Stefan Neff
The Courage To Be Sober Chapter 29
To Challenge Myself To Be Better Than Yesterday

I struggled for many years with my self-worth as a man and even as far as to say a human being, because of my thoughts and beliefs about myself. I know now that this feeling doesn’t have to be this way. I would wake up in the morning and wonder who I am and why I am here on this planet. I thought if I only had the skills or smarts to do what I wanted in life I could be happy.
That thought was stuck in my head from the notion of self-worth as a child. I never could see a bigger picture in the grand scheme of my life as I see it now. I truly believe that self-worth can be taught in school but the truth is it all starts from within the home and most of all ourselves.
When we look at what we want in life and who we want to be tomorrow, life is forever changed. Finding our passions in life, for example, the passions that our parents have when this passion made them happy. If our parents aren’t happy then our children may have issues
about their own happiness. There is a path that society can take on the road toward what is joy and what is unhappiness.
The question is what is true to our own happiness may not be happy for others? If you are like me, I like doing things in life that put a smile on my face. I went through life with an upside-down look on my face always wondering if happiness was a myth and I ask myself if there was such a thing as joy in life until I looked deep into my past feelings and then looked into the mirror of my own thoughts and feelings from yesterday.
The teaching of yesterday showed me what did work and what didn’t make me feel happy. If I could only bottle up and sell what happiness I felt inside my core I could be the richest human alive on this planet. To improve my situation I need to see what was making my past so uneasy and painful to move forward into the future of who I wanted to be and feel on a daily basis. Accept what yesterday had brought to my life but I will never settle for what tomorrow will bring.
I will always look at yesterday as the gauge of where I want to be. I want to know so many things about who I am deep inside, even if it is hard to look at myself in a mirror because to one's self is to know who I am.
I truly believe that as parents we can know our children and who they want to be in life. I remember as a kid my parents never really knew me for me and always assumed that I was doing something bad like they did when they were children. If you are like me remembering what assuming means - Making An Ass Of You And Me LOL.
How about talking to our children and asking them questions about what makes them happy. But we have to make ourselves happy first of all. When was the best time for me to make changes in my life towards the life I truly wanted and desired well, the truth is right now would be the only time?
Like Nike says Just Do It!!
My Solution For Change
1. To make a change in life is to improve our lives from yesterday
2. Strive for self-improvement on a daily basis
3. Never settle for who we were yesterday
4. Look into the mirror and ask ourselves who we want to be tomorrow
5. Take 100% responsibility for our lives
6. Take action every single day we are alive towards where we want to be
in the future
7. Guide our children to their inner happiness by example ourselves
8. Love ourselves unconditionally without judgment
9. Stop making excuses for our difficult situations and the issues in our
lives