Living with chronic disease and pain may place a permanent frown on your face and all this talk about "thinking positive" may just feel like a punch in the gut. Luckily, it's never too late to get help! For all of us suffering from a severe case of worry, stress and over seriousness, may I present this marvelous version of the twelve step program :
The Twelve Steps Over Serious Anonymous (OSA)
Step One - We admitted that we were powerless over seriousness - that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step Two - Came to believe that only by lightening up could we achieve a state of non-seriousness.
Step Three - Made a decision to turn our constant self-criticism over to our sense of humor and learn to "lovingly and wholeheartedly" laugh at ourselves.
Step Four - Decided to give ourselves a break once in a while, instead of constantly doing searching and fearless moral inventories of ourselves.
Step Five - Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being that our wrongs were often in our heads.
Step Six - Were entirely ready to accept that our characters were as good as anybody else's and possibly better than most.
Step Seven - Quit harping on our shortcomings.
Step Eight - Made of list of all persons we thought we had harmed and saw that they'd forgotten all the crap we'd blown out of proportion.
Step Nine - Quit making amends for breathing air and taking up a few square feet of the planet's surface.
Step Ten - Resigned ourselves to the fact we were going to criticize ourselves at times, but would try to stick to our guns when we knew we were right.
Step Eleven - Sought through prayer and meditation to calm down and realize we're not responsible for everything.
Step Twelve - Having experienced immense relief from these steps, we would try to carry this message to other over-serious people and to practice these principles in all of our affairs.
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