It’s pretty easy to awake and get caught up immediately into the daily routines of life isn’t it? Each of you most likely has your own set patterns of the way you like to start each and every day. But how many of you though actually begin them in a selfless way by asking your Higher Power, whomever that is, how you can be helpful for the day?
There are so many opportunities throughout each of our days to get out of our self-centeredness and ego-based states of mind and help another. But what often ends up happening instead is that we get caught up in those routines and patterns in life and focus solely on what we need to do and accomplish for the day. What that usually ends up translating into is a tremendous amount of missed opportunities where we could have helped our Higher Power spread more love and light on this planet.
The sad reality is that most of us are in a hurry all the time. We’re rushing from here to there and checking off the boxes of what needs to get done during our day. In doing so, we might be less courteous to others on the road or in various places of business. We may avoid phone calls from those we deem to hold less importance. We may tell someone we are too busy when they’re asking for our help, even if it’s just for a few minutes of our time. And sadly, we might even forget to do even the simplest of things, such as holding a public door for those following closely behind us.
Those are just some of the missed opportunities where each of us can be helpful to our Higher Power. In my case, for the longest time I was so self-absorbed into what I needed to get out of life that I really thought little about helping anyone else out on any given day. I starting changing that a few years ago by waking up each morning and saying the following in my daily prayers.
“God, how can I be helpful to You today?”
Life has changed for me dramatically for the better since then.
Now, I see so many different ways where I can do just that. It’s almost as if I were once completely blind to what was going on around me. I’m a lot more respectful on the roads today because of it. I like to hold the doors now for people and smile as they walk on by. I enjoy talking to strangers who seem like they need a friend for the day. In fact, several of the sponsees that I am working with now in my 12-Step recovery arose from my new awareness of how I can be helpful to God.
We truly never know how our Higher Power may call upon us to help out in any given moment of a day. But if we are too busy thinking about ourselves and what we need to get out of it, then we are going to miss many incredible opportunities to experience the reason why we are all here, and that’s to spread love and light everywhere.
So the next time you wake up and are ready to start your day, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and ask your Higher Power how you can be helpful for the day. In doing so, you may find yourself being called upon in the strangest of ways. But you’ll probably also be smiling a lot more and feeling a lot less self-absorbed with all your day-to-day worries of life because of it.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson