Roy Lloyd: New Year's Guidelines

How will we live in this new year of 2012?  Some good guidelines come from the 12-step movement followed by those addressing their addictions or those affected by those addictions. Consider these opportunities for how we can conduct ourselves from this day forward:

• Believe in a power greater than ourselves;
• Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves;
• Admit to God, as we understand God, as well as to ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs;
• Humbly ask God to remove all our shortcomings;
• Make a list of all persons we have harmed and be willing to make amends;
• Continue to take personal inventory and when wrong promptly admit it;
• Seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.

The last one of the twelve steps is my particular wish for us all: Having had a spiritual awakening, we practice these principles in all our affairs. 

May this be a happy and hope-filled new year!  This is Roy Lloyd.

[Originally presented on 1010 WINS NewsRadio, New York City.]