a person who listens can speak.
Dag Hammarskjold

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.
Lao-Tzu

When I began to listen to poetry is when I began to listen to stones, and I began to listen to what the clouds had to say, and I began to listen to others. And what is most important for all of us, is to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself, in here, but which is also the soul of everyone else.
The Native American poet Joy Harjo on PBS

When you do things from the soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
Jelaluddin Rumi

There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
Martha Graham

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

Don't ask yourself what the world needs ... Ask yourself what makes you alive because what the world needs are people who have come alive.
Ranier Maria Rilke

Common sense is not so common.
Voltaire

And the day came when the risk to remain tight inside the bud was greater than the risk it took to bloom.
Anais Nin

It's Never Too Late to Be What You Might Have Been. George Eliot

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
Alexander Graham Bell

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Loyd Wright

Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration.
Evan Esar

There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you.
David Burns

Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind.
Alice Meynell

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.
Brian Tracy

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius

We are still masters of our fate.
We are still captains of our souls.
Winston Churchill

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
Lucretius

The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it.
Plutarch

Press on! A better fate awaits thee.
Victor Hugo

See also Using Affirmations

See sidebar for more inspirational quotes and quotes of the week.

sources: http://www.overeaters.net/inspirations.html
http://www.freewebs.com/rayneonthemoon/inspiration.htm
http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/
Picture source: MrsMenopausal

Eating Disorders: Inspirational Recovery Quotes

"A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost."
Jean-Paul Sartre

I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it."
Rita Mae Brown

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it." The House at Pooh Corner
A.A. Milne

"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self."
Aristotle

"When you love your body, you are most able to share its pleasures with those who light your heart."
Huitaco

"Life itself is the proper binge."
Julia Child

"If one is a Greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?"
Edith Sitwell

"It matters more what's in a woman's face than what's on it."
Claudette Colbert

"Trouble is part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the [people] who love you enough chance to love you enough."
Dinah Shore

"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, [but] it is impossible to find it elsewhere."
Agnes Repplier

"It is time for every one of us to roll up our sleeves and put ourselves at the top of our commitment list."
Marian Wright Edelman

"Go within everyday and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out."
Katherine Dunham

"By very slow degrees, and with frequent relapses, that alarmed and grieved my friend, I recovered."
Mary Shelley (from Frankenstein)

"When all is said and done,
it is persistence that is the antidote to powerlessness....
The sight of goodness undeterred
has more power than all the forces on earth arrayed against it."
Joan Chittister

"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up."
Paul Vale'ry

"Try.
Fail.
Try Again.
Fail Better."
Samuel Beckett

"Remember: Only one thing registers on the subconscious mind: repetitive application - practice. What you practice is what you manifest."
Grace Speare

"It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities."
Sir Josiah Charles Stamp, an English Economist

"If you live your life with a shield up, even the good things in life will pass you by."
Anonymous

"The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises."
C. G. Jung

"What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so. " Mark Twain

"Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow."
Alice M. Swaim

"Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them." Aristotle

"The only journey is the journey within."
Rainer Maria Rilke

"Yes, know thyself: in great concerns or small, Be this thy care, for this, my friend, is all."
Juvenal

"Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow."
Doug Firebaugh

"Insist on yourself. Never imitate."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed."
Theodore Roosevelt

"Our greatest glory consist not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
Oliver Goldsmith

"Happiness resides not in posessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul."
Democritus

"There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you."
David Burns, Intimate Connections

"The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new, and hope is brightest when it dawns from fears."
Walter Scott

See also Using Affirmations

See sidebar for more inspirational quotes and quotes of the week.

Quotes compiled from the following sites:
http://www.poppink.com/inspirations.html
http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/growth.html
http://eatingdisorders.suite101.com/article.cfm/more_quotes
http://www.swedauk.org/poems/quotes.htm

picture source: MrsMenopausal