When action plan was added to the Tools ten years ago, I was not sure how to utilize it. I looked up what action plan means: “An action plan is the process of identifying and implementing attainable actions, both daily and long-term, that are necessary to support our individual abstinence and emotional, spiritual, and physical recovery” (The Tools of Recovery, …

My recent service as Virtual Services Trustee has taught me about: balance between service to others and self-care, the importance of what is good for OA as a whole instead of what I prefer personally, accepting help and direction and not taking it as criticism, how much there is to know and how little I do know, grounding my ideas …

I have always made action plans . . . if all my to-do lists count. Daily to-do lists keep me organized and let me check off the items I complete. However, when it came to recovery from compulsive eating, I found I needed something more specific to keep me on track with my abstinence. I needed an action plan that …

My action plan is a prescription for recovery from my food addiction: Eat three moderate, weighed-and measured meals Pray morning, day, night, and as needed Connect daily with my sponsor and OA friends Attend two to three face-to-face OA meetings a week Read OA-approved literature and other recovery and spiritual books two to three times a day, or more as …

I resisted doing service—the same way I’d once resisted writing out a food plan for the day. And I hated the slogan “service is slimming,” which some members chanted during the reading of the Tools in meetings. But my program was faltering in all areas: physical, emotional, and spiritual. I was forgetting all the important parts of the program, forgetting …

Over the years, I’ve held a lot of service positions and learned so much in each one. For me, the rewards of service are many, including self-confidence, people skills, and friendships, not to mention the fact that honoring a service commitment has sometimes been the only thing that has kept me coming back. Recently, I’ve experienced unexpected perks from my …

When I arrived at my first OA meeting in August 1999, a member greeted me at the door. When I walked into the meeting room, I saw OA literature laid out on the table. One woman sat and talked to me until the meeting started. The meeting started promptly and everyone paid attention to the meeting leader, who shared her …

Service is what keeps me in the program. There is no “as if” in it; my life truly does depend on it. Doing service at the group, intergroup, and region levels gets me out of my own head. Doing service for others enables me to be useful, and that is a positive feeling. When I do service, I feel like I …

I am grateful for sixteen years and six months of abstinence, by the grace of God and this Fellowship. It is a gift to serve as a sponsor and see sponsees go through the Twelve Steps to find abstinent, sane lives. Sponsoring helps me take the focus off my problems (a divorce, move, and new job), which could lead to …

From the very beginning of my time in the OA rooms, I heard that service is a Tool. However, I never thought about it as a way to connect to my Higher Power and preserve my abstinence until recently. I tended to think of service as a Tradition. It was, in my mind, a practice that was important to preserve …