Chris Prentiss Quotes

When people who believe themselves to be addicts or alcoholics come under great stress or trauma, they mentally give themselves permission to drink or use drugs as a remedy.

Everything that happens to me is the best possible thing that can happen to me.

I wrote this book to show you that a cure is entirely possible because I've seen it happen over and over again.

The events that occur in my life are workout situations. They are there for my benefit so I can become strong and gain wisdom and information by working my way through those situations.

Happiness comes from our response to the conditions of our lives.

If you are surrounded by people who not only don't believe in your goals and your positive outlook on life, but who also continually try to tear you down, it will be extremely challenging for you to hold firmly in mind that you will succeed and that you can be happy.

At the bottom of every person's dependency, there is always pain, Discovering the pain and healing it is an essential step in ending dependency.

There is only one way to achieve lasting happiness. That is simply: Be happy.

How you conduct yourself along the path that is your life determines how your life unfolds.

The true source of happiness is within each of us.

Most of the time, we respond to life without taking a moment

Your life today is the result of a series of decisions you made that have caused you to arrive where you are.

Every belief that you hold manifests itself in some manner by either causing you to take some form of action or by preventing you from taking action. If you don't believe something is possible, you won't even attempt it.

To give up power to change for the better is inherently distasteful to everyone, and to force people to affirm that they are addicts or alcoholics so they can speak in a meeting is shameful and demoralizing.

You are not alone in your quest to be who you want and have what you want.

You can be happy if you are willing to let go of your past and leave yourself unencumbered so you can fly freely.

Think about the stigma that is attached to the idea that alcoholism is a disease, an incurable illness, and you have it. That's a terrible thing to inflict on someone. Labeling alcoholism as a disease, a cause unto itself, simply no longer fits with what we know today about its causes.

The more you engage in any type of emotion or behavior, the greater your desire for it will become.

People who believe they have bad luck create bad luck. Those who believe they are very fortunate, that the world is a generous place filled with trustworthy people, live in exactly that kind of world.

The best way for you to get that new experience is to change your response to what happens.

Stress comes from the way you relate to events or situations.

Not only is the Universe aware of us, but it also communicates with us. We, in turn, are constantly in communication with the Universe through our words, thoughts, and actions. The Universe responds with events. Events are the language of the Universe. The most obvious of those events are what we call coincidence.

If you feel depressed for an hour, you've produced approximately eighteen billion new cells that have more receptors calling out for depressed-type peptides and fewer calling out for feel-good peptides.

A computer cannot manufacture new information. That's the difference between our brain and a computer.

You can open to the idea that whatever happened to you in the past eventually turned out or will turn out to be a benefit to you.

The Universe doesn't make mistakes.

choose to feel happy about whatever the situation is, knowing it will ultimately be to our benefit.

If you examine your motive for doing anything, you'll soon discover that your reason is that you believe it will make you happy.

Even if it is painful and lonely, associate with worthy companions.

Every person in the AA program who's successful is living proof that he or she does have power over addictive drugs and alcohol- the power to stop.

The Zen of doing anything is doing it with a particular concentration of mind, a calmness and simplicity of mind, that brings the experience of enlightenment and, through that experience, happiness.

You don't need to be a scientist to know how powerful your imagination is.

Embrace simplicity…be content with what you have and are, and not one can despoil you.

You are not an alcoholic or an addict. You are not incurably diseased. You have merely become dependent on substances or addictive behavior to cope with underlying conditions that you are now going to heal, at which time your dependency will cease completely and forever.

What determines each person's state of happiness or unhappiness is not the event itself, but what the event means to that person.

Although you may have never sat down and defined what your philosophy is, it is fully operative and working in your life at all times. It deals with what you believe about the world in which you live, about its people and events, about how you affect them.

The Universe doesn’t make mistakes. Everything is happening just as it should. It’s only our perception of difficulties that causes us the distress and the difficulty we experience. Not only that, but when we label events as ‘bad,' we fail to perceive the benefit that is waiting for us.

If you can stop using substance or stop your addictive behavior for extended periods of time without craving, you are not dependent. You are dependent only if you can't stop without physical or psychological distress (you have unpleasant physical and/or psychological withdrawal symptoms) or if you stop and then relapse.

The path of the knowledgeable, successful person, which only leads to supreme good fortune and great success is always directly in front of you.

Each river is different, but they all eventually lead to the ocean. No matter what we’re doing or when, or whether it brings us happiness or remorse, gain or loss, we’re all on our individual paths to enlightenment. Even when we’ve done something we consider wrong, we’re still on our path to enlightenment.

Who you allow into the circle of your life will make the difference in the quality of your life.

The answers are never 'out there. ' All the answers are 'in there, ' inside you, waiting to be discovered.

Stress and anxiety cause our brains to release chemicals that put lines in our faces and tear us down emotionally and spiritually.

Alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people are using to help themselves cope with the problems. Those problems always have both physical and psychological components- anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficient disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain.

The moment you make the internal changes necessary to obtain your goal, the outside world changes instantly.

Whatever you are trying to achieve in life, it is essential that you surround yourself with people who believe that what you seek and what you believe in are not only possible but also very probable.

How do you change what you believe when your experience has convinced you otherwise? By creating a new experience. The best way for you to get that new experience is to change your response to what happens. By the natural law of cause and effect, that new response will create new results, which you will then experience as a new reality. To reach the goal of happiness, act as though the following statement is already true: Everything that happens to me is the best thing that can happen to me.

When you need an idea about how to do anything, get quiet and relaxed and think about what it is you need to know. Then the flow of ideas will come. Be patient and let it happen. Sometimes it takes a little while, but it always works.