Make Miracles in Forty Days

Melody Beattie:

Thanks so much for taking time to comment. I’m also glad you’re giving the activity two rounds — sometimes I need to circle the problems by doing this activity two to four times; other times i do it just because it keeps me at peace with life and with who I am. I’m absolutely thrilled that it’s working for you. It was scary to take a stand and write this book – yet i knew it (the activity) absolutely worked because it worked for me at one of the (many) low points in my life. Best, Melody Beattie

Melody Beattie:

Hi Erin. I’m sorry about what you’re going through; don’t need to know the details but I know you wouldn’t be here unless it hurt. I want to add that the exercise I’ve written about in the miracle book is somewhat different than what the others are asking you to do. I’m not asking you to be grateful for a tragedy as I think that would trivialize whatever the problem is. What this exercise asks is that you acknowledge gratitude for how you feel, because it then makes how you are truly responding to the situation legitimate, valid emotions. It helps us surrender to who we are, our emotions, and ultimately the situation as it is — but I don’t think we ever need to be grateful for anything that hurt us that much — just our ability to feel deep pain, to care that much, and to be so open that we can be affected by a loss at that level. It also helps us keep moving through the emotions until we can start moving forward in our lives. And surrender is the best way I’ve ever learned to connect with our true power.

Hope that helps. If you have any more questions or comments, be sure to write in and ask. Best, Melody Beattie. PS — now that I found all my lost replies to your comments, I’m going through and trying to get them posted — but I want you to know I wrote this in October and it’s been hiding — with these other posts — for two months. I’m so sorry; it feels horrible to feel like you’re being ignored.

Melody Beattie:

Hi Margaret. I’m glad you’re writing with your questions about the activity — that’s how you’ll get the most from it. (And that’s what this site is for.) Each situation, each person — and even different situations in the same person’s life — are unique to that period of time it’s difficult to answer your question. I’ll offer some thoughts and hope something fits or clicks for you. I don’t know if you’re going through grief right now, but that’s a situation unique unto itself. We don’t do grief; grief does us. We have little control over it, and the miracle exercise won’t bring a dead person back or make us stop missing the person we love and lost. It can, at the right time, help us to begin the process of moving forward with our lives, but this activity isn’t necessarily effective right away for people raw with deep grief. There’s just not much we can do except let grief have its way with us, and hope we don’t do damage to ourselves or anyone else until we re-join life. Okay, now I want you to read my response to Diana — and then read the rest of my answer to you. (Or finish reading this, and then read my reply to Diana’s comment too.) It’s vital that you not focus on the miracle or miracles you want, after first naming and becoming aware of them. Let the whole “miracle thing” go. This activity is about focusing on what’s going on inside you. And to directly answer your question, yes, I have done endless lists that report the same emotions – over and over and over again, and being grateful for them. Usually if we’re stuck, a good strong reason has helped us get and stay stuck. It takes a while to get out of the muck or even quicksand we’re drowning in. Just stay with your honest emotions and responses — how you feel right now, in this moment, each day. As to goals, as you become aware of them (which your daily activity should help you do — make you aware of what you don’t have but want, or do have and don’t desire). Try not to let any current awareness of a problem make you more stuck, or feel victimized. Turn that awareness of what you want (but don’t have) — including not knowing what you want ) as a written goal. But after you write it down, let your desires and goals go. Put the list away, in a sacred and safe place where the only eyes that will see your list are yours. Sometimes, when I’m reallly stuck, it also helps to find a few things I’m genuinely grateful for too — not just the painful or unwanted emotions I’m feeling and/or denying. An activity that can help is finding something I really like about life, and including that on the list — and then doing the same, but for ourselves. Find something you really like about yourself, and then add your gratitutde for that to your list. It can help lift our spirits, and the lighter we are, the easier it is to get lifted out of any rut we’ve found ourselves in. Please, try to not look at your list after you write it (your daily activity “I’m grateful for …….” (whatever you’re really not grateful for list). Instead, focus on feeling the feelings you’ve been denying or repressing, really getting an emotional connection to them instead of doing them in your intellect or head. This exercise is about accepting who we are, how we feel, what’s really going on with us in our life, and surrendering to that instead of dodging, ducking, and avoiding it. I tell the story time and again about how when I was grieving the loss of my son (the first wretched years) and I went to a therapist and told her, “I spend months feeling nothing, just numb.” I looked at her, and she stared at me. “Well, then just feel numb,” she said. I paid her $95 and left. It turned out to be the best $95 I’ve spent. Giving myself permission to feel whatever it is I really feel, to just feel that — let myself be and stop picking on myself — was a huge gift, one that helped me to move forward instead of staying stuck. Also, sometimes we tend to get impatient. If we’ve had a problem for a while, it may not change overnight. If we’ve felt a certain way for a long time, we might not turn that situation around right away. Sometimes people get just the seeds of their miracle(s) by the end of the first days. And the miracles we ultimately receive may not be the ones we thought we wanted in the beginning. Like I said, each situation is unique, and so is this activity and how it will work on us. I’ve given you some additional exercises you can add that might help change — but it might take you a while to get out of the rut. And what you perceive as an unchanging rut might be a rut or situation that’s already begun to move, even if it’s only moving in small ways. You may see yourself differently than you actually are. Or, it might take a lot longer than you thought to turn the situation around. It’s hard to say without knowing you, and more about the situation you’re in — and your past. Someetimes doing things like ending a relationship (even if we know it’s not good for us), or other issues that we have so many rules for that we don’t leave room for us to be who we are: “real human beings” — can be much harder to move through than we think. Now, to directly answer your question(s): yes, my list often repeats itself, especially if I’m grieving a situation, or the situation isn’t resolved. Try your best to go deeper into your emotions. See if there’s more or deeper emotions underneath the ones you find so obviously sitting on top. Go as deep as you can –as deep as you feel safe going — into what’s taking place emotionally inside you, and be grateful for who you really are and how you really feel — whether or not you perceive your emotions as “therapeutically correct.” And please keep writing in with your questions and be as specific as you can, so I can make my answer specific to your questions. (My last list was an almost daily repeat for the first 40 days, before it began to move much at all.) Good luck, and let us know how it’s going. Read other posts in the forum, too. We’re a group — helping each other. Melody Beattie (Also, when you’re not doing your list, listen to your intuition about what you need to do, and then do it (unless it involves harming someone else or you.) Those little things we get the urge to do can be much bigger in the overall plan than we think. Best, Melody Beattie. PPS: You really don’t need to work on your magic wand list except once, before you begin the regular daily activities. That puts too much focus on external (or even internal) goals — the tomorrows — instead of who you are and what’s happening right now, and that’s what our goal really is.

Melody Beattie:

Thanks for your report on this exercise. When we hear positive reports like that, it encourages the rest of us to keep going (myself included — even though I wrote the book). We’re all coming and starting from a different place (and different amount of paiin) when we begin doing the “Miracle Max List” (as a friend and I have dubbed it). If we’re going through deep grief, it may not stop the grieving process — and we wouldn’t want it to (well, we would, but it’s not in our best interests to do that). I’m glad you’re having fun with that and more than anything, I’m glad you found the true gift I find from this activity: Peace, the Peace that Passes All Understanding. Best, Melody Beattie

Melody Beattie:

Hi Francine. Thanks for your words of encouragement. I believe I already repleid to this comment — but the “back room” of this sigte is a bit haywire right now, and things are giong where they’re supposed to go, and getting where they need to be. Just wanted to be sure I acknowledge your request. AS A NOTE TO OTHERS: If you don’t see a response usually within a few days, but as I get back to writing make that “two weeks,” please poke me and let me know. Thanks, Melody. (PS – I’ve found that everything is a lesson, but one circumstance can mean one thing to one person, and another to a different person. I’ve had a difficult time reporting people to the police, first because of the time, energy and difficulties involved and secondly, due to guilt from a long, long, long ago past. This was a lot about setting me free. but then again, we often don’t know what we’ve been learning until the lesson is over and done.” Best, Melody Beattie